Tomino's misogyny unintentionally created the circumstance for Urobuchi to have this empathetic wake up.

But there's a beautiful irony in Urobuchi's pipeline here. Fanservice and sexualized characters receive legit criticism for their objectifying aspects. But conversely, getting horny for a character is also an emotional attachment.

If it isn't clear, I love taking Tomino out behind the shed. I think he has huge problems with women.

Tomino: women are largely emotionally incompetent creatures who only serve to complicate men's lives and distract them from important things like denying their homosexual desires through acts of genocide.

Gen: empathy is a hell of a drug.

It's just a type of novel format in Japan. Generally, they're not very long, easy reads, with illustration, and aimed at a teen to twenty something audience. A number of IPs got started at Light Novels like Vampire Hunter D, Lodoss War, Dirty Pair, Slayers, and Haruihi Suzumiya.

I will add, that those dumb political form protest posts are more useful from someone like my mom because it's reaching an audience who isn't as exposed to leftist shit. It's still kinda flaccid, but any drop in the bucket is still a drop that wasn't there before.

Her behavior is fantastically weird.

I often describe her as behaving, sort of like she's in a different show than everyone else and doesn't realize it.

I'm curious how much of their first few episodes are reshoot and how much is salvaged work. I've heard a lot of "first episode is rough, but it gets better".

Crushed blacks are a lost art, also. I adore these crisp, delineated shadows. The kind of stuff Dean Cundey made a name for himself doing and then kinda just stopped.

It's been a minute since I was in film school, but if I recall correctly, that whole first season was basically shot on flashlights and the most basic and limited of equipment because it was so cheap and they just leaned into it for great effect.

And given where I am at narratively, I should still be on target for this volume to conclude 100k longer than the last, but it might, somehow, end up less. I really hope it ends up less.

I wrote over 48,000 words a month, roughly, last year.

I've only really had about a month and change since I started volume 2, and I'm at 60k.