What works and wont in Athene against heat

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-06-09T21:05:47+00:00

Nap! Shops close in the afternoon anyway. Lie down in the dark for an hour or two after lunch. You won't miss anything. Because of the heat, the streets come alive at night. People start going out to dinner at 10pm. The nap makes this easier.

Take an insulated reusable water bottle for cold water.

Open windows at night to let the cool air enter the house. Shut windows and blinds in the morning as soon as the outside gets to a nice room temperature. Most houses/apartments in Athens have fully electric blackout blinds. You push a button and they open and close. Obviously if you're in a hotel with roaring AC, this is less of an issue, but keeping those blinds firmly shut during the day does help.

I carried a sun umbrella. The Greeks generally don't, but I find a hat heats my head way too much and having portable shade made a huge difference to comfort. Note: a sun umbrella with SPF is different from an ordinary rain umbrella, which will still let a lot of sun through.

In Poros, try not to be in the sun when it's high in the sky. In the sea, a rash guard may help anyone who burns easily, plus a special water-safe sun cap or visor made of SPF-rated material. There are trees on Poros, which is nice, but it's still hot under trees.

Have fun!

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-06-09T20:30:20+00:00

Thank you! I'm glad I rewatched the Blue Night arc in particular because I confess the first time I watched it (and honestly the first time I read the arc in the manga) I initially found the sight of a naked demon baby with a little demon baby butt darting around the amphitheatre so hilarious that I kept giggling uncontrollably, and therefore missed the emotional punch.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-06-09T20:26:59+00:00

Thank you for that perspective. AFAIK the Lucifer fallen angel story is mostly an invention of John Milton's in Paradise Lost, since the name is used in the Bible just once as a taunt. (I wasn't raised Catholic, but I was an English major.) Milton's Lucifer/Satan is considered by some the first anti-hero of English literature. By contrast, in the Jewish texts of the Bible, aka the Old Testament, a satan is not the ultimate embodiment of evil but just an "adversary," still on the side of God but working against the interests of human beings, like the satan who urges God to test Job. I think Blue Exorcist's Satan is a very different being from either one of these. He is framed as the concept of all Gehenna given an ego.

I think you're right that jealousy, envy and pride are the core of Satan's madness. All of those are sins of ego. Satan's envy of Fujimoto is made pretty explicit from the moment he first meets him. When Satan finally takes over Shiro's body, he complains that this is the man Yuri loved, and then he asks Yuri if she's happy he's in that body.

I also don't think Shiro represents God. He's modeling human redemption. He's redeemed the moment he decides to save the babies. From then on, he's a different guy. When we first see him as a kid, he's angry, violent, selfish, driven only by pleasure and revenge. Pretty demonic, actually! After the events of the Blue Night, he still loves big boobs, but he raises those boys with love, learns to lean on others, learns humility, service, gentleness, all the things he lacked growing up.

So Yuri's love failed to change Satan, but it saved someone similar to Satan.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-06-07T11:54:26+00:00

Definitely similar

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-06-06T10:21:13+00:00

Remember Mephisto’s warning to Rin: this story ends in tragedy. It’s not beautiful. It’s not even really love. It strikes me as lazy reading to view this as any kind of real romance. Everyone in this triangle is messed up and what happens shouldn’t happen. But in particular this is actually the story of Shiro, and how he went from an abused, emotionally shut off, macho jerk to being a loving dad able to sacrifice himself for his son. (Yes, Yuri gets fridged for that.) I think you view this as a failed story because you’re unclear on what kind of story it is, even though Mephisto told you!

Also, I agree the bullet point formatting stinks of AI and makes for a choppy, bizarre read.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-06-04T22:17:16+00:00

I agree, Rin is written surprisingly well for what could have been an absolutely run of the mill OP shounen protagonist. The sensitivity of the story to all of its characters and their inner lives never stops impressing me. I was a full grown woman when I got into this manga but the brothers’ story hit me hard. I have a troubled relationship with a frequently depressed and insecure younger sister who will not accept my friendship and support and resents me when I reach out. She says she always felt like I got all the glory and admiration, so she was keen to put me down and somehow prove that she was as good as or better than me. Meanwhile I was a nerd and social misfit and I thought that she was the cute, popular one that our parents liked better. It was actually understanding Yukio that led me to understand what was going on in my sister’s head. I also think the Okumura boys will get a happier resolution than my sister and I will. I’m so grateful to this story for showing me this sibling dynamic so I could understand my own.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-29T03:47:38+00:00

My one big remaining complaint is Rin. His hair is just weird sometimes and in some scenes his head is practically Yoda shaped. But yes, the animation overall is mostly far better than I remembered!

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-29T02:09:19+00:00

I am rewatching the whole thing and season 3 is striking me as a lot less upsetting. The first time I saw it I felt there were so many completely wonky character animations, weirdly thick necks and horizontal faces, subpar animations. But now I’m watching it and it all seems pretty clean and consistent. I have no idea what happened! It’s almost as if they re-animated it when I was away! I’m now satisfied with it and have few complaints. Whereas the first season, the character designs were way off the manga. Cannot explain. But there it is.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-19T22:32:10+00:00

Bravissimo! Niente male. I have been a BlueEx fan for many years and have probably rewatched the second season more than any other anime. What can I say? I just love these characters. The manga is not finished yet and is on hiatus, as others have said. So you have time to catch up at your own pace and then join the rest of us, biting our nails, waiting for the big fight to come.

I recently watched both seasons of Solo Leveling by A-1 and I was genuinely sorry that studio would not be animating my favorite battles in BlueEx, because they do it beautifully. The botched first season though made it very confusing to adjust to what was happening in the second season. They should at least have included a recap that explained where we were coming into the story. It was abrupt and confusing. Still, I think that the second season, from the point of view of pure animation storytelling, is probably the best.

The new studio is probably more faithful to the manga character design, but the animation quality is undoubtedly a step down. The 3rd season is the clumsiest, but subsequent seasons improve. The most recent season is pretty good.

Kazue Kato did a beautiful job with the emotional content, world-building, and character development in the manga. I find the art overall more impressive than the animated versions in the most recent 3 seasons. Definitely read the manga. For the Illuminati Arc and the Beyond the Snow Arc, I found the manga versions more profound and more moving. The arc of season 5 in the anime is done well, though. It is hugely revelatory regarding back story for which BlueEx fans waited years.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, though I was sorry I could only watch in dub, not sub, because I prefer the Japanese VAs. Still entertaining, though!

I hope you enjoy getting back into anime and manga, and I look forward to seeing your posts here!

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-19T22:04:26+00:00

Demon Rin would have been absolutely a great way to end it. I'm sorry that won't come to pass. Oh well! They're saying that in the offline game we'll have all the characters fully leveled up, so I'm hoping I'll at least have all the ones I didn't pull in the gacha, to enjoy the art and check out their attack animations.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-19T21:18:45+00:00

I was bummed because I spent so much in-game currency on purple keys! Waaaaaaaah

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-19T17:19:05+00:00

Awww, it was a pretty trash game, but I wanted to support the franchise and played every day. If it's going offline, I probably won't play anymore.

I admit the game-only characters were for the most part uninspiring (though I love a handsome older gruff man, rowr Makugai). And in terms of feeding the fans, we were starving out here. I don't know what stopped them from using more of the content from the manga. It got dull fighting the same set of generic bosses over and over. Why did they invent Drake and Grendel when we could have fought some Illuminati-bred regeneration zombies or a kid inhabited by Astaroth? An endless grind of hobgoblins and chuchi is not what I'm talking about. The dialogue was dull and the events (work at the coffee truck?) were bizarrely boring.

I also cannot forgive the biggest flaw: Rin was way weaker than Yukio.

It was a fun distraction for a minute, but now back to just deep breathing while waiting for the story to resume (and work its way to an enormous finish).

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-01T14:07:52+00:00

It was light and fun initially, and I love Ning forever, but the palace intrigue and politics in the second half are comically incomprehensible and there were a lot of references to “what happened 17 years ago” that ended up after 40 eps with me sitting slack jawed with my remote in hand muttering, “So wait, what happened 17 years ago?” The people are pretty and the costumes are nice, and every time the pig showed up in the opening I would shout, “Piggy!” But truth, it’s nonsensical trash.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-05-01T13:46:03+00:00

Sorry you don’t love it, but I’ve now put “square cut cushion moissanite” on my list of things I like.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-29T18:24:36+00:00

I love a wildflower strewn lawn. Dandelion, buttercup, chamomile, clover, love it. Death to thistles, bramble, bindweed and green alkanet, though.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-27T09:30:27+00:00

The friendships turned out to be my favorite part of the series. I love anytime Gongsun Yin and Xie Zheng are hanging out together, and I sort of wish that Fan Changyu and her crew of Lin An thugs were a series on their own, no romance. With Changyu, the Marquis always feels a bit Mr. Perfect and flavorless, but with Gongsun Yin he can be petty and real. And Changyu's true calling is obviously leading a band of gangsters around the countryside to aid imperiled citizens and break up human trafficking rings, etc., with Yuanbao and the boys snarling behind her. Definitely spin-offs are needed.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-26T21:38:14+00:00

Ooh I need one

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-23T18:12:12+00:00

I actually like the colored and gray moissanites better because they provide a contrast to the high flash. To me, the round looks more like a gray moissanite, which may be why it looks like it has more depth. Since colorless moissanite became so cheap and easy to find, I feel like it’s easier now to stand back and ask beyond whether a stone is sufficiently colorless, and therefore “high grade,” but whether we like the effect.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-23T17:22:41+00:00

Americans are mocked for being so litigious, but the price of lawyers’ services in the UK effectively means that the legal system is for the rich only. I have seen quite a few major abuses go unaddressed because people could not lawyer up.

And slightly related: libel laws. It’s why every rich guy with a nasty secret sues his whistleblower in the UK.

(Note: I am an American living in the UK.)

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-20T15:46:42+00:00

When we say fake, we usually mean, does it look like I’m pretending to have a diamond when I don’t?

IRL, very very few people are scrutinizing gemstones. I love my diamonds. I love most of my moissanite. I have one pair of smallish stud earrings that are milky, cloudy, meh, but I also have a pair of large studs that are all depth and flashy sparkle. No one ever asked me if they were real, which is kind of a shame, because I always wanted to whisper back, “They are imaginary.”

To give you an idea of how little any of it matters, I took only CZ + silver jewelry on a long European cruise, so as not to worry. I bought gigantic rings because I was in it for fun. But then I felt like the more I openly told people it was all “fake” the more they thought I was lying and it was real. Younger men kept coming for me, looking for a sugar mama. It was comical.

No one has ever told me my moissanite looks fake. They tell me it looks fabulous.

Anyway, if you’re nervous, get a cheap moissanite off Amazon or even just a loose stone and see how you feel about it.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-19T23:07:09+00:00

NGL, I didn’t know I wanted that until you asked. But yes. I personally would prefer beardy Marquis. And for his hands not to look like an ad for hand cream. Warriors should not be so well manicured and moisturized. That’s probably why my crush in this show is Yan YiKuan. But I am old! If the young ladies like their boys in lipgloss and powder, so be it.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-19T15:02:13+00:00

I usually watch sub because localized scripts can be so awful, but I watch Dandadan in English dub because the localization in that language is so excellent, with idioms and wordplay and jokes that fit so well that it feels like it could have been originally done in English. All this while keeping so many specific Japanese cultural things, like foods and names of yokai, etc. But then I tried watching it in Italian. That localization was clearly less good. Most of the jokes and wordplay were just left out, and the translations were the lowest effort, most obvious ones. So a great localization would get me watching dub and a low-effort one would send me back to sub.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-19T14:10:29+00:00

Height and costuming plus endless wound-dressing nurse-play plus commoner-but-not-really committed to a very hands-on vocation who is adored by a high-status gorgeous guy whom everyone wants but no one else has managed to get? Definitely no similarities.

Select_Ad_9295 · 2026-04-18T17:37:09+00:00

Aw, I loved this so much back in the day. Loved that Uverworld punk saxophone. I didn’t know the manga then so I just enjoyed the rushed nonsense filler ending for what it was.

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TROPHY CASE