WoOoOoOOoOoooOOOooo

HALLOWEEN EDITION

So much to say, so little I'm actually going to publish.

Well first off, since it's Halloween my door actually has this adorable picture of Ex-Keine on it right now. I would give her all my candy if she showed up at my door. EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF IT, and I will ensure that she'd share with Mokou. It would be wondrous.

Apparently Buddhists do not celebrate Halloween.

Here's a song that is fitting for the day.

Nue, a creature feared by humans for one simple fact, the Nue is a being who's true form is still unknown, is that loli we see before us her real form? It makes me wonder, is ZUN tricking us humans once again, and laughing his ass off?
She was sealed away in the depths of hell, but all the ruckus Chernobyl caused broke her free, releasing along with a bunch Unidentified characters a horror unknown to man. Shape shifting, corpse morphing, they are all truly fearsome powers. -Excerpt from the description

Yeah. UFO was horrifying. Those UNIDENTIFIED SPACE SHIPS AND LIKELY THOSE ADORABLE MINI-ALIENS PILOTING THEM IT IS SO SCARY HOMFG I had to hold back ALL my fear to collect them because they gave you free things like candy. Though in terms of progress I actually reached Shou on EASY MODO! She proceeded to destroy me. (Which is funny because I got through midboss Nazrin with no problem) I can perfect Nazrin and Murasa now (no it's not because she's my favourite and I practiced her forever in practice mode) both Kogasa and Ichirin still give me trouble, in particular their last spellcards. IF ONLY I HAD THE BOMBING REACTION. But you know what? Nue is a troll, forcing me to risk my VERY LIFE to manoeuvre through all the bullets attempting to collect that red life UFO ONLY FOR IT TO TURN BLUE THE SECOND I TOUCH IT--FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

So due to it being Halloween this week/month's edition is going to be discussing the internet's fascination with the genre: Grimdark. Every single one of my favourite characters have been subjected to such a genre, though some made more sense than others. (I demand more Murasa grimdark. SHE IS A MASS-MURDERER FANDOM! Do something with thaaaaat! Oh and she is also a ghost. And no, Stripe-Pattern's desire to gorify everything using psychopathic Sanae does not count, nor does Byakuren letting a little girl be eaten by a youkai!) One particular favourite from Touhou that isn't Flandre is Koishi, due to her disconnecting herself from the youkai world by having a few arteries not plugged into her brain, or something. I even did an entire post about this, with the strangely-popular Youtube series: "Koishi's Heart-throbbing Adventure" This little adventure isn't just Koishi decapitating everything (rather, she is the one who is decapitated oddly enough...and Yukari, but that's spoilers! Oops.) I have not been following it because it subjects poor Shou as a victim and that just tortures my heart to see Shou like so. (By the Myouren Crew too. :< )

But yes, the internet is now fascinated with that which is grimdark. I'm not entirely sure why (or maybe I am late and it has been in forever) but people simply like making characters as miserable as possible that goes far beyond that of emotional trauma. They are after all fictional characters, so no real people are being hurt except maybe offended people on the internet. But no one really cares about people on the internet unfortunately. I highly enjoy fan-made creations that are incredibly sad. I love reading tragedies and occasionally angsty-stories. (Those that don't tread into wangst-y, at least) So what makes grimdark even more fascinating than already a genre that tugs at your heart strings, attempting to stab you every time you open your eyes? I must admit I am not completely against grimdark, so long as it's well-written and has some sort of point. (And yes I realize most fluff has literally no point but at least it makes you D'AWWW which is important! Senseless grimdark kind of does nothing really, or disgust you. But who wants to willingly be disgusted?)

And well most grimdark I've run into wasn't the type I'd like unfortunately, since they are all senseless. The aforementioned Stripe Pattern is one of them. I'm not going to go into the heart-throbbing adventure since I had an entire post devoted to it before, but I have these Stripe Pattern doujinshi on my computer, and I got to say. So senseless. Of course if you make it like Taoism propaganda it'd be far more hilarious, except the part that depicts Nue as a hero. (In which case Nue would be some sort of amazing historical figure we'd all hail) One of the biggest most noteworthy of scenes is when Byakuren leads a bunch of youkai (who all look like horrible ugly disfigured demons and not the pretty loli youkai you regularly see) and they walk into a village. One of the youkai eats one of the little girls, and Byakuren does nothing to stop it, in fact encourages it. The most aggravating parts of the story isn't so much the scenes despite how horrific this one is, but the fact that the circle uses actual quotes from in-game to describe Byakuren's beliefs, throwing it completely out of context. It truly does seem like a propaganda doujinshi. Stripe Pattern hates the UFO characters, and had Sanae brutally massacre the group. 

I too have even written grim-dark, if that one story of mine where a nuke falls on China causing the death of the entire population leaving Max missing a hand means anything. I am not proud of that story, in fact I quite despise it. The fact that I use such a touchy situation to justify for the shipping I have in the story is awful. I've also written imprisoned Negima characters with regular tasings and fights, also a way to write out a shipping. I don't know what was wrong with me then, but I do believe I had a fascination of grimdark myself. I think a lot of teenagers go through this phase, it's like being emo and wanting to cut yourself (but not actually cutting yourself...I hope) thinking that the entire world hates the fuck out of you and nothing is fair. You know, the whiny teenager stage. I think a majority of my past Livejournal posts are pretty much either fandom squeeing or whiny teenager stage, so... (yet I still keep them around for nostalgia purposes)

But some of them are again, rather interesting. I think half the reason I fell into the Hetalia fandom is that you could depict actual wars with the characters, and use that character as a symbol of the feelings the entire nation feels. Yes I realize some people might be offended by reducing an entire population to a shallow anime character, but you got to be brutally honest about these things. While a death toll with a gut-wrenching high amount of numbers is pretty devastating, you probably don't know anyone who actually died since mass death occurs in a third-world country much more often, but many people were in tears when they found out Steve Jobs passed on, a single person. It's a lot easier when there is only one face. The face of a poor girl who was murdered near a University a few weeks back is a lot more emotional than a number. We don't have time to look into the histories of a devastating catastrophe then a single person whose future was so very bright or of a man who revolutionized technology of the current era.

But yes, how did we get to that from grimdark? The problem with most grimdark out there is that it doesn't seem to have a point besides making you disgusted unless it's actually involved in some sort of plot. South Park is often considered something like this, but still has elements of humour in it to keep plenty of people watching, but grimdark never really has humour for some reason. Perhaps I'd look into it more if it did. Also I could talk about the MLP fanfiction Cupcakes on here but eh, despite its notoriety I don't think I really need to discuss it. Really, what is there to discuss of a one-dimensional fanfic? Pinkie Pie dices up Rainbow Dash! There.

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On another note since I am on an MLP tangent recently, I am going to defend the haters of Pinkie Pie from episode 4, the Halloween episode. There aren't that many actually, but the idea that there ARE people annoyed by what she did in that episode frankly annoys me as well because that episode made me like her even more. 

People should not go into this show thinking it's a generic everyday baby show. I'm sure the humongous population of people watching it is evidence enough, but for some reason Canada decided to air this channel on Treehouse TV, a toddler channel. It has such shows like Timothy Goes to School and Franklin. I was actually rather shocked when I heard they censored the word "losers" on that channel. If a show has to be censored to be on a PRESCHOOLER CHANNEL it does NOT BELONG THERE, not to mention several episodes that might be too complicated or terrifying to children. I'm wondering what they'd do with Fluttershy snapping a bear's neck from episode three. I was quite surprised that episode got through to airing with such a ridiculous scene. It is on par with Bubbles beating the shit out of a bunch of monsters and wiping blood off her mouth. Not to say it wasn't an entertaining scene, but Jesus Christ are those ratings folks even paying attention? Lol.

Anyway onward to episode four! The Nightmare Night episode, bringing back a character that was long missed during season one. (Well, according to a ton of fans...I didn't really care.) I found her hamminess quite glorious, especially since it wasn't intentional. When I saw the costumes first-hand before the episode aired I found Pinkie's a little unoriginal at first. "Really? The ridiculous character in a chicken outfit? That's not original at all!" In fact in terms of first impressions I actually didn't like any of them, though Applejack's was okay. When the episode aired though, all my disappointments were addressed!

Twilight wasn't MERELY a wizard, but of Stars Swirl, an obscure historical figure. It was so in-character. I can't say much about Rainbow Dash's because although being a Wonderbolt isn't original, being a Shadowbolt comes out of nowhere seeing as all it was was Nightmare Moon attempting to deceive her loyalty. I suppose it was fitting considering her pranks. Applejack was not really touched upon either, and both Fluttershy and Rarity got nothing. Throughout the episode I saw Pinkie Pie screaming in terror from Luna, unknowingly making her night rather miserable. I at first wondered why she'd do that, due to two things:

1. She was there and helped reform Luna with the power of RAINBOWS!
2. Her 'Giggle at the Ghosties" song.

So while wondering if she was just off-character or the writers were being stupid again (they tend to be in occasional episodes) at the end of it she explained that "sometimes being scared can be fun" or something like that. That was in-character too, just like Twilight's costume and her chicken outfit spells it out perfectly. She was being a chicken! You also have to remember that Nightmare Night comes EVERY YEAR and EVERY YEAR you're supposed to be afraid of Nightmare Moon, it is tradition, JUST LIKE THE ROYAL VOICE! She's not going to switch from last year, and again she didn't realize she was making her night miserable. After all, they almost had a truce at the end there if not for Rainbow Dash. People who denounce her for being a selfish prick just baffle me. I can only shake my head. Misunderstandings happen in everyday life too. 

It reminds me of people disliking a character because they were doing something from their point of view because we viewers know everything and expect everyone to act as what we know. For example a character might be acting like a bigoted sexist bastard in the past, but we are watching from our time-travelling heroines' view. Anybody that actually doesn't act bigoted is a goddamn Mary Sue. (If they act HESITANT and eventually break the norms then it's okay (it's called character development!), but they are not going to magically decide that the world they grew up in is completely and utterly wrong) 

Yeah, people who denounce her for this episode are as aggravating as people who hate Rarity. (As you can tell Pinkie is my favourite character)

That is all! Enjoy all your candy or spiked punch if you're attending parties, and Happy Halloween! I also have a WoT entry being prepared if I ever decide to post one! Stay tuned for that! Maybe.

(no subject)

"Let's take the character of Pinkie Pie. She's "random" and breaks the fourth wall/is potentially officially insane. I think the problem of most children's shows these days is that they have too much of the Pinkie Pie archetype. This causes the shows to have minuscule plot and animation that zooms through everything with the fastest speaking possible to fit everything in. This is especially frequent on shows with shorts. Pinkie Pie works in her little universe because she's the only character who exhibits this, but if the upcoming season they start flanderizing her or expanding her to anyone else I think the cartoon will go downhill."

Ahahaha. Every single instance some character I'm not initially fond of becomes my favourite. I wonder how that happens.

Don't judge by cover alone people! Pinkie is awesome.