Why Sun And Moon Anime... Is Actually Pretty Good With How They’ve Handled Ash’s Transition.

not to be pretentious, but a lot of stuff you guys complain is being ruined by capitalism/the algorithm/whatever can be solved by consuming something else than the most basic mainstream stuff that's thrown in your lap. "songs nowadays are getting shorter to fit entire tiktoks and it's ruining music" have you tried listening to something else than Spotify's Top 100 my dude? "fanfiction-to-publishing pipeline is churning out mediocre books and it's ruining literature" have you tried reading something outside the NYT bestseller list my dude? This is not a post about how algorithm based industries give visibility to the lowest common denominator art at the expense of actually creative and meaningful art that struggles to make itself known, which is a valid discussion for another time, this is about people actively not giving this kind of art their visibility because they won't get out of their way to discover stuff outside the mainstream radar and prefer to be passively fed what to consume while bitching that is not up to their tastes.

the fact that "eco" and "ethical" are two separate concerns in the global north, and that "eco" is a much more popular concern, with many "eco" products being made in actual sweatshops, is a big part of why i am The Joker

Distant Utopia - from ひきだしにテラリウム (Terrarium in a Drawer) by Ryoko Kui

now that Dungeon Meshi has an official English translation, i hope someday Kui’s other work will get translated too. this anthology was really good, and this story was one of my favorites

People really need to realise that “media can affect real life” doesn’t mean “this character does bad things so people will read that and start doing bad things” and actually means “ideas in fiction especially stereotypes about minority groups can affect how the reader views those groups, an authors implicit prejudices can be passed on to readers”

“some people don’t deserve redemption” redemption isn’t something that’s deserved, it’s something someone does. it’s making the choice to change the way you live your life, to be better, to do good things instead of bad things and try to make up for the bad things. and everyone can and should do that, at any time, no matter what they’ve done. we can’t change the past, but we can choose what kind of person to be now and in the future. we have the responsibility to do so. it is so completely not about “deserving.”

from the r/Jewish subreddit:

Best Megatron Optimus Dynamic?

I really love the unrequited kismesis relationships Megatron has with Optimus in the G1 cartoon.

Megatron thought of himself as Optimus’s greatest arch-foe, while Optimus Prime only thought of him as “the current Decepticon leader”.

If Megatron ever found out that Optimus didn’t care about him as a person but only as a threat and symptom of the actual problem*:the Decepticon cause, I think he’d be crushed.

Megatron:“How can this be, I betrayed you and killed your coworkers back when you were a dockworker!”

Optimus:“You’ve killed alot of people. After a while its hard to take it personally. and unlike you I go to therapy”

*remember that in the cartoon they were on the Third Great War between Autobots and Decepticons. Megatron was not their founder in the original cartoon.