Not What It Seems

The good thing about binge-watching Steven Universe with the knowledge that Rose was Pink Diamond is that Pearl's behavior makes a lot more sense. Originally, she was one of the things that bothered me when I tried to watch it before; pretty much everyone was annoying except my friend's favorite character, Amethyst (and except Garnet, but she was the leader so I didn't care for her or was at least neutral on her). But now I can see that Pearl is like me, Pink is like my mom, and the other diamonds are like my mom's three older sisters. And I need therapy. Early Steven Universe is still not for me for the most part, though. As for "Legs from Here to Homeworld," the structure we saw shaped like White Diamond from "The Trial" was indeed her ship and not a statue or building. It's unclear how long she's been in there being the battery and the glue keeping Homeworld running and intact. Everyone had assumed she'd been out ruling over or conquering planets, but unless she did that through projections, those days are over. Also, who knows if she's always been emotionally detached or if it had something to do with Pink's faked shattering since the other two diamonds seem to have dealt with it in their own ways. Can Steven get her to care about anything ever again or even listen to him? Yellow thought she could talk to her but it's clear White's not listening to anyone. Or maybe something else happened that has nothing to do with Pink and that's just how she is.

The Orchestra trailer for KH3 finally resurfaced, and whoever reported on it before was wrong about who says "something doesn't feel right" probably because they were distracted by the hype (it was Buzz, not Aeleus). However, I still feel like bringing back Roxas isn't going to go that smoothly.

One more thing I will say about Berseria is the typos. Oh God, the typos. These subtitles were not written out by some poor tired person at ass o'clock in the morning. They were clearly the work of Google Closed Captioning. There is no excuse for this, even if it's just skits (sometimes the result was funny-bad but increasingly became bad-bad). My husband and his friend completed the story (there's still new game plus stuff to do, but all they wanted to do was finish it), and it's disturbing that Velvet and her brother are eating each other for eternity and kinda sad that Laphicet turned into a dragon anyway - the dragon of light, Maotelus.

Walgreen's had Sloppy Joe flavored Pringles, so I bought some. I'd rather have the real thing, but the real thing is messy, and these aren't. They taste very barbecue-y but different enough. I don't love them, but I think they're pretty decent.

Binge-Watching

The Lake Lilac Summer Social felt like it should've been the season 3 finale of Camp Camp. I thought that would be something involving Campbell trying to take David down with him, but that turned out to be the next episode, and Max shut it down. I liked the character development for Erin, but the Midsummer Night's Dream plot was never going to end well since none of them really belonged together (I felt bad for the boys, though). It also made me wonder who would've won if Max and Nikki didn't stuff the ballot box to punish Gwen. Real life can't live up to slash fiction, or even friend fiction. Now I wonder what the actual finale will be (unless Campbell tries again but I doubt it). I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about the Shape of Water episode coming up, but I've read good things.

Volume 4 of the Clear Card manga seems to have some translation issues. Akiho's last name was changed from Shinomoto to Shinohara for some weird reason (probably a new translator who wasn't paying attention), and at one point Sakura's speech balloon seems to be a curse word as it is made up of symbols. She is probably screaming her signature "HOEEEE!" as the Flight Card flies off with her, but apparently somebody decided it needed to be censored.

Equestria Girls Rollercoaster of Friendship had been partially leaked before, and it seems like it aired without much announcement leading up to it. I'm glad I was able to see the whole thing. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. I'm more excited about the other Equestria Girls shorts that were leaked, particularly Game Stream. I want them to be released in their finished form so I can favorite that one officially.

If Blue and Yellow Diamond's ships are arms, and Pink Diamond's ship is legs, then White Diamond's ship must be a head and a torso for them to fit into to form a Megazord-type robot (though that doesn't take into account things like the hand ship). I have binge-watched seasons 2 though 5, but season 1 is going to take a while to get through since it's so long and I had no interest in it when it was originally airing. One thing I don't understand is that gems can't hold shapeshifting very long, but Pink was able to change into Rose permanently (unless that's just a diamond thing). Also, if Lars is a pink zombie, then so is Lion, which means one of Rose's lions died and her tears brought him back to life (I don't know, I haven't seen the episode he was introduced in yet).

So far, Lin-Manuel Miranda has been in two episodes of DuckTales as Gizmo Duck. While they haven't made any direct references to Hamilton or Moana, you can probably apply some lyrics to the situation: "What's your name, man?" "I'm not throwing away my shot," "Immigrants: we get the job done," and so on.

Monumental

I decided to actually watch the Heart of the Crystal Gems run of episodes, and it was great. I like Ruby and Sapphire better than Garnet, but I appreciate Garnet more now. "Why would Ruby be a cowboy?!" made me laugh, but then that was actually what happened for an episode. I think Bismuth is cool now too. At first I thought it was dark that she stuck her head into the lava to scream, but I quickly realized that gems can survive that. All I knew about Patti Lupone was from that episode of Will and Grace she was on (where Jack was trying to get a lock of her hair for his collection), but she's perfect as Yellow Diamond. I was impressed with how Lapis came back and dropped the barn on Blue Diamond, then no-sold her emotional attack. "I've felt worse." Damn. I haven't written anything about Raven and Ienzo lately, but the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire has inspired me. I even had this weird dream where Ienzo used his illusion power to pretend to be Raven so she could escape, but she wasn't having it.

The return of RWBY Chibi was hilarious. J Michael Tatum and Vic Mignogna really stole the show (or episode in this case). The first skit was Tatum as Klein the butler cycling through his multiple personalities, including telling off Winter for yelling at Weiss. The second skit was a day with Uncle Qrow, in which everything turns into chaos around them but Ruby still loves spending time with her uncle. Unfortunately, Yang didn't feature much in either story, entering the scene too late in the first one and actively avoiding her uncle in the second.

DuckTales did an episode crossing over with Gummi Bears (not the actual characters but the mcguffin from that show). I never really liked that show, but if they do an episode about Rescue Rangers that would be awesome. I like the character development and relationship between Scrooge and Webby, though.

It turns out that Tales of Berseria is loosely based on Berserk (or at least a core theme found within it), so whatever goodwill and benefit of the doubt I had is gone. It was on sale this month so my husband and his friends bought it and started playing it. It's fun enough for a Tales game, but I still don't like it very much.

I don't know why it took me this long to try Marshmallow Fruity Pebbles. That stuff's delicious. And they have added peanut butter and chocolate to the roster. Oreo did the same, but I'm more excited for finally getting the strawberry shortcake flavor (which is amazing).