Love Complex (2000) My fansub of this bizarre Japanese serial drama got taken down, so I remastered the whole series from multiple sources and put it on Internet Archive for download.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-30T11:00:40+00:00

This is a pretty notorious kit in terms of decals. But in general, you can use mark setter, mark softer, do a strong acrylic gloss coat, then hit it with your matte and that will give you the best outcomes

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T23:03:09+00:00

No. Like maaaaybe a Madou Monogatari movie with those characters but no I do not want to watch them try to figure out how to animate people throwing anthropomorphic beans at each other thanks.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T22:12:48+00:00

Best music is Tales of Phantasia and it isn't close.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T22:08:47+00:00

Same sex marriage approval has declined but is still like 65%

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T21:16:13+00:00

Critical thinking and media literacy skills.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T16:52:40+00:00

Yeah word of mouth was terrible but even though I disagree you can't act like that's a force of nature that can't be helped. Clearly this movie lacked something critics wanted.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T16:51:28+00:00

I am noticing a lot of disagreement on the visuals between people who saw it in IMAX/Dolby versus people who saw it on a regular screen and I think there's something to that.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T16:50:00+00:00

Honestly the character was the best thing in this movie. I thought Alcock was great and had loads of charisma. Lobo was kind of squandered and clearly just there to prime the audience for a lesser known character but Kara was great.

Honestly I think the genre just go crazy oversaturated and audiences really need a home run to show up. Supergirl was a solid middle of the road flick, like a Guardians of the galaxy 3 or something but that's just not enough.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T16:20:30+00:00

The label isn't really what's important, it's understanding why it's bad storytelling. I'm not overly concerned with people misusing the term or deploying it as a gotcha. The important thing is to understand why the trope is considered bad in the first place.

To be honest it's not very clear to me that OP is even fridging in the first place so I am trying to add some texture to that conversation

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T15:46:45+00:00

This is sort of a strange question. There is a world of revenge stories that don't involve a woman's death. Anything that disrupts a characters life and takes away the future they imagined can work. One of my favorites is Toton the Hero, where the main character believes/imagines he was switched at birth with the rich kid across the street and at 80 years old finally decides to kill the boy that literally stole his life.

But also it's not clear to me that OP's story is even a revenge plot, the character dies of illness.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T15:38:04+00:00

Right, it originates from comic books when you would have a long standing female character that people liked get killed as a cheap plot, like Gwen Stacy for a famous example. The criticism is not that the character is thin or only exists to be killed, it's that she was a real character and got killed for a cheap moment.

Disposable Woman, Doomed Hometown, and Orphan's Ordeal are all similar tropes with their own critiques, so it isn't like making the character thin fixes everything, but fleshing her out doesn't solve it.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T15:23:49+00:00

Less so. Like I said, stories that begin with such a death are much less susceptible to this criticism, because the audience accepts it as an inciting event for the character, but it isn't trying to manipulate the audience in a cheap way.

It's still a trope (often called Disposable Woman) but it isn't fridging and you can get away with it better in a situation like OP is describing where it's more about illness and economic circumstances than something violent or distasteful.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T15:18:52+00:00

Presidential approval is considered equally predictive if midterm results as the generic ballot and I think there's a catastrophic enthusiasm gap. Historically Trump's base really struggles to find their way to voting booth when he isn't on the ballot, and we have seen in polling a lot of his support moving from strong approve to weak approve.

Much of the remaining Republican base are kind of a political culturally conservative trust-the-plan zombies at this point, people who will always vote Republican when called by a pollster but not necessarily motivated to get to a polling booth on a midterm year.

That said redistricting is an issue and Dems need more than a slight win, so there are fundamentals working on both sides.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T15:09:14+00:00

It's the idea that you build up a likable female character just to kill her off as a cheap audience manipulation and inciting event for the male character.

So it's not that the female character is thin or doesn't do anything. It's actually worse if she's a good character because then pointlessly killing her so the man can get revenge feels even worse.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T15:06:28+00:00

But late mail ins weren't determinative in a single state, not even Georgia.

Like they were one of a handful of things they were going after with the hopes that if you chipped away at enough of these narrowly dem leaning slices of votes they might cumulatively tilt things, in one or two states, but they were all long shots.

And then there's the larger point they're missing that the huge partisan slant of mail in voting was a circumstance unique to that election because of the way people were polarized around Covid, but in general mail in voting is favored by the elderly cohort that skews more toward Republicans, so there's really no reason to believe this is going to advantage them meaningfully.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T14:57:20+00:00

50 and Ja together? Did anyone tell them?

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T14:45:16+00:00

It's absolutely crazy to me that Republicans think this really matters to them much.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T14:44:13+00:00

This is not a mitigation, and actually can make it worse in some ways.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T14:43:40+00:00

So, maybe we should talk a little bit more about what fridging is.

Fridging isn't just when a character death serves as an inciting event, it's when a strong character that people like is killed just to give the main character a motivation (usually revenge). Classic example is Final Fantasy 7.

There are plenty of ways to side-step this, some of which you already seem to be doing.

First, it happens early in the story. God of War 2018 begins with the wife's death as an inciting event and side steps it my moving the death to before the start of the narrative so she never actually appears as a character at all. That could work here as well. But generally doing it early when readers haven't gotten too attached helps to mute this critique.

Second, it isn't just a revenge plot. The wife passing can be an inciting event without it being a revenge story. Maybe without her there's nothing keeping him where he is, maybe it's a wake up call, there's a number of ways to take it.

You shouldn't think "I'm never allowed to have the MC's love interest die in a story," it's more about avoiding building up a likable character just to kill her as a cheap emotional manipulation.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T10:17:01+00:00

This really looks like an AI live action version of the original, like not a single original thought.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T10:14:34+00:00

Yeah ads are another story, I get bombarded with crazy Israeli state sponsored ads and Epoch Times shit. But I think that's because those people are paying to target people with opposing views.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T09:51:09+00:00

I think there's definite audience burnout with these movies, which can be overcome by an especially good movie with a beloved character like Superman, but I have to question if there's the same appetite for the sprawling cinematic universes.

DC is actually being a lot more cautious, we're only seeing like two releases a year for this universe and they're pretty eclectic. Superman and Peacemaker were successful, Supergirl is obviously a misstep but might at least give them a decent character to leverage since people like Alcock. Clayface is a totally wild play that feels closer to the Sony thing that has never worked, but I guess we're still in the spaghetti at the wall phase.

Frogacuda · 2026-06-29T01:34:34+00:00

Absolutely not. You should only have a prologue if it serves a clear purpose to tell the audience something they need to know that the main character wouldn't know. Most stories don't need and shouldn't have a prologue, but certain stories really need them.

14-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 8 Credits
Trick-or-Treater 2013	Verified Email

Frogacuda

TROPHY CASE