Someone make a stancy vs j-ncy gifset and it's just

  • Steve being charmed by Nancy's butterfly stickers in her locker in s1
  • vs Jonathan admitting he got rid of her pink sweater because he doesn't like the color pink (lmaooo)
  • Steve telling Nancy "it's okay" in s2 when their relationship was clearly over and she was already moving on to Jonathan
  • vs Jonathan intending to slow motion breakup with Nancy, keeping her tethered to his miserable ass for 18 months
  • s1 Steve apologizing for "messing up" (aka the infamous "slut" graffiti incident)
  • vs Jonathan getting called out for taking pics of Nancy as she was undressing and turning the moment into a character attack on her
  • s4 Steve "I'm here, I'm right here"
  • vs Jonathan's "sorry I wasn't here" (or from season 3, his sarcastic "I'm here now" and Nancy's equally sarcastic "hallelujah!")
  • s5 Steve coming up with the idea to drive his beamer through the Upside Down rift to find Holly, waiting for the "do it" go-ahead from Nancy
  • vs Jonathan - idk, pick one of the half dozen times he contributed literally nothing to the team in s5, including him wanting to "stick to the plan" after Nancy's parents were almost killed and Holly was taken
  • Steve's hopeful "you're there, you've always been there" 6 little nugget dream from s4
  • vs Jonathan venting to Argyle about his and Nancy's relationship leading to their kids hating him, Nancy resenting him
  • s4 Steve telling Nancy how he crawled backwards as a baby but "I can change. I can learn, I can crawl forward"
  • vs s3 Jonathan's mean and bitter "the real world sucks, deal with it like the rest of us" acceptance of the status quo, passively stagnant as always
  • s4 Steve volunteering to jump into Lover's Lake
  • vs s5 Jonathan only volunteering to climb the radio tower after Steve had already decided to
  • "he makes me laugh" Steve awkwardly trying to quote Sherlock, the "you almost shot me with that" / "you almost deserved it" moment, Steve and his Squawk sound effects
  • vs how suffocated Nancy admitted she felt with Jonathan, pick any number of times he's sat or stood uselessly by her side, frowning and miserable
  • Etc etc

it's stuff like this that tells me how bad that divorce stung!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! because it was so easy to make stancy endgame!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if you're going to make a ttrpg that emulates genre tropes- particularly if it advertises itself as 'creating [genre] stories'- it behooves you to have at least a passing familiarity with the most important entries in the genre

as in: if you make a magical girl ttrpg and you dont have the most influential work in the genre listed in your inspirations im not going to take your work very seriously

thats just the thing: this is about almost every single english language magical girl game i have ever encountered. this is about princess: the hopeful, this is about girl by moonlight, this is about starlight burnout, etc etc etc. just look at these inspiration lists:

there are seven listed inspirations here. of them, two are magical girl shows, in a game purporting to replicate the dynamics of the genre.

nine listed inspirations; two magical girl shows, one magical girl 'deconstruction' fic.

nine inspirations, three magical girl shows. noticing a pattern with which two shows get featured every time?

glitter hearts is the first to finally list a season of precure as an inspiration, so congratulations are i suppose in order. and no madoka, shockingly! anyway, you see the pattern- its very hard to take these games' claims of genre emulation very seriously when the level of engagement with the genre is so shallow. its kind of impossible not to link this with a general contempt amongst a lot of western audiences for magical girls. there's a sort of arrogance at play here, an assumption that there's really nothing to investigate- what's to understand? they're just stupid girl shows (except, of course, madoka magica, which is a Real show). you can do it much better than they can. and of course, you can just fall back on your own favourite (often western) media to fill any gaps. everyone wants what magical girls have, no one wants to watch magical girls!

That's exactly the problem.

A lot of people are wistfully nostalgic about Sailor Moon but allergic to touching any other mahou shoujo... especially works actually geared at young girls.

I totally get disliking PreCure, I don't like it either! Only the very first Futari wa Pretty Cure looks appealing to me. But, it's really not the only magical girl anime out there. You loved 90's Sailor Moon? The same cast went on to make the only shoujo demographic adaptation of Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey Flash! It's even in the same art style as Supers and Stars. (The original Cutey Honey of the 70's, while concieved as a girl's show to sell clothes-changing dolls, wound up only securing a late night time slot and was reworked into more of an ecchi show for older male viewers, although some young girls still enjoyed the stories! Go Nagai would later go on to make another mahou shoujo series, Majokko Tickle, for a shoujo demographic.)

You like idol anime and magical girls? Creamy Mami! Magical idol anime are their own genre too.

You mostly liked the filler expanding on the characters in the 90's? You liked the slice of life scenes best of all? You like bittersweet anime with elements that make you cry your heart out? Full Moon o Sagashite, about a 12 year old with terminal cancer who gets to be older with the help of the reapers tasked with claiming her soul in one year, which she learns in the very first episode... the manga a little more than the anime, as it goes more into depth into their lives and the soul reapers' past lives, but the anime expands on her idol career and has a different ending from the original author, so it feels true to the characters and satisfying.

You want to see a magical girl anime that's inspired by Sailor Moon, but Takeuchi Naoko also greatly enjoyed it and made fanart of it? Wedding Peach!

You want those early cute witch magical girls without any big enermies to face? Just dealing with everyday things? Marvelous Melmo (an orphaned girl gets the ability to change her age with the help of red and blue candies from Heaven given to her by her dead mother's spirit, but she also later learns she can shrink back into an undifferentiated zygote and turn into whatever creature she was thinking of beforehand! It's sex education for girls in the 70's, but with a lot of comedy and heart too), Sally the Witch (the original! .... I did not see this one, but it's inspired by the 60's show Bewitched!), Minky Momo (although, Minky Momo can get heavy sometimes, it's usually fun, about a princess from the land of dreams trying to bring her planet back in orbit because it's drifting away due to humans losing faith in their dreams... it's also the one where Shudo Takeshi, head writer of the Pokemon anime, famously gave a toy company that wanted to pull the plug on the successful anime that just wasn't selling toys, by having the first incarnation of Momo KILLED BY A TRUCK FULL OF TOYS... she revives in the same episode, but it sure was a loud and clear message... second Momo stars in her own season and is reborn as the biological daughter of the earth couple the first Momo brainwashed Chibiusa-style into believing they were her family.)

You like cute and colourful characters and care a lot about the environment and endangered animals? Tokyo Mew Mew! I didn't watch this one yet, but I really do wanna see the reboot and it was super popular back in the day. ^^ All the designs look so cute.

If you want more modern magical girl anime that are on the cute and chill side, but actually geared at girls and it's not just PreCure, Cocotama is full of magic and adventure, while being very cute... I caught some fun episodes with witches and dragons and quests, but also some Hamtaro-esque episodes where it's just the cute mascot characters navigating a much bigger world and interacting with each other, it's fun!

The sadly short Mewkledreamy (just two seasons, Mewkledreamy and Mewkledreamy Mix) from Sanrio is so sweet it'll give you cavities. A sleepy, kinda lazy, but good-hearted girl receives a sentient plush kitty from the land of dreams and must save people's dreams (so, in a way, kind of like Minky Momo!), while an equally adorable bunch of sentient plush kitties try to corrupt people's dreams and make them act more selfishly by exploiting their weaknesses (so, also kind of like Onegai My Melody--which is what Kuromi was created for!) The art is SO cute and this show seems popular with both male and female viewers, it has something for everyone! There is a magical boy too, later on. ;3;

The situation is so dire, I've bumped into multiple unconnected indie tabletop RPGs which purport to genre-blend magical girls with mecha whose authors had genuinely never heard of Magic Knight Rayearth.

I was lost within the darkness but then I found her ♪

PERCY JACKSON & ANNABETH CHASE — Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan's Curse Teaser

In 1973, near Nichinan City in Japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries initiated an experimental forestry project.

During the Great Depression, many American families faced severe financial hardship, and everyday items became essential for survival. Flour sacks, which were typically used to carry flour, became a valuable resource for poor families. Instead of discarding the sacks once emptied, people reused them to create clothing, bedding, and other household items. This practice was especially common among those who could not afford store-bought fabric.

A Beautiful Nightmare ☕️ Today marks the anniversary of my character, Sleep’s, first appearance in a short video, and for his installment in the Era Looks, we chose a look inspired by the 2000s. He parties like it’s Y2K, so why not? Happy Birthday, Sleep! May your iPod shuffle never accidentally be put into the wash! 🖤

Photography: [IG] wildefirecontent

Styling: [IG] dpstyledme

“I wish I was always right.” “OK you have two wishes left.” “No, I have three.” There is a moment of acknowledgment between you and the genie. “Alright. I can play that game.” thinks the genie before internally activating monkeys paw mode. “What’s your next wish?”

There is no meme so domain-specific that I won't laugh at it. Give me train fandom memes about fucked up signal flags. Give me Beowulf scholarship memes about how to correctly translate "hwæt". The fact that I have no frame of reference is no obstacle to a sensible chuckle.

I raise you my challenger:

Funnily enough, you've managed to hit my actual area of expertise, so this one doesn't provoke a sensible chuckle so much as it does flashbacks to that one time in college I went 96 hours without sleep because I started a CS term project on this meme's exact subject matter the week before it was due

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