Alandro, 26 (he/him), I love Tokusatsu, Crime Shows, Comic Books and Animation in general.Eu amo Tokusatsu, Series de Crime, Banda Desenhadas e Animação no geral.
138 posts
Latest Posts by alandrothegreat - Page 5
Tessa Quinn Character Analysis
Just for fun, because Sleepless Domain is amazing. Spoilers, of course.
Tessa is a self-centered character. When I say this, I am by no means saying that she is a bad person or doesn't care about her friends. But she elevates her own importance again, and again, and again.
Look at her bedroom. Yes, she has her whole team represented up top. But the rest of her décor is her own merch. Nine Alchemical Aether figurines. A costume. A fan. A lunchbox. A trading card. A button. Another bag with Aether's sigil as the clasp. Aether-themed jewelry. Possibly more, if the abstracted pink and yellow posters represent Aether as well.
Compare this to Undine's room. Very little Magical Girl merchandise! Like Tessa, she has Team Alchemical represented in doll form. Unlike Tessa, she doesn't have herself as one standalone, let alone several. (Fascinatingly, we see an Alchemical Air poster - did Sylvia, in her self-promotional way, give this to Undine? Or did Undine purchase the poster because she knows that Sylvia's Magical Girl earnings make up her family's income?)
Undine also has her friends represented in pre-Magical Girl form, in the photo on her mirror.
Now, let's look at Kokoro's room. Heartful Punch, like Alchemical Aether, is a super-powerful, popular, pink Magical Girl. You wouldn't know it from her bedroom, though. We've got some heart-shaped iconography, in the lamp. A Magical Girl poster for Team Forte - not Kokoro's team, but another team/band. The pink poster with the fist could easily be Heartful Punch merch, but it seems to be the only piece of self-promotional material, and a subtle example at that (semi-abstracted, without her face or name on it).
Undine and Kokoro's rooms are more about their interests than their Magical Girl identities. Kokoro has exercise equipment, cat things for Kicks, hair styling supplies. Undine has animal plushies, lots of books, her fish. Meanwhile, Tessa's room centers primarily around Alchemical Aether merch. She surrounds herself with her own image, and specifically with the Magical Girl version of her own image.
We know that, when Team Alchemical is alive, Tessa fixates on her status as their leader.
And, when Undine first gets her powers, Sylvia, Sally, and Gwen rush towards her with excitement for her -
- while Tessa hangs back, a slightly crestfallen look on her face. I don't think it's a reach to believe that she is disappointed that she isn't the one who got powers. Interestingly, Undine herself seems a bit surprised that she gets powers before Tessa.
Undine's assumption that Gwen or Tessa would become a Magical Girl before herself suggests that there is a dynamic among the friends, even before they are a Magical Girl team, in which some of the girls assume more significance within the group. Tessa is one of them. Further, while interstitial guest comics may not be canon, Undine finds her dream self standing on a very interesting mural.
Alchemical Aether dominates this scene. The other four girls are represented by their faces, enclosed in pink circles. Aether's full body looms serenely over them, hands clasped. Her sigil surrounds the whole tableau. In Undine's subconscious, Tessa has a literally outsized presence in relation to the rest of the team. Of course, this comes from Undine's mind, and not Tessa's. But we have reason to believe that Tessa sees herself this way as well…
Tessa's Dream, or, as Goops calls it, "a memory that should have been [Tessa's] all along." Is Goops an unbiased source? Absolutely not. But I believe that this sequence is indeed Tessa's Dream, up until the point that her hair and speech turn a Goops shade of purple and Goops crows, "Now you're starting to incorporate my memories." If you accept that this is indeed Tessa's Dream as it happened, these panels are chock full of things to unpack about her self-image. First, we find her in a palanquin, carried by her faceless friends. She wears royal adornment - a robe, a crown, a scepter.
Now, Tessa is surprised and alarmed to find herself in this position in relation to her friends. She shakes off the robe, she tells them that they don't have to carry her.
And they listen. When Undine turns to face Tessa, she is Alchemical Water. She thanks Tessa, and then all of the girls drop the palanquin and run off as Magical Girls. Tessa's crown falls off.
She calls for them to wait, but they do not. The curtain closes and she is alone.
In Tessa's subconscious, she finds herself above her friends, both literally as they lift her and figuratively as she wears the trappings of royalty while they wear plain white. Undine thanks Tessa before she lets go, suggesting that Tessa granted her permission. Critically, it is when the girls become magical that they leave her. There is a before, in which Tessa is the center of their friendship, and an after, in which they become new people, drop her, stop listening to her and leave her… she has been robbed of her crown, her status, because now they have something in common that she does not.
While Tessa is embarrassed by the display and tries to put a stop to it - she would never actually dress as a queen and ask her friends to carry her on their backs - the fact that her Dream manifests this scenario suggests that in Tessa's subconscious, she believes herself to be the center of their pre-Magical Girl friendship, and to have no place within their Magical Girl one without powers of her own. Again, I don't believe Tessa is a bad person. I believe she is sincere when she tells the Woman in White that she wants to use her own powers to help her friends.
That said, she presumes that her friends need her to help them. That presumption leads all the way up to that fateful, fatal night, when she holds back from patrol with the belief that the other girls will struggle without her and appreciate her more as their leader.
(They die without her, of course. But they die because Goops murders them, not in the course of a normal patrol. Aether obliterates the monster when she arrives, but only can because she arrives afterwards… that fall would have killed her, too.)
Tessa would hate to see herself as the queen of her friends. Yet, she has no trouble asserting that she is their leader, believes herself indispensable to them, and cannot handle them having something she does not.
Even her assertion to Undine and the way she takes the blame stems from the fact that she believes herself to be responsible for all of them.
That's why she's so vulnerable to Goops. She can easily be convinced that the situation is all about her.
Ironically, Tessa's self-absorption does not indicate high self-esteem. Quite the opposite - Tessa is deeply insecure. She feels upset when her friends get powers before her not only out of jealousy, but also out of fear that they will leave her behind. She believes that she has no value to them without powers. Thus, she pins everything on being magical, powerful, the leader. Being Aether. Goops perceives this, and tries to tempt her with the promise of more power…
And taunts her with the loss of her identity as Aether.
But by this point, Tessa has given up. Her self-absorption has devolved into self-loathing. She goes out to Goops with the intention of being killed.
The text in gray, the vestiges of Tessa's self-worth, are weaker than her self-blame. Tessa is overwhelmed by what she perceives as her failure - to save Undine, to be friends with Rue, to be a good daughter. "No one needs you anymore," she thinks. And if she cannot be needed, then what's the point of living at all?
And then there's TessaGoops. Is Tessa her puppet, or are they truly fused into one person? I'm still not sure. I suppose time will tell.
At the very least, I believe Aether's powers are still present, somehow, at least slightly. Why else would the spot where her sigil was glow when Undine approached?
I suspect it will matter, at some point, that Alchemical Water has a little bit of Alchemical Aether inside her.
We shall see!
Redrew an old picture for Sleepydiscord's most recent artgame! I was honestly intimidated to try redrawing this one because I still like it a lot, so I'm glad to see that I have actually improved in the five years since then. Although I do regret not going as bold with the coloured highlights as I did the first time around... (COMMISSIONS)
You've been cast into a fictional setting, and you don't get to pick your genre. This wheel picks it for you.
kunoichi sketch
https://twitter.com/koyoriin https://patreon.com/koyorin https://instagram.com/koyori_n https://bsky.app/profile/koyorin.bsky.social
Note: I based the awnsers on the main characters, based on the combination of their personalities, the themes and tones of their respective shows that I believe would work in an potential crossover, and it's not, in any level, an attack on the other shows. Also, I didn't include any of the Showa Riders because I believe that all of them qualify (Especially #1 and #2)
Ok, this is my new blog for those who followed me as #mydearalandro, who will now focus on news, donations, and politics.
This blog will act as my new main blog, with focus on art and media.
Me sittin’ here, seriously concerned for all the young kids who are gonna’ grow up in this fandom environment thinking they’re secretly evil monsters because their sex fantasies aren’t strictly pure or vanilla or because they ship something with an unhealthy dynamic. Soooooo many people must hate/be terrified of themselves.
Hey…….hey kids…….
You’re fuckin’ fine.
The human brain is weird. Sex fantasies ≠ actual desires. If you ask yourself, “would I want to act out this thing in real life” and the answer is “fuck no,” then you’re fine. Shipping is also not an indicator of what you would condone in real life. You are not secretly a monster. You are a human being. Human beings are complicated. Please calm down and treat yourself to a smoothie or something.
Something that took forever for me to learn with fanfiction dialogue.
it’s okay to make your character stumble over, and to think about their words.
It’s okay to give characters speech patterns and let me tell you why;
It’s natural.
Every single person has a speech pattern. We all speak differently, we speak like our personalities and it’s a good way to get to know a character.
Something I’ve noticed in YA books in the characters speaking without filler words like ‘well’, ‘anyway’, ‘like’, ‘literally’.
And remember: it’s okay to use these! Make your dialogue more realistic, and more human!
Sometimes, people talk slower, and have to think about what they want to say.
Sometimes, people stumble over their words because they’re anxious.
Sometimes, people talk really fast and blur their words together because they’re afraid to forget what they want to say!
Selective people prefer not to talk at all, and like to stay mute for their own safety or comfort, and the best you can do is respect them for choosing it.
It’s okay to use phrases like, ‘yknow’, ‘uh’, ‘uhm’, ‘mhm’ because it’s how we speak in the real world.
It’s okay to have characters hum in thought, or use their body to portray that they’re thinking!
Some people fiddle with something in their hands while thinking!
Some people bite their lips in thought.
Some people hum under their breath while they think.
Silent ways of telling the reader that your character is thinking words that they’re not ready to say yet!!
It’s okay to have your character repeat words and or phrases when excited and when they can’t contain it! Sometimes, we just get so excited, that we aren’t thinking about how many times we say things.
It’s okay to write a character repeating themselves, especially if they want to get their point across to someone/if someone didn’t understand their point in the first place.
Non-verbal replies!!!
Shrugging of the shoulders, incoherent mumbles, hand gestures, use the power of writing to describe a reply or phrase with facial expressions, or physical movement!! Silence is okay too, if it’s needed!
Silence can speak just as much as words!
Dialogue is important.
Dialogue that flows and is human is i m p o r t a n t!!
A small comic about Palestine I created to appeal to more passive family and friends
Anyways if you have the money I urge you to donate to Ibraheem Hadi, a Palestinian who contacted me and whom I promised to highlight in relation to this comic:
Otherwise there is always a need for eSims to keep Gazans connected
If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.
Hello, I know we don’t know each other, but I am in a very difficult situation and I need your help. I lost my home and my job due to the war, and now my wife, child and I are living in a tent without any basic necessities. We desperately need your support to provide food, clothing and shelter. Any donation will make a huge difference in our lives. Thank you🙏❤️
https://www.gofundme.com/MahmoudAhmed
Boost
i, too, make this face when i am told i get $2000 to spend as i please
Literal definition of spyware:
Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡
Instructions for how to download a Youtube video using VLC on Reddit
Instructions for how to navigate the underworld on an Orphic gold tablet
saw a post abt HBO removing shows that suggests ppl just “burn dvds” but everyone doesnt know how to do that so here is one way to do that
- get blank dvds (Both +R or -R work, I think +R is slightly cheaper, the difference is rewritability), these are not very expensive for the amount you can get in bulk (if you are in the US 100 of them is about 30$ at walmart)
- an external DVD drive that plugs in via usb is also around 20-40$ (it tends to be closer to 20)
- download DVDFlick (free)
- if you don’t already have the mp4/mpeg of whatever media you want to burn, you can download movies/shows off of sites like gomovies.sx and soap2day
gomovies.sx will have a download button that looks like this
below the video you can choose one of these
if you click streamlare for example and then the download button it will take you here where the mp4 is
(if you’re on an iphone/ipad, clicking download will save it to your files app)
- if you cant find the download button on soap2day you can also install a video downloader extension which will find the movie for you
- at this point you can drag and drop it into a google drive or keep it on your computer but if you still want it on dvd ->
- open dvd flick, drag and drop the video
- click “project settings”
- give it whatever title you want, you can change encoder to “normal” (default is below normal if you are doing other things on the computer). you dont need to change target size or thread count (unless you want to)
- insert a blank dvd into your drive, make sure you click “burn project to disc”
- click accept then click “create dvd” next to menu and project settings. it will create a destination folder and this dialogue box will pop up when you click “create” on more dvds, just click “yes” and then “okay” on the box that appears after it
it’ll take a couple hours, once its done take a sharpie & write whats on it and stick it in a case . or dont . im not ur mom
So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.
This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.
I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.
There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.
I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.
Adblocking/Privacy/Security:
uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.
Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.
Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files instead.
NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.
Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
Popup Blocker (Strict): Blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all websites by default unless you manually allow it.
SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.
AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.
User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.
Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.
Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.
Webmail/Google Drive:
Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.
Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.
Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.
Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.
Accessibility:
Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.
Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.
Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.
Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.
Utility:
ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.
History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.
Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.
Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.
Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows the user to drag select multiple hyperlinks and open all of them in new tabs.
Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.
EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.
Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.
Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts, go discover it.
Browsing & Searching:
Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.
Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.
Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.
Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.
Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.
Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.
Website Specific:
PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.
Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.
Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.
Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.
BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.
Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.
XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.
Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst mind annihilating content slop I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips" and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.
BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.
Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.