Wow thank you so much, TB! This was a life-changing moment for me. Less my friend, though. Funny how that works out. Sadly I don't have much to offer in return, because while I did read a lot there wasn't a ton that blew me away. Learning Curve was super good though so if you didn't read it yet you ought to!

Glad I could help. I did end up reading Learning Curve, and it turns out everyone was right, it was pretty good!
I actually found a story shortly after I posted my recs--you know that feeling you get sometimes when you read a fic and you're like, "This is it. This is my favorite fic in this fandom." ? Well, here's mine: peripheries by ethiobird. It's an ongoing collection of oneshots about Adora and Catra's relationship seen from the eyes of other characters. It's brilliant and I highly recommend it. The character voices are spot on and it can be funny, tender or heartbreaking depending on who's looking at them. I think I'm going to re-read it right now, actually.

^ I do think that some people pretended not to understand what literary theory is, but honestly, I'm still confident that most of those comments are from people who really believe "Death of the author" is a threat.

In other news, I still sometimes check the Tumblr of the author of Baggataway, a sports series I still think of fondly years after it ended (the translation is unfinished unfortunately). They still upload pics from their old series occasionally, so anyone who likes it should take a look! This is the latest one, incidentally these two are my favorite couple.

So a while ago video essayist Lindsay Ellis made a video about the possibility of applying the "Death of the Author" literary theory to JK Rowling's work in wake of her increasingly public transphobia... Turns out she's been receiving comments and threats from people who, it seems, sincerely believe that "Death of the author" means "I think the author should die because I disagree with their politics". I know I shouldn't be surprised, but sometimes it just hits me that some people really are that stupid.

The manga is being translated too but I'm waiting for the anime instead

If you enjoy light novels at all, I recommend you give the original LNs a read! They're absolutely fantastic. And given that the manga needs four volumes to adapt one novel, I don't think the anime is going to go very far into the original material.
The fact that we haven't got a release date for volume 4 yet is killing me.

New Otherside Picnic promo looking really good. Can't wait for January.

Nnoott sure where else to ask, but I need She-Ra fanfics that are good. Asking for a friend. Thank youu

Oh, I can help! I've been reading She-Ra fics for the past couple weeks (along with Owl House fics, but that fandom is too young to have many really good stories yet). I'm still making my way through the tag, but assuming you're looking for Adora/Catra fics (that's all I can help with anyway), here's what I recommend:

Required reading is Don't Go, a missing S5 scene widely believed to have been written by showrunner Noelle Stevenson.

If you don't mind smut, Code Of Conduct is roll-on-the-floor funny. Give the series it belongs to a look, too!

I also recommend giving prolific author n7punk's profile a look. Some of their smut can only be accessed if you're logged in. I like their take on the characters, and they write something that I've found is a rarity in the fandom--AUs where Catra is still a magicat. For some reason people tend to turn her into a human.
strangehunger writes good stuff as well.

I'm kind of keeping Learning Curve for a bad day but it's in like everyone's bookmarks and supposedly it's really good.

If you like AUs, you'll have to get used to the fact that many writers make up last names for the characters and it still feels weird every time. Here are some:
- please take it out on me
- As long as we stay together (if we just stay together)
- The Rhythm & Blues (C'mon, Darlin', Make Some Noise) series (technically unfinished, but you can just stop reading after the 4th fic)
- someone you like

Other than that, the usual method of finding an author you like and going through their bookmarks applies here. For example, I'm going through this person's bookmarks today. Probably the next few days too, there are a lot.

Let me know if you find good ones I haven't mentioned!

You guys, I just finished binging the She-Ra reboot and it was awesome. Loved every minute of it.

Now to look at the fanfic and fanart. Recommendations welcome!

Christ on a pogo stick. Can this asshole please get a life?

I've had Glee's Adele mashup song on my mind lately. The show was a trash fire most of the time and I would never recommend it to anyone, but when it did things right, it was incredible. Naya Rivera was such a talented performer :(

I swear that fucking show is cursed.

Is it wrong that a lot of pairings and ships I like are from shows or games that I haven't played or watched yet?

Nah, it really isn't. If liking a pairing gets you to watch a show (you should watch Symphogear!), then good, but if you end up never watching the show a pairing is from it doesn't matter. And if someone tries to gatekeep you, they're an idiot.

I've read quite a few Im@s Cinderella Girls doujins even though I failed to get into the anime and never played the game. Besides, some good artists actually make doujins that are more interesting than the original work could ever be. Or some doujins flesh out side characters, or show what they would be like as adults, which the original will never do.

RIP Ennio Morricone, one of the best movie composers of all time. My favorite track of his (and of any movie) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYI09PMNazw

That's likely a programming joke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/255_(number)

Who knows how many of those went right over my head while reading.

Oh MAN. You opened a huge can of worms right there.

Whoops!

The issue is that she is radicalizing a lot of her fans, and the UK already has too many TERFs (there are that many that they are attacking laws protecting trans people and preventing laws that would protect trans people)

Basically this. A lot a young people, or parents of young people who read her books, follow her on Twitter and see make her well-written, rational-sounding arguments like "sex is real", and then they see people insulting her in the replies. Surely those rude people must be wrong, and the nice lady author they like is right? If some random person spouts hate online, that's their problem. But if someone with a huge platform uses it to spread hate and lies about a vulnerable group, that's when it becomes a problem for everyone. In my opinion at least.

Anyway. Here's an official art of Sakura Quest's (remember that anime? it was a fun watch) Maki and Sanae that got lost in the upload queue. The author of the manga adaptation shipped them. Loved the domestic roommates-to-lovers vibe they gave off. Might try requesting an upload again, I dunno.

It sucks that someone so powerful is a bigot.

I get what you meant but I have to say it: did you forget who's the US president right now?! LOL

I mean, yeah, I could've worded that another way. To put it differently, it's depressing that so many powerful people are bigoted assholes. Putting it that way makes it more depressing, though. In Rowling's case, I was thinking about how she's a huge children's books author and she has the power to influence millions of kids all over the world with her bigotry.

JK Rowling is being a transphobic shit again, why can't she just delete her twitter

It sucks that someone so powerful is a bigot. On the bright side, Graham Linehan finally got banned from Twitter and basically all he did was be an obsessive transphobic shit. Something good happens once in a while.

I really enjoyed the anime when I watched it around 15 years ago. I can't say how well it holds up, but there is yuri. Kris is the character to look out for, she appears in the second (out of three) arc. The main character can be annoying though, it takes a while before she gets some confidence.

If anyone wants to look for the original, there is a TV anime and an OVA series. Just skip the OVAs, they're a retelling and I have a vague memory of them not being good. Plus I don't think they have yuri.

I'm not sure why they would want to revive such an old property, but I'm interested. If they want to update it, they should make it (even) gayer.

^ I'm broke this year, but happy shopping to everyone! If anyone is looking for recommendations, some good lesser-known games I've played the past couple years on Steam include Cat Quest, Valley, Mu Cartographer (if that one even qualifies as a game), Stacking and Empathy: Path of Whispers.

The other day I was talking to a woman (who was frankly way out of my league) and occasionally she would smile at me and bite her lip. I'm terrible at identifying body language clues and it was her workplace anyway, but I swear lip biting is supposed to be a sign of attraction?? I try not to be one of those creeps who mistake a professional smile for flirting so obviously nothing is going to come out of it, but if she was into me it's nice sometimes to know that someone finds you cute even though you think you look like a potato.

Thank you everyone for the replies! I didn't have any deep reason for asking, just wanted to confirm that we're all a bunch of nerds.

I also have a bad passionate side, which is shipping, I don't debate it online but I get really mad thinking about "wrong" ships or the ones who just disregard chemistry and go for whatever character they like, for example, when I see the MHA fanart drawing Uravity with whoever they want or even worse with love live characters ... I just get so mad it's hilarious, I don't comment on the pairs I don't like of course because I know it's all bs, I know it's problematic sometimes but geeeeeezzzzz pls understand, for me is like seeing ntr everywhere

Oh, I do the same thing. I also keep my thoughts to myself though, obviously. I really appreciate when people ship and let ship, arguments about shipping often devolve into "this ship is bad/toxic and you should feel bad for liking it" and it gets obnoxious really fast.

There's one thing I was wondering about, but I really don't want to make a new thread only to see it get two replies and die. At least if I don't get any replies here it will get buried, heh.

So are you guys nerdy/passionate about something other than manga, anime and video games? Do you spend your free time reading about history, getting involved in political activism, listening to music? It doesn't come up much here on the forums for obvious reasons, but I was curious.

My thing is photography, for example.

After seeing recommendations in the spoiler thread, I gave Seven Days War/Bokura no Nanokakan Sensou a watch. It really surprised me.

For one thing, people who don't want politics in their anime will want to skip this one, as one of the main plots of the movie is about protecting an undocumented immigrant from immigration officers.

I knew the movie had yuri, but I was expecting a five-minute subplot. What actually happens is that the male lead's crush is in love with her female best friend. He's completely cool about it when he finds out. It reminded me of SSSS.Gridman a bit, the way the main character's feelings end up not mattering. I should add that one of the girls moves away at the end of the movie and we don't find out if they stay together, but to be fair, we also don't find out if the other (straight) couple stays together after the revelations. The tone seemed optimistic though.

So that was a pleasant surprise. The movie itself was a lot better than I thought it would be going in. It was a good way to kill an hour and a half.

Also why has this not released since last december? The manga hasn't been finished or cancelled afaik.

The translator had to step down. We'll get back to work if we can find someone else.

I do recommend the six volumes that have been translated, though. The anime is this sort of by-the-numbers Cute Girls Doing Cute Things series with weird humor and hints of something more. The manga is... a lot more. Even the publisher joked about it recently, tweeting something along the lines of "This has nothing to do with the anime at this point".

We only have a small, dead thread for light novels so I thought I'd drop this here instead:

Otherside Picnic is extremely good and I highly recommend it. Three volumes are available on BookWalker and Kindle, but if you absolutely don't want to spend money the first two volumes are on Nyaa. It's well worth the money, though.

It's a horror yuri series where the horror is well-written and the yuri appears to be going somewhere. I'm having trouble explaining how good it is without spoiling... The creepiest chapter for me was the third one of the first volume, but individual opinions will depend on your phobias and personal experiences.

An anime was announced by the director of the Kase-san OVA and the studio that animated Hanebado, so it has chances of being good, if you don't feel like reading novels (but you really should read them).

Yeah, the preview for Tamayomi didn't look fantastic. I'm looking forward to it regardless as it's still a girls' sports anime and there are too few of those.

22/7 yuri report after 6 episodes: Some. The anime appears to be pushing the Miu/Sakura pairing pretty hard. Probably just fanservice, but could turn out to be more if taking the OP and the potential from Sakura's deadline into account. Includes such interactions as Sakura winking at Miu while they're performing the lesbian song and Miu blurting out that Sakura's smile is beautiful. Akane (stoic glasses girl) is also quite the smooth talker because of how deadpan and honest she is, I hope we get to see more of that.
I'm enjoying it a lot, even if I usually have trouble getting into idol anime.

last edited at Feb 17, 2020 11:51AM

What are the best Love Live / Love Live Sunshine doujins?

Apart from Karuha I've mentioned above (my favorite Love Live artist so far), authors I like include Kajimoto, Kanbayashi Makoto, EERR, Kashikaze, Mezashi and Ichihi. There should be a variety of pairings in there (a lot of Nicomaki though).

wow the beach, niiiiiice and yes they are... from the start XP really good
by the way this manga https://mangadex.org/title/44653 should be read with the anime, each chapter of the manga is like an ova of it's corresponding anime episode, like, read chapter 2 after watching episode 2.

Thanks for reminding me about the manga, I forgot it was getting translated. Looks like it's going for a completely different tone from the anime.

Yuri doujinshi with good stories?
I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of good manga just because they're dj. Any series or pairings will do as long as it's good.

Heart Panic Kotori-chan is a cute Love Live doujin I'd recommend. Also for Love Live, anything by Karuha gets a recommendation from me. She mostly writes adult life NicoMaki so no previous knowledge of the characters is necessary.

Speaking of good stories, there was this amazing Kantai Collection doujin Nakatani Nio drew before getting serialized... But it will never be completed.

Oh, I just remembered a Touhou doujin I haven't got around to reading yet, but back when it was released an impressive amount of people said it was one of the best things they'd ever read.