#(vol.1 issue 10 to be exact)

[incognitomoustache]

[the-shinysnorlax]

Miguel O’Hara: A comprehensive reading guide

I honestly don’t know if this has been done yet, and considering that there are multiple different main canons for Miguel, it’s even more confusing on where to start.

To clarify, there is 3 different “Mainstream” universes for Miguel. Earth 928 (The main universe for most Miguel media), Earth-2099, and Earth-6375 (The universe where he’s part of the exiles)

I’m gonna be starting with

Earth-928

(Note: I’ll try to put these in order as much as possible, but due to retcons and other things like Spiderverse it may not be 100% accurate)

Important reads are in bold

-Amazing Spider-Man #365 (Not really important, it’s just a preview of the first issue, but it’s counted as Miguel’s very first appearance so.)

-Spiderman 2099 vol 1 #1-10 (VERY important reads, they set up the universe and Miguel’s origin story)

-2099 unlimited #1-3 (Not really important to the lore, but they’re silly little stories that I have to mention them)

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #11-15

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #16, Ravage 2099 #15, X-men 2099 #5, Doom 2099 #14, Punisher 2099 #13 (VERY important reads, highlights the fall of the hammer arc and shows Miguel’s relationships with other 2099 characters, especially Jake Gallows. Read in the exact order listed)

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #17-22

-2099 unlimited #8

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #23-34

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 annual

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #35-38 (Venom 2099 arc, important read as it introduces Kron Stone properly)

-Spider-Man 2099 special

-Spider-Man 2099 meets Spider-Man (First introduction of Miguel to Peter)

-2099 unlimited 9-10

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #39-43

-Symbiote Spider-Man 2099 #1-5

The following issues have been mostly retconned and are no longer canon. I’m listing them still for sake of continuity (Plus they’re interesting) but they are NOT canon to E-928

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 1 #44-46

-2099: World of tomorrow #1-8

-2099: Manifest Destiny

End of retconned comics

-Captain Marvel vol 4 #27-30

-Superior Spider-Man #17-19

-Amazing Spider-Man vol 3 #1

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 2 #1-12

Note during this time is the Spiderverse event and Miguel is featured in multiple comics that tie into it. I will not be listing them all due to time, plus he was mostly featured in his own comic for it anyways

-Secret wars 2099 #1-5

-Amazing Spider-Man vol 4 #1

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 3 #1-10

-Spiderman 2099 vol 3 #11-16 (I list them separately because this takes place during Civil War 2 and that also has a lot of tie in comics that I will not be listing due to time. But yeah. That’s a thing)

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 3 #17-25

-Amazing Spider-Man vol 5 #32-36

Earth 2099

-2099 Alpha

-Spider-Man 2099 vol 4

-2099 Omega (This and vol 4 are E-2099 Miguel’s origin story. I’m not personally a fan of the writing but it is essential to read if you want to understand the universe)

-Spider-Man 2099 Exodus Alpha, #1-5, and Omega

-Spider-Man 2099 Dark Genesis #1-5

-Miguel O’Hara, Spider-Man 2099 #1-5 (The best series we’ve gotten so far of this earth, not really important to the Miguel lore. I just like it lol)

Earth-6375

Note that this is optional to read and I’ve heard some very mixed opinions about how Miguel is written here. If you want to read it, be my guest.

-Exiles #72

-Exiles #75-99

-Exiles annual 1

Honorable mention: Timesplitters 2009-2099 #1-4, Spider-Man, and X Men.

These technically take place in a separate continuity to all 3, but they are important enough that I listed them anyways.

Honorable mention 2: Edge of Spiderverse vol 2

Idk what continuity it takes place in. it is currently ongoing.

Other non comic media

The following is a list of media that Miguel is featured in extensively (Not counting all the mobile games because I mean those are just gacha games and aren’t important to the Miguel lore)

-Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse and Spider-Man across the Spiderverse

-Ultimate Spider-Man S3EP9 and 12

-Spider-Man Edge of time (Personal favorite adaptation of Miguel in media)

-Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions

-Araña and Spiderman 2099: Dark Tomorrow (Not confirmed but likely takes place in E-928 5 years after series ends)

And that’s about it! If there’s any appearances I missed, please don’t hesitate to say something and I’ll fix it as soon as possible.

[foolsocracy]

With all the age discourse around Spider-Man Noir right now, I thought I’d compile parts of the comic that imply his age. I want to state that this pulling from his 2009-2010 comic run before the time skip, specifically the first volume. The spiderverse movie has taken a lot of liberties with the characters, so it is very possible that what Peters age is in 1933 in the comics is NOT what his age is in 1933 in the movies.

Peter’s age is not directly stated in his 1st comic run (I can’t speak for the 2020 ones because it has been a while since I read them, plus there’s like a 10 year jump). It IS however heavily implied that he is young. So much so that you can’t seem to go more than a page without someone referencing it.

Like, these all happen in the same scene. The writers beat you over the head with it.

In this issue alone Peter is called both “son” and “sonny” once, “boy” twice, and “kid” 8 times. Outside nouns, he is also referred to as young, and when Urich brings him to The Black Cat, Felicia calls it “babysitting.” Urich also asks Peter if he is “allowed out after midnight” but after some research I can’t seem to find any evidence of NYC having juvenile curfews at this point in time, though they did exist in lots of towns in the late 1800s and early 1900s because of child labor laws. I think this instance is just Pete just being young and an adult being concerned about his well-being.

It is also mentioned in this volume, and again in Eyes Without a Face (vol 2), that Peter wants to go to college in the future and is currently studying & saving up money to do so. This alone doesn’t necessarily mean he’s under 18 as there isn’t a max age to apply for college, plus Peter comes from a poor family during the Great Depression. It wouldn’t surprise me if he started college later than usual because of that (lack of funds & catching up due to not being in school/working).

There is other evidence that does imply he is under 18 though— he’s too young to drink alcohol!

Spider-Man Noir Vol 1 issue 1 starts in January 1933 before jumping back three weeks to December 1932 where Ben Urich meets Peter Parker

It is during December 1932 that he meets Felicia Hardy who owns the speakeasy The Black Cat. Prohibition is still in place and won’t be overwritten until a year later in December 1933. It is important to note that before Prohibition was instated, the drinking age in New York was 18 years old. That law is what the characters reference when they discuss drinking age. And most importantly, Peter doesn’t deny the fact that he’s too young to drink. He just snarks back in true Parker fashion

This is the most concrete evidence there is towards Peter being under 18 in the noirverse. It can even be argued that Peter is under 17 with how easily Felicia picks up on the fact that he’s underage (and that she does so from a distance might I add, as seen in the ‘babysitting’ panel).

There is also a panel where JJJ refers to Peter as an “orphan.” By definition, an orphan is a kid under 18. This is JJJ, so this can be taken with a grain of salt as he loves good ol hard-hitting words. When people speak they don’t always use words by their exact definitions; sometimes if you’re young and your parents are dead, JJJ is going to label you an orphan even if ur a legal adult lol. But if you take this at face value it’s definitely another indicator that Peter is under 18.

TLDR; Spider-Man Noir from his 2009-2010 comic run is most likely under 18, and can be argued to be 15-16+. If not that, then is definitely college aged or younger.

[roguestorm]

How To Start Reading Marvel Comics

Okay, so let's say you're a fan of the Marvel movies or games or you just saw Spider-Verse and you want to know how to start reading comics. Hi, welcome! This is one method of getting into comics; it is not the only one. We're going to be heavily relying on digital comics for this one, so if you prefer reading on paper, this might not be for you.

Step One: Pick a Character

This should be easy! Pick a character whose comics you want to read. It doesn't have to be your favorite character of all time; it just needs to be a character you're interested in getting to know a little better. A character is going to work better for this particular method than a team will, although there are plenty of team reading guides if you really want them.

Let's say, for the sake of example, that you just watched the Moon Knight Disney+ series and you want to read some stuff about Moon Knight.

Step Two: Find a Reading List

The very technically advanced way to do this is to Google "[Character] Reading List" or "[Character] Recommended Reading." For Moon Knight, Marvel has an official one that pops up right away.

The official ones are good places to start, but IMO, the best ones are usually from tumblr or Reddit. Comic fans can be very intense, but we also know more about the material than anyone, including Marvel. :) Here's one for Moon Knight.)

Step Three: Understanding the Reading List

Comic names are formatted one of two ways. You might see someone say Moon Knight (vol 7) or Moon Knight (2014). These refer to the same series of comics. They mean that the title of the series is Moon Knight, that it is the 7th series published under that title, and that it started publication in 2014. Moon Knight (vol 1) is Moon Knight (1980), because it's the first run of comics called Moon Knight and it started publication in 1980.

So, how do you know? That's where the wiki comes in. marvel.fandom.com is my best friend. So, when you type "Moon Knight vol 7" into the search bar, it brings up this page. See how it says (2014-2015) at the top? That's how you know that Moon Knight (vol 7) is Moon Knight (2014).

Step Four: Accessing Comics

Now we have to get the comics. We have a number of options:

For digital comics:

Buying digital comics. You can do this on Amazon or Marvel.com. However, this gets expensive real fast - for example, Moon Knight (1980) has 38 issues, and each of those costs $1.99. That's almost $80, just for volume 1.

Marvel Unlimited subscription. This is not a bad deal TBH. It's $10 a month, and they have quite an extensive catalogue. The only problem is that the site takes forever to load and is not easily searchable. Usually, I'll type into Google the name of the exact comic I want to access (e.g. "Moon Knight (1980) #1") and then click on the marvel.com link that comes up.

Piracy. This is the easiest and cheapest option, and thus the most popular. I'm not going to link any sites, but ask a friend or Google and you'll find one easily enough.

Physical comics are also an option, but they are more complicated. Groups of issues are collected in trade paperback collections, but finding which collections contain which issues can be a bit more of a hassle. And then buying those collections can get pricey very quickly.

If you like physical comics and have a public library card, I'd recommend checking out what they have on their shelves. On a Marvel comic, you want to look at the back cover, usually in the lower right-hand corner, and it will tell you which issues are in the comic (e.g. "Collects Moon Knight (2014) #1-6"). You might find some things that were on your reading list, or you might find some comics you'd never have read otherwise. A lot of public libraries (at least in the US) have a larger comic book collection than you'd expect.

Step Five: Have Fun and Be Yourself!

The most important thing to remember is that you are supposed to be having fun. There might be some frustration if you're not used to reading visual media (I know I wasn't), but it should overall be fun. If a comic feels like a slog, you don't have to read it! Maybe you and the person who made the reading list just have different taste. Try a different comic. Try a different character.

Also, remember that it's okay to be confused. You might be jumping around a little bit and so you might not know everything that's going on. This is kind of the perpetual state of reading comics. If you want to double-check the wiki or ask your friendly neighborhood comics blogger, that's totally fine.

[positivelybeastly]

Beast and Dark Beast

The thing that gets me about the 'Dark Beast is just who Hank is given time' thing I see thrown around every now and then is that it fundamentally misunderstands literal decades age characterisation and the entire narrative point of the evil doppelgänger.

Like, I genuinely think that anyone who writes these characters almost has to be sat down and made to read X-Men Unlimited vol. 1 #10, and that's not an exaggeration, because Dark Beast is NOT Hank if he was evil. What he is, is something more subtle and interesting than that. He is Hank if his socialisation was completely different, and that's a fundamentally different thing.

He grew up in an aggressively social Darwinist society that was obsessed with genetic purity, the superiority of mutantkind, the codification of the idea that some people are just better because of their genes. Literally everyone in that world is different, because how in god's name would they stay the same?

On some level, Dark Beast is aware that his world is fundamentally cruel and without faith and optimism and belief and love. It's a fucking hellpit. It's the worst possible world. And he knows that. He knows, on some level, that there was a time where he wasn't like how he was, that there was a time where he did have faith. He is, on some level, aware that this is not all he could be.

But he also believes that this is all he can be, because to be anything else is to be weak, and thus you get your teeth kicked in and you get your lunch money taken away and you get shanked in the head.

Like, this sequence is so fascinating because this murder is meaningless except as performance - and performance for a world that Dark Beast isn't even in anymore! It's empty.

Someone has to die - why? Because that's just the way the world is. Because if someone doesn't have to die, then my entire worldview is meaningless, I could have made different choices, swam upstream, maybe died as a result, but at least I wouldn't have done all that. Because if someone doesn't have to die, then everything I did was actually just straight up evil and I have to start worrying about morality, and that feels bad. That makes me feel weak and unhappy and angry and ashamed and I don't like that.

If someone doesn't have to die, then I could have made different choices. And I don't like the idea that I made the wrong ones.

Morality is subjective. Science is absolute. I don't have to think about it. Like, Dark Beast criticises Hank for this, but it gets at why Dark Beast has never been half the scientist Hank is, never will be half the scientist Hank is.

Because he is fundamentally incurious. He's asking questions, but they're not the right questions if you ever want to get an answer that fucking means anything.

He'll never be the scientist you are, huh?

Go ahead, loser. Fucking solve it. Best guess.

Oh, you don't have a fucking clue? I'm shocked.

There's a reason that Isaac Newton said that, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Collaboration, peer review, question, counter-question, interrogation, inquiry, the simple act of asking, hey, what if all of this is completely wrong and we're looking in the wrong place? All of this is what science actually is.

It is not the act of pinioning flesh open and poking at what falls out. That's butchery, and it's hackery. There's a reason that pretty much all of the medical research conducted by the Nazis has been discredited, because it's bad science on top of being completely morally abhorrent! You don't learn anything through brutality! You only reinforce your own brutality! You go looking for answers, and you find them, because anything that disagrees with your preconceived notions, you ignore!

And Hank is not like that. It's no coincidence that the exact same issue that dives into Dark Beast's psychology has this scene in it.

And it's just. This is not an aberration in Hank's writing. This is how he's hard coded. This is who he is.

Choice.

Hank was given a choice. Dark Beast wasn't. And the difference between them is that, when given further choices, Hank continued to recognise that he had choices, while Dark Beast refused to admit that he had ever had a choice.

The point. Of the evil twin. Of the doppelganger. Of the shadow. Is to examine what changes, and what doesn't. There is a reason that Dark Beast was chosen to survive the Age of Apocalypse, and persist 30 years past the point where his timeline was truly relevant. There is a reason that he was chosen over AoA Cyclops, or AoA Wolverine, or AoA Jean Grey, or any of them, to come over, and persist, and survive. There is a reason he keeps coming back to life. He has died twice, and come back, for a reason.

Because he is interesting. Because he's fun. Because he's everything that Hank is, twisted one hundred and eighty degrees and made frightening. Because he is such a contrast to Hank. And it's just. It's such a betrayal of long form storytelling and narrative techniques to take one look at the good twin, and go, what if they were secretly always evil, actually? What if the evil twin was actually just foreshadowing?

It's fucking boring.

Evil Hank is 'we have Dark Beast at home.' Evil Hank is dull, and boring, and an edgelord's idea of a mad scientist. He is not curious, he is not funny, he is not interesting. His entire ethos can be summed up in one sentence, the ends justify the means, and that's it. There's nothing more to him. He's a joke of a character. Can you write anything substantive about that version of character that isn't just a summary of his bad choices? No, you can't, because he's a collection of shitty tropes and badly researched continuity pulls. There's no point talking about him.

What happens if you put evil Hank in this situation?

Like, legitimately. If you put X-Force Beast in this situation, is there any real question as to what he'll do? No. And that is boring. It is, quite literally, actually, factually, in the most basic definition of the word, predictable.

This is the single most intriguing panel that Dark Beast has ever been in, because I genuinely don't know what he's thinking. I don't know what he's going to do. Because I don't think he knows what he's thinking, or what he's going to do. He's overwhelmed. He's emotional. He's possessed by something, but he doesn't have words for it. It's not absolute, it's subjective. It doesn't make sense. It's illogical. Irrational. It infuriates him. It fascinates me.

That, is the narrative point of the evil doppelganger. To put a version of a character you know in a situation where you know what the good version would do, and see what they would do. To see what changes, and what doesn't. So that you can be surprised at what is the same and what is different.

Saying, well, actually, they've always been exactly the same person, is fucking stupid. It betrays a belief in, fuckin', in fuckin' genetic essentialism! That all we ever are is a product of our genes and that we're never destined to be anything than what a string in our genes says we are. And it completely misunderstands why Dark Beast is the way that he is!

Dark Beast did not come into the world a monster. The world he lived in made him a monster. If you want to say that Hank is Dark Beast, just given time, then what the fuck are you saying about the world that mutants live in? That the X-Men have created? About Earth-616?

Do you really want to imply that the Marvel Universe is such a fucking hellscape for mutants that it literally has the exact same effect on Hank McCoy as the Age of fucking Apocalypse? Because why in the fuck should I even read about the X-Men, if that's what they've managed to accomplish in their 60 years of publication? What great fuckin' heroes.

Like, just. What actually happens to Hank, given time? What's more common for him to experience? Across the multiverse?

Mutation.

Misery.

Betrayal.

Death.

Seriously, go back and read old What If comics, and you'll notice that almost any time that things go bad for the X-Men, Beast dies, almost immediately, because it's an immediate sign that things have gone wrong. It is way more common for Hank to be the one who suffers rather than inflicting suffering, canonically. Just because Dark Beast is the only one people know about doesn't mean that he's the only one who exists.

Dark Beast is not an inevitability. He's an eventuality. He's a case study in nature vs. nurture. He's the worst case scenario. He's the shadow cast by Hank's light. There's a reason Hank persists, even damaged by bad writing as he is - because he's worth reading about.

Because he's interesting. Because, despite being 61 years old, there are still stories worth telling about him.

Because fundamentally, funny blue man who looks like a monster but is actually a good guy, is a better concept than, blue monster man that is evil and only evil. And the fact that people don't seem to grasp that idea in 2024 is. Baffling, to me. The fact that people would rather the boring answer, because it appeals to the edgelord in them, just makes me want to roll my goddamn eyes.

Bleh. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Ask for better, more complex stories, please.

[mangatxt]

top 10 manga i read in 2024:

(please note these are not necessarily published in 2024. just things i read or picked up this year)

the fable / ザ・ファブル by minami katsuhisa (seinen / hitman, yakuza, action, comedy / complete) a famed hitman must lay low under the care of a local yakuza group in osaka for a year, blending into a society he is deeply unfamiliar with. some of the most thoughtful and funniest character writing i've ever read.

adults' picture book / otona no zukan kaiteiban / おとなのずかん改訂版 by itoi kei (seinen / childcare, drama / complete) when his late best friend (and maybe more) passes away, an adult comics mangaka must get his act together to take care of his orphaned daughter, even enlisting the help of a local tax accountant to his new odd family. i think this is one of those series that caught me at the exact right moment. you too can read vol 1 as a creative in your late 20s to max out emotional damage.

sketchy / スケッチー by maki hirochi (seinen / sports, slice of life / complete) burnt out and feeling lost, ako stumbles into a group of female skateboarders one night on the way home — invigorated with hope and excitement, she, along with a great cast of women, take up the sport too. absolutely delightful and inspiring, through and through.

colette decides to die / colette wa shinu koto ni shita / コレットは死ぬことにした by yukimura alto (shoujo / fantasy, mythology, romance / complete) (tw: suicide) a village doctor, desperate for a break from overwork, jumps into a well. when she arrives in the land of the dead, she meets its king -- hades -- who is sick and needs her care. a very unique take on greek myth with wonderful slowburn romance between the leads.

do not call it mystery / mystery to iu nakare / ミステリと言う勿れ by tamura yumi (josei / detective, mystery, drama / ongoing) totonou kunou is arrested for the murder of a classmate he doesn't know. after he successfully deduces each cop's backstory while in custody, the police consult his detective skills for other cases, including his own. if you liked basara or seven seeds, i probably don't need to sell this to you.

smoking behind the supermarket with you / super no ura de yani suu futaru / スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり by jinushi (web comic / slice of life, romance / ongoing) overworked and stressed out, sasaki regularly visits his local supermarket for one reason only: the cute cashier yamada. on one visit, he doesn't see her. disappointed, he takes a smoke break behind the store and encounters tayama, a mischievous coworker who seems oddly familiar. a friendship between the two grows with every shared cigarette. if you liked wotakoi but want something more down to earth, this is for you.

gazing at the star next door / tonari no stella / 隣のステラ by ammitsu (shoujo / romance / ongoing) chiaki reckons with her feelings for her next door neighbor and best friend subaru, who's quickly rising through the ranks to become the most popular actor in japan. read this for a classic, butterflies-in-your-stomach shoujo romance feeling.

orb: on the movements of the earth / chi. chikyuu no undou ni tsuite / チ。―地球の運動について― by uoto (seinen / historical, drama / complete) this manga follows several generations in a fictional retelling of the discovery of heliocentrism in the solar system. when claiming that the earth revolves around the sun will get you killed for heresy, these figures must work together in secret, so that church's terrifying inquisitors cannot find them. this fucks, and the anime fucks even harder.

a condition called love / hananoi-kun to koi no yomai / 花野井くんと恋の病 by morino megumi (shoujo / romance, drama / ongoing) a girl who struggles to understand romance and a boy with debilitating abandonment issues enter a trial relationship after a kind act makes him fall in "love." a tough read at times, but to me, this is a welcome commentary on the "obsessive male lead" trope in romance manga.

lost lad london / ロスト・ラッド・ロンドン by shinya shima (seinen / mystery, drama / complete) a young part-time worker, al adley, is framed in the fatal stabbing of london's mayor. when by-the-book detective ellis gives him the benefit of the doubt, the two work together evade arrest to unravel the murder -- and the reason al has been targeted. short (3 vols) and underrated with a unique and delightful art style and some keen social commentary.

[opalish1]

Kate Bishop Reading List

Long ago I made myself a (roughly chronological) list of Kate Bishop comics, and I recently updated it and figured I might as well share. There are some fairly minor appearances included; just know I cut out SO MANY MORE.

Also, I don't care how minor the appearance is, if Deadpool and Kate are in the same issue then I'm including it.

YOUNG AVENGERS ERA

NOTES: This is the most streamlined segment, because I've read these through enough that I more or less remember which appearances have substance and which are just Kate's nostril on page 16.

-Young Avengers vol 1 #1-8

-Young Avengers Special (one-shot)

-Young Avengers vol 1 #9-12

-Civil War 1 #1-2

-Civil War: Runaways/Young Avengers #1-4

-Civil War 1 #3-7

-Winter Soldier: Winter Kills (one-shot)

-Captain America vol 5 #26

-Civil War Fallen Son: Death of Captain America #2-3 & #5

-Young Avengers Presents #1-6

-Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #1-3

-Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1-4

-Nomad #4 (set during Civil War)

-Siege Young Avengers (one-shot)

-I Am An Avenger #1 & #5

-Avengers: Children's Crusade #1-4

-Avengers: Children's Crusade Young Avengers #1

-Avengers: Children's Crusade #5-9

HAWKEYE DUO/YA2 ERA

NOTES: I once tried to work out the exact timeline for Hawkeye v4 and YA v2; I've broken things up according to that timeline. YMMV on accuracy and you certainly don't have to read in that order. I in no way tried to integrate HvD or anything listed after that into a coherent timeline. Also I don't entirely remember how large of a role Kate plays in the Patsy Walker/Ant-Man issues, sorry.

-Hawkeye vol 4 #1-5, #7, #6 & #17

-Young Avengers vol 2 #1-15

-Hawkeye vol 4 #8-9; #10-13 are concurrent

-Hawkeye Annual (one-shot)

-Hawkeye vol 4 #14, #16, #15, #18-22

-Hawkeye vs Deadpool #1-4

-All-New Hawkeye vol 1 #1-5

-Gwenpool Special #1

-Astonishing Ant-Man vol 1 #1

-All-New Hawkeye vol 2 #1-6

-Patsy Walker v1 #2

-Old Man Logan v2 #2-4

-Astonishing Ant-Man vol 1 #6

-Civil War 2: Choosing Sides #2-3

-Uncanny Avengers vol 3 #13

-Civil War 2 #4-6

-Year of Marvels: October Infinite Comic (one-shot)

-Spider-Man/Deadpool vol 1 #12

KATE BISHOP SOLO/WCA ERA

NOTES: Gonna be honest, I never really tried to make a timeline for the concurrent pubs during this time, so...whatever. And, uh, I don't honestly remember how much of a role she plays in the Wasp stuff, so I included those to be safe.

-Hawkeye vol 5 #1-16

-Unbelievable Gwenpool vol 1 #14-15

-America vol 1 #1, #5-6

-Generations: Hawkeye & Hawkeye

-Despicable Deadpool #299

-West Coast Avengers vol 3 #1-10

-Season's Beating (one-shot)

-Unstoppable Wasp v2 #7

-War of the Realms: Journey Into Mystery #1-5

-Fearless vol 1 #1

-Avengers vol 8 #22

-Death's Head vol 2 #2-4

-Gwenpool Strikes Back vol 1 #3-5

-Empyre vol 1 #4-5

-Empyre Aftermath Avengers (one-shot)

-America Chavez: Made in the USA #1-2, 5

THE (MOSTLY) UNREAD ERA

NOTES: Aside from the H:KB solo, this is basically my to-read list, so it's entirely possible some of these appearances are extremely underwhelming. I did try to cut out anything that seemed SUPER light on Kate content, but that also means I might've cut some comics where she has more of a presence as well.

-Black Widow vol 8 #10

-It's Jeff Infinity Comic #1, #6-7, #9-12, #14, #18, #22, #25, #28

-Lucky the Pizza Dog Infinity Comic (one-shot)

-Hawkeye: Kate Bishop vol 1 #1-5

-Alligator Loki Infinity Comic vol 1 #13, #15

-Marvel Meow and Pizza Dog Infinity Comic #1-4

-Women of Marvel vol 4 #1

-Avengers: War Across Time vol 1 #5

-Captain Marvel vol 10 #50

-Marvel's Voices: Pride vol 3 #1

-Avengers Unlimited Infinity Comic vol 1 #58-59

-Extreme Venomverse vol 1 #5

-Women of Marvel vol 5 #1

-Infinity Paws Infinity Comic #1, #10

-Avengers vol 9 #14-16

-Marvel Mutts Infinity Comic vol 1 #11

-Blood Hunters vol 1 #2

-Venom War: It's Jeff (oneshot)

SOME ALTERNATE UNIVERSE KATES

NOTES: Only really including the ones I've read or that are on my to-read list.

-Secret Wars Journal #1 (Lady Katherine AU)

-Siege vol 2 #1-4 (Lady Katherine AU)

-Secret Wars Too (Lady Katherine AU)

-All-New Wolverine vol 1 #33-35 (Old Woman Laura timeline)

-Old Man Hawkeye vol 1 #5-12 (Old Man Hawkeye timeline)

WRAP UP

It's probably pretty obvious which comics are the most important to read (both YA runs, all the Hawkeye solos, etc) so I wanted to mention some of my favorites you might be tempted to overlook

-Winter Soldier: Winter Kills oneshot. Kate and the YA meet Bucky.

-Civil War Fallen Son: Death of Captain America #3. Clint and Kate's first meeting.

-Hawkeye vs Deadpool #1-4. I love this title so much. Kate and Clint team up with Deadpool for the first but not last time.

-Despicable Deadpool #299. That time Deadpool threatens the Hawkeyes and Kate says he wouldn't shoot her and he agrees that he wouldn't, he'd just shoot Clint twice.

And for MCU Kate fans, shoutout to Black Widow vol 8 #10 for being the only (...so far as I know) comic to place Yelena and Kate are in the same room.

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Collections to watch out for!

EXCITING TIME TO BE ALIVE!

Good fall to all you comic collectors out there!

Next week: 10/25/23, don't forget to stop into your local comic shop for a few thrilling special sets! THREE OF THEM to be exact!

First! For all you Must have Moon Knight fans, we have a wonderful collection of art and special covers by The OG himself: BILL SIENKIEWICZ!!

Bill Sienkiewicz is renowned for his work on some of Marvel's most iconic comics of the 1980s: Moon Knight, The New Mutants, Elektra: Assassin, and more. This collection is filled with some of his finest covers, pin-ups, and pages. Included in this Artisan Edition is the oversized first issue of Elektra: Assassin, written by Frank Miller, as well as many gorgeous pages from that acclaimed series. All have been meticulously scanned from the original art and reproduced to the exacting Artist's Edition standards. While appearing to be in black and white, these images have been scanned in color, allowing the reader to view them as closely as possible to the original art. Ink gradients, blue pencil, corrections, and more are all clearly visible, all the wonderful subtle nuances that make original art so special and unique.

This will run you roughly $39.99 (though some online comic shops have it on sale for less.

Diamond code:JUL231276 ISBN:9781684059683

What could be better than this?

How about the MCU Official

WEREWOLF BY NIGHT ART BOOK! I am so excited for this one you guys.

On a dark and somber night, a secret group of monster hunters emerges from the shadows and gathers at the foreboding Bloodstone Temple following the death of their leader. In a strange and macabre memorial to their leader's life, the attendees are thrust into a mysterious and deadly competition for a powerful relic - a hunt that will ultimately bring them face-to-face with a dangerous monster.

Continuing their popular ART OF series of tie-in books, Marvel Studios presents another blockbuster achievement! Featuring exclusive concept artwork and in-depth interviews with the creative team, this deluxe volume provides insider details about the making of the highly anticipated special.

This bad boy will set you back $60. But again, you can find it online for a little cheaper at some retailers. (especially if you pre-order before it drops)

Diamond code:MAR230961 ISBN:9781302953362

LAST but not least!

For those that have been trying to assemble all of the old Moon Knight collections, we have

MOON KNIGHT EPIC COLLECTION VOL 7 DEATH WATCH TP!!

We're heading into the 90s with a collection or appearances in other works and continuation of Moench in the main line. We've got Doctor Doom, Infinity Wars tie over, The return of Bushman, and more!

Collecting MARC SPECTOR: MOON KNIGHT #39-51, MOON KNIGHT: DIVIDED WE FALL, MOON KNIGHT SPECIAL #1, WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (1985) #93-94 and material from MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS (1988) #152-154.

This little collection will cost you $44.99 (but I'm getting it for $38 online through pre-order)

Diamond code:JUL230851 ISBN:9781302953805

Now I hear you all screaming "What about the Moon Knight show art book?!" That is still currently scheduled for release on 11/22/23. But it has been pushed back twice already so I'm not going to scream about it till it's in my cart with an official pre-order ability and the money has left my wallet. (Moon Knight you keep my wallet barren and sad).

[faboover]

4 Years of Making Videos on RWBY Volume 6

Introduction

Hi, I’m Fabian. I run a YouTube Channel called Faboover in which I post Let’s Plays, Fan-Trailers, AMVs, Toonami Promos, and Toonami Music Videos. I also make Video Essays discussing, analyzing, and criticizing RWBY, which I started doing with RWBY Volume 4 back in 2017. 

Over a 4 Year Period (2019-2023), I made 5 Videos discussing multiple aspects about RWBY Volume 6. The video series is titled “Thoughts” and covers my Thoughts on the Topics of Story, Animation & Editing, Design, and whatever Miscellaneous Topics can be included in each. What I want to do here is go over what went into each of these Videos I made this time around for Volume 6 and why it took me so long to produce them. I also want to finish this up by explaining what I’m going to be doing for Future Videos for RWBY.

Links to the RWBY Volume 6 Thoughts Videos are provided below with the Date I released them and how long each are.

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Story (12/1/19, 30:23)

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Animation & Editing (7/1/20, 30:55)

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Design Pt. 1/2 (4/15/21, 26:28)

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Design Pt. 2/2 (9/12/21, 35:36)

Final Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6 (10/23/23. 1:09:30)

If you want to read this easier and easily jump to different sections of the post, please go to the Google Docs Link for it provided below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D6j5usI6mTC-zvn8ioViyDvqcJ8hIKAfArg3Et3hS2E/edit?usp=sharing

Story Video

This is pretty standard fare for me as it closely resembles how I’ve done this Video for Volumes 4 and 5 in which I talk about the Characters and Overall Story Stuff for RWBY Volume 6. The change up here is how Ruby is the last Character and Topic for the Video after getting into all of the Other Characters and Overall Plot Stuff for Volume 6.

The reason I had Ruby as the Last Topic for the Video is because of how I felt it would be best to go over everything else first in order to get into Ruby’s Story for Volume 6. I especially felt that I needed to do it this way with the Overall Story Beats for the Volume as how the plot progresses would be important in understanding what is going on with Ruby.

My favorite Topic for the Volume 6 Story Video is Qrow. This is mainly because I hadn’t talked about him at length like this before. My favorite bits I talked about in relation to Qrow is how Qrow kept his distance during the initial phases of the heist and how important it is that Ruby kept approaching Qrow while his spirits were down.

I don’t have any issues with how this video turned out. I believe I started writing this video in the middle of 2019, recorded my Audio for the Video in September, and finally released it in December of 2019.

Animation & Editing Video

I’m going to start this one off and say that I really need to come up with a new way to introduce these Videos talking about RWBY’s Animation. I started this Video the exact same way I did for the previous two I made on the Same Topics for Volumes 4 and 5. I don’t remember if I noticed this repetitive intro after writing, recording, editing, or releasing the Volume 6 Animation Video. I most likely noticed when editing the video.

Anyway, this is a video in which I got to do some cool stuff with. Got to breakdown Oscar’s Character Animation for the scene in which Jaune comes at Oscar, which I hadn’t analyzed and brokedown the animation in a dialogue scene before. Got to revisit the Topic of Squash and Stretch and highlight the use of a Smear Frame on Nora, which actually isn’t the first time they’ve done a Smear Frame like that. The bit I’m more proud of is my breakdown for the Animation and Action during the Fight between Yang and Adam.

I actually took notes this time around starting from Blake and Adam’s Fight on the Antenna and through the Woods up to the end of Yang’s Fight with Adam. Helped me identify all of the strengths for these Fight Scenes. Obviously, I focused on Yang and Adam’s Fight. The part of the breakdown for Adam and Yang’s Fight that I got a lot of positive responses to is my analysis and breakdown for Adam’s 3 Drawing Slashes against Yang, which was adapted from Monty’s Test Animation for a fight between Adam and Yang.

One of the things I took major umbrage with is how people would passive-aggressively dismiss the quality of the Fight between Yang and Adam by saying that it was only Good because of Monty. This being because it took moments from the Test Animation Monty did for a fight between Yang and Adam that leaked. So, I started this section of the video by highlighting Yang’s Animation since the Test Animation mainly focused on Adam. Doing this would show how much additional stuff was done in this Fight that didn’t come from that Leaked Test Animation Monty made.

One of the last topics for this Animation and Editing Video was a small bit in which I brought up the Special Effects Animation for Volume 6. This section was originally going to contain more, but as you will come to see, the Topic became much more complicated as I first pushed it into the next Design Video. A Video which would then become a 2 Parter because of how complicated covering the Topic truly became.

Design Part 1

This Design Video covered Topics that I usually cover in my previous Design Videos for RWBY (Characters, Environments, Grimm, Sound, etc.), but I went about covering them differently. This time around, I took the approach of presenting what went into producing what was seen in Volume 6 and not just talking about what I think about each Design Topic, which obviously bloated the length of the Video.

The section of this First Design Video for Volume 6 I’m very proud of is the section in which I went over the Conception, Influences, Initially Planning, and Implementation of The Apathy. How I approached writing this section was mainly influenced by the “Exploring” Series on the YouTube Channel GoodBadFlicks. This is also a section that I spent more time scoring (implementing music) than anything I had done previously. Another thing I did is purposely not show the Apathy until I actually started talking about them. This is a section I put a lot of thought and effort into how I wrote, spoke about, and edited. I would later upload this section as a Standalone Video while editing my Final Thoughts Video for Volume 6.

Design Part 2

The Design Part 2 Video covers the Special Effects and Visual Effects (VFX) of RWBY up to Volume 6 with brief mentions about Volumes 7 and 8. This is the first time I have ever spent so much time researching a subject and writing about it in a presentation/video essay type format. I kid-you-not, I spent months going through the Commentaries, watching the Behind the Scenes, looking over Crew Demo Reels, reading Articles, etc. in order to understand as much as I could about the Production of RWBY in relation to Special Effects and VFX. What was originally intended to be a small section to be included in the Animation & Editing Video quickly became more and more complicated as I continued to gain knowledge through my research.

Why did I even start researching these aspects of RWBY’s Production?

It started with the 2D Special Effect for the Fire in the Fireplace at the Brunswick Farm. 

My first reaction was, “This is odd. I know they don’t do Fire Effects like this from what I saw in Volume 2 Episode 4, Volume 4 Episode 8, and Volume 5 Episode 10.” 

But then I went, “Wait, do I actually KNOW that they don’t do Effects like this or am I just making a Baseless Assumption?”

I later messaged Hypeathon, who had done a 3 part video series on Monty and RWBY, and asked if he had any resources on the Special Effects for RWBY (I was only focused on the Special Effects at this time and was looking to get sources for the Volume 6 Animation Video). Hypeathon would then provide me much more than I expected and directed me to review the Commentaries.

As I mentioned earlier, I found myself traversing down a Rabbit Hole I wasn’t expecting. See all of my Notes and References used for the 2nd Design Video in the Google Doc linked below.

RWBY Special and VFX Sources, References, Notes, etc.

I would write this section with the original intention of including it with everything I was writing for the 1st Design Video; however, when it came time to review my initial draft for the section that would become the 2nd Design Video, I found myself not liking it.

I felt like it was directionless and uninteresting. It came off like I was just spouting information rather than presenting information. That’s when I messaged Hypeathon again and asked if he would be okay with proofreading and providing feedback on the First Main Draft of the Special Effects and VFX Section for my Original Volume 6 Design Video Script.

Hypeathon accepted. 

So I provided him the Current Draft of my VFX Script and a Document with all of my Notes and References so he would know where information was coming from and have context to how I was writing this part of my script. Hype would give feedback, suggestions, alternations, and notes to the Draft I gave him as I continued to write the rest of the Original Design Video with consideration to everything Hype was providing me and giving feedback to.

As we were doing this, the page count on this Original Design Video’s Script ended up getting pretty high and about to hit 20 Pages. Why this was a big deal is because the previous Story and Animation Video Scripts were around 10 Pages and ended up to be about 30 Minutes each. I came to realize that I was about to have an Hour Long Video on my hands. Thus, I made the decision to split the Design Video into two parts.

This decision helped give Hypeathon more time to go over and provide feedback on the rest of the Special and VFX Draft I sent him and also gave me more time to finesse my scripts for the now 2 Part Volume 6 Design Videos.

If you would like to see the Original Draft of the Special and VFX Script I sent Hypeathon and the feedback and notes Hype provided to it, it is linked below.

(I DID ASK HYPEATHON IF HE IS OKAY WITH ME SHARING THIS HERE FIRST)

Special Effects of RWBY Draft (with Hypeathon’s Feedback)

I am overall proud of how the Volume 6 Design Part 2 Video turned out. The only thing I wished I did better on is the section of the Video talking about RWBY Volume 3.

When it came to my research I did for this Video, I was initially only focused on anything dealing with the Special Effects of RWBY. It wasn’t until I started researching Volume 4 that I pivoted to research not only the Special Effects but also the VFX and Production of RWBY as a whole.

Despite this change in approach to what topics I was going to be researching and covering for the Video, I never went back to Volume 3 and is why I said that the Special and VFX for Volume 3 had little change. This is also why the Volume 3 Section of the Design Part 2 Video covers mostly the Production of RWBY and not the Special and Visual Effects. That said, doing it this way did help provide a smoother transition to talking about Volumes 4 and 5.

Final Thoughts

Talk about another mile and a half. This Final Thoughts Video for Volume 6 took me a long while to write and edit. Part of it was all the stuff regarding Adam and the White Fang I had been planning to cover in this video, and another part was the Jaune and Pyrrha Section of the video.

I was originally writing the section regarding Adam’s Character as a sort of play by play about Adam, what we see of him, what others say about him, and what he says throughout each Volume. That was getting very long. I got to the point where I was writing in this way up to Volume 5 and went, “This is too long” and I didn’t feel like this is how I actually want to talk about Adam’s Characterization. I’m referring to the Tone of my writing. Thus, I consolidated it with a complete rewrite so that it would be better focused. Even with that done, I still faced hurdles when it came to writing those sections about Adam and the White Fang.

The number of times I thought about removing specific sections of the Adam and White Fang Topics to the point where there were times when I did remove them. This is all because I was super anxious about covering these topics as I am obviously going to be getting into and discussing the Racial Subject Matter and Implications regarding the character of Adam and representation of the White Fang.

Running through my mind when considering whether to keep these topics were:

Is my perspective important?

What if I’m ignorant?

What if I say something in this video that someone could take major offense to?

What if I say or present something in a way that makes someone who respected me now think less of me?

What if I make the conversation regarding these issues in RWBY Discourse worse?

Thoughts like these would just spring up from time to time during the writing and editing process. Yeah, I even considered cutting these parts out from the video during the editing phase after I had already recorded my audio for the video. This anxiety once I got up to the Adam’s Character Section of the video during the editing phase really kept me away from the video timeline and hindered me from making any significant progress on the full video. I think it took me 2 to 3 months to finally edit those sections of the video. It took me about a month to edit the first 20 minutes of the video.

The reason I kept these sections regarding Adam’s Character and the White in the video despite my anxiety about them is because I essentially forced myself to. “If I don’t talk about this now, then I am never going to.” That was my mentality with keeping these sections regarding Adam’s Character and White Fang in the video. 

“If I don’t do it now, then I never will.”

Now, why would the Jaune and Pyrrha section of this Final Thoughts Video be hard for me to write and such? Well, that’s because that section was originally intended to be a Standalone Video. One that I hinted I was going to be making in my Update #14 Video that I put out on 11/7/18. I later confirmed that I was planning to make a video regarding Jaune and Pyrrha in my Update #16 Video that I put out on 9/1/19.

I started writing the script for the Standalone Jaune and Pyrrha Video, but all I was able to complete is a single paragraph. That video would only make sense with what was already out for RWBY at the time when I first hinted at it, which was Volume 6. That’s why the Topic for Jaune and Pyrrha got added to the Final Thoughts Video. It was also to address the scene in which Jaune talked to Nora and Ren at Pyrrha’s Statue.

When I finally got around to including that section about Jaune and Pyrrha in my script for the Final Thoughts Video, I was at least able to start making good progress. That was the case until I actually got to talking about Jaune in Volume 6 in which I hit a wall.

The problem was how I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say and how to say it. This was because I essentially looked at what I was writing so far regarding Jaune and Pyrrha and went, “Where am I going with this?” It was the last part of this section to write before concluding it, and I had lost the narrative.

I think it took me quite a while to figure it out. Rewatching the scene with Jaune, Nora, and Ren helped me to finally develop a connective through-line for what I wanted to cover and get across.

The only other major topic in the Final Thoughts Video I want to talk about here is the Bumblby Section. It was a topic I had originally planned to be in the Final Thoughts Video since around the time I started writing the first Story Video. I originally wrote it as though RWBY Volume 6 had just ended and was focusing on a specific aspect about the relationship.

Did they pander with Bumblby in Volume 6?

I had finished writing the full Final Thoughts Video around October or November of 2022. Volume 9 had not come out yet. By the time I finally got around to editing the Bumblby Section of the Video, Volume 9 had finished and Yang and Blake officially became a couple. I was playing back what I had said in the Video in my Video Editor and asked myself, “Does it even matter anymore?”

The answer I came to was obviously, “No.”

So I cut out all the parts where I referenced anything regarding fan-service and pandering. Re-recorded some of my lines to remove mentions of those as well. All so I could just focus on the 2 small problems I had with Blake and Yang’s Relationship, how it was presented in Volume 6, and then talked about how I wasn’t impressed with how it progressed afterwards in Volumes 7 and 8.

If I had to pick what my favorite section that I did for the Final Thoughts Video, it would be a toss up between these two.

Adam in Volume 6

Jaune and Pyrrha

The reason for the Volume 6 Adam Section is because of how it is an overview and analysis regarding Adam and his Character. It also gave me the opportunity to cover aspects about Blake’s confrontation with Adam at the end of Volume 5 that I didn’t get to cover in my original RWBY Volume 5 Thoughts Series due to how I needed to compress and focus my talking points regarding the last 4 episodes of that Volume.

My favorite bit I talked about regarding Adam in Volume 6 was the line in which Adam said to Blake how he just wasn’t good enough for her for Blake to then retort back that it was way more than that. I really liked digging into why Blake would respond back with that in regards to Adam.

The Jaune and Pyrrha Section should be obvious as Jaune is one of my Favorite Characters in RWBY. So, getting into stuff regarding Jaune and Pyrrha and explaining why I have interest in Characters like Jaune was really enjoyable.

If I was to put out one of these as a Standalone Video, it would be the Jaune and Pyrrha Section. It was originally intended to be one and covers more about the Characters than just one Volume.

Why Did These Videos Take So Long?

The title for this part of the write up speaks for itself. The answer is due to a variety of reasons.

Motivation

Energy

Time

Distractions

Procrastination

Anxiety

Just to name a few.

One of the big contributors as to why I took so long to make each of these Videos is because I would just end up in a Writer’s Block pretty frequently as I wrote the scripts for the Videos. I would just get stuck. I would know what topics I wanted to include and talk about. I would have these topics titled and listed out in my initial draft. But then, I would just struggle with figuring out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I also struggled with the script writing process itself because of how I would just forget how to write. I cannot count how many times during the writing process for these Volume 6 Thoughts Videos that I would stop and ask myself, 

Should I be starting a new paragraph?

Wait! When should a new paragraph be started?

Am I employing proper Grammar here?

Am I structuring my sentences properly?

I bet if you look over this whole write-up you are reading right now, you can find examples of me still struggling with stuff like that.

Another big contributor as to why it took me so long to get these videos out are the lengths of each video. Each video is 30 minutes or longer. Those are some daunting video lengths to produce.

I ended up developing a way to help myself not feel so overwhelmed by the length of each video by adding markers for each section/topic of the Video in the Video Editor’s Timeline and then moving these marked sections/topics far apart from each other in the Timeline. This is so I could just focus on the current section I am editing and not worry about how much more I have left to do in order to complete the video. Essentially, I broke down the video into sectioned tasks instead of just one large project. Despite that, I obviously still struggled to make progress when editing the Videos.

Another thing I would do to help me make progress when editing the videos is open my Vegas Project for whatever Thoughts Video I was working on at the time every time I started up my computer. However, I would also open other things such as YouTube, Social Media, etc. I would also spend time on my Phone reading through and watching the same stuff. I would just gravitate to whatever would be more interesting or immediately fulfilling for my mind to engage with.

One of the things that I do, which can be called a compulsion at times, is Day Dream whenever I’m listening to music. Not just Day Dream, but imagine and play out whole scenarios in my head to the music I’m listening to. This is how I develop the ideas for my Fan-Trailers, Toonami Promos, and Music Videos.

The reason this can be called a Compulsion is because sometimes my mind will just get stuck and locked into one thing, this one scenario. So, I have to grab my phone and start listening to music so I can play out what is currently running through my head until it’s done, but then like 30+ minutes have passed.

This can all be related to ADHD, which I have now started taking medication for after completing an ADHD Test that my Psychiatrist had me take. If you look through my Likes on Twitter, you can find me liking and retweeting stuff in regards to ADHD over the years because I just related them to my experience when editing these videos over the last 4 years.

Neurodivergent Kids when listening to music:

https://x.com/EthanTheRaccy/status/1690786287349846016?s=20

ADHD when you are passionate vs not:

https://x.com/AdonisThuul/status/1680623330800304131?s=20

“I just need to finish this project”:

https://x.com/choinheap/status/1651924410570350592?s=20

Markiplier Talks about ADHD:

https://x.com/ac_maestro/status/1642882059801698305?s=20

McNasty’s Quote Tweet adding onto what Markiplier said:

https://x.com/McNasty/status/1644400896221265921?s=20

Future Videos

I’m now 3 Volumes, 1 Spinoff, and a 2 Part Crossover Film behind in regards to my Thoughts Series of Videos for RWBY. Obviously, it now takes me too long to produce these videos. So, what am I going to do moving forward?

The Thoughts Video Series I’ve been making for each Volume of RWBY will be no more. One reason is the aforementioned time it now takes for me to write and produce them. The other reason is that my Format with these videos just won’t work with Volumes 7 through 9. Especially with the Story Videos as each of the Characters’ Stories are told through those Volumes and not isolated to just one.

Will I be making any videos talking about, discussing, analyzing, and criticizing RWBY?

YES

How am I going to do so if I’m not going to do it in my usual format anymore?

I will instead be producing Videos that are about a single topic rather than just a Broad Topic with a bunch of Individual Topics. This will make the Video focused and, hopefully, shorter. This will also be focused more on Topics that I want to talk about rather than Topics I’m not that interested in.

I already tested putting out Videos in that format by uploading sections of my previous Thoughts Videos for RWBY Volume 6, which are all linked below.

How RWBY Vol. 6 Put More Focus on Ruby (3:33)

Yang VS Adam - A Brief Animation BREAKDOWN (13:11)

The Apathy: Influences, Design, and Implementation (7:23)

A VERY GENERAL Overview of RWBY's VFX (12:56)

These also showcased the new Thumbnail and Video Title Formats I will be using when making Videos like this. I previously opted for just “Thoughts - <Subject>: <Subject about that Subject>” as I didn’t want my Titles to come off as Clickbait or anything like that.

The previous titles would communicate that these are my thoughts about this subject and will be talking about this sub-subject of the subject in the Video. The Title explains exactly what I’m doing in the video. Of course, this Title format is boring and doesn’t really prepare the person coming into the video with what to expect.

The New Video Title Formats I’m going to be doing, as seen in the Titles of the previous 4 videos I linked, are much more intriguing and attention grabbing. Each of these videos has already done better than the originals they came from in regards to Engagement (Likes and Comments).

I’m gonna be challenging myself over the next week to write, record, edit and upload a Video in this format. I will be discussing and going over a Scene from RWBY Volume 9. So, please look forward to it!

If you want to hear my early thoughts regarding Volumes 7 and 8, you can hear me talk about them on this Episode of the Dumb Weebs Podcast linked below.

Dumb Weebs Podcast Episode 9 - IRONWOOD WHY (RWBY Volume 8)

If you want to read an Analysis Piece I wrote and posted to my Tumblr Blog about Ruby for Volume 8, that is also linked below.

The State of Ruby as of RWBY Vol. 8 Episode 8

[reallca-blog]

Unwrapping the Wonka Bar Vol. 1 - Where is Charlie’s Town Located? Part 11

If you haven’t read the previous post, click here for Part 10 to make sure you are caught up to speed. If you’re already read the previous posts, then welcome back and let’s get back to the show!

Exhibit #9: Just Where in Northeast London is Charlie's Town Located?

I had to cut the last installment of Unwrapping the Wonka Bar short because there was just too much stuff I wanted to include in this installment that Tumblr did not let me post it in its entirety, so I divided the instalment in half and I now come to you with the second part where we continue to try and figure out where in London Charlie’s town is located. As mentioned in the last instalment, Burtonville must be located in East London as it needs to be fairly distanced from County Buckinghamshire and the Salt Family Manor while still being in the same media market. However, Southeast London has been eliminated from consideration after an extensive analysis of the shadows and the position of the sun over Burtonville, meaning Charlie’s town is located in one northernmost boroughs of East London. And so, with four East London boroughs vying to be the home of Charlie's town, we need to become extremely picky about the features these boroughs bring to the table if we are to unravel the answer. And, in order to do this, we need to study the view north of the Bucket home and compare that with what lies north of these real-life boroughs in order to help eliminate some of them from the competition.

From this scene where Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka hover over Charlie's town in the Great Glass Elevator, we get a clear view of the Bucket home and what lies beyond Burtonville's northern border, we see that after the city limits lies an empty field and hills all covered in snow. Now, this fact quickly helps us eliminate one of the remaining options, the London Borough of Enfield for the simple reason that the borough’s namesake, the city of Enfield borders a string of small towns in County Hertfordshire to the north and west of the city of Enfield. There is also the issue that anything to the west of the city of Enfield is too close to central and West London to truly be East London, and this is important not just for the destitute qualities needed for the location of Charlie's town, but for the fact that will be elaborated upon in a later installment of this volume, that Charlie's town and the Salt Family Manor have to be decently separated as they do not share the exact same climate. Therefore, the London Borough of Enfield must be eliminated from consideration.

Had it not been for the Factory Manual, we would not know that Charlie's town has a name, Burtonville, and perhaps we would have been misguided and designated the Buckets, Willy Wonka and the rest of their neighbors as residents of a real-life town on the border between Greater London and County Essex. But because of this, we know that Charlie's town is not a real­-life­ place, for the lack of a better term, and this means that we have to place the town in an empty space somewhere in northeast Greater London in order to not disturb the existence of a real-world town in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe. Now, that by itself does not seem all that hard as there is plenty of empty space in the area where a town could have been built in in an alternate universe without compromising the existence of already existing towns. However, when we take into consideration the prerequisites established by the film, the fact that to the north of the Bucket home lies a baren nothingness limits just where the town could be.

And so, with all of these factors in mind, I set out to study the geographic frontiers of the London Boroughs of Waltham Forrest, Redbridge and Havering and I stand in front of you all now to say that I found four possible options as to where Charlie's town could be located. I will also include an image below of each of the four options consisting of two outlines, a red one indicating where Charlie's town could be located and a blue outline where the empty field north of the Bucket home could be located, so that you all can better visualize how large each option is.

Therefore, let's jump right into these four options and analyze the argument for why Charlie's town could be located here, starting with:

Option #1: Northeast Waltham Forrest

As the London Borough with the shortest northern border with a political subdivision not within Greater London, Option #1 manifested very few options for the location of Charlie's town. It seemed that the London Borough of Waltham Forrest would be outright eliminated from the running at first, that was until I mapped out an area east of the town of Chingford and west of Buckhurst Hill in the neighboring London Borough of Redbrigde. Theoretically, Charlie's town could span an area 0.347 miles2 and the field north of the town could span an area of 0.437 miles2. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that this is an incredibly small area of land for such a sprawling location that we see on screen. With only a bit more than a square mile of space available, the odds that Charlie's town could be in the London Borough of Waltham Forrest are small, but fortunately there are other options available for consideration.

Option #2: Central Redbridge

What makes this location an interesting choice is that there is actually a suburban community just north of where the field could be placed at, but unlike Option #1, we have a more free space to work with to place to possibly place Charlie's town here. An analysis of the area revealed Charlie's town could span an area of 0.905 miles2 while the field north of the town could span an area of 1.613 miles2, a significant increase from the previous option. With more than twice the available space for a possible location as compared with Option #1, Option #2 blows its competitor out of the water. But yet, the cluster of homes just north of the possible location of the field makes this option seem not that much better. Therefore, we must continue our analysis of the other possible locations and see if any of them are a better fit for our search than Option #2.

Option #3: Northeast Redbridge/Northwest Havering

For the first time in our analysis, we now have an option that is both wide enough to feature a town and extends far north enough to feature an open space as was shown in the film. In between the London Borough of Havering and the London Borough of Redbridge lies an uninhabited space where Charlie's town could be located, with an area spanning 0.946 miles2 which would form the town and an area spanning 2.685 miles2 which is where the empty field north of the town would be located. This option is much more of an improvement from the other two, however, the placement of Charlie's town in the area comprising Option #3 would mean that a real-world cemetery would never have been built as the land would be occupied by the rows of council homes we in the film. It should also be stated that the cemetery in question, Gardens of Peace, appears to have opened in 2009, years after the film take place in and decades after the postwar period when the homes in Charlie's town would have been built. And with such a location not affecting anyone who is living, it can easily be argued that the cemetery does not exist in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe. Or perhaps the cemetery is located somewhere else nearby, or perhaps the developers bought up some land from the residents of Charlie's town who are clearly strapped for cash and demolished the homes to build the cemetery after the events of the film. Regardless, Option #3 appears to be a solid choice for the location of Charlie's town, yet we still have one more location to consider.

Option #4: Northwest Havering

And finally, our last option up for consideration is similar to Option #2, a small strip of empty land next to the towns of Collier Row and Harold Hill in the London Borough of Havering. An analysis reveals that if Charlie's town was located here it would span an area of 0.455 miles2 and the field north of the town would span an area of  0.759 miles2. Now, something interesting about this option is that the location of where Charlie's town could be located is where the Risebridge Golf Centre is located in the real world. Much like the case of the Gardens of Peace cemetery, this golf club doesn't seem to have been completed until way after the end of World War II, having opened in 1972, way after the town would have been built. However, this means that the golf club would have been built by the time of the events of the film, even by when Willy Wonka would have had his candy awakening,  which causes a discrepancy as this means the golf club either does not exist in the exact same location in Charlie's town or it doesn't exist in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe at all. With this in mind, if this were the location, it would make sense that the town would have been built here as the land would have been unused throughout the entire reconstruction period the UK underwent after the war, making it a prime location for a housing project.

And so, with this data having been laid out in front of us to analyze, we can now begin narrowing down the options and discover where in Greater London Charlie's town is located. First things first, the fact that Greater London is already so urbanized means that there are very few open fields in the region for a fictional town to be located in, and that can be seen in the fact that there are only four options to choose from. And once we look at the data for each option, it becomes clear that two of these options are not really feasible. Options #1 and #4 do not even have half a square mile to host Charlie's town, and even more important, neither option even have a full square mile of land to be the empty field north of the Bucket home visible during the scene where Willy Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe travel to the Bucket home in the Great Glass Elevator after the tour.

Because of those facts, I can confidently eliminate Options #1 and #4 from the running, and interestingly enough, this actually helps us narrow down the search even more. With Option #1 being eliminated, the London Borough of Waltham Forrest is removed from consideration, leaving only the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Havering in contention (and more interesting, the two remaining options border each other).

Now, seeing as the two remaining options literally border each other, I began to look deeper into the land I designated for Charlie's town and the open field north of the Bucket home in an attempt to narrow down our options down to the place where Charlie's town is located and what I found was rather interesting. Long story short, Option #2 doesn't match the potential that Option #3 offers, with nearly twice the amount of space available for Charlie's town and about 50% more space for the open field to the north than its competitor, Option #2 needs to step aside as Option #3 is clearly the best option for the location of Charlie's town. However, the size of of Option #3 is not what makes it interesting; while I looked into the land I designated for Charlie's town and the empty field north of the Bucket home in Option #3, I noticed that all the land in question was not contained in one borough, let alone one region. Now, this was to be expected as even the name for Option #3 highlighted the fact that this area spanned two different boroughs, the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Havering, however, the northernmost part of the empty field would not even be in the Greater London region in this case, it would actually constitute a part of neighboring County Essex.

And while I kept taking in Option #3, something else about it and Option #2 came into focus in my mind, the fact that both of them border each other. Perhaps I should not be looking at these two options through an either-or lens, but a both-and lens. Therefore, I would like to propose that the location of Burtonville is still mostly in the London Borough of Redbridge, however, the land making up both the town and the empty field north of the Bucket home is a combination of both Option #2 and Option #3.

It should also be stated that this option means that a part of the human settlement where Charlie lives is not in the London Borough of Redbridge, with a part of it, perhaps even the area of the settlement where the Smilex Toothpaste factory is located, being located in the London Borough of Havering. Now, this would mean that the Smilex factory would be located in a different jurisdiction than Burtonville because Burtonville would be a city in the London Borough of Redbridge, so that part of the settlement might have a different name just for being on the other side of an imaginary line made up by man. However, what truly matters here is that Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the Bucket home are located in the London Borough of Redbridge, with some of their neighbors living in the London Borough of Havering and a part of the empty field north of the Bucket home being located in County Essex, outside the boundaries of Greater London.

And so, with all the narrowing down of possible locations we've done so far, I am proud to announce that we have reached the end of our analysis. Charlie's town is located in the London Borough of Redbridge, more specifically the Ward of Hainault, the subdivision of this particular borough that the land designated for the location of Burtonville in our Unity Option provided above is mostly located in.

That’s it for Part 11, click here for Part 12 when we reflect on our findings so far, as well as offer up additional reasons as to why Charlie’s town is located in the London Borough of Redbridge.

Also, if you have better quality images of the scenes from the film I included in this post, feel free to share them with me so that I may replace the ones I used to improve the experience for the reader.

[heroesriseandfall]

For me I do think Dick should be a preteen but his age in his origins was inconsistent enough even before Tim was ever introduced—it already ranged from 8-13 without Tim involved. So to me it makes more sense to move along that range if I want the timeline to work with more realism. (Obviously I’m biased to post-Crisis as much as I love pre-Crisis for actually containing Dick’s Robin years.)

If I don’t want the timeline to be realistic then 8 year old Dick is extremely fun so long as they still meet at the circus and Tim still remembers it (you can pry Dick promising to do a quadruple flip for his toddler eventual-brother from my cold dead fingers) and so long as Tim is still 13 when he’s introduced (because that’s just important for me to calculate everyone else’s age later on when his age becomes the most consistently referenced). So yeah I think it’s better to utilize the surreal-comic-logic in that case.

Also I consulted my timeline doc and found some more of the post-Crisis references to Dick’s age in his origins, so here’s some more just so they can all be in one place here:

Another time Dick was said to be 8 is in Gotham Knights #21 (surprise! The writer was Devin Grayson).

10 years old was used near the beginning of post-Crisis in Secret Origins #13, used again in New Titans #57. For Batman Year Three, he’d be 10 doing math from the many “11 years ago” refs in BY3 (with me being extremely confident Dick was 21 at the time, so many comics indicate he’s 21 that I’d need another post), but the first issue contradicts itself and the rest of the issues in that arc by also saying it was 12 years ago and almost 10 years ago. After that, Secret Origins #50 says he’d just turned 10 (<- according to this comic it might be Dick’s birthday today).

(10 seems to be the most common age around the time A Lonely Place of Dying was published, which would make Dick Robin for 9 years and Tim almost/barely 2 at the circus, which is a bit too young developmentally IMO, the writing makes him seem closer to 3…but Marv Wolfman not being exact in child development does not surprise me at all lol.)

Batman #710, Batman #713, and Batman and Robin (2009) #13 all have Dick younger than 12 or exactly 12 when he was Robin, because he says he was 12 when doing Robin-y things like his first time jumping through a particular window and when he understood the Joker. In Batman Confidential #13, Alfred says Dick was 13 a year after he became Robin, making him 12 at the time.

Batman #416 says Dick was Robin for 6 years before being fired at 19, making him 13. This matches up with later Robin: Year One #1 saying Dick was in middle school and Nightwing Vol. 2 #151 saying Two Face beating him up (a few months after he became Robin, as told in Robin Year One) happened when he was 13.

Teen Titans Vol. 3 #1/2 places Dick’s parents dying 10 years before Tim Drake (who’d almost or just turned 16) joins the Teen Titans. Dick was probably 24 at the time so he’d be 14—however, this timeline also says the New Teen Titans formed 5 years before this group of Teen Titans (so 5 years after Dick’s parents died). That part of the #1/2 timeline is off from my age references by like 0.5–1 year, they should’ve formed about 5.5–6 years before Tim turned 16, in which case since they formed when Dick was 18 he’d be 13 when his parents died 5 years earlier.

In Batman #615 and some other comics, Bruce says he and Dick were around the same age when their parents died, but this doesn’t actually help much because Bruce’s age also varies all the way from 6-12, though I think 8 is common, followed by maybe 10.

As for the gap between Dick’s parents dying and him becoming Robin—which would technically affect all of this—that gap is 6 months in Batman #441 and Robin Annual 4 on page 39 (but in Annual 4 they only confirm Robin is a long-term role a year after his parents died when he’d already been Robin for 6 months), and it’s just under a year from right after his 10th birthday to right before his 11th birthday in Secret Origins #13. I know there are also some comics where Dick seems to become Robin pretty much immediately. I don’t think Batman: Legend of the Dark Knight #100 clarifies a specific length of time but it feels quick.

I think those are all the ones I can find/remember.

Nightwing Vol. 2 #54

Nightwing Vol. 2 #73

Gibsontown, Florida, aka “Gibtown”

Ahhh, okay. Huh.

[ectonurites]

ive been kinda MIA on here recently so i forgot if i express one (1) opinion i will then immediately get like 10 follow up anons. im sorry guys i super do not have the brain capacity for long discussion on ship stuff right now 😭

the only other thing i want to say on the subject today is that comics are the strangest mix of 'things never change' (status quos) and 'things always change' (constant reboots and retcons and things in flux)

eras and creatives cycle, ideas and plans can change at the drop of a hat (remember 5G and how that whole thing was gonna happen and then thousands of comics got pulped at the last moment?) or sometimes things are super planned out ahead of time! it's hard to predict because it ebbs and flows. that's why i try to avoid saying anything too definitive about upcoming stuff/what could be possible in the future, at best just pointing to something someone from DC said themselves and hoping for the best.

but to me the idea of considering an unexplored-in-canon idea completely 'dead' or 'certain' feels like it's always going to be a losing game, because whatever answer could be determined is maybe relevant for that exact moment, but not necessarily a year from then, or 5 years, or 10.

like... thinking about the time that Geoff Johns, circa 1996 shortly before he started worked at DC, wrote in a fan letter to the Superboy solo comic: "Last thought... I think I know who Superboy is a clone of. How about Lex Luthor? All the pieces fit, and it would have some great ramifications." [X] which the editor of the comic he was writing to laughed off as untrue. Later issues of Superboy established it an untrue. But less than a decade later when Johns had control over Kon in Teen Titans Vol. 3 #1, we all know what suddenly became canon.

for better or worse, nothing is ever as certain as you may think it is with comics.

[dialovers-translations]

DIABOLIK LOVERS DAYLIGHT Vol.11 Tsukinami Carla [TRACK 3]

Original title: 命のかたち

Source: Diabolik Lovers Daylight Vol. 11 Tsukinami Carla

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Toshiyuki Morikawa

Track 1 ll Track 2 ll Track 3 ll Track 4 ll Track 5 + Epilogue

→  LIKE MY TRANSLATIONS? SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI!

TRACK 3: THE SHAPE OF LIFE

Carla enters the house.

[00:06] “...Haah. I just got back.”

You run up to him.

“Yeah…Ugh…Kuh…This is bad…”

You frown.

“It was quite the demanding mission after all…It appears that fatigue has taken its toll on me.”

You offer to help him. 

“My bad. I shall borrow your shoulder.”

You support him and you walk towards the sofa.

*Rustle*

[00:47] “Haah…I put on a pathetic display. However, you are the only person I would ever show this side of me to.”

You ask if he wants to drink your blood. 

“Yes. There is simply no other way…but to drink your blood. …!! Why is your complexion so pale? You do not look well at all. It is even worse compared to when I left the manor.”

You insist that you will be fine. 

“Hah…I do not want to take your blood when you are already running low as is.”

*Rustle rustle*

[01:26] “Hah…I shall go rest up in my room. If I get some sleep, I should feel a littleーー …Ugh!”

He nearly collapses but you support him.

“My body simply refuses to listen to me for some reason…How pathetic.”

You tell him that he is in dire need of your blood. 

“I know. However, for that exact reason, I simply cannot bring myself to do that. My disease should have reached a dangerous point. I might just suck you dry. …Cough, cough…!”

*Rustle*

[02:11] “...Get away from me. Who knows what might happen to you…the second I decide to sink these fangs into you…”

You refuse.

“However…Cough, cough…! …Ugh…Cough, cough…! …Kuh! Like I said…If I could…Cough, cough…!!”

You say that you will make yourself bleed if he refuses to bite you. 

[02:38] “You…That look in your eyes…You are not simply threatening to do it…but you are actually prepared to slice up your own body…Hah. Do you really love me that strongly…? Good grief…You are unbelievable. I cannot believe I am forcing my own woman to inflict harm upon herself. That is simply outrageous. A dishonor as the King of Founders. …Hah. Fine. Accept my fangs…and my love.”

*Rustle*

Carla bites you.

“Mmh…”

*Sluuuuurp*

*Gulp* 

“Hah…Mmh…”

*Gulp*

*Rustle*

“Nn…Mmh…”

*Sluuuuurp*

[03:51] “... ーAh. I can feel my power returning…Your feelings of love…are flowing inside of me…Haah…”

*Gulp*

*Sluuuuurp*

*Gulp gulp*

*Sluuuuurp*

*Gulp*

“Mm…Nn…Hah…”

*Rustle*

[04:22] “You…What’s wrong?”

*Rustle*

“...Oi! Are you alright? …!! …She has completely lost consciousness. Haah…I guess it came to this after all.”

*Rustle*

Carla carries you to the bedroom.

*TIMESKIP*

[05:10] ( At first, I figured that feeding from her was the cause behind all of this, and that she had been feeling unwell for a while now, due to the regular loss of blood. However, would that truly cause her to be out cold for a whole twenty-four hours? Something was off. In that case, perhaps there is a different reasoning behind this? I examined her body…and came to a realization. )

You wake up.

*Rustle*

[05:57] “...So you’ve woken up.”

You try to sit up.

“Do not push yourself. You cannot get up just yet. You lost consciousness and were asleep for a whole day and night, you know?”

You frown.

“...You are hiding something, are you not?”

You flinch.

[06:22] “I am not pressing you for an answer. All I want is to confirm my suspicions. If you cannot tell me the truth, I shall answer in your place. There is something wrong with your body. Could it be that your heart is not functioning properly…?”

You nod.

[06:50] “Hm. I suppose I was spot on. I thought that you were simply suffering from anemia, but that was not the case. I confirmed it with my very own ears. Your heartbeat sounded worryingly weak. On top of that, your complexion has been pale and you are showing signs of exhaustion. It does not seem like this has only recently become an issue. From what I assume, symptoms were already showing before I went on my trip, correct?”

You turn your head away.

“Hm…Since you do not deny it, I will take that as a yes.”

*Knock knock*

[07:53] “...Hm. A visitor? You just stay in bed and rest, okay?”

Carla gets up and walks towards the door. 

*Thud*

*TIMESKIP*

*Groooowl*

*Flip*

“From Shin? …Okay. Now go.”

The Wolves run off again.

*Flip*

[08:36] “...Heh. Shin is truly outdoing himself. He truly is doing everything he can. However, he is right in saying that we cannot proceed unless I arrive at the scene. In other words, the plan will come to fruition as long as I step up. We can restore the hegemony of the First Bloods.”

[09:10] ( As the King of Founders, it was a message which should have made me rejoice. A glorious future was waiting ahead of me. However, at the same time, I was about to lose my wife. With a heartbeat so slow, it was only a matter of time before her heart would completely give in. As long as I am infected by Endzeit, she is absolutely necessary to me to help soothe the symptoms of the disease. …I must prolong her life at all costs. )

[09:58] “...Excuse me? What did I think just now? Do I not want to simply save her!? Am I only trying to help her for my own selfish reasons!? Or to save myself…!? …Either way, those thoughts are disgusting. ーー Truly despicable. …Either way, I must proceed onwards. I must see through everything in this world…and deliver the decisive blow.…Right?”

ーー TO BE CONTINUED ーー

[paaradoxum]

BakuTodo Rec List of Fics Vol. II

It’s been a while since the last time I did the other list and many new, wonderful fics appeared (the dynamics will be the same: AO3 fics that includes top!Bakugou and bottom!Todoroki for those that are NSFW), so if you wanna check out here is Part I.

This time there are 32 fics in this list, I have more and probably I will make Part III soon.

Spoiler: EVERY SINGLE one of these stories are FUCKING AWESOME.

Rating: G

→ flowers die, feelings grow by kinneyb

Summary:  When Bakugo first visits a local flower shop with Jirou, he buys some flowers in a lame attempt to piss off one of the employees - a guy named Shouto. But then he gets a little too invested in keeping his flowers alive.

→ Pretty by doop-doop.

Summary:  Like so many things that had to do with Shouto, the question took Bakugou entirely by surprise. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

→ For a Single Moment by itsclowreedsfault.

Summary:  Katsuki shakes his head with a sigh and an unbidden smile. Shouto's always been like an overexcited kid when it came to cats; Katsuki should've known he didn't stand a chance against them in Shouto's first visit to a cat cafe.

Rating: T

→ Ruin My Life by justhavesex.

Summary: He's not a vengeful person, really, he's not.

But him and Bakugou have started this little on-going war of theirs back in middle school when they were 10 years old and Todoroki had accidentally—if you got Todoroki drunk enough and fed his ego well enough he would, in fact, admit that it was very much on purpose—accidentally fed Bakugou's limited edition All Might magazine to his cat.

→ Aesthetic Distance by llyn.

Summary:  This was around the time Shouto was appearing in all the blogs and rags and instagrams wearing a hideous faux fur coat of bright, hot neon like some awful crawling creature from an acid trip had been hunted and skinned, its pelt draped over Shouto's shoulders.

→ Dance To This by justhavesex.

Summary:  Bakugou has never cared much about being an alpha, not really, not until he met the most frustrating omega in all existence: Todoroki Shouto.

→ Welcome to the Mile-High Club by minhakos.

Summary:  In which Todoroki realizes that maybe airplanes aren't the only thing that should make him nervous.

→ Boyfriend Tactics by Esselle.

Summary: 'Shouto's eyes go impossibly wide. He seems to lose all powers of communication for a moment and just stands there, frozen, staring at Katsuki and the kitten. Finally, eventually, he utters the tiniest noise Katsuki has ever heard him make.

"Ah…" '

--

Katsuki comes to the aid of a small and fluffy civilian while on patrol.

→ Line by Line by Lillabelle.

Summary:  With half his sketchbook filled with drawings of the guy, Katsuki wondered if he’s already crossed the line of being insanely creepy. They’ve never spoken, and he honestly only knew the person’s name was Todoroki Shouto because of role call in class. Shouto was just… so unique to look at with his half and half appearance. It was hard for Katsuki’s eyes not to get drawn to him. Not to mention they shared several classes, so if Katsuki ever got bored and felt like drawing something, there he was.

→ a todobaku one-shot collection by kagehinataboke.

Summary:  all of my multiple, multiple, multiple todobaku one-shots. i stan two (2) dipshit boys that are obviously in love and hate with each other.

→ amaryllis by ?

Summary:  The amaryllis has come to symbolize pride, determination and radiant beauty. Somehow this all suited Katsuki a lot more than Shouto expected.

→ tell ourselves a good lie by ElmoIsSatan. (In-Progress 12/?)

Summary: For a straight guy with anger issues, getting a “boyfriend” might just be his only escape.

Or-

Bakugo makes an impulsive decision and suddenly gains a boyfriend just to prove his parents wrong... The only problem is it’s all fake.

→ how to register for a library card (and get a boyfriend in the process) by Kaleid369.

Summary: “Friends have each other’s numbers, yeah?” Bakugou shrugs. “I don’t hate you, I guess.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you,” Bakugou snorts. “I gotta go. Text me so I have your number.”

“I will.”

He's already started walking away when Shouto blurts out, “See you tomorrow?”

Bakugou shoots him a smirk over his shoulder, as if to say, Duh.

Shouto stands and stares at his retreating back, and the thought of kissing him pounds along with the beat of his heart.

→ on brand by dinosuns.

Summary: Midoriya is honestly unsure what’s worse: the tragic fact that Todoroki Shouto can make anything look objectively incredible or the fact Kacchan has six versions of the exact same photograph saved onto his camera roll.

Nobody saves a photo that many times by accident.

Kacchan set the bar, Todoroki raised it. That is not a good thing.

→ The Journey Home by dinosuns.

Summary: “Your hair looks real fucking nice.”

“I thought it was about time I grew it out,” Todoroki says, something wistful caught in his voice. “You were always saying I should.”

That’s true. And Bakugou is satisfied to know he was right about it looking good, but it’s not like he can share that with the fucking class anymore.

--

Bakugou tells himself that he's fine with how things turned out between them. He also tells himself he's not still in love.

Rating: M

→ Zephyr by yeetin. (In-Progress 4/?)

Summary: The breeze that sifted gently through a golden sea of tall, dry grass brought the tiny spike of a different scent. An inconspicuous little prickle down the spine, barely even worth paying attention to. Something no one else would even imagine being able to notice.

But Bakugou did.

→ Objection, Your Honor by Myona. (In-Progress (8/?)

Summary: Shoto Todoroki hated Katsuki Bakugou. And he had plenty of reasons to do so.

But he didn't know that how things can change for the two of them who saw nothing but trouble in each other's presence and life altogether. Katsuki was a trouble from the first time Shoto heard his name, to the first day he met the man.

Rating: E

→ On Hot Blondes and Drunken Hookups by Crossfire. (In-Progress 4/?) I love this so so much.

Summary: “I’m Bakugou. What’s your name, Pretty Boy?”

Shouto looks at the drink in his hand, then back to the beautiful blonde boy, then back to the drink and downs it in one go, ignoring the slight burn as it slides down his throat, and while it would have been more suave to appear unaffected, he gives his head a little shake. He takes a quick breath and forces the words out before he has a chance to realize what a massive mistake this all is.

“Hot blondes I want to bang can call me Shouto.”

→ Tick Tick Boom by Ajaxthegreat. (In-Progress 6/?) THIS is so good, I’m in love.

Summary: An exhausted socially awkward violin prodigy and a deaf punk rock drummer walk into a bar.

→ Better Take a Mental Picture by chibibeeee. This is HOT HOT.

Summary:  The one where Deku watches Bakugou take Todoroki and their exhibitionist kink is unlocked.

→ Cover: Blown by darkanddank. (In-Progress 1/2)

Summary: Some undercover agents got hooked on drugs. Went full Stockholm Syndrome, flipped and joined up with the other side. As Bakugou’s palm went flat over Todoroki’s navel and dove beneath his closed zipper, Todoroki started to understand just how easy it might be to go rogue.

...aka cop Todoroki gets his world rocked so hard by bad guy Bakugou that he has an existential crisis

→ Just One Bite by Crossfire.

Summary: This particular fuckup begins when he saves a cat from a demon in a sketchy alley.

Well, maybe slightly before that when his esteemed hedge-witch mentor turned out to be an incubus who coincidentally turned him and his stupid nerdy neighbor into incubi.

Or maybe when he was born to a non-magic family, but early on developed minor magical inclinations that turned out to be not-so-minor and kind-of-hugely-destructive.

Wherever this fuckup was born, it’s culminated as follows: Bakugou has been an incubus for one hundred and twenty-two days, seven hours, and thirty-six minutes, has not had a single successful feed, and is essentially slowly starving to death. His mentor is suspiciously MIA and that stupid shitty nerd has managed to secure himself a two-person harem so it’s just Bakugou, starving. To death. Slowly.

→ Gangster by Brixxen.

Summary: Bakugou is a detective trying to solve a case that's been open for months. He ends up in a town and meets a man who could be his undoing...

Todoroki wasn't expecting the blonde at the bar to leave him wanting more...

→ How to spend a Friday night by veltana.

Summary: That's how Katsuki ended up on his bed on a Friday night leaning against the headboard with his laptop between his spread legs, his hard dick in his hand, watching Shouto open himself up for him on the screen.

→ Your Turn by doop-doop.

Summary: An extra scene/epilogue/continuation of smd.

Bakugou and Todoroki housesit for Bakugou's parents and take advantage of Bakugou's large bed.

→ Comfort by hellaradholly.

Summary: Katsuki agrees to be Shouto's roommate after UA despite having an unbearable crush on him.a gift for Katie for the BakuTodo Valentine's Day Exchange!

→ Empire of Dirt by castiiron, clairesail. (In-Progress 5/?)

Summary: There was something different about being with Bakugou Katsuki. Something that Shouto had been searching for tonight, to no avail. A consistent burn in his gut, the warmth of a fire that hadn’t been stoked in many years. Katsuki had been inexcusably rough with him. Harsh in a way that had pulled him back to reality. Shouto hadn’t realized he was missing out, being so used to what he knew; going through the motions, a means to an end. His life for the last few years had revolved around mediocre sex as a way to abate constant desire, always at the forefront of his mind.

Unhealthy coping mechanisms are easier to hide when you aren't screwing your ex-classmate.

→ Be Quiet by chibibeeee.

Summary: Katsuki and Shouto stay the night at Deku's. If only they had any self control, then they wouldn't have to keep so quiet.

→ Speak Softly My Sweet Villain by Brixxen.

Summary: Ask anyone in Tokyo and they’ll tell you the same thing. That the No.1 Pro Hero Todoroki Shoto is the perfect hero. He’s kind to everyone, always the first to arrive on a crime scene, always the calm and collected hero everyone wants him to be.

It was ironic how things happened to lead Shoto to his current situation. Him moaning and shuddering like a teenager, clinging to the strong perfect body of the most wanted villain in Japan, Ground Zero.

→ Peanuts and Wolves by cashmeresho.

Summary: “Yeah, man, okay!” The guy holds up his hands in surrender and Shouto shoots him another apologetic look. “I really didn't know you guys were married! I didn't see a ring!”

“Oh,” Katsuki says. He frowns hard for a minute and then grabs Shouto by the arm to whisk him away to his table with Izuku and Kirishima to guard him or sniff him or whatever weird territorial thing he wants to do.

→ College Roommates|BakuTodo by S_Kuro.

Summary: Todoroki is the son of the famous Todoroki Enji, also known as Endeavor, his father is a famous business man that wants Todoroki to take over his business, but Todoroki wants to become a photographer. He goes against his father's wishes and goes to an art university miles away from home. There he meets a certain explosive blonde, who turns out to be his roommate. what sorts of ridiculous shenanigans will they find themselves in and what relationships will they end up in.

a BakuTodo fanfic

This is my first fanfic with these two, so don't judge me and I hope you like it.

→ Locker Room by darkqueen_25.

Summary: There are worse things to walk in on in a locker room, Inasa thinks, than your two new friends fucking against the shower walls.

There's probably nothing better than being asked to join in, though.

[s-lily]

LOKI - EPISODE 04

LokixSylvie bothered me, and I finally know why.

(Spoilers ahead!)

In Episode 3 I had a lot of confused feelings about them. I have shipped Enchantress and Loki since Thor: Tales of Asgard (2011) in cartoon form. Since Sylvie seems to be the MCU version of her I guess I was ok with that, but at the same time, I think it's too soon for Loki to have a romantic interest (I know it has been more a decade for us, but this is not Infinity War Loki, this is Loki from 10 years ago). It's also weird that they behaved like siblings at each other throats the entire episode, but the storyline kept bombarding us with conversations about love (Come on! when she was going to enchant him their silhouettes made a fucking heart right there!), and of course the little itsy bitsy detail that she is a Loki variant.

A lot of weird feelings to reflect upon the week. Then episode 4 reveals to us from Mobius that Loki is in love of Sylvie, and I'm definitely in the no wagon. Why? Why does it bother me so much?

After thinking all day (thank heaven I'm on vacation!) I finally discover why: I was too quick. I want slow burn. As I see it, this fell in love thingy has two reasoning:

1. He fell in love just because she is him, and he is the biggest narcissist ever existed. Does it mean he also is going to fell for Classic Loki, Hammered Loki, Alligator Loki, and any other variant of Loki?

2. He fell in love because she has a "great personality"

I personally like the second option better, but they barely know each other!!! He knows she taught herself magic, and she has been running from the TVA all her life, long enough time to not even remember her mom.

I'm going to scratch about her being Loki, and stop calling her Lady Loki. Indeed she is Laufey's daughter (and probably they have the same biological mother) and has the exact molecular composition of a Loki, but experiences make us what we are.

Since she was born a girl, the entire perception of the world imposed on her is different from a boy. For example, Loki was seen as a cheater because of his magic because that's a woman thing in the Asgardian culture. Sylvie wouldn't have that problem because... guess what? She is a girl. The whole sibling rivalry with Thor would have been a totally different dynamic (Did she have a big brother Thor?  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Thor needs to meet Sylvie asap). The adoption issue is irrelevant because they told her from the beginning. In the end, sadly, it didn't matter too much, because she didn't grow up like an Asgardian Princess but as a homeless runaway kid hiding in apocalypses. Sylvie is her own person (I get now why she doesn't like to be called Loki), and it's fair that if Loki is going to fell for her, he falls for the person she is, not the person she is supposed to be. And that requires time.

MARVEL GIVE ME THE SLOW BURN!!!!

[checkdispleased]

re. ep. 21 on Lardo, what are your thoughts on the idea that Lardo's haircut/ art student vibe, is sort of trading on the visual cues/ imagery of queerness, to provide an illusion or semblance of queer rep, while not actually doing the work to write an actually queer character? You guys have touched on N using a sort of visual/generic shorthand in her characterization in other areas, but the mentioning the Ollie/Wicks thing got me thinking again about how few canonical queer characters are 1/2

2/2 are in the majority of the comic, for a comic supposedly all about queer rep. [it kinda reminds of that author of the wizard books and her word of god gay character after the fact, though i don't think N is doing it to nearly the same degree], but i can't help but see similarities in how cultural cues are used to a nod to representation that's not actually treated as canon by the text itself.

I just deleted a whole stupid Harry Potter essay and will instead say this: I was about to say we found out Dumbledore was gay 15 years before OMGCP even started, and then I remembered I’m an idiot who can’t do math. Still, not that I think JKR needs or deserves the very meager fairness I’m about to lend her right now, but, one difference between that series and this comic is, Harry Potter is not about queer experience, and it never claimed to be, and it wasn’t de rigueur for YA book series to feature any LGBT characters necessarily over the period when it was begin published. Check Please is supposedly about that exact topic! And it was created and presented in a space -- specifically the slash fandom subculture on Tumblr, in 2013, working on the vernacular of webcomics -- where the expectation of queer content was de rigueur. In addition to the fact that I got into the comic because I had heard Jack and Bitty got together, this is maybe why I diverge from @tomatowrites​‘ uncertainty that they would get together: this was being created from and presented in the space where that was exactly what would happen.

To be also fair to Ngozi, I guess the comic never really positioned itself as speaking to LGBT experiences other than Bitty’s. Still, he says he’s come to Samwell because of the breadth of its queer community? I think, through the lens of the comic alone, what he must have meant was that he wanted to be in a place where he could be openly gay to find a boyfriend, not that he wanted to like, have LGBT friends broadly speaking. One interesting thing about the Y4 Tweets, which I have only ever seen in the chirpbook, is that it is established that Bitty, uh, addresses one of the most pointed criticisms of Check Please:

“ducksducksducksducks,” I’m entirely sure based on other Tweets in here, is Lardo.

Hey, this is loooong.

This is SO confusing because it’s like, Lardo’s not a lesbian ... probably? She’s very into Shitty? They live together? Like sharing-a-bedroom live together? There is nothing in the physical comic, or anywhere else that I’m aware of, period, where it’s implied that she’s into women at all, beside the fact that she’s got short hair for a while? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think these were ever tweeted; I think they were written to go in the chirpbook. So it’s tough to know, in a Watsonian sense, what precisely Bitty is responding to, or if he’s responding at all. There’s no context for this. Like much of the comic, it’s just there, implying some things broadly while also addressing a major criticism of the text (that Bitty has no gay friends) without actually examining it within the text itself. Confusing!

I’m not sure what was originally intended in regard to Lardo. (Would love to hear Tomato weigh in on this, if she has time.) It could be as straightforward as, some people at art school look like this. It would be absurd to code a character as queer and then do nothing to establish them as queer in your queer webcomic, of course. Anyone who understands the potential gain of having people think Lardo is not cishet must also understand the potential cost of not just making it canon?

Part of the essay I started writing about Harry Potter up there was to say that, of course, fuck JKR, but also, I think people are making a very 2020-based criticism of the “Dumbledore is gay” reveal, which happened in 2007, concerning a book series that was written starting in the mid-1990s. Not that nobody was ever gay in mainstream media before Check Please, but I do think it’s possible that as popular as those books were, and as powerful as the author was, she may actually have felt she couldn’t put that in there? At the time, I felt like it was a cheap nod to an obviously huge slash fandom -- but now I actually kinda feel like, okay, maybe it was a cheap nod to her obviously huge slash fandom and also she genuinely didn’t think she could have it in there? The very conservative principle of universally legal gay marriage still felt, at the time, like a distant prospect. My goal in thinking this through isn’t to say it’s okay because it happened in ~the past~ when things were less socially just, but rather, to try to explore the thinking that must have gone on around these decisions.

Which leads me, finally, to the actual point of this post: conceiving of Lardo, and OMGCP, in 2013, Ngozi was coming from a slash fandom perspective that largely held these two beliefs:

It is unrealistic for a story to have more LGBT characters than the main pairing; 10 percent of people are gay so if a friend group has more than one or two gay people in it, that’s submitting to some kind of slash-brain internet logic that can’t hold; and

Just as it is homophobic to presume that gay people are or have to be any particular way, it is similarly problematic to presume someone is queer just because they look or act any particular way

The first one is really rooted in fanfics where an entire cast of characters who aren’t gay in canon are suddenly gay in fanfic; this is presumably not a problem for OMGCP because OMGCP is not actually a fanfic. But it is heavily influenced by fanfic; it functionally works as a fanfic ahout two characters named Jack and Bitty who just happen to have also originated within the fanfic. But the comic’s initial readership is going to be people whose interests cross with fandom, because Ngozi is a prominent fan artist so her audience is gonna be that! So you can kind of feel why maybe Bitty is the only gay in the cast until it turns out Jack magically (??) is also.

Which brings us to Lardo: she looks like someone you would think is into women? But I think she was potentially designed as an example of a character who seems gay but isn’t, because it is not okay to presume things about people based on how they look. This is pretty complicated because, well, yes, in general there’s a saying about not judging books by their covers because that level of superficiality perpetuates harmful biases. At the same time, people do judge just about everything by their appearances regardless of whether it’s superficial or not, and so most people know this and use their own appearances to construct their own identities, that is, try to tell people how they want to be read. It’s very 90s-2000s to assert that it’s wrong to make assumptions about whether someone is gay based on appearances, and you can understand why: normalizing gender non-conformity was and is an important project, but until recently the only way to do that was to do it from a position of insisting cishet people could be gender non-conforming. Of course, looking back, this feels like an insane supposition because of course there is a gay aesthetic, or gay aesthetics? Of course queer people have always looked and acted certain ways to try to subtly identify for the purpose of finding fellow travelers?

If I recall correctly, this came up in fanfics a lot, where you’d have one character who is the straightest man making jokes about how much he loved to suck dick, or whatever. And maybe, maybe, some of this lingers in Lardo. I’m thinking mostly of how Kenny was used in South Park fics, but also, come to think of it, Butters, who doesn’t so much crack jokes but he does seem pretty gay, if you take soft-spoken weak-willed effete boys to be gay, which, of course you do. We all do, sometimes. (There’s also an episode about him cross-dressing.)

But what’s even more striking is that there’s already a character who embodies this particular trope in Check, Please: Shitty. He’s theatrical (flamboyant?), he’s writing his senior thesis on the homoeroticism of hockey, and in a very brief (very badly written) ficlet from the back of Huddle Vol. 1, he checks out Jack’s body in the lockeroom and tells Jack he’s a “Greek god.” When Jack says, “That’s so gay,” Shitty responds with, “Welcome to fucking Samwell. Sometimes dudes will tell you you’re hot without even saying ‘no homo’ afterwards.” So we’ve got Jack, who is gay, telling Shitty it’s gay to admire another man’s body as he reddens and is visibly uncomfortable, while Shitty, who is straight, acts like it is somehow normal for all men to be attracted to other men without it being much of an issue for him personally or society broadly. This is not to say that you can’t find these attitudes reflected in the real world; Jack, who’s closeted, obviously has reasons to posture like this, or be uncomfortable with another man complimenting his appearance. But paired with Shitty’s comments the comic is engineering a reversal that claims it’s not inherently gay when a man is attracted to the body of another man -- except, it is? It’s a fiction that serves a kind of post-post-modern post-queer theory pop cultural attitude that I think, in 2020, we’ve moved on from. Underneath Shitty’s posturing is the sad truth that it’s a straight man, particularly a man like Shitty, whose comments on other men’s bodies would be tolerated; it’s unlikely that this is something Bitty (or Jack) would feel it was socially acceptable for him to say. Shitty’s working here as a type.

An I think it’s not a coincidence that he’s paired with Lardo within this story? She is similarly gender-transgressing; beyond having short hair she is characterized as a “bro” (an inherently male-coded performance) and crushes at beer pong and belches on her opponents. Not in the comic, obviously, but we’re told she does -- maybe kind of like Shitty only finds Jack hot off-page? (When he’s not lounging naked in Jack’s bed--again, something that Jack is uncomfortable with, but if a gay man did this, it would certainly be a problem.) I think these are all jokes that are very of their time for fannish texts in the period leading up to when this comic was started.

Again, nothing is impeding Ngozi from putting a female-identifying character who’s attracted to women into her markedly LGBT webcomic in 2014. I think it’s more than likely that if Lardo were meant to be queer, it’d be in there, somewhere. Or, rather, I think if it were an intended reading from start, it would have been in there. Or it would have been in a Tweet. In an extra. In an FAQ. On the Patreon blog. Mentioned in a Livestream. Somewhere? But where we get one incredibly disconnected hint that she might be, it’s in a Kickstarter-backed volume of post-canon content in a way that ties into the actual story or Lardo’s nonexistent interior life not at all. It’s not a story about her--but that’s the point? It’s not a story about her. If it were meant to be a story about a friend group, how would this particular detail not be enriching? When Lardo notices Bitty fretting over Jack’s game in the library, doesn’t the moment have more weight if she can empathize with even slightly more incision?

And like, you can say a lot of things about JKR, and the politics of gender and sexuality within her books was always bad, so this isn’t giving her, like, credit. But you can totally see how using cultural cues might have been all she felt she was able to do in the 1990s and early 2000s, yes, even as one of the most powerful authors working at the time. This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have done more, or that her bad views are actually understandable, see. (I mean, they’re perfectly understandable, also abhorrent.) 

Ngozi is making a fucking gay webcomic for a gay readership on Tumblr in 2013-2020. She had no reason to use cultural cues to hint broadly unless she wanted credit for something she felt she couldn’t represent (which makes no sense, see previous sentence; entire essay) or Lardo was never intended to be anything other than a cis straight woman -- which is a fine thing to be, by the way, nothing against cis straight women? It’s just that like, this comic got a lot of flack from an internal crowd of complainers, myself included, about the things it didn’t do -- and one big thing it neglected to do was introduce meaningful relationships with other LGBT characters for Bitty. So I think that Chirpbook shit is just a late-in-the-day retcon for virtually nobody.

But this is a conspiracy theory so like, take it with a grain of salt.