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makeste · 4 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 294: A Half-Assed Escape

Previously on BnHA: Mirio was all “SURPRISE I’M BACK THANKS TO OUR RESIDENT SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WHO RECENTLY EARNED HER BACHELOR’S OF BEING A TOTAL BADASS.” Kacchan was all, “you know what, Dabi’s been trending long enough, time to remind the fandom what a real G looks like,” and he blasted his little bleeding body back into the fray and was all “FROM HERE ON OUT CALL ME DYNAMIGHT!!” Mirio was all, “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh, you’re serious,” and Kacchan was all “!!”, and so that’s the story of how my son got murdered twice in one day. Meanwhile in the Todoroki Drama Zone, Deku was all “STOP MURDERING MY FRIEND” and Dabi was all “THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” and fandom had a whole big debate about Whether Or Not Dabi Trying To Murder Deku’s Friends And Mentors Is Any Of Deku’s Business, which went exactly how you think it went. Anyway, so then Deku yelled at Dabi, and Endeavor was all moved by his manly words and randomly went to go uppercut Machia in the chin. And, seeing as how the Momoserum finally chose that exact moment to kick in, Machia is now down for the count.

Today on BnHA: The Miriosquad handles the Nearly High End Noumus, freeing up Jeanist to jasphyxiate (okay that one doesn’t really work so well) the rest of the League. Compress is all “TIME FOR THIS MILD-MANNERED SIDE CHARACTER VILLAIN TO SHINE”, except that by “shine” what he actually means is “use his quirk to punch a literal hole right through his own ass to free himself.” The rest of the chapter is basically just a back and forth between him and Jeanist, with Jeanist trying to recapture him, and Compress repeatedly thwarting him by chopping more holes out of himself because HE’S FRESH OUT OF FUCKS, AND THE ONES AT THE STORE ARE ALL SOLD OUT, MOTHERFUCKERS. Anyway, so with Compress basically dying and all, Horikoshi is all “you know what that means”, and delivers a freshly-baked villain flashback revealing that Compress is a descendant of Harima Ouji, a.k.a. the Peerless Thief, a.k.a. some famous guy whom Gentle mentioned this one time for like two seconds back in the day. The chapter ends with Compress finally demasking himself and dumping Tomura back onto the ground, a.k.a. The Worst Possible Place For Tomura To Be. ( ��﹏•)

WHY IS CRUST HERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD

-- OH WAIT, SHIT. OH

AIZAWAAAA you’re alive and receiving medical help thank GOD. HOW MANY EYES DO YOU HAVE. AND MIRKO!! HOW MANY LIMBS DO YOU HAVE, OMG

so is this Aizawa dreaming about Crust’s final moments, then?? jesus. with All Due Respect to Crust’s memory, does Aizawa not already have enough misplaced guilt on his conscience as it is?? “nope, we’re gonna keep piling it on. that’s all he is now. three limbs, an indeterminate number of eyes, sexy hair, and Guilt” well shit

motherfucker y’all really out here placing an oxygen mask on Gran Torino’s corpse. fucking shounen characters. each one comes with a lifetime warranty

DAMN YOU HORIKOSHI WHY DO YOU KEEP SHOWING THESE CLOSE-UPS OF HAWKS’S UNCONSCIOUS FACE ALL WHUMPED OUT AND EXHAUSTED. HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS ARE WE GOING TO GET. ARE YOU PLANNING ON KILLING ME WITH THE UPCOMING CONVALESCENCE ARC, BECAUSE IF SO, AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL ME AHEAD OF TIME SO I CAN MAKE A WILL

for a moment I considered going back and checking my previous recaps to count how many times I’ve already made a joke about Dabi’s fire incinerating Hawks’s wings but not touching so much as a hair on his five o’clock shadow, so that I could calculate whether or not I could possibly get away with making that same joke one more time. but then I realized I could just do it in this kind of roundabout way I’m doing right now instead. so there you have it

FFFFFFFMT LADY AND MIDNIGHT NOOOOO

PLEASE BE ALIVE. PLEASE RESPECT THE SIGN ON THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING. THE ONE THAT SAYS “NO LADY CHARACTERS ALLOWED TO DIE”, WITH THE FINE PRINT AT THE BOTTOM “AT LEAST NOT UNTIL HORIKOSHI GIVES US LIKE TWENTY-SIX MORE OF THEM FIRST IF THAT’S THE WAY HE WANTS TO PLAY IT.” IT’S A GOOD SIGN, PLEASE RESPECT ITS WISHES!!

so anyway though, Jeanist is giving a speech about how god knows how many people all worked together to bring Machia down. and now RHA is getting in on those fabric puns too, I see. “A SINGLE STRAND MAY BE THIN BUT TOGETHER THEY FORM A STRONG ROPE” oh so you think you guys are funny eh? I’m a frayed knot

MEANWHILE EXCUSE ME BUT WHY ARE YOU FUCKING CRYING BLOOD, HOLY SHIT

fffffff. so much for him taking over as the Number One once all this is over. so let’s just recap real quick, because Horikoshi has long since made it clear that one of his plot goals for this arc is to wipe out every single member of the Billboard Top Ten. so how we doin?

Endeavor - was just figuratively eviscerated in front of the entire nation by his homicidal zombiepunk son. also burnt half to death and possibly down a lung. will almost certainly be forced to retire after this one way or the other

Hawks - lying prettily in a medical tent. wings status: gone. hair status: still perfect

Jeanist - WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS FINE BUT APPARENTLY HE’S OUT HERE DYING, JESUS CHRIST

Edgeshot - MIA, last seen fighting Re-Destro. I really want him to have kicked RD’s ass because fuck that guy, but realistically they probably fought to a draw at best

Mirko - alive but in critical condition and missing something like 1.5 limbs

Crust - dead, currently haunting Aizawa’s traumatized dreams. now he’s gonna be triggered the rest of his life by people giving him the thumbs up, THANKS A LOT

Kamui Woods - was set on fire which is His Weakness. thoughts and prayers

Wash - last seen floating hospital patients to safety as Tomura’s wave of decay descended towards him. probably dead ffff

Old Man Samurai - haven’t seen this fucker in a hot minute, who even knows where he’s wandered off to

Ryuukyuu - currently being treated for her wounds, looked pretty bad off. but it’s hard to tell how hurt she is since most of the injuries were acquired in her transformed state. SHE BETTER GET WELL SOON

anyways, so yeah. so much for the top ten. guess that’s another reason Horikoshi brought Mirio back now, huh

so there’s a big panel of everyone fighting the Noumu while Machia lies there all “blurgh.” good riddance my dude. it took like twenty chapters and a hundred people to stop this guy so I really fucking hope he stays down. you’ve had your fun

anyway so Jeanist is sending another steel thread towards Dabi! and he’s all “just a bit more!!” fklklj this is gonna go real well isn’t it

meanwhile Mirio’s fighting a Nearly High End with all of these weird rock formations jutting out of its skin. go on and kick his ass then, Mirio

“each of these guys is probably just as strong as the Noumu from Kyuushuu” hold on I thought Ujiko or Tomura or someone said that wasn’t the case? not that Mirio would know I suppose. anyways let’s just hope he’s wrong cuz if not these kids are probably screwed

kLSDKFHLSKHGLKLK OH MY GODDDD

IIDA FUCKING TENYA YOU’RE A PEACH. THINKS THE NAME IS OUTRAGEOUS, CHECK. USES IT ANYWAY, CHECK. “JUST BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND DOESN’T MEAN I CAN’T BE SUPPORTIVE.” WHAT A CLASS ACT

AND KACCHAN IS RESPONDING WITH AS MUCH DIGNITY AS HE CAN MUSTER

WOW, SON. IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH YOU HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO, OR SOMETHING!! although listen up, real talk, the fact that Kacchan of all people can’t muster the energy to yell at someone questioning his ability to kick ass is HIGHKEY troubling and we may be in need of an intervention here soon :/

now Jeanist is finally turning his attention to the League! was... was it not already on the League. omg

ACTUAL SCREAMING AHHHHHH FUCK FUCKLK LK AHHLKHKFFFF

hey so um. what the actual fucked up hell. my soul left my body. imagine if you saw the reflection of this panel on your bedroom window. you would never sleep again

OKAY RHA TRANSLATORS ARE YOU HAVING YOURSELF A LAUGH AGAIN

THIS CANNOT BE WHAT HE’S ACTUALLY SAYING RIGHT. BUT IT’S RIGHT IN THAT UNCANNY VALLEY OF NOT BEING QUITE SURE, THOUGH... (　ﾟдﾟ)

(ETA: just a next-day clarification here, apparently my sleep-deprived ADHD word-skipping brain completely skipped right over the “a” in that last panel, so what I read was, “and Shigaraki’s limp noodle.” so yeah, the moral of this story is always read the speech bubble carefully before you start making running jokes throughout the rest of your post, folks.)

oh wow he’s really freaking out lmao

to be fair though, I’d argue that Dabi has gotten pre-tty close at this point :’) thrilled for him, really I am

but anyway, well then figure something out you big dramatic robot-armed fiend. didn’t you just say you could touch your own ass? can you not just Compress yourself to break free?? does it not work on you? or would you be stuck afterwards lol

(ETA: I was picturing him compressing his entire body at once, not just chunks of it. ghhhlkh.)

holy shit Jeanist. are you stupidly trying to cut off their air, or are you going for more of a sleeper hold (jleeper hold??) thing instead. the latter would be way smarter and faster and probably safer as well just saying

but unless Spinner is just being super dramatic, it sure looks like he’s fucking strangling them djslkjlk. this will certainly cement his popularity among the villain stans. good thing you’re not running for office any time soon bud

anyway so I have no idea what these guys are trying to do now. what is this

do you even have till the count of 5 at this rate. I mean

OH MY GOODNESS

HE’S REALLY FUCKING DOING IT!! HE’S COMPRESSING HIS BUTT!! OMFG. TOMURA HIDE YOUR NOODLE!!!

WHAT THE FUCK

DID YOU COMPRESS A PIECE OF YOUR OWN ASS. FUCKING WHAT. PUT THIS MAN’S PICTURE IN THE DICTIONARY NEXT TO THE WORD “LOYALTY”, HOLY CRAP

HOLY SHIT COMPRESS

“HOLY SHIT DID THAT GUY JUST PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH HIS OWN ASS IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS VILLAIN PALS. FUCK IT, HE DESERVES TO ESCAPE”

jeez, talk about... A HALF-ASSED ESCAPE ATTEMPT :D :D :D hahaha. but real talk though, Horikoshi has clearly never tried to leap twelve feet straight up in the air multiple times in succession with only half his glutes though. everyone, I regret to inform you that this panel right here on the left may be slightly unrealistic

also where the hell is he going to go?? did you pack a jetpack away in one of those little marbles sir. and what about Dabi?? and Skeptic too, I guess, but we don’t really care about Skeptic

(ETA: at this point I had to stop reading for about two hours because I had to go out and take care of something; that’s also why this is being posted later than usual lol. anyways so where were we.)

oh my lord

the existence of a translator’s note here implies that the earlier line about Compress being able to reach Tomura’s junk was not, in fact, ad-libbed. hmm. hmmmmmmmm

anyway so now he’s grabbing Compress again because OF COURSE HE IS, so now we’re right back to square one! except now Tomura and Spinner are secured inside of little marbles, and presumably Compress is the only one who can release them

oh nevermind he’s just maiming himself again instead, SHEESH

Skeptic a man is dying please have some goddamn respect

so, uh. is he gonna die, though??

I really can’t tell wtf is going on here, this is the most confusing the art has been in a while. Horikoshi put all of his spoons into that creepyass close-up panel earlier, that bastard

OMG WHAT ARE YOU SERIOUS

DON’T FUCKING TELL ME THE “COMPRESS IS RELATED TO THIS THIEF GUY FROM OLDEN TIMES” THEORY IS ACTUALLY TRUE WHAAAAAAT. OH SHIT

so apparently Harima was a Robin Hood type guy who stole from... heroes?? wtf. are heroes the 1% in this scenario. y’all didn’t have any Fortune 500 CEOs to steal from?

THAT’S THE BLOOD THAT FLOWS THROUGH YOU, OH SHIT. and in a related oh shit, the fact that we are getting a Compress flashback now of all times doesn’t bode super well for him. ffff

MEANWHILE THE TODOROKIS ARE STILL TODOROKI-ING

listen here boy if you touch one freaking hair on Shouto’s candy cane head I swear to god --

WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY!!!

SHOUTO NOOOOOO. WTF YOU’RE LITERALLY THE ONE GUY WHOSE WEAKNESS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FIRE. DABI YOU SHIT, YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF!! I’M PRINTING OUT A COPY OF THAT COMPRESS PANEL!!! KEEP AN EYE OUT ON THAT BEDROOM WINDOW YOU PUNK!!!

SO NOW POOR SHOUTO IS UNCONSCIOUS AND FALLING!! SOMEONE SAVE HIM!! WHO CATCHES THE CATCHER

COMPRESS LITERALLY HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE RIGHT NOW, WHAT IS HAPPENING

PLEASE DON’T CALL TOMURA LEADER OF THE “PLF” YOU KNOW I CAN’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY WHEN YOU DO THAT. ARE YOU DYING. ARE YOU JUST A FUCKING HEAD NOW WTF

(ETA: “masks are removable, makeste” you know what it’s been a long day okay lmao. or I suppose Compress is really the one who is lmao.)

GASPPPPPP

okay. okay. looooool okay then

WHY WERE YOU COVERING THIS SEXY MOP OF HAIR UNDER THAT HOOD YOU TOOL. IT WOULD HAVE LOOKED SO GOOD WITH THE TOP HAT. I’M SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW

as if it wasn’t enough for him to demask himself, he also had to get all shirtless and then do this weird attempt at a sexypose too huh

hard to say exactly how much of his torso is currently missing, but safe to say that’s proooooooobably not good. :///// fuck

on the other hand, Kacchan also has a torso hole and he’s still flying around like he just drank a dozen red bulls, so

this man lost his ass and he’s still out here monologuing like it’s the last two minutes of The Prestige. one might say he is monologuing his ass off

so he let Spinner and Tomura free, but is Dabi still trapped in his marble?? wasn’t he all on fire and stuff?? hopefully he can still turn off his quirk in there because if not that’s a pretty fucked up way to die. somewhere out there Snatch’s ghost is all “YEAH I’LL SAY.” oh how the turntables

last but not least, sooooooo. Tomura. back on the ground. that’s. um. ...shiiiiiiiit

#bnha 294 #mr. compress #...and actually that's pretty much it lol #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #sorry this is up later than usual (and mostly unedited as well)#just one of those days

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everythingsinred · 3 years ago

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 12)

Oof, the long-awaited Christmas Ball arc has finally arrived! Let's get into it!

What does it look like to see Natsume at his most selfish? One needs only to look at Chapter Fifty.

Chapter Forty-Eight

The Christmas Ball is finally here!

Natsume has to begin the ball just like he has to begin the festival, sitting on stage with the other Principal students, as if he’s some kind of representative. When he catches Mikan looking at him, he sticks his tongue out at her, and she’s taken aback and offended, but he’s trying to be cute. When Natsume is around Mikan, they always bicker and argue. She’s someone he can argue with, something he can’t do with most people. He can’t argue with the people in the DA class because he’ll get punished. He can’t argue with Ruka because he already causes him enough stress. With Mikan, none of the arguments are deep. She forgives and forgets easily, and he can act freely act like a little kid. In the last chapter, even, he smiles at her when they’re in the midst of an argument, because just the freedom of being able to bicker makes him happy.

He's trying to be cute, so go easy on him, Mikan.

He sticks his tongue out at her, acting silly and childish, because she’s special and he can act silly and childish around her.

For most of the ball, Natsume is content to sit in the tree, minding his own business and keeping away from the commotion. He does notice Mikan, though, because he always does, when she acts as Trash Santa to help Youichi play with Mr. Bear. He doesn’t say anything, and he’s only present for a couple panels, but it’s obvious she stands out to him.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Natsume is eating a good piece of cake when he meets with Ruka, who is overcome with guilt for kissing Mikan on the cheek a few minutes ago. Ruka knows that Natsume likes Mikan too, but he doesn’t understand that Natsume has jumped that ship before it could even leave the dock. Natsume gets that Ruka is conflicted about something, so he playfully squeezes Ruka’s nose to assure him in his own way. Natsume’s love language is physical touch even if it is awkward, whether it’s ruffling Ruka’s hair or squeezing his nose. That’s how he comforts people, particularly Ruka.

It apparently does make Ruka feel better, because when he next sees Mikan, he doesn’t freak out like she does. He’s calmed down a bit, isn’t quite as guilty. So he does his own version of what Natsume did for him at the alice festival closing dance. He gets Mikan to dance with Natsume. It’s his way of evening the score, giving Natsume the same chance he got. Either he doesn’t understand that Natsume isn’t playing the game at all, or he’s trying to convince him to start.

He walks away and Natsume and Mikan are left standing there without their masks. There’s a moment of awkwardness, where they stand around and don’t say anything, but Natsume has a moment of resolve. He takes her hand and pulls her close. It starts off proper and gentle, like a dance is supposed to be. They dance and Natsume notices that Mikan is not happy to be with him at all. She’s quiet and frowning. He’s seen her smile while dancing before, because she always catches his eye, so he knows she’s capable of it. She’s danced with Ruka, Tsubasa, Narumi, and all sorts of people, and she’s had a big grin on her face for all of it. For some reason, that smile is absent when her partner is Natsume.

Natsume got upset and hurt when Mikan said she would never want to dance the last dance with him. He’s hurt now that she seems so reluctant to dance with him in a zero-stakes dance at the Christmas Ball. He will be hurt in the future too, because he has a low self esteem. This girl that he likes may see him as a friend, but she gets so uneasy around him, and only him. Natsume thinks he cares so much more about her than she does about him, and it’s moments like these where he gets the feeling more than ever, and it hurts. He thinks it’s a given. He’s helped make it happen on purpose. But he still wishes deep down that it wasn’t that way.

He's doing everything right and she's still upset to dance with him! What's her deal? (heheheh)

And so he argues with her. Why isn’t she smiling with him, huh? He’s doing it all right, the way he’s supposed to. He’s dancing normally and she seems to hate it. He turns to insults because it’s his most reliable technique, and suddenly Mikan is energetic.

To avoid making a scene, they bicker and insult each other under their breaths, dancing just the same as they had before, but with a new aura around them. He twirls her and she’s smiling now. And his eyes get soft, because that’s all he wanted. One moment of selfishness for him to keep in his memories, where they danced and she actually liked it.

The moment ends when they get shoved and fall over, Mikan landing with her teeth on Natsume’s lip.

They’re both tense and uncomfortable with what just happened in front of so many people. Natsume hates that he tripped in front of everybody, so his mood has suddenly soured. If this had been a proper kiss, he wouldn’t have gotten so angry, and he won’t, spoiler alert. He was actually having a nice time, only for the moment to be so abruptly stolen from him. He fell down and now his lip is bleeding. Her teeth hitting his mouth also could be the closest he’ll ever get to a kiss with Mikan, and she looks horrified. Being under so many watchful eyes, all nervous about what’s about to happen. He has very few options, really. He can walk away, or he can cause upset. Natsume isn’t in the mood to run away, since he’s already embarrassed himself by tripping, so he tells her that she’s bad at dancing and kissing, even though he obviously very much likes dancing with her.

He is a problem child.

Chapter Fifty

Mikan is enraged that he had the audacity to call what happened a kiss. There’s also the trouble of Ruka, who had been nice and arranged for them to dance in the first place, only for this to happen.

Now it’s Natsume’s turn to feel guilty. It was an accident, of course, but Natsume already messed up by calling it a kiss, so now Ruka is upset. The only thing he can say to comfort his friend is to downplay it, acting as if everyone is making a big deal over nothing.

Don't worry about it, man. It's a whatever situation.

Natsume’s admirers take that as some sort of confirmation that he’s the man, probably going around kissing all the time. This really meant nothing, because it’s just one kiss of many. It’s far from the truth: Natsume has never kissed anybody before. This kiss doesn’t mean anything only because it was an accident.

Natsume escapes. He feels horrible for hurting Ruka, and probably let down that the teeth-kiss is the closest he’ll ever get to the real thing, least of all with Mikan. He stays in his tree, safe and isolated, alone with his thoughts. He has no intention of returning to the party.

In fact, it’s Mikan who finds him, when she climbs up the tree to find someone to comfort her. She’s looking for Tsubasa or Hotaru or Ruka or Iinchou. Not him. She admits that she’s just settling for him (or at least that’s the way it comes off in the TokyoPop version), and not being one of the people she can count on is something that he sadly resigns himself to.

Still, even if she’s only venting to him because there’s nobody else around, he listens to her whole story.

Just like with the Christmas Ball prep, he insults her and it somehow works. The worry leaves her face and she grins.

Forgive me. These scans leave much to be desired. Apologies.

Natsume is a bit preoccupied. He’s had some time to think and he has a lot on his mind, so he reminds her that she was angry at him just a bit ago, reviving her rage. It’s short-lived, though, because then he asks what happened between her and Ruka. Mikan shuts down, then tries to change the subject, mentioning all the gossip about his many kisses, suggesting Natsume talk about himself before demanding to know other people’s business, which leads him to the conclusion that she’d kissed Ruka.

They argue a bit more, but then she insists that the accident before didn’t count as a kiss, so he decides to fix that.

Natsume’s selfish acts are still in the single-digits, but this belongs on the shortest list in the world. Keep in mind that Natsume is convinced that Mikan and Ruka kissed already. They did, but that was a cheek kiss, and not on the same level. He has no idea. They’re arguing, so it won’t seem romantic or mushy at all, especially when compared to whatever Ruka surely did (though he did not do anything at all, in fact) and she won’t get the wrong (right) idea. It seems like a low-consequence move, like something he could do, so that he could have it for the rest of his life and then die with it. He doesn’t dare assume it’ll mean something to her.

He pulls her into a kiss, in any case.

She pushes him away, gasping for breath.

He explains that he did it because she said it wasn’t real before. An easy excuse. Then he muses, “So that’s what kissing is like…” and essentially answers her question from earlier, about all the rumors that he has plenty of experience kissing. He says it’s no big deal and then jumps from the tree.

"Wow! That sucked! Let's do more of this next year!"

To him, it is a big deal.

He says things aren’t a big deal when he wishes he could do them, like competing in the alice festival and now with kissing. Things are a big fuss over nothing when he can’t do them but wants to. Just like the alice festival, this is something he can’t look forward to. This is done, and it’ll probably--definitely--never happen again. Being selfish once is one thing. He wouldn’t do that to Ruka.

Downplaying it is supposed to comfort her. It’s no big deal after all, so she can just move on and keep kissing Ruka, which she probably prefers anyway. It obviously meant a lot to him, since in about a year he’d ask for more and more kisses, but for now, he’s content with one. It’s all he can ask for, and all he needs. Just one kiss, to know what it’s like to kiss the girl he loves. And now he’s done.

His post-kiss behavior is all for her sake, acting casual and blase about it so that she doesn’t catch on that it meant something more to him. “Huh, whatever,” is an easier kiss to get over than a romantic and sappy one, in his mind.

Besides, she’s not like him. It’s not like she’s never kissed somebody before.

Chapter Fifty-One

It’s post-Christmas cleaning day in Class B and the kids are gathering in a circle to tell scary stories on their lunch break. Koko calls Natsume over to make a demon fire for the atmosphere. Ruka and Natsume catch Mikan’s gaze and she runs to avoid them both.

She’s an anxious mess because of the Christmas Ball, unable to look either of them in the eye.

Natsume and Ruka both join the group anyway, and once Mikan is thoroughly spooked, Natsume scares her even more with Yo-chan’s help. It’s not that he wants her to suffer, but he wants to seem as unaffected as possible. See, he’s right back to normal, so there’s nothing to worry about. She doesn’t need to freak out about what happened, because ultimately, nothing happened. It was no big deal, a big fuss over nothing.

Jinno then separates the class into smaller cleaning groups, and Mikan is stuck with Natsume and Ruka. She’s awkward and anxious, Ruka’s embarrassed and doesn’t know what to say, and Natsume’s not the type to talk much anyway.

He isn’t really the kind of person who fixes things, but it’s on him now, because the other two sure as hell won’t. So first he teases Mikan by scaring her. She gets a little upset, so he tells her to quit ignoring Ruka. He makes it about Ruka, because he’s okay being the one ignored. Again, he’s never considered himself in the running for Mikan’s affections. He’s Team Ruka, all the way.

Ruka is touched, and there’s obviously no hard feelings about the accidental kiss at the ball. That doesn’t mean that they’re talking much, or that there’s no tension. They both know that something happened with the other in regards to Mikan, and broaching that topic is uncomfortable. They’ve been letting it sit for so long untouched--months even, since the very start of it all--and it’s only gotten bigger and bigger.

Before they can have an actual conversation, though, the lights go out.

They’re all sitting against the wall, Ruka and Natsume on either side of Mikan.

They’re both aware that Mikan is easily scared and that she’s particularly afraid of the dark, and so they both independently decide to hold her hand in an attempt to comfort her. Natsume remembers how afraid she’d been when they were trapped together in the haunted house, and how all she’d wanted at the time was to hold his hand, because if they’re touching, they’ll be warm and less scared.

Don't overthink it, Mikan. You might figure him out.

For now, it’s not about being selfish, just being helpful, because he wants to reassure her and comfort her. He’s learning ways that he can be comforting to Mikan, that don’t necessarily involve insults and getting her mad.

But then he looks up and he and Ruka notice each other, see what the other is doing, and after all this built-up tension and awkwardness and lack of conversation, it only makes sense that…

They start laughing. They start talking, suddenly so honest, because the hardest part is over. They got to skip over the confrontation and now they can just talk about it with each other. They’ve known the truth about each other all along, but now they don’t have to pretend to hide it anymore.

And Ruka feels free to tease Natsume, and Natsume can tease Ruka, and that’s amazing too. Even before Mikan came to the academy, Natsume and Ruka had a lot left unsaid. They didn’t communicate well, and their talks never involved bickering or friendly teasing. It’s like all the tension that had accrued between them for years has suddenly lifted, and they can laugh about it now.

There's so much honesty here now.

Natsume can tease that Ruka has terrible taste in women, Ruka can shoot back that that means Natsume does too, and Natsume can scold him for putting himself on his level.

If anything, this was good for their relationship. They’re in a place now where they can communicate about their feelings somewhat. Natsume is never really that emotionally open, even at his most communicative, and he’ll continue to keep his secrets, but the wall that has built between them has been more or less knocked down.

This moment doesn’t seem romantic at all to Mikan, but romance is intrinsic to their conversation. Ruka swears he won’t lose, and Natsume scoffs that he’d never intended to win in the first place.

And just like that, without even including Mikan in their conversation, everything is back to normal, or even better than normal. The Christmas Ball tensions have officially been eliminated. The feelings may still be there, but the problems are gone.

But it’s still dark and scary, and now it seems that a ghost has joined them in the hall, wielding scissors--so Ruka and Mikan run away. Natsume is not so easily spooked, so he sticks around long enough to see that the ghost in question is Nobara.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Natsume starts his conversation with Nobara by reminding her of an off-screen (off-page?) conversation, where he told her to stay away from Mikan. Nobara explains that she came to see him, because she was watching Mikan for the entire Christmas party and has something to tell him. Though it’s a bit creepy, the lengths Nobara went to in order to watch Mikan (including special opera glasses that catch sound), she says she saw something strange.

At first, Natsume thinks she’s going to mention the kiss, and he’s uncomfortable that Nobara probably knows about it. First, she’s still just as untrustworthy to him as before, because she’s loyal to Persona. That their kiss might get back to Persona could be potentially quite dangerous, and he might face serious punishment as a result. Secondly, he’s also capable of getting embarrassed, and the idea that this girl was watching when he had no idea at all, especially during such a vulnerable moment, is a little off-putting.

But Nobara isn’t talking about the kiss. She’s talking about the fact that the person who danced with Mikan and upset her by making her mask fall was probably the ESP. She tells Natsume because she’s seen the way he looks at her and she knows that he cares about her. She can even tell that Natsume forbidding her from talking to Mikan is his way of protecting her, even though she must not be a fan of such a rule. She’s a middle-schooler, and not as close to Mikan, but Natsume is in her class. He’s her partner and he cares about her, so he is the best person to have protecting her. Because he will, no questions asked.

Natsume remembers the warning he’s been given, that he should continue isolating himself or bad things will happen to his loved ones, so we can tell that he finds himself somewhat responsible for the ESP upsetting Mikan. More than that, he’s understandably concerned that this is merely the first move of many, and that the ESP will continue to antagonize her and even put her in danger, and that it would all be his fault.

In any case, Natsume is kind of stuck regarding his options.

He can go back to trying to avoid her. He was never that great at it in the first place, but it’s bound to be even harder now. But he also has to protect her, and that will be harder to do from a distance. Besides, the damage seems to have already been done. Whatever happens, he’s willing to take all the punishment in her stead, as long as she’s safe.

Conclusion

Natsume has done all he intends to do: he got a kiss from Mikan and now he'll more or less step aside. Or will he? The plot thickens! But in any case, he's up to face some serious repercussions for his actions so far, and his punishment will be any day now...

Also, sorry, I couldn't find full scans for Chapter Fifty-Two, so there's no pics. It's okay, I wouldn't have done much for it anyway, because Natsume's only around for a few pages.

Hope y'all are having a nice day! Thank you so much for reading this far!

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billiewena · 3 years ago

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for the 100k fic celebration, here a portion of the “what if 10x05 had a sastiel agenda?” AKA lil shit sam/jealous dean destiel fic I first shared a while back! been having a lot of fun basically rewriting and expanding on the entire musical episode with new songs (and lots of cute kristen & siobhan moments because OF COURSE they’re still a couple.) it was really encouraging to see the positive response to it back then and it's been taking forever because of work/other writing but I’m so excited to have this one be the first full-length fics I ever post.

It starts with costumed teenagers locked in a tight embrace with absolutely no room for Jesus.

“What are they doing?”

Marie glances over her shoulder for only a brief second.

“Kids these days call it hugging,” she says slowly. Geez, it would’ve been less insulting for her to just outright say Wow, you’re old.

Except it’s not just any of the show’s stars hugging over there. One of them is the “Dean” who’d been mid-rehearsal when they arrived and looked more like Bieber than him with the blonde wig. And the other? Well, he would recognize that Columbo coat anywhere.

“Is that in the show?” he asks, pointing their way.

Marie quickly shakes her head at the accusation. “Oh, no. Siobhan and Kristen are a couple in a real life.”

He nods and lower his hand. Got it. That’s all it was. Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about—

“No, my play explores the nature of Sastiel.”

“The — wait, what?” he says, confused at once.

“Sastiel?” Marie pauses, giving him a second to figure it out. He doesn’t. “You know, the relationship between Sam and Castiel?”

Dean blinks.

“Sam and…C-Cas?”

“I know, I know. Edlund’s series never finished. I’m lucky I got these drafts. Ugh, it’s Midnight Sun all over again. But the love story is all in the subtext,” she says with confidence. “Can you believe there are people who still think Destiel is endgame? After everything that happened after the angels fell? After Gadreel? Please.”

He silently sounds out the word. Des-tiel? Wait…

“Ever since Cas came back from the dead and took on Sam’s pain, I knew. I just knew. Every one of their arcs had been parallel to each other’s from their fall from grace to the trials. And now with Dean gone, all they have…is each other.”

Marie sighs. “Besides, you can’t spell subtext without S-E-X.”

He coughs and nearly chokes on an asteroid-sized lump in his throat.

“I…uh. Yeah, th-that’s not…you know, I think I’ve seen enough,” Dean says with a forced smile. “Thank you for your, ah, time. I’ll, uh, we’ll follow up if we have questions about the missing persons case. I—alright.”

And with that he purses his lips, turns on his heel and walks away — nearly tripping over one of the stage chords as he does. Why are there are so many of them anyways? This is just some all-girls school production, not the goddamn West End.

He finds Sam in his natural nerd habitat (the tech booth) sifting through all the bins of A/V supplies.

“Yeah, not to interrupt the blast from the past here but it’s time for us to go,” he says, patting the door.

His brother shoots him an annoyed look but packs up and follows him out all the same. Not that Dean bothers to wait for him; no, he makes a beeline for the car as soon as he leaves the booth.

“Hey, what’s with the rush?” Sam calls after him as he runs to catch up with him at the school entrance.

“No rush,” he says shortly. “Just wanted to see what you found out before you got too lost in the nerd sauce over there.”

He doesn’t need to look back to know he’s on the receiving end of a Classic Sam Bitchface right now and continues to stomp his way through the parking lot.

“Well, no EMF, no hex bags. None of their props are remotely hinky. Talked to Maeve and all those extras in the auditorium.” Sam finally catches up and walks side-by-side with him now. “You have any more luck?”

“Nah. Ms. Chandler's office is just a pile of empty bottles and regret. She's probably just face down in a bar somewhere. Or a ditch. I did get to hear all about the director’s, ah, creative vision though,” Dean says, teeth gritted. “Apparently we go into space, I become a woman, and there’s even ninjas and robots!”

“Robots. Huh. Well, that’d definitely be a new one.”

“There’s no robots in Supernatural—”

“I-I know that,” Sam says in exasperation. “I just mean it’s, y’know, innovative. And Dean we’ve fought weirder. Remember the teddy bear? The fairies? The ballet shoes?”

“Well, you just wait until you hear about what she in store for you, Lover Boy,” he says.

And that makes Sam do an instant double-take.

“Uh, Lover Boy?”

“Yeah, your number one fan back there —” he says, gesturing back towards the school, “— was telling me all about the play’s, uh, love story between you and Cas. You got something you’ve been meaning to tell me or what?”

“The love story? Wait, what do you mean me and Cas?”

Dean scoffs, already in utter disbelief of the words he was about to say. “Like you and Cas, together. Together together? Romance of the ages the way she made it sound. Apparently it’s all in her play!”

To his surprise though, Sam just… laughs. “Well, I mean hey, that’s an improvement from the ones who wrote about me and you.”

“You got that right,” he agrees with a shudder. Meeting one Becky the Stalker was bad enough. Knowing she wasn’t alone and that she had an audience made it even worse. “She even had a portmanteau for you, dude. Like you’re some celebrities in a grocery store tabloid. Sass-tiel.”

“Sass-tiel?” He seems to seriously consider it but shrugs. “I don’t know. What about… Samstiel? CasSam? Cam? Mmm, maybe not that…”

Dean groans. “Really? That’s your issue with this?”

“Of course it’s not my issue,” Sam says. He stays pensive for a few more seconds until chuckling again to himself this time, as if he’s the only one in on a private joke. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Cas is great but…”

“Not your type?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam says. No, it’s definitely more than that and he’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding his amused expression.

Dean turns and stares him down. “What?”

“I dunno,” he says, his smirk fully visible now. “I just think it’s funny they’re pairing me up with Cas when the one with the ‘profound bond’ with him is right there.”

“Oh, haha. You’re hilarious,” Dean retorts at once.

“Hey man, I’m not the one who stayed in Purgatory for a year to find him.”

His glare takes on a murderous edge.

“Okay. You know what? You’re going to do that thing where you just shut the hell up! Forever!”

Sam holds up his hands in either what’s either a show of innocence or surrender.

“Alright, alright. Well, other than the Charlie Kaufman of it all I got nothing.”

“So…what?” Dean says. “This-this all... This whole musical thing, everything, it's... it's all a coincidence? There is no case?”

“Unless you're seeing something I'm not, no, Dean. There's no case here,” he says sincerely this time.

“Come on. This has classic Trickster vibes all over it.” He almost wants to turn around and start yelling, Come on out Gabriel you bastard!

“Trickster’s dead, man. And he wasn’t just a trickster, he was an archangel. And they’re all gone too.”

“Could be a lower-rank angel?” Dean tries. “I mean, Zachariah pulled off an entire apocalypse world. And that place where we were both corporate drones. Before you know it, this’ll get all Buffy and it’ll be me and you singin’ and dancin’—“

“Dean…I think it’s just fans. Look, as long as they’re not putting another love spell on one of us I couldn’t really care less what they’re doing,” Sam says with some bitterness, clearly not looking back at that particular memory with any fondness. “Just writing some songs? I mean, it’s innocent enough.”

“Oh yeah, so innocent,” he scoffs. “They’re singing about our dead parents, your demon blood bender, the apocalypse, all of it! This is just…it’s make-believe for them! But it’s our lives!”

Sam runs a tired hand through his hair. “Look, I don’t get it either man. I wasn’t exactly thinking about the books’ entertainment value while Chuck was describing my sex life in vivid detail—“

“Don’t remind me,” he says, holding up a hand in disgust.

“—but I dunno. There’s obviously something about it they connected to, right? Something they related to, something that moved them, inspired them? And I guess…I mean, what’s wrong with that?”

There is so, so much wrong with that.

“I don’t know what story they’re reading and what Sam and Dean they’re ‘connecting’ to here. But it sure as hell ain’t us. I mean…they even made me blonde, dude.”

“It’s a high school play, what can you expect?” Sam laughs. “It was probably the closest wig they could find at Party City.”

Dean ignores him, muttering aloud as he makes his way to the driver’s seat.

“The hair…the singing…the robots… the love story…”

“You really were bothered by that, weren’t you?” Sam gives his brother a curious look.

“SUPERNATURAL ISN’T A ROMANCE!” Dean snaps. “Look, these girls obviously don’t know what they’re talking about—“

“I dunno, Dean,” Sam said in a clearly taunting voice now. “Maybe you’re just jealous of what me and Cas have.”

He flushes. “W-what? I-I’m not—“

“We could give you two a name too, y’know? So you don’t feel left out? What about…Dee-stiel? CasDean?”

And he refuses to entertain this conversation any longer.

“Shut your face! Get in the car!”

Thankfully Sam notices the shift in tone and obliges at once.

Dean, meanwhile, takes a moment outside the car to glance around — almost as if checking to see if anyone overheard that comment. Not that it mattered. Who could overhear? No one even knew they were THE Sam and THE Dean. Who cared? He certainly didn’t care. He didn’t care at all...

(to be continued)

#if you were one of the people who offered to beta read back in march know I WILL be reaching out to because I need it lol #destiel #destiel fanfic #destiel fanfiction #fanfic #spn 10x05 #also this is a given but if you did want to be tagged when this is posted hmu!#been having so much fun with this especially with writing the new songs #also tbh the musical itself is the closet I will get to writing a sam & cas fic so that's been fun too lol #ESPECIALLY because then I can immediately add dean's reaction to it which is typically 'time to walk straight off the stage'#it's also fun to write a s10 fic since I'm a 'dean's been in love since s8 at least' truther #anyways new to this and my untreated adhd means I make a gazillion typos/take forever to work on things/get distracted by new ideas but #literally every positive comment on that first post is the reason why I'm still workin' at it

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steve0discusses · 3 years ago

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S5 Ep 15 Pt 1: The Gang Gets Lost in India

Ah, back to Yugioh classic. Sort of. We’re going into the second filler arc before Bakura, which I have been told is kind of nonsense. And youknow what, from the first scene--this is the first scene by the way--yeah I can see the nonsense.

We got Yami cosplaying as the Chrysler building, we got Yugi saying WTFWTF, we got...this thing?

This thing tells us “Join my game, Yugi!” and then the demon just kinda bounces.

K, bye, I guess.

(read more under the cut)

Waking up from this nightmare, Yugi reveals that he has outgrown his good pajamas. Or maybe he just overused them like I did to my favorite pajamas during quarantine (which, not gonna lie, I hand sewed my favorite pajama pants back together 2 or 3 times like they were the Velveteen Rabbit. Quarantine pajamas and me were like best buds for a year there.)

RIP Yugi’s good pajamas.

It’s fine. I’m fine.

I can get used to Yugi in his normal ass old man pajamas without any cute stars on them. I can accept this. He’s getting older. So much older that for a second I thought he was learning Hebrew, by the looks of his books on his counter. I thought...wow, is Yugi actually attempting to learn a language spoken around the time of ancient Egyptians???

But uh...I went a searching and unfortunately that’s not Hebrew, and if that is a language, I don’t know what it is. Pretty sure it’s just random marks because this show has to be translated in so many languages. Man. For a second there that looked like really sneaky world building, but nah, Yugi is still kind of a dumbass who has yet to attend a solid year of school.

Also, I got to take in this mustard yellow as if I’ve seen it for the first time.

It has strong building blocks energy. It’s...so much yellow and it’s extremely the vibe of that one set of animal crossing decorations that I have because it’s a very common recipe, but, can’t figure out for the life of me how to fit into any room.

What am I supposed to do with these, Nintendo? Other than recreate Yugi’s Muto’s haunted game store/house?

Like I live in the Bay area and we have wild painted houses so you can see them through the fog (back when we...still had fog, RIP California) --but this is a little much. This is such strong Protagonist energy but as a house.

Also, I’ve don’t think I’ve brought this up before, but like...Yugi is loaded, right? Like he’s way too good and humble to ever say he’s loaded, and they sort of make it seem like he’s not (when compared to Seto Kaiba) but damn, this location of his real estate sure is something. That and Grandpa’s tiny shop seems to run on a constant deficit and his family just doesn’t care.

We flash back a bit to Gramps sneaking out, and Yugi is like “oh great, my only Father figure I ever talk about is getting a backpack together and just...leaving without any notice, huh? Without telling me you were going to go? Didn’t think that would maybe be a little off putting?“ and Gramps is like “Yes?”

Like Gramps nearly died going to an amusement park a few episodes back so I can see why Yugi is a little bit concerned.

Down the street at a little town lottery, Joey is getting further into gambling (I don’t know what those little street lotteries are called, it’s in a lot of anime--but kinda looks like mom lotteries for moms.)

I’m not sure why India is on Joey Wheeler’s bucket list, seems a little random, but he went to Pegasus’ country, after all and that’s barely even a country.

Joey going nuts on a lottery machine instead of going to school was pretty peak filler, so I’m not really minding this stuff so far.

And then, just to spook me, check this out:

I can’t believe they even let them back into a classroom. In my nerd school, if you missed one too many days, you were sent to the bad schools to be someone else’s problem. But in Yugi’s case...that either IS his school or...Yugi is failing International School, which is just a thing he’s allowed to do, because, as I said before, this kid has got to be loaded. Even Seto Kaiba was like “I’m not spending money on this school anymore. That outfit is like 50 bucks a jacket.”

Youknow, I have seen all the other characters knock on Tea’s choice of cute ass monsters for the last 5 seasons, and she has never once changed them out. She is holding onto this scary seraphim thing with the many wings like every child with their first Pidgey. She does not care.

Also how is this thing cute?

like the front of this orb has a face with hearts on it but like...it is kind of remarkable what Yugioh decides is cute. Magma golem: not cute. this thing? This thing that looks like it’s a chibi version of the last chapters of the bible and will sound the trumpets of the second coming? So cuuuuute.

Tristan used to be the Janitor/hall monitor/square archetype. Like hell he can walk around with that 00′s R+B soundtrack.

Joey appears in order to get us the hell out of school, and the art team retires this school background for the rest of what I assume is this entire series.

Goodbye school. Maybe you’ll come back with Bakura. Which would be weird, since rumor is that arc takes place in ancient Egypt.

On their walk home, Tea lets out in an inner monologue that no one could hear that after 5 straight seasons of his BS, she’s sick and tired of Pharaoh being the center of attention all the time and she needs a freakin break.

TBH, as she was thinking in her head like “Pharoah is just so freakin much” Yugi switched over to Pharaoh and was like “WHATS UP TEA, THINKING ABOUT ME??” and I thought for a split second maybe he read her mind with his Pharaoh powers.

And like...maybe he did? Seems like a thing he can just do but chooses not to tell anyone about. I mean would you tell anyone? I wouldn’t.

So, unlike Miho in Season Zero, who at least had the decency to try to take her Mother to Australia, Joey Wheeler has wisely decided that the 3 other ticket holders will not be the 3 other members of his immediate family. That would have been the most awkward trip between Serenity, his mother he hasn’t really spoken to in 7 years, and his absent father who was written out of the series for being a raging alcoholic. They would have not even made it to the plane.

Instead he’s gonna take the ghost in Yugi’s head and call that an adult (two tickets in one, really). It’s honestly not that bad of a plan, since his only other father figure, Grandpa, is MIA, and his only other, other father figure, Roland, charges like 300 dollars an hour and wants stock options and health insurance.

And honestly they should have taken Roland because he’s one of their best plane guys.

So they take the smallest little Amelia Earheart plane in the world, going from Japan to (checks map) India...which 2 times the distance this plane can go and it crashes...which is exactly what would happen if you took a teeny tiny plane over the Himalayan mountains without refueling that thing.

We call this a magical incident later in the episode, but this is just basic math.

So, fun fact, (and probably why I discuss planes so often on this blog) two of my Grandfathers were pilots (well, three, since my grandmother remarried another pilot), which sounds like a crazy coincidence until you recall that their generation was in WW2 and we just shoved children in planes for 20 years and called that normal.

Anyway, to save on travel costs, my engineer Grandfather built his own plane out of junkyard parts, which, as you can imagine, is a living nightmare, and it was held together by like duct tape and gasoline (which at one time used to be cheap). Tempted God every day that Howls Moving Castle touched the sky.

And while I only know it from photos since I wasn’t exactly born yet, it looked exactly like this plane. So looking at this, all I can think is...yeah...that’s what you get for flying to India in a tin can car. To this day I cannot trust any plane of this size.

So, they climb out of their wreckage virtually unscathed and into familiar Californian territory.

At least Joey thought about bringing a tent.

It’s interesting how our cast has become so accustomed to this that they’re not even all that shell shocked. It’s just another day in the life.

So next time we shall find out what India has in store for us. Or if we’re even in India...because again...feels a lot like this BG team doesn’t do any research into their landscapes and every place feels a whole lot of the same. But...at least they didn’t put any Arizonan mesas in India.

#Yugioh #YGO #yu-gi-oh #recap #photo recap #S5 #Yugi Muto #Joey Wheeler #Tristan Taylor #Tea Gardner #School?????#A really ass plane #gambling #And a trip to India

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frasier-crane-style · 3 years ago

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It’s a love story baby just say yes

Disney: Hey buddy, new episode of Loki out.

Me: Okay.

Disney: This week we find out Lady Loki’s backstory!

Me: Thought that would be covered in the last episode, where Loki spent the whole episode with her, presumably trying to figure out what her deal was, but I guess not.

Disney: Well, now we anticlimactically reveal it in the first few minutes.

Me: Okay. So?

Disney: So she’s a Loki that was either born female through random chance or decided to be a full-time woman for some shapeshifter reason, even though ‘Loki’ is ‘genderfluid’ already.

Me: So you wouldn’t think that would make a difference, going by your own logic.

Disney: Well, it does! Probably! This makes her a Variant, so the TVA comes after her.

Me: Wait, how old is she in all this?

Disney: Oh, about ten or so.

Me: Wow.

Disney: What?

Me: It’s just you’ve previously shown the TVA to go after these Variant timelines, like, minutes after they kick off. They’ve been like ‘oh no, we only have thirty minutes before we have to reset this timeline, otherwise the galaxy will implode!’ They let this one go for several years? I’m assuming here that Asgardians-slash-Jotuns age to adulthood a la humans and then the aging process slows way the hell down, so there’s no Baby Yoda situation where Thor spends a century wearing diapers.

Disney: Safe bet. But yeah, they just let ‘Loki’ be a woman for a decade or so. Or maybe ‘she’ just decided to always be a woman five minutes before the scene started and we were just really unclear on that point.

Me: How unclear?

Disney: We literally have ‘her’ ask how she broke the timeline and Ravenna just blows her off. One of those “for me, it was Tuesday” things.

Me: Despite the obvious answer being that this Loki is a woman, which was previously inferred, since all the Lokis that weren’t straight-line Thor 1-to-Ragnarok Lokis were pruned? I mean, this is a weird point to go from ‘if you step one foot out of Sacred Timeline line, the TVA will take your ass out’ to ‘ehh, Loki could’ve been a woman if the universe felt like it, no one’s stopping him/her/it.’

Disney: That it?

Me: No... the premise of your show is that ‘our Loki’ is going after ‘Lady Loki’ because he has some in-depth knowledge of ‘her’ thought process. But her life deviated from his something like a thousand years ago, when the TVA scooped her up as a child. They basically exist as two completely different people; Lady Loki even says she barely remembers Asgard, which was this Loki’s whole life until a couple years ago. So this is like taking Adolf Hitler as an adolescent, raising him as a Mormon in the year 2536, then expecting him to know what Der Fuhrer is thinking back in 1943.

Disney: Huh. Maybe we should’ve dedicated a whole episode to that important point instead of just one short opening scene.

Me: Like last week’s episode? Which was all about who Lady Loki was?

Disney: Yeah, that would’ve been a really good idea.

Me: Is Dude Loki even the same age as Lady Loki? She could’ve been dodging the TVA for like fifteen years while Loki Boy lived out hundreds of years of life. Which, again, argues against them having any sort of profound Loki-to-Loki connection. He could be the Asgardian equivalent of an octogenarian interacting with a teenager! And also one is Chinese and one is Mexican.

Disney: Anyway, Lady Loki escapes and grows up on the run from the TVA.

Me: Okay, how does she escape?

Disney: Hmm?

Me: Lady Loki, how does she escape from the all-powerful TVA as a small child? Even our fully grown Loki struggled to do that. As the Goddess of Mischief, she must’ve pulled off some really clever trick.

Disney: Oh, she did! The agent guarding her? Lokette kicked her in the shin and bit her hand.

Me: ...

Disney: Then she grabbed the agent’s little Ziggy thing and ran for it.

Me: And that’s the best explanation you could come up with for a small child escaping the most powerful people in the MCU?

Disney: Yup!

Me: Should I even ask how Lady Loki learned all this magic and shit if she was always on the run, NOT in Asgard where she would have teachers?

Disney: You’re forgetting that this is Disney. Female characters are always stronger and more competent than male characters, no matter how lacking in experience or puberty they are.

Me: Right, right, right... you ever think about maybe hiring a showrunner that’s more concerned with telling a good story than making Loki a homogay who kisses men?

Disney: No, why? Hey, we gave the fat black lady a big hero moment, would you like to hear about how totally unearned it was? She basically ran through Moebius’s whole character arc in, like, two minutes so we could have a ‘shocking death’ and then subvert your expectations that Owen Wilson would actually have something to do as a deuteragonist.

#loki #they literally downloaded an entire character arc into fat black lady's head #maybe she picked up some of kylo ren's lightsaber skills too #you never know

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stranger-who-writes-fiction · 4 years ago

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Gonna make full use of my ‘comic rant’ tag and roast Future State: Superwoman.

Spoilers! And yelling! Of the disgruntled kind!

So a few things at the start here: 1.) I wanted to love this book. I wanted it to be great. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, in spite of some iffy stuff in the solicit text. So this rant is not coming from a place of having decided this was going to be awful ahead of time. 2.) My tolerance for bad Supergirl comics is pretty high! Takes a lot for me to actually come out and say that a particular issue is trash. Reader: This story is trash.

It’s not ‘middle-aged white guys writing/drawing a story about sending a minor to a potentially hostile planet fully nude’ trash, mind you. It’s the compost bin, rather than the landfill. Slightly nicer trash, but it still stinks to high heaven. Allow me to expand!

PROLOGUE - SUMMARY: ...I actually can’t summarize this comic b/c it would devolve into a lot of senseless yelling. We’ll just have to tease out this terrible plot as we go along.

PART I - DEAD DOGS TELL BAD TALES: The comic opens with Kara standing at Krypto’s grave. That’s not why this comic is trash, but it bears mentioning. Because why. Why would you do this.

PART II - IN WHICH IT ONLY GETS WORSE: So, Kara has a running inner monologue, and the main thing we gather from Kara’s thoughts is that it was Krypto who taught her to be a hero. On paper, that sounds very sweet! In practice, it reads as Kara having no moral center whatsoever—whatever good qualities she might possess, she did not learn from her parents, or her foster parents, or friends, or fellow heroes. Nor do they come from within Kara herself. Nope, t’was Krypto who taught Kara not to be a jealous rage monster. That is not hyperbole--Kara’s walking around angry about her cousin all the time and she’s like, ‘It was you, Krypto, who taught me not to judge, and to let go of anger.’ Listen, I love Krypto, but this? This is, as the youth would say, a bad look.

PART III - THOSE CERTAINLY ARE...SOME THEMES: The set-up here is that Kara is on the moon, and has established a sanctuary for alien refugees. That’s a dynamite idea! I love that! Buuuuut Kara didn’t look at the plight of alien refugees and say, ‘I want to help!’ Really, she didn’t even look at herself and say, ‘I don’t want others to feel like I’ve felt.’ No, she said, ‘Earth won’t accept me as a hero, and Clark didn’t name me protector of Earth, so. I’m out!’ (Honestly, if your moral compass is so whack that you need a dog to walk you back from Hulk-Smashing...can’t say I blame Clark for not picking you, Kara!) But apparently, the people on the moon don’t really like her either. And it is literally never explained why. There’s a whole montage of Kara fixing stuff and saving lives and all the moon folk just glare at her. This makes both the moon people AND Kara look like a**holes, because they come across as ungrateful, and she comes across as a glory hound. Thanks! I hate it! So the ‘peace’ Kara’s found on the moon isn’t really peaceful at all, cause she still resents her cousin, and people still don’t like her, in spite of the fact that she’s constantly performing acts of service for them.

Also, side note, I’m just now realizing this is an entire population of alien refugees...and Kara is somehow still the odd one out. Like, Earth I get, because everyone else is a human and maybe freaked out by the super powers. But a bunch of aliens? WHY. Why did you do this. Why did this need to be set on the moon with alien refugees if you’re not going to interrogate Kara’s identity as an alien refugee herself AND all of the aliens are inexplicably humanoid in appearance and utterly ordinary in terms of power levels.

Like. This is not the CW show, where they have a budget, and a huge ensemble cast to serve. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. AAARRRRRGHHHH.

PART III CONT’D: There’s also this weird ‘birthright’ element introduced...like, Clark and Jon stole Kara’s ‘right’ to be earth’s defender which is...a terrible reading of Kara’s modern origin. It brings in the idea that Kara is a ‘chosen one’ and because she didn’t get to be that chosen one, all of her hero work is for nothing. Never mind the whole central conceit of what makes Clark and Kara heroic...that they have this incredible power, and choose to do good with it. Nah...it’s all about her ‘right’ to protect the people of Earth! And mean ol’ Clark took that away! THANKS. I HATE IT.

PART IV - A POOR USE OF SPACE: So, all of the Future State books kind of struggle with the issue of too much exposition, which is understandable. They have to introduce an entirely new status quo in a very limited amount of literal page space, so you *really* have to have a handle on how you allocate your time and focus.

Introducing a brand new, lore-heavy heroic character who gets all of the development and dynamic art and pulls focus away from the character you’re meant to be writing is a bad use of a two issue limited series.

Like, this is a crappy Supergirl comic but it’s a great backdoor pilot for a Lynari ongoing, I guess.

Imagine if in the Jon Superman book, they introduced a random, brand new best friend for Jon, and he got the big character arc instead of Jon. That’s something you save for an arc in an ongoing title, NOT A TWO ISSUE EVENT COMIC.

Back to said new character, there’s a lot of forced attempts to parallel Kara and Lynari, but Lynari’s backstory is so confusing, rushed, and poorly explained that it’s like: okay, they’re both...angry? And the moon jerks hate them? ...uh. Okay.

(I’m gonna bring back my ‘why is this set on the moon, even’ question so that my ‘poor use of space’ header becomes a better joke.)

PART V - I'M HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO...B/C THERE SURE AIN’T ONE HERE: I’ve already mentioned that Krypto was apparently Kara’s conscience so when Lynari’s aunt arrives to...kill them? (again, everything about Lynari’s backstory is rushed and poorly explained) Kara gets real mad and basically pulls a Gothel: ‘You want me to be the bad guy? Fine! Now I’m the bad guy.’ But thank goodness Lynari is there to tell Kara no! Don’t murder the giant aunt eel! Lynari then steals Kara’s powers and gives up the swamp jewel that’s been hidden inside their body and now their aunt is less murder-y!

WOW. Couldn’t even give the big damn hero moment to Kara in her own book, huh?

So the day is saved. It takes Kara a while to regain her powers, and it’s only then, when she’s no longer ‘above’ the moon jerks, that they’re like, ‘oh, we like her!’ There is a bit of narration about how that attitude is awful. But that narration is provided by Lynari. See, the inner monologue is no longer Kara’s thoughts, but rather it has switched to Lynari’s point of view. They’re telling us this story. And do you know why?

PART VI - WHY THIS COMIC *SUCKS*: KARA DIES. SHE’S THE FRIGGIN’ ‘SECOND GRAVE’ OF THE TITULAR ‘TWO GRAVES’

Fudge this comic to heck.

See, Kara dies on the moon, presumably of old age. She’s buried next to Krypto. And this random character who we’re suddenly supposed to care about tells us her story. Not Clark. Not the Danvers. Not Brainy. Not even one of the supporting cast members from her solo title. No one from Kara’s life is mentioned at all, save for Jon and Clark, and they’re pretty much relegated to flashbacks of Kara punching them.

PART VII - TIME TO COMPARE DEATHS, I GUESS: First and foremost can I just say that I hate that’s a sentence that I’m typing about Kara in the year of our lord, 2021. But okay: Kara’s big famous death in Crisis stopped the entire DC universe cold. Everyone paused in the middle of the destruction of the multiverse to mourn her loss and honor her (GENUINELY HEROIC) sacrifice. Clark and Barbara--two established characters with a strong connection/relationship to Kara--offered lovely eulogies.

This one: Kara gets to die of old age in obscurity after a lifetime of striving to be recognized and only achieving it by de-powering and serving a population of jerks.

Not the warm and fuzzy ending you think it is!

(Meanwhile, Clark lives for millennia and spawns an entire dynasty of Els, all of ‘em out there, protecting the cosmos. I was looking forward to House of El in the hopes of maybe seeing some Kara stuff but NOPE. Thanks to Superwoman, we’re probably not gonna see any future Kara stuff beyond this! G R E A T)

And like, the argument could be made that this ending makes Kara happy. This is the life she chooses! She wants to be alone and garden on the moon! Except, we get zero insight from Kara regarding the remainder of her life. We only have Lynari’s narration and some montage shots...nearly all of which focus on other characters. But honestly, even if we did get Kara’s side of things, I doubt it would shed much light on her feelings, bEEECAUSE...

PART VIII - SUPER BLAND: This Kara really has no personality outside of ‘detached and vaguely bitter.’ I like Sauvage, I think she’s an incredibly talented artist, but here, Kara is stiff and her expression often reads as aloof. She’s very pretty, but it comes at the expense of being expressive. (And I know Sauvage can do expressive stuff...because Lyanari gets to be expressive.) Like...I love that shojo manga vibe but this is a Kara devoid of spark and warmth.

...Like...Melissa Benoist’s portrayal of Kara is right there...

I’ve already sort of touched on this but her inner monologue doesn’t have much personality either. She’s just parroting the same, ‘I need to do as Krypto taught me!’ nonsense for both issues. Until, of course, we shift to Lynari’s narration, and lose Kara’s thread entirely.

PART IX - LET’S WRAP THIS UP: This book frustrates me to no end because it had a lot of stuff going for it. It’s got a female writer and artist--still a rarity for the Supergirl book--it’s a limited series mostly free of continuity and character baggage, and it’s not tied down to the grimdark cyberpunk stuff happening in the Gotham books. YOU COULD’VE DONE ANYTHING. And, once again, DC goes with a pitch that’s: Kara is angry, Kara resents Clark...and Kara dies.

It’s also happening...right as Kara has no dedicated ongoing title, the movie’s been shelved, the TV show is entering its sixth and final season, and all promotion has shifted to new CW and HBO shows.

*screams into the void*

MAAAAAAN I hate this book. I hate that it retroactively makes me hate the Andreyko run a little bit--a run that I took to be about a traumatized young woman forced to confront her grief, and who leans on a beloved animal companion for comfort. Here, Krypto is L I T E R A L L Y the reason Kara’s not constantly frying folks with her heat vision.

I hate that this book has made me use the word ‘literally’ so much in this rant.

I hate that this could possibly be more in continuity than Millennium.

Remember Millennium? Where Kara was in like...five pages? And she was warm, and kind, and promised to help Rose because it was the right thing to do, and oh yes, WAS PRESIDENT OF EARTH?!??! AND A CLASSY OLD LADY!?!?!?!?! WHO WAS STILL ALIVE AND KICKIN’ IN THE FAR FLUNG FUTURE!?!?!?!?!

I hate that I’m using my lunch hour to rant about how much I hate this comic.

I hate that DC editorial seems hell-bent on erasing the interesting aspects of Kara’s character to sand her down to ‘the angry one’ or ‘Batman 2.0′

PART X - LET’S END ON SOME (?) POSITIVES: Don’t read this book! Don’t do it! Don’t waste your time and money!

Instead, check out ANYTHING ELSE. If you want mom!Kara, read Tom Taylor’s ‘Last Daughters of Krypton’ in the DC Nuclear Winter special. If you want heroic oldlady!Kara, read Millennium. Honestly? Pick up anything by Bendis that has Supergirl in it. It is miles away better than this. You want angry Kara working through her grief? Andreyko, Red Lantern, even Infected. ANYTHING BUT THIS. HECK, grab Superman of Metropolis instead! That has bad Kara characterization but at least she doesn’t end up dead.

Anyways. This comic is bad. I wish it wasn’t! And this is now the SECOND TIME IN A ROW that Kara’s book ends on a terrible note before the character disappears from monthly comics for an unknown period of time.

*screams into the void again*

#SG post #future state #future state superwoman #comic rant #and oh it is a RANT

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years ago

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The Mandalorian Chapter 13 reactions

Well, that was... well. in short I quite enjoyed some of what happened while din was there and I didn’t really care about what happened while he wasn’t there lol. I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that I just don’t care for the episodes dave filoni writes for this show, which is simply a matter of taste I guess.

(if you loved this episode wholeheartedly -- probably look away now, I’m going to be a bit of a downer about it and I don’t want to shit on your joy haha)

- let’s just get this out of the way first: there’s a lot of stuff around rosaria dawson and transphobia in real life and yeah, of course that affects how I watch the show. I don’t even want to talk that much about ahsoka in this because of it. she was not that good in the role, after seeing how it played out I don’t think the character needed to be in this show at all, and she should never have gotten the role in the first place and that’s about it for what I’ve got to say.

- dave filoni consistently does things with din’s characterization that feels off and weird to me, subtly out of place with what we see in other episodes (he’s... ruder? more short tempered/cocky/actively or aggressively interpersonal? more prone to express himself directly than he is usually? idk how to describe it but filoni!din always feels one step to the left of what he should be and I’m so hyper-attuned to this character that when something’s a bit iffy with him it throws everything else off haha. it feels like a shallower, more convenient read on him and I don’t like it)

I also think filoni is almost too familiar with and in love with the source material sometimes? “A Mandalorian and a Jedi? They’ll never see it coming” is undeniably a great line that echoes in decades of deep lore and so on, but dave my good man din had no real idea what a jedi even is until literally this morning. we, the audience, know about this long and storied history, but unless ahsoka spent the afternoon explaining it to him din still only knows the faint outlines of it, he has no personal experience of or attachment to it. it’s not bad, as such, it just rings false to the character based tone of the show for me personally

- positivity break: baby sitting perched on the dashboard to be close to papa while they’re in hyperspace........sd sdfskdjhfdsakjksdhfkasjd

also this is some full on madonna and child in the manger shit and I am LIVING for it (odds he’s crying quietly behind the helmet here? pretty damn good if you ask me). the mundanity of what’s essentially the shitty spartan bathroom of the razor crest on one side contrasted with the light and tenderness and love on the other? amazing, a perfect microcosm of what this show does with combining the grittier everyday down to earth stuff in the star wars universe with myth and wonder and magic and through it elevating both

- the idea of having an iconique samurai/sword duel standoff and a western standoff going on simultaneously is genuinely inspired, but in action it didn’t really work for me. (the sword duel stuff needs these moments of stillness with sudden outbursts of violence and then stillness again, the western standoff needs mounting tension until it’s nearly unbearable, and cutting between them the way they did you sort of didn’t get either to its full potential. again it’s a cool idea, though, I hope someone picks it up and does it better at some point)

- seeing a jedi and a mandalorian wander together through a burned out wasteland left desolate by greed and warfare should have hit me harder than it did but for some reason it didn’t, idk. thematically sound, though, I like it a lot on the metaphor level

- I LOVE that pure beskar makes a specific sound, and that it’s an almost ethereal noise like the high clear chime of a distant bell. also now din has something to fight light sabers with that isn’t the dark saber which makes me so happy because you guys I do not want him to be the mand’alor. keep that funky laser sword away from my dad, apart from killing him at the end that is literally the most boring way to end his arc pls do NOt

- wow they really went in hard on the samurai stuff in this one huh! there is a part of my mchanzo-loving heart that thrives on seeing a space cowboy and a space samurai team up, *wild otp-fuelled whisper* they’re twin genres inextricably entwined okay they belong together if you see this spreadsheet I’ve made over here --

- even knowing it was just a trick I felt such intense distress seeing the signet pauldron away from din. like the attachment I have to these pieces of metal because That Armour Means Dad... wild

- they really chose the dumbest name possible for the baby huh fsajdfhsaj I agree with din his name is ‘kid’ now (eh just give me a while to get used to it probably I’ll come around)

also... you know what I’ve said before about shrinking the big unknowable galaxy ‘the mandalorian’ has been setting up? wow did they do that big time in this one, and it makes me feel decidedly :/. why does the baby have to come from the jedi temple, is there truly no other tradition of force users in the entire galaxy he could be from? WHY do you have to pull thrawn into this when most people watching this show won’t even know why he’s such a big deal? is this a stealth tease for a rebels sequel? if so why spend an entire episode of this show that only gets eight precious episodes a season on it??

- on a more fun positive note: baby’s clothes are clean again, so it’s confirmed that din does wash them (and I guess that he does have some means of washing clothes aboard the razor crest!). I loved... most of the dad and baby stuff in this one, but then don’t I always I’m easy to please that way haha (the ‘playing catch’ sequence felt a bit off to me but I don’t know why. din being like ‘he’s so stubborn’ wasn’t... eh. didn’t land right. “that would be a first” was fun tho lol)

- having ahsoka state the baby’s feelings out loud like that felt... weird? and also kind of unnecessary in parts, like yeah he’s a baby who’s been passed along to different groups of strangers and experimented on by empire scientists, you don’t need to spell it out for me that he’s been scared and lonely, or at least spell it out more interestingly? it’s such blunt force storytelling where it didn’t need to be? there are more elegant ways to get the same things across, I am absolutely convinced

- ...wow while I was watching the episode I was mostly like ‘okay this is Fine I can go along with it’ but seeing what I’m thinking about in hindsight... yeah probably my least favourite episode of this show full stop haha, it took the spot from chapter 5 which was also a filoni ep

- I did 100% genuinely adore the whole part of din approaching the town and meeting the magistrate. consistently hiding the baby behind his cape and his arm? being deliberately, teeth-grindingly dispassionate with everyone, just giving them nothing? getting to see a bit of professional bounty hunter din again? wonderful in every way, I love this man

- lots of meaningful shots of baby in the middle with a mando on one side and a jedi on the other, it’s almost like they’re setting up some Themes here lol

- ...do you think din told ahsoka about either the rhino-levitating or the force choking. because girl I don’t think not training him is going to make this just go away haha, he just won’t know what he’s doing

- it makes me so sad that baby connects his force powers with being abused :( (also a heartbreaking sign of just how much he cared about din from the very beginning, since he used it on the mudhorn to save him anyway ;________; was that like. literally the first time he sensed kindness and affection in anyone in like twenty five years or... )

- I understand why ahsoka would feel this way because of her past and specific traumas, but tbh attachment in a baby? probably a good thing, he doesn’t really have the higher brain functions to cultivate non-attachment yet and needs a safe figure because again. he is a baby.

good on her for realizing it’s not a task she can take on both for the baby’s sake and her own, and also that din is that baby’s Dad though. the way she smiled at the end watching them leave seemed vaguely hopeful/had a little bit of wonder in it, like maybe she felt the potential for something good there, something she couldn’t conceptualize from her background but could sense the tentative outlines of anyway?

(also so much pressure on a lil bb to decide his path... his dilemmas should be limited to what colour socks he wants to wear today not the course of his entire life :( I know he’s a magic baby but.......)

- idk maybe I’ll find more affection of this episode through rewatches, you never know

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta

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allkinds-oftrash · 3 years ago

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Ya girl is watching the latest HSM series ep and Imma live blog it hshshs and will add my reactions under the cut so it doesn't end up a long post. Anyways, let's goo:

AHHHH THE MORNING SHOW WITH GINA AND EJ WE LOVE TO SEE IT

They really said we're gonna let life imitate art with Nini and Olivia huh

Ricky was SUPPORTIVE??? Damnn I really thought we gonna get a classic Ricky tantrum....

But also wow sir that sounds salty and should definitely talk to someone abt how you're feeling...A therapist maybe 👀

I know we needed to contextualise how Ricky felt abt the song but I really wanted to see Nini's interview in full!!

Sebby you're so cute I do wanna see yall do DEH

Shjshshs not the rights not being available for another 5 years 😭😭

I dunno how they're in great shape and closer to the Menkies Gold after not having a single proper rehearsal, but go off Miss Jenn

Omg honestly Kourt's costumes are always amazing and on point Imma excited to see it

Kourt is such a simp we love to see it

Carlos is so pissy this episode we love to see it shshhs

Also love the way Seb calms him down and keeps him nice it's such a funny dynamic

"We had 20 people make our Belle dress over 50 hours" Okay North High shut the fuck up

I'm calling it now the reason North High knows so much is cos Howie is the leak and Kourt has been unwittingly telling him. The way her phone keeps going off as they discuss how North High knows everything is really good foreshadowing if my prediction is right

Also like her phone went off just as Carlos said "How did they know that?" THAT'S PEAK FORESHADOWING

If Howie ain't in North High, I dunno what Tim is doing

GSJAGSHAH KOURTNEY MAKING ABS FOR EJ I CANNOT

"I have abs" We know sweetie

"I PADDED THE THUSH FOR YOU" "AWW THANKS KOURT I NEEDED THAT" THIS INTERACTION IS EVERYTHING THAT WAS SO FUNNY!! I love that it is now canon that EJ has abs but no butt love that for him

Okay but like damn these costumes are great!! North High can fuck right off with its high end ones I just wanna see lowkey homemade costumes by students; I'd watch a Broadway show if I wanted to see professional costumes okay

Damn Carlos has killer eyesight clocking in that mask in the trunk

GINA BBY DON'T SAY THAT AND HAHSGSH NINI NUDGING HER WAS SO FUNNY

Nini's little look over at Gina was like "Omg you guys my girlfriend is so cute and dumb" GINI STANS HOW WE FEELING?

Miss Jenn don't be that naive, your boyfriend probably put them up to it

That Insta page is prophetic with their timing tbh; all the info is a leak obviously looking at your Howie but like the timing of it all. Those kiddos don't know that they are discussing the stolen mask at this exact moment (Kourt has put down her phone after Carlos snapped at her so Howie doesn't know they are talking abt it rn)

"We don't dance with the enemy" *cuts to her dancing with Zackey later*

SEBBY WEARING THE TEACUP COSTUME OMG HE'S GOING MAKE SUCH A CUTE CHIP (yes I am still mad Seb/Joe was robbed but Imma fangirl over the costume anyway)

Wtf why does North High look so expensive - they are literally in the same district as East High right??? How did they get this much funding

North High is a very artsy and rich for a public school; they should have had Nini go here instead of YAC tbh (like this campus feels like what YAC should have been) NOW THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN INTERESTING STORYLINE

Seblos' dynamic IS ON POINT THIS EP I really love my bois so much and their back and forth is hilarious

Shhshs DIANE who loves volleyball and North High okay I totally believe it

WHY ARE RED AND ASHLYN SO KINKY EVERY DAMN EPISODE TIM THESE ARE UNDERAGED CHARACTERS STOP IT

Shshsh we love Gina knowing herself and practicing self control by volunteering to be the lookout

Omg yall listen to Carlos and stfu they are so lucky no one saw or heard them yelling Wildcats

Oh no no no no no Miss Jenn you gonna get sucked in; this is gonna be so messy

Omg I saw someone post about this scene before I watched the ep YALL ARE RIGHT THAT BOI HITTING ON GINA IS SO FINE Babes go for that one, not EJ

NOT THEM FAKE DATING UGH E W TIM STOP MAKING ROMANTIC PORTWELL A T H I N G I honestly do not understand how some of yall can ship it romantically knowing Sofia is a whole underaged babey and Matty is a whole ass grown man - like I get the appeal of the Wonderstudies getting together and they do have chemistry but the irl age gap is creepy and outweighs the appeal of shipping them romantically

As I always say; Portwell/Wonderstudies should be a BROTP not an OTP

Ugh Brotp Portwell would have clocked Lily right away; romantic Portwell making googly eyes at each other isn't helping anyone

Living for Nini getting the recognition she deserves - I really like her solo arc this season she's so much more interesting without Ricky tbh

Aww Kourt you simp I love her and I'm so happy she's happy I wanna be wrong about Howie being a North High kid

Where is the mask??

OHMYGOD THESE KIDS COMING IN LIKE A HORROR MOVIE

Lily really wishes she was Jesse St. James huh; you could never Lily so stop

Andrew Barth Feldman and his cute little French accent I love him so much

Hnng Miss Jenn gonna get manipulated by this hoe. Omg wowow Zackey really is a hoe, making out with another girl before the show THE AUDACITY OF HIM SAYING MISS JENN WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH I WILL THROW HANDS WITH THIS MOFO

Wait the kids didn't steal it BUT WHAT IF ZACKEY DID

Ssjsgfajhdfg I CANNOT WITH ANDREW'S ACCENT but I can't tell if its really bad or really good but I'm also confused why didn't they just cast a French person as Antonie shshhs Antoine is adorableee and a little shit the best type of character

Lily is so annoying b y e sis bye and Olivia Keegan is talented I just wish they didn't make her character such a cartoony villain type

"How about if we bop to the top" SEBBY I LOVE YOU AND NEVER STOP BEING SO CUTE I SWEAR and Awww Carlos called him Honey I am s o f t

Hnng why do these fools are really gonna give into North High calling them chickens

OHHH NO SHE DIDN'T JUST SAY THAT ABOUT ASHLYN FUCK A DANCE OFF I AM ABOUT TO THROW HANDS WITH A 16 YEAR OLD

"She told us not to dance with the enemy. She's better than this" No Sebby, she's not *cuts to her dancing with Zackey* AND OMG THE WAY I SAW THIS EDIT COMING BEFORE IT CAME

Ooooh I like this song wayyy more whatever the mess The Mob Song became (when I first heard it drop on Spotify yesterday) Around You is such a great song musically and lyrically very relevant to these two and gosh I love their voices together

They have so much chemistry damn, go home Mike (well he technically has oop) and Mr. Mazzara

YES YOU DO MISS JENN YOU ALWAYS HAD IT

Oh god this is the scene from the trailer; she's gonna make a move on Ricky isn't she?? Leave him alone Lily he doesn't need a 3rd girl to be confused about he needs a therapist

Lily shut the fuck up with quasi; STOP TRYING TO MAKE QUASI HAPPEN

"I love Nini's song" Sure, Jan.

...Okay yes you should have called him out but don't bait him LIKE THAT oop there's the scene from the trailer

Ohmygod is Andrew Barth Feldman gonna hit on Ashlyn

Okay this is so cute but also I am VERY annoyed with the way this show handles its characters like they aren't relevant or important unless they get into a relationship or a love triangle?? That's such a shitty way to give out screentime and arcs to characters. Is it not enough to develop the characters on their own and strengthen their friendship???

HUH TIM why you so obsessed with compulsory heterosexuality??(well also homosexuality for Seblos but they are the only ones I'm not annoyed with their relationship cos its a hella big step for Disney to have a gay couple and their relationship isn't in our faces or overshadows the plot and its just spinkles of cuteness every time they interact - they are honestly who Rini wishes they were; besties in love. They are a couple that Tim should be taking notes from; leave the relationship drama in the background, focus on the theatre and friendship aspect of everything)

My mini rant aside; this is a very adorable interaction between Ashlyn and Antoine.

"TOM HOLLAND ON STILTS" GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE WITH THAT COMPARISON I AM SCREAMING ANTOINE THAT'S SO FUNNY

This is so funny he keeps picking out the hottest guys of the group; as if he himself isn't the French version of Big Red they look super alike ngl shshsh

WHY YOU RUIN IT WITH THAT ANTOINE I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU

Drama between Antoine and Red is already spicing up shshsh I cannot

Why are you so dramatic with the shuffle Lily gtfo of here...also this doesn't make sense?? She wasn't even on a BATB playlist; what if a non BATB song came on ahahah

Good to know they aren't big fans of The Mob Song like I am Awww EJ you cutie, okay I will appreciate the OG Mob Song just for you

OH WAIT HE PROLLY LIKES IT COS ITS A GASTON LED SONG TIM GIMME THE EJ SOLO I DESERVE IN THIS NUMBER

I'm being robbed of Gaston for the last 7 eps I at least deserve an EJ solo for compensation

The way the set looks straight out of Broadway but also like omg the blue lighting and fancy stage gave me intense flashbacks to that Glee episode where Vocal Adrenaline sang Bohemian Rhapsody

RICKY STOP BEING SALTY AND ACTUALLY COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND LIKE A NORMAL PERSON

OMG THE SUBTITLES SAID ITS HOWIE SINGING AS THE BEAST I FUCKING CALLED IT

Howie you hoe you gonna break my girl Kourtney's heart

Yeah...still not a fan of Antoine's Dance Remix

Yall know Gina would kill the dance number if she wasn't wearing that fit

Okay but it's Gaston led song WHY DOES EVERYONE BUT EJ HAVE A SOLO IN THIS SONG??

First the Beasts led it (Howie sounded better than Ricky ngl), then the Lumieres (their voices worked hella well together; I always forget what a talented singer Frankie is THEY NEED TO GIVE HIM A SOLO SONG) and now the Belles are going at it (Ashlyn's voice is superior)

BIG RED BEING JEALOUS AND SALTY IS SO FUNNY ITS LIKE A PUPPY BEING ANGRY I CRI

...Did anyone really win, Lily??? STFU

CARLOS IS RIGHT AND HE SHOULD SAY IT

Oooh I did see someone talk about this when the Rose Song dropped last week, apparently its illegal to add songs to a musical you're doing for a school play; I really thought the show would brush past that irl rule but I guess they are playing into it

THE WAY EVERYONE TURNED TO EJ FOR THE SPORTS METAPHOR I AM D Y I N G AND HIS FACE WAS GOLDEN! ITS LIKE THAT LISA SIMPSON MEME SHHSHSH

Okay Nini is being a little pissy about leaving her song out of the show and its a little selfish to wanna keep it at the risk of being disqualified but I also understand why she's hurt

Everyone is dog piling on her right now being against her idea and it feels like they are being against her song and her herself instead of them not wanting to be disqualified. Also like she poured her heart and soul into the song after Miss Jenn lowkey rushed her to write it. So I can see why this feels like a rejection of her and her song and why she's so hurt rather than her seeing the big picture right now

It doesn't help that Ricky said the final blow causing her to walk off

Okay maybe Zackey gets some rights for being chill and wanting the kids to be peers

THIS MOTHERFUCKER I KNEW HE WAS SHADY Also the way I gasped even though I predicted he stole the mask halfway through this ep shshsh

Stab him Miss Jenn STAB HIM

Bitch why you so threatened by East High if yall have such a Broadway-esque show planned??? They honestly should have stuck to the Little Mermaid; I really wanted to see the aquarium

"It's just a song Ricky" "A song can mean everything" Do you get deja vu? Anyone else getting intense flashbacks to Jan when DL first dropped and all the drama happened 👀

YES PLEASE STAY CO ANCHORS Gosh I love them so much esp once you take the romantic connotations out of their interactions

ROUGE GRAND I'M SCREAMING

I love this long take of checking in with everyone's relationship status (still hate how romantically focused this show has become but still a cool shot)

I K N E W IT I WAS RIGHT

Okay but like looking at Kourtney's face I have never wanted to be wrong so bad GOD I HATE IT HERE I really think he likes her and I hope they work it out

Nini setting up her own music acc feels like when Olivia rebranded her whole IG to be just for her music stuff - love this for both of them

AHHHHH SHE'S NINA NOW YALL

I know everyone loves her as Nini but like I have always loved the name Nina and it really suits her to be honest also shows how she's growing up now and kind of leans into the lyric "I won't be confined to your point of view" from The Rose Song because Nini is the nickname Ricky gave her so it shows that she's outgrowing him too and I love that for her!

Overall thoughts; they really crammed all the North High drama into one ep huh. Personally would have liked it if all of this was spread out throughout the last few episodes; like different hijinks for every episode. I'm just a big fan of properly setting up the overall arc over the season instead of patching it together closer to the climax/end of the show. Cos now it lowkey feels like two different seasons - 2A felt like The Rini/Rina Show esp with YAC storyline and whatever was going on with Rina and now 2B is finally feeling like what this season should have been all this time

#hsmtmts season 2 #hsmtmts #hsmtmts spoilers #nina salazar roberts #gina porter #EJ Caswell #Ricky Bowen #Kourtney Green #Ashlyn Caswell #Seb Matthew Smith #carlos rodriguez #Big Red

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incoherentbabblings · 4 years ago

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What are your favourite comics anyway?

Oh! Oh! Oh! Okay. Full disclaimer. We’re going for what comics I re-read over and over again. Are these comics...good? Eh. Are they bad? No, I don’t think so. Some were meh to wow! when first released that time has either been kinder or harsher to, but I don’t think I have a series or a run or a title which is I like which is like... hot guilty garbage. Though, of course, feel free to disagree. There are some authors on here which people will not want to touch with a barge pole, and I totally understand and encourage not touching them if you don’t want to.

Having said that, here are my favourite popcorn comics (largely Titans and Batfam because I am... basic):

The Flash (2016) issues 39-45 + Annual #1

Having said that, Flash time first. People think Williamson is a real hit or miss writer and I do agree, but I think this whole arc is one big hit. It’s frantic in its energy, I love Gorilla Grodd as a villain, I love the modern Flashfam trying to help, I love how Wally coming in to help totally turns the tide and the mood. I love how everyone looks at Wally like… this guys is powerful, more powerful than any other speedster… but also noting there’s something very fragile about him. I didn’t include Flash War in this because I’m still waiting for the payoff for that angst regarding Wally, but this arc… mwah. Wallace Rudolph West being vindicated as the greatest Flash (whilst allowing Barry to be flawed and to lead his family)? Yes please. Also I love Carmine’s art. I gather it’s hit and miss for some folk but I love the line work. Also Carlos D’Anda’s issue (come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack draw Dick and Roy again your work has gotten so much cuter this past decade) is a beauty too. Big ol’ eyes.

(Under the cut ‘cause this is LONG)

Batman Dark Victory

One of two Loeb stories for me. And yeah sure Long Halloween is objectively better but…jelly bean

Also, angry traumatised Dick smacking a dying man with a stick. What a legend.

Gates of Gotham

Cass! Damian! Dick!Bats! Tim! A mystery villain! World building for Gotham! Stuff exploding! Batfam banter! Trevor McCarthy art! This bizarre panel of Jim Gordon holding Tim’s hand like he’s checking the time?

It’s one of the last ‘pure’ Batman stories before the reboot – Bat Inc aside – so it’s how I like to read the Batfam’s relationship by the end of that universe. Everyone’s a lot more content, proud Dad Bruce, happy and settled Dick and Damian, Cassandra returning home, Tim chopping off the emo hair… it’s all good.

Grayson (particularly #5)

I know why people can’t stand it. The circumstances leading up to it are bog awful. Opinions on Tom King’s writing has only grown more spliced with time. The (sex) jokes are too on the nose and hit too close to home for many. The cheesecake art is too stilted for some. But! Issue #5 is my favourite single issue story. Ever. You never have thought boxes in this series, because everyone is lying, but you aren’t told when. You never know how genuine Dick is being at any given moment, until it is just him and the baby. I love how single-minded it allows him to be. I love how he flat out lies and manipulates to protect that little girl, whilst also caring for Helena. About how seriously he takes his job of protecting Bruce and his family (and that’s why he’s even doing the stupid spy thing in the first place). And maaaaybe it’s unrealistic that Dick could outlast Midnighter crossing the desert, but screw it. Bruce can be better than metahumans all the time. Let Dick get an issue to be so to. Saving a little girl who is probably going to grow up to be akin to Superwoman. Just because he’s given himself that responsibility. He’s going to double cross twenty groups at the same time and come out clean as a whistle. And he’ll cross a desert with a newborn to do it.

Light of my fricking life.

Infinite Crisis

I…I like that things go boom. John’s is very good for that. Also, the Nightwing and Batman moments howowheheheheheheeeeeeee. Almost wish Bruce had shot Alexander. I wonder what would have happened?

(Brief side note: Graphic Audio’s adaptation of this is great fun. I dropped a bowl of cereal at the part of Superboy Prime versus the Titans. Cassie’s scream when Pantha’s head got punched off was a bit…intense. The No Man’s Land one is very good too if you have cash to burn - the voice actors are the same in both and Nightwing’s voice actor has this lisp and I don’t know man... I love it. He’s now the voice in my head for Dick).

Titans/JLA and The Titans (1999) issues 1-25

The Titans are now known I think for not being a very proactive hero group. Books struggle with balancing team dynamics versus plot, and this one is no exception. I know people don’t want to touch Devin Grayson’s stuff with a barge pole. My justification for this is flimsy I accept that, however, the JLA/Titans comic was the very first comic I read when I was like six or seven. I was rummaging through my brother’s room as a nosy kid does and this was at the top of his pile. Thank god for the little info boxes as each Titan was captured/referenced. I fell in love with Kory, I fell in love with Dick, I fell in love with Donna (oh Donna…) and then I tumbled down a hole and pretended I hadn’t until about six years ago. So that’s nice. So yes, this one is one hundred percent nostalgia based.

But honestly, Linkara did a retrospective on this event comic and series years ago, and his reasons for loving it are the same as mine really, so go watch those if you have like five hours to kill. When Devin leaves the comic remains strong for just a moment then... absolutely plummets off a cliff. So I really wouldn’t bother with the second half of the series but hey. You do you.

Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Insiders

More Geoff John’s explosions. My first comic that got bought for me. My brother walked in to the shop and said: “I need a comic for my sister where Starfire gets a good showing” and the men went… ah yes.

Eleven-year old me was like EXPLOSIONSSSSS but also was intrigued by Kory and Dick’s bedtime convos (perhaps…I was a bit under the age bracket for this book - Kory gets a good showing huh?) but uh. Anyway. Also this is when I was thoroughly enamoured with Roy. This crossover is typical Winnick and John’s angsty angst with overly poetic narration and tropey tropes which, combined with what came before and what was to come for the Outsiders, can make both series such a slog to get through, but in isolation, I think it’s a real fun crossover which gave everyone a bit of time to shine and some real fan-ficcy moments (very self-indulgent, and I love that in a comic).

Teen Titans: Year One

I love Amy Wolfram and I love Karl Kerschel. It’s a good intro to those five characters with cute stories. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Batman is demonstrably a major prick in this, even after de-brainwashing, so it’s obviously going with the ‘Dick is only half as functioning as he is thanks to Roy, Wally, Garth and Donna’, which I can get behind 100% depending on what story they are trying to tell, but it’s just… it’s still sad to read. I just think the art is brilliant at giving each of the five very clear characteristics just from their body language, and you know immediately what each character dynamic is like with another.

Batman Hush

The other Loeb story. Again, it has what I like in a Batman story. A mystery, the family, appearances of villains, flashbacks and brooding, fighting, Jim Lee’s Nightwing being hunky… Ahem. It’s a fun read I think. Also, I really like Loeb’s Bruce? I don’t think people talk about it much. But he’s really chatty in his own head. And he’s witty and dry and funny. I like that! Also, Babs is such a backbone of this story. I adore that. She’s treated well here, I think.

Black Mirror

I flipping love this arc. I love it. I love the two contrasting but deeply disturbing in different manner art styles, I love the mystery, I love Babs role in the story, I love Tim’s little appearances and the banter with Dick, I love the weird villains and the terrifying ones, and how you think one is one of the two only to be revealed to be the other or both. I love Dick’s investigation and how he goes about it differently to Bruce. I love Dick’s relationship with Jim, I love the flipping reference to the vultures and owls seemingly following Dick (a whole reboot before Snyder got to tell that story), I love the monologue about how James thinks Dick is weird and weak for his compassion and love, when really that’s his greatest strength, I love Jim wanting so hard to believe James is trying against Babs’s cynicism, but also does try to get an unbiased opinion of someone who is proven good at reading people (Dick) and does what he needs to when his son is actively harming people, I love that ambiguous ending and the questionable science, I even love the Joker’s one (1) scene with Dick. I love this line,

I love Snyder at his best. When he’s good…mwah. Great.

…And yeah. That’s my story.

#dc #dick grayson #bruce wayne #wally west #koriand'r #roy harper #batfam #the titans #the fab five #I love talking about things I like I'm sorry this is so long!#ask and I'll babble #Anonymous

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whoslaurapalmer · 4 years ago

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boy howdy was adolescence of utena sure an, experience

-okay so going in i know the theory that, what is it, this is ~a direct sequel~ and this is utena dreaming in the hospital or whatever and after watching it i definitely see where that theory comes from but??? i don’t buy it -i would rather think ‘this is Yet Another Version Of These Events, Sounds Good’ -there’s just so much emphasis in utena on like, Repetition and The Story and Making A Story so why would you not say ‘this is just another iteration of events, this is just another way’

-opening production screens: sega miku’s voice from the original project diva game for the psp that i played in japanese in high school, still living rent-free in my head ten years later: 🎵 sega~

-the best part of everything was the shadow girls just out there not only having a radio station but just like existing as a mass of alien shadow girls in the radio station and i love them so much with all my heart

-OH WOW THAT IS SOME INTENSE ARCHITECTURE -i’m not making a hp reference in this the year 2021 but know that the part of my brain still with a terrible amount of hp information had The Thought You Think I’m Thinking, About The Staircases And Architecture Here -those roses.......with the.........those are swords, a+

-the bathtub scene actually made me think about, akio + anthy vs kozue + miki which i hadn’t considered before like touga + nanami but there’s a parallel there too, huh -and it all goes back to akio, doesn’t it

-i was rewatching ep 13 earlier when i thought, is akio trying to open the gate to get back whatever power he had as dios? because he’s clearly not dios anymore. and he clearly doesn’t have whatever he had then -he has no keys -the movie also made me think about, the significance of utena being able to.........acquire dios’s power, in a way (-and when anthy said “you remind me of dios when i first loved him”) -but only when.....utena is still focused on The Prince because that stops after the black rose arc, when utena’s Prince Vibe starts to get picked apart, and utena has the sword drawn out of her instead -there are once again more words i could put here but. i’ll have to think it over more

-nanami -NANAMI

-hypersexual because of abuse trauma anthy himemiya 🤝 hypersexual because of abuse trauma laura palmer -speaking of, the......skipping record..........

-miki: who’s touga? me: excuse me

-akio: /dead me, eating a snack bag of doritos: oh so he’s just dead now???? wow great good for him (me eating doritos is not imperative to this moment. but also. it is.)

-“have you never been asleep?” vs leland in fwwm saying “i thought you knew it was me” -godddddddddddddddddddddddddd -AND THEN HE STABS HER LIKE THAT -my brother, earlier, putting the movie on our media server: so is this like the fwwm of utena? me, earlier: maybe! me, at that moment in the movie: yeah. yeah. y e a h

-noooooo my girl got in the elevator again -“there was never a live prince to begin with” well i mean yeah that’s the whole thing WAIT -GODDAMMIT YOU GOT ME AGAIN -i thought touga was gonna be revealed to be akio all along here. idk. not that it was PULLING A MIKAGE AND MAMIYA -respect, though, honestly, for managing to put the black rose arc in here

-you know what.............sure. okay. yeah. i’ll take the car wash. somehow i can get behind it being a car wash that turns utena into a car. somehow. somehow, but i can -you lost me a little with shiori though. -AND WAKABA’S THE GREEN CAR???? power of friendship indeed.

-me, no longer eating doritos: run him over, anthy!! me: ......did she? hope so.

-the.......straw dolls......... -oh wait! like a, self you left behind, sort of thing, right

-utena: so now we’re headed into a world without roads. me: i know what you’re saying with that but. my hell brain: where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

-it was still, a little emotional............they both got out for sure............

-i will probably never watch this movie again. but good for them for getting to kiss 💗

#lulu talks about utena

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makeste · 4 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 300: Days of Our Todorokis

Previously on BnHA: Hawks was all “hey Jeanist, wanna go on a road trip with me to my mom’s house?” Jeanist was all “you know it,” and so they hopped into Jeanist’s jercedes and took off. Hawks took a nap and had a flashback to his Dickensian childhood living in a abject poverty with his jerk mom and jerk dad, thinking heroes were make-believe until one day Endeavor arrested his dad and Baby Hawks was all “OH SHIT.” And then he saved a bunch of people, and the HPSC was all “what do we have here,” and blah blah blah, you know the rest. Back in the present, Hawks was all “well my life is currently in shambles, but on the plus side there’s no one bossing me around anymore so that’s pretty cool,” and then decided he was going to talk to Endeavor. Fandom was all “I can’t believe Hawks would side with his childhood hero over the man who burned his wings off and posted a video calling him a violent murderer who took after his abusive dad,” so that was fun and stuff. I can’t wait to see what piping fresh takes this new chapter will bring.

Today on BnHA: Our old friend Carbonation Carl tries to loot a Starbucks and gets his ass kicked by a senior citizen. Society is all “YEAH, WE’RE REALLY STARTING TO GET SICK OF THIS SHIT.” Old Man Samurai is all “this room won’t stop me because I can’t read it” and abruptly decides to retire, which, fun fact, is literally THE LEAST HELPFUL THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE. Anyway so then a bunch of other punkasses follow suit, and while I won’t say that I’m actually starting to root for Stain to kill some peeps, just for the record I’m not not saying that either. Back in the hospital, Endeavor cries some tears because his life sucks, and then is confronted by his entire family, LED BY QUEEN REI, FIRST OF HER NAME, BACK IN BUSINESS AND LARGE AND IN CHARGE. Rei is all “fuck feeling sorry for yourself, we have a rogue Murder Son on the loose” and I swear to god I have never felt so alive.

so here we go! and just for the record, even though the last two chapters have been phenomenal, I don’t necessarily have any sky-high expectations for chapter 300, mostly because chapters 100 and 200 consisted of Mei Boobs, and Toadette and her horrific quirk lmao. so go ahead Horikoshi, what are you gonna pull out of your hat for this one

oh, back to this stuff again. sob

I guess there was only so much time we could spend having hospital antics and exploring Hawks’s past before we got back to dealing with the whole “the world has gone to absolute shit” issue huh, lol

omg

what’s with these bizarrely cute Noumus. why do I want to pet them

so the narrative text is going on about how people have been super paranoid about the Noumu ever since the USJ incident a year ago. so yeah, I guess the fact that there are now a bunch of them confirmed to be running around is really freaking people out even on top of everything else

wtf is happening here

what did this poor lil glass ever do to anyone. r.i.p.

OH MY FUCKING GOD

SODA SAM IS BACK ON THE LAM

tsk tsk tsk. my man has graduated from snatching purses to raiding cafes. going after that big money. this man has no business sense whatsoever lmao

OH BUT WATCH IT NOW!!

OH SNAP THE PEOPLE ARE FIGHTING BACK. WHATCHA GONNA DO NOW SAM

THIS MAN IS 172 YEARS OLD AND HE’S NOT HERE TO PLAY GAMES!!

WTF IS HE LIGHTING THIS THING ON FIRE OR SOME SHIT. GETTEM GRANDPA YEAHHHH HE’S CHARGING AT EM YEAHHHHHH

lmao so that was fun. and now we’re cutting to Wash!! omg. look at him

he’s so dedicated. too bad you don’t have a car like Best Jeanist. probably takes a while when you’re just running everywhere

you see?? you were too slow!!

NOOOO, GRANDPA. he defeated Pepsi Pete, but lost his life in the process. this is too tragic

anyway so the good news is that the cafe has been saved! but the bad news is, there really isn’t much of a cafe left. huh. I guess that’s one of the reasons why people are supposed to get a license to use their quirks like this

oh snap and now everyone is coming outside, and they’re none too happy to see poor old Wash over here

seriously Wash, get a bicycle or something. also the way this guy is gesturing so dramatically with his hand in this sort of “YOU SEE!! YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS!!” manner is sending me

OH MY GOD

HE SPEAKS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS. IT MEANS JEANS PUNS ARE YESTERDAY’S NEWS, FOLKS!! MAKE WAY FOR THE LAUNDRY PUNS. CAN’T WAIT TO WATCH THIS ALL... UNFOLD

“the heroes had dwindled away” okay real talk you guys, it is literally only a matter of time before they press-gang the children into picking up their slack. I still don’t know how to feel about that, but it is happening one way or the other regardless. Child Soldiers 2 Electric Boogaloo. wonder if we’ll see a rise in vigilante action as well

OHO WHAT’S THIS? THIS IS A CHAPTER OF GRANDPAS HUH

-- no fucking way

WOW. WOW. WOWWWWWW

wow. so he didn’t do a fucking thing while the rest of the top ten were being turned into red mist in the previous arc, and now that it’s all over and they need his help more than ever, he decides... THAT IT’S TIME TO RETIRE. holy shit. “fuck you” doesn’t even begin to cover it my guy. you stand there and soak up those boos you coward

ohhhhhhh shiiiiit you guys. oh shit

the “I am not here” breaks my fucking heart for real though y’all. oh man. everything he worked for is gone just like that

(ETA: okay so a couple of the takes I’ve seen on this make it seem like All Might is somehow the bad guy here?? “this is what happens when society puts a bunch of glorified cops on a pedestal”, “finally the cracks in hero society are showing”, etc. etc. so, just a friendly reminder that this isn’t happening because of too much trust and a lack of critical thinking; this is happening because the villains killed all the heroes and broke a bunch of murderers out of jail. it’s happening because an organized league of terrorists succeeded in terrorizing, and so society is now understandably awash in fear and panic. like, it’s just wild to me that AFO is RIGHT FUCKING THERE, and yet week after week fandom still has their “IT’S ALL THE HEROES’ FAULT” signs still up on their lawns. BUT WHATEVER, MOVING ON.)

also though, so exactly how much time is passing here now? I wanted to go straight back to the hospital and see what happens with Deku and the Todorokis. please don’t tell me we’re jumping ahead sob. my aaaaangst

OH SHIT

STAIN. LISTEN UP BUDDY. I KNOW WE’VE HAD OUR DIFFERENCES, AND I STILL DESPISE YOU FOR CRIPPLING TENSEI AND TRYING TO KILL MY BEST BOY TENYA. BUT AS IT HAPPENS, THERE ARE ONE OR TWO OTHER HEROES OUT THERE NOW WHO I WOULDN’T MIND YOU PAYING A VISIT I’M JUST SAYING

LOL BUT IT ACTUALLY ISN’T THIS MAN, FFFFFF

sob. yeah I was talking about Old Man Samurai actually but YEAH. HEY THERE ENJI

also is this entire hospital actually run by characters from Super Mario Bros though. first Yoshi and now this guy, come the fuck on that is not a coincidence

lmao they stuck him in another one of these cavernous creepy hospital rooms

wtf is it with Horikoshi and these giant fucking rooms lately. Kacchan’s in chapter 298, then Tomie’s colossal house furnished with like one table and a TV, and now this. and the weirdest thing about it though is that “huge space with nothing to fill it up” is like the exact opposite of what you’ll usually find in Japanese homes lol

so now Enji is just sitting there thinking things like “my head is fuzzy” and “I’m alive” lmao okay. not quite all there yet, huh. I’ll give you a minute

I’m so fucking curious as to who his first visitor is going to be omg. either way it’s going to be interesting af, and either way fandom is probably going to feel some way about it but OH WELL

okay now his thoughts are getting more coherent! and he’s remembering Touya, and feeling regret for freezing up and forcing Shouto to deal with everything instead

!!! OH HERE GOES BRACE YOURSELVES Y’ALL IT’S ABOUT TO GET SPICY

NO TOUYA PLEASE DON’T CRY HONEY NO PLEASE

ohhhhhhh man

okay, I mean I didn’t expect you to, but so instead then you’re just going to do... what? lie there and wallow in regret and self-pity for the rest of your life? son you know that’s not how we deal with our problems here in Shounen

though also, I totally do get it though. honestly, thinking on it, I probably would have been disappointed with any other response. but so this is where the rest of his family (including his adopted son) come into play now though, because like it or not they’re all in this thing together. and so friends, I am once again asking you WHO IS GOING TO BE THE ONE TO VISIT ENJI FIRST

AHHHHHHH

KRANCH!!!! OMG AND THE OTHERS ARE SO TINY NEXT TO HIM THAT I ALMOST DIDN’T SEE THEM AT FIRST. IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE TWENTY MILES AWAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS REGULATION HOCKEY RINK OF A ROOM

holy shit I’m so excited lkjlklhlglkasdsjldfk

SDKFJLSKHLKJL

the way she has him by his collar lmaoooo. “lol nah you’re not going anywhere pal.” damn straight, siblings have to be ride or die in situations like this. banding together for survival. strength in numbers

OH MY STARS I’M JUST WARNING YOU NOW THAT I’M ABOUT TO DISSECT EVERY LAST REMAINING PANEL OF THIS CHAPTER PROBABLY YOU GUYS. WE COULD BE HERE A WHILE

love how Fuyu has absolutely no idea how to segue into THE SINGLE MOST AWKWARD CONVERSATION SHE’S EVER HAD, so she just GOES FOR IT in pure small talk mode like they’re meeting up for brunch somewhere

I KNOW IT’S A SMALL THING, BUT I APPRECIATE THAT THE FIRST THING ENJI ASKS IS WHETHER THEY’RE OKAY

lastly while I can’t wait for more of this delicious Natsu angst, I also just have to say that Enji has as much reason to cry right now as anyone on the planet. you can’t deny that being confronted by your not-dead-but-you-thought-he-was-dead son who’s all “SURPRISE DAD I GREW UP TO BE A MASS MURDERER AND I HATE YOU AND EVERYTHING IS ALL YOUR FAULT AND NOW I’M GONNA MAIM YOUR OTHER KID” with a side order of “EVERYONE HATES YOU AND SOCIETY IS CRUMBLING AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE GOOD EVER AGAIN” is enough to bum pretty much anyone out. there’s a Pagliacci the Clown joke here somewhere. BUT DOCTOR, I AM THE NUMBER ONE HERO

oh man lol he is seriously falling apart

damn. like you guys, I’m sorry, go ahead and cancel me, but I do feel compassion for the man. it’s therapeutic for me to see an abuser actually feel remorse and be truly sorry and want to change and want to make it up to his family. and it’s also compelling as fuck to read a narrative about a family that’s trying to grapple with that, because let me tell you straight up, as someone who’s done a version of that song and dance -- it is exhausting. it is a piping hot mess. it’s a gigantic mishmosh of extremely volatile emotions that all somehow all contradict one another. love, hurt, hope, anger, betrayal, resentment, attachment, longing. it’s something you can both be desperate for and also want nothing at all to do with. and attempting to portray all of that and write about it is a monumental task, and one which Horikoshi has done so, so delicately thus far, and damn but I appreciate it. anyway, so I’m here and I’m ready for my latest helping of Todoroki Fam Feels you guys

GASP

oh man. OHMANOHMANOHMAN. CAN IT REALLY BE. IS THIS THE REDEMPTION ARC OF CHAPTERS 100 AND 200???

LMAO SHE’S ALL “WE ALL FEEL BAD YOU JACKASS STOP CRYING ABOUT IT”

LAY INTO HIM REI!! SORRY ENJI YOUR PITY PARTY HAS BEEN CANCELLED IN FAVOR OF A “SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT” PARTY COURTESY OF QUEEN ELSA OVER HERE. THE PEOPLE TOOK A VOTE AND WE WANT LESS WHINING AND MORE ACTION

oh my god look at this lady folks

NOTE THE HAIR BLOWING IN THE NONEXISTENT WIND. NOW WE KNOW WHERE SHOUTO GOT THIS POWER FROM

(ETA: btw guys, seeing Rei handle this crisis like an absolute champ despite everything she’s been through is everything, though. I’m reminded of Hawks’s line last week about people sometimes unexpectedly finding liberation when they’re backed into a corner. like things may be shit but goddammit her kiddos need her.)

THE CHAPTER IS ALREADY ENDING SOB, IT’S ONLY A 17-PAGER THIS WEEK, BUT GODDAMN WHAT A WAY TO CLOSE

oh my god. oh my god oh my god. AND FUCK YOU HORIKOSHI FOR CUTTING IT OFF THERE sob. it’s like each week the wait for the next chapter becomes more painful. the Todofam is about to get real, and on top of that Hawks is gonna crash the party at some point down the line, and on top of that we’re still waiting for Kacchan to have his own heartfelt discussion about What The Fuck Are We Supposed To Do Next with his best friend who’s currently in a coma. all I want to do with my life is read about these three things, and all I can do is simply wait as they are portioned out in agonizing, addicting little installments every week

anyway! tune in next time as we answer the question of whether or not fandom will finally run its train of logic all the way through to its natural conclusion and somehow manage to cancel Noted Abuse Apologist Todoroki Fucking Rei. don’t act like it can’t happen. you all know nothing is sacred lol. anyways but I’m ready for anything lol, bring it

#bnha 300 #endeavor #todoroki enji #todoroki shouto #todoroki rei #all them todorokis #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I can't believe I've done 300 of these now lol #think I'm gonna finally have to update the post index again

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davidmann95 · 4 years ago

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Got a handful of DC-solicit asks, so I’ll just write up my thoughts on the whole batch again.

Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #1: The BALLS to not only do the next Mister Miracle thing after King and Gerads, but to do it with Shilo Norman and therefore invite Seven Soldiers comparisons as well. I wouldn’t be that interested, but the preview art that came with the announcement looked fun so this is a maybe for me.

Wonder Girl #1: I got a Yara Flor ask so I’ll go more into detail with that, but this sounds...not good.

Future State: Gotham #1: Hahaha, thanks, call me in six months if the next team does something there’s a reason to give a shit about. Except...wait, Dennis Culver cowrote that E Is For Extinction Secret Wars mini, dammit this might be good. Either way though, god willing we get a Future State: Metropolis book by Dan Watters too.

Legends of the Dark Knight #1: Hopefully this going with Sensational Wonder Woman means there’s a similar Superman anthology in the cards too, but I won’t hold my breath. Darick Robertson doing Batman is enticing, but I’m not familiar with his work as a writer and the premise doesn’t sound that gripping so I’ll wait and see. That Francavilla variant though? DC, blow that up to poster size and you’d make a mint.

Milestone Returns: Infinite Edition #0: Hmm. I got love for Static, but I might wait for further announcements and/or buzz before taking the plunge on this one.

DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration #1: This is a SERIOUSLY stacked lineup, definite buy.

Stargirl Spring Break Special #1: Impeccable timing, DC. It feels like it must be some kind of statement that there are no Morrison members of the Seven Soldiers in the mix (even swapping out Ystin for the original version of Shining Knight no one cares bout) - we focus on the Moore fixation, but there’s enough tidbits that I really do feel like Johns probably flat-out hates Morrison. And what’s this ‘secret eighth soldier’ nonsense? There’ve always been eight soldiers, people have been joking about it forever!

Justice League: Last Ride #1: Discussed that announcement here.

Batman: Earth One Vol. 3: *blinks*

*blinks again*

*squints at the cover art*

...Geoff Johns are you seriously trying to step to Morrison and use the Miagani tribe? YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN PEOPLE

I Am Not Starfire: Interesting concept that seems like it pushes into indie-flavored territory as much as DC’s superhero output just about ever has, if word-of-mouth is good there’s a decent chance I’ll get this.

Action Comics #1031: Wonder if this is serious about the potential of Kryptonian refugees, given PKJ suggested the idea in Worlds of War and that could play a significant part in the New Krypton stuff from Bendis’s Legion (with Johnson being clear he’s following up on a lot of Bendis’s ideas with his own Superman run).

Superman #31: This sounds big-time like Johnson hammering Superman into a swords-and-sorcery shape for an arc since that’s his bag, but Superman’s malleable enough for that to work so I’m not complaining.

American Vampire 1976 #8: Still not getting, so.

Batman #108: Tynion’s well and truly figured out how to game the direct market’s dopiest instincts, hasn’t he? Well, as long as that’s in service of him getting to continue doing weird Batman stuff with Jorge Jimenez like introducing whatever the ‘Unsanity Collective’ is, that’s fine with me. And more Ghostmaker!

Batman: Black & White #6: Not as packed for the finale as some previous issues, but still looking good. And there’s really never gonna be a ‘last’ Scott Snyder Batman story, is there? Sure it’ll be good but that’s kind of a shame, his Detective #1027 feature really felt like a nice full circle.

Batman: The Detective #2: Guess I wasn’t the only one wondering if it was a stealth DKR prequel and they wanted to cut that notion out at the knees.

Batman/Catwoman #6: Still very down for it, but BOY that Batwoman costume Mann debuted on Twitter.

The Batman & Scooby Doo Mysteries #2: I recently finally started reading Sholly Fisch and companies’ Scooby-Doo Team-Up! recently after getting the whole run for free on ComiXology earlier this year and have fallen in love with it, so I’m totally grabbing this digitally.

Batman/Superman #18: “The Dark Knight and the Man of Steel are on a mission to stop the godlike Auteur.io from destroying the pocket worlds he’s created...but where on Earth did Auteur.io even come from? The answer starts not on Earth at all, but with an ancient cult of World Forger worshippers on a planet far away—and if our heroes are to have a prayer of stopping this mythic behemoth, they’ll need to get to the bottom of his power source, and quick! It’s a race against time as the parallel lives of entire worlds hang in the balance!”

Anonymous said: Haha is Yang really doing Superman & Batman vs. Zack Snyder and the Snyder Cult (look up “auter” if you don’t know what I mean)? That’s fucking hilarious, especially since he apparently comes from the World Forge which is where all the shitty Earths full of bad ideas are made. Pretty pointed criticism there if I’m reading it right.

I’ve seen two or three people other than this anon independently conclude this arc is about the Supermen and Batmen of the Multiverse teaming up to stop Zack Snyder from destroying them all and at this point I’m ready to ask my LCS owner if I’m allowed to pay more than cover price for this run.

Batman: Urban Legends #3: Much more into this after the Grifter and Outsiders stories in Future State.

Catwoman #31: No reason not to assume this’ll continue to be great.

Challenge of the Super Sons #2: Good for the folks who want this, and that Nick Bradshaw variant is fun.

Crime Syndicate #3: I wanna be convinced to get this book, but the interviews are not persuading me.

Detective Comics #1036: How long is Mora sticking around?!

The Dreaming: Waking Hours #10: Another one I’ve got nothing to say about because I’ve never been getting it.

The Flash #770: Actually really excited to hear about how bad this run will suck now that I know it’s by the mind behind that “Geoff Johns’ OC - do not steal - beats up the Grant Morrison DC future” catastrophe from Future State.

Green Lantern #2: Really couldn’t wait a month for Far Sector to wrap up, huh?

Harley Quinn #3: Still not interested, but that *is* a nice cover.

The Joker #3: There’s a very real possibility I’ll have dropped the book by this point if it turns out to be the illustrated editorial mandate I get the feeling it could be, but fingers crossed.

Justice League #61: Not complaining, but wow, this really is Naomi 2 since Campbell’s busy in order to provide the necessary material for the CW show.

Looney Toons #260/Mad #20: Were these grouped with the rest of the solicits before?

Man-Bat #4: Very curious how this’ll be received, given nobody much cares about Man-Bat but Wielgosz seems to be quickly becoming a favorite.

The Next Batman: Second Son #2: Hadn’t realized this was only 4 issues - guess for at least one of them it’ll be the Luke Fox book everyone expected in the first place.

Nightwing #80: Dick Grayson vs. Heartless, not how I expected the DC/Kingdom Hearts crossover to happen but I’ll take it. That variant though? ALL TIMER:

The Other History of the DC Universe #4: I was trying to figure out who the focus of #4 would be since we know #5 is about Thunder and Lightning, forgot Montoya was confirmed.

Robin #2: Wanna care, so don’t care.

Rorschach #8: I will get it and probably like it.

RWBY/Justice League #2: My thoughts here will be their own post because there’s something particularly notable, but:

Anonymous said: Have you seen the BATtleaxe from the new art for RWBY/Justice League?

Yes, anon. Yes I have.

Sensational Wonder Woman #3: Eh, premise doesn’t grab me but maybe.

Strange Adventures #10: God I love the book about how Adam Strange sucks.

Suicide Squad #3/Teen Titans Academy #3: Hahahahaha

Superman: Red and Blue #3: Fiffe and Stokoe doing Superman stories!!! And...Nick Spencer. With Christian Ward art?! Sigh, fine, hopefully it’ll be Nick Spencer doing a nice little comedy, and not having Grant Morrison Superman throwing his t-shirt away because he grew up and realized changing things is too hard. A horrible shame Pope is doing the main cover though, the allegations against him I guess never really got any attention. At least there’s this JPL variant:

The Swamp Thing #3: Swampy will never be my guy but very happy for those who dig him, because I imagine this’ll be terrific.

Truth & Justice #4: Normally I wouldn’t care at all, but what I’m hearing on Twitter about this is a crying shame - that Jeff Trammell is really talented and Red Hood is a favorite of his and this is likely to be one of Jason Todd’s few Actually Good comics, but that artist Rob Guillory is a bullying transphobic piece of shit. Sucks all around.

Wonder Woman #772: I was so excited for this run, and then Immortal Wonder Woman had to go and suck.

#DC Comics #Opinion

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mousehole5000 · 4 years ago

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wow i made this draft on november 1st i really took a break from this huh anyway tgcf chapters 121 - 142

i realize now this coffin scene was inevitable. feel kinda weird about hua cheng back and forth from Teen to Big Man but it is very funny that theyre having their “dude dont look at my boner” moment while in the jaws of a water dragon

pei ming: why didnt you guys make a bigger coffin so you didnt have to squish together like that? xie lian: haha yep!! anyways what brings you here?

“In the grand, spacious centre of the entrance hall sat a person. And this person, dressed in all black, its face snow-white—was a corpse! Instantly Xie Lian shut the doors soundly.” - king of minding his own business.

okay this is where i stopped putting notes here for a while but i did save some in my e-reader so here’s some of the highlights

“Guzi used to have a good sleeping form, but perhaps with his cheap dad’s bad influence, now he was also spread out on top of Qi Rong’s stomach like a dead fish. Lang Ying himself was curled neatly in the corner, and was covered by a few shirts. Xie Lian lifted the blanket covering Qi Rong, suppressed the urge to smother his face, and covered the two small children.” - xie lian funny moments. also it would be really funny if qi rong redeems himself by learning love through these misfit chiildren and it might actually endear me to him but i hope that doesnt happen

Every heavenly official was yelling, and even Ling Wen was throwing a fit. “DON’T THROW EVERY BIT OF USELESS INFORMATION MY WAY, HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK I HAVE TO GO THROUGH EVERY DAY? DON’T YOU ALL KNOW TO USE YOUR BRAINS A LITTLE BEFORE ASKING ME?!” - ling wen marry me right now

“An expression like “seen a ghost” that only mortals experienced was now showing on his face for the first time. Shi Wudu’s pupils shrank to the smallest they could, and he blurted, “You’re still alive?!” “I’m dead!” He Xuan said coldly.” - okay everythings going tits up rn but i did laugh

i did see spoilers re: ming yi/he xuan reveal + shi wudu’s fate beforehand so i dont have a genuine reaction other than oh shit

“He slowly enunciated each word. “I won’t touch your fate. But, here in this place, chop off your brother’s head for me.” CLANG! He threw a rusty blade onto the ground. Shi Qingxuan stared at that blade, his eyes wide. He Xuan continued, “Then, never show yourself before me again, and I will pretend you’ve never existed in this world.” - okay idk what else is going to happen but rn im concerned that this is like the 2nd biggest ship. i guess we’ll see?? i mean i am really curious whats going to happen to them. shi qingxuan keeps calling he xuan “ming-xiong” and i... sad

shi wudu im not really invested in you as a character but these next two bits... interesting

“If I don’t die but have nothing, then that’s truly a fate worse than death. If I’m not the Water God, I can’t take care of you. I won’t even be able to protect myself. I’m scared that we won’t even last two days…TAKE IT!” - damn. something about the wealthy losing everything and not knowing how to live without it bc thats their entire life and identity

“EVERYTHING I HAVE TODAY, I FOUGHT FOR MYSELF. I WILL FIGHT FOR WHAT I DON’T HAVE. I WILL CHANGE FATE I DON’T POSSESS. MY FATE IS UP TO ME AND NOT THE HEAVENS!” - okay so the whole committing spiritual fraud by tormenting a man and his family to get your brother a cushy title thing aside this was kind of badass. heretical? possibly. but still. also is he intentionally riling up he xuan so sqx doesnt have to kill him? if so damn...

also okay as long as im here im just gonna say it. the choice that he xuan gives shi qingxuan is fucking brutal but i actually think its probably as fair as it could be. sqx didnt know about or participate in what happened to hx but they did benefit from it greatly while hx lost EVERYTHING and i can understand he xuan’s thinking of “if you really feel bad for what happened to me then you have to make a sacrifice and understand the suffering and this is as clean as its going to get” and theres a bit where sqx is trying to beg for mercy but cant get the words out which im guessing is bc theres no good argument!! what happened was fucked up!!

“When Pei Ming saw that reinforcements had arrived, he didn’t appear particularly delighted; instead he threw the sword into the ground, then rubbed his nose and said, sounding grim, “You all just had to come just as I finished making these, what the heck.” - pei ming making coffins chopping down trees with his sword i love it #wastehistime2k17

“Xie Lian brought that basket of eggs along, and gave them away as souvenirs from the mortal realm. Many who received the eggs were overjoyed; some deciding to eat it along with their own blood, and some proclaiming they would hatch an eight-foot monster.” - GHOST CITY GHOST CITY

“Placing the brush down, he blew lightly at the ink and smiled. “If I like something, then my heart will not have room for any other, and I’ll always treasure it. A thousand times, a million times, no matter how many years, this will not change. This poem is the same." - thats nice and all but king... get therapy. i actually have further thoughts but tbh i dont want to put them into words bc they are simply too personal! moving on

didnt take any notes but somewhere in here was the bit with mount tong’lu opening and hua cheng losing it and kind of um. hm. that scene. thats another trope i really hate tbh i dont care for it as a way of including physical intimacy between characters and idk if it really ever adds anything but whatever moving on

The Half-Maquillage Woman - kind of interesting monster idea bc women and aging…. yeah. however i think this would be a lot stronger if there were a) more girls and this was b) discussed or illustrated at all prior to this moment. still interesting that its included knowing the author is a woman tho and there’s been comments on how ling wen is perceived vs pei ming. this book does keep giving me hope for interesting female character arcs i really want it to deliver something

quan yizhen..... i get u

lmao i have a note on a bit with lang ying that says “please dont be hc in disguise” and..... my clown nose was on but at least i knew that. for real this is bothering me how much he’s just. always. there. i know he’s a lead but we didn’t really need him around for a lot of this. oh well. okay now to my current notes

“Yet it was precisely because it wasn’t cooked that it had to be eaten quickly. Once Xie Lian cooked it, it wouldn’t be edible anymore” - fucking fantastic

“Xie Lian hugged his belly. “Of course! Only after having met you did I rediscover that it’s such a simple thing to be happy, hahaha…” Hearing this, Hua Cheng blinked. Xie Lian’s laughter quieted a bit, realizing what he just said was a little too revealing.” - okay i know i said what i said about being tired of hua cheng being everywhere but... the line…. the fact that theyre laughing together…. :pleading:

“It’s not,” Ling Wen said. “At least, I believe, there will definitely not be another in history who can create a dish called ‘Incorruptible Chastity Meatballs’” - and truer words were never spoken

“I, DO NOT WORSHIP GODS. “I, AM GOD!” - this was every bit as badass as i hoped but no one told me it was immediately followed up by a little bit of the ol dinner theater fjalkdsfjsd. also puqi shrine noooooooooo

“Xie Lian sighed as he thought, “Qi Rong has taken Guzi away, who knows if the poor child was eaten or abandoned. Wind Master...... ..... who knows if Black Water took him away. Pray they’re both safe.” yeah hey are we going to fucknig. find out what happened to the child???

and yeah i dooooont really care for the age regression? thing thats going on. i just dont like that trope tbh. but tiny hua cheng whipping out his fat ghost king wallet in the store was funny tho. it is really funny that hualian are just like wandering around some random towns while the heavens are in an uproar. i guess theres not much else to do but its funny

“Me too, me too. You all know of my shixiong, right? Talented, with an infinite future! He only had one small vice: he loved playing women. Decades ago, a little prostitute ghost seduced my shixiong and sucked him dry into human jerky, and that Hua, Hua, Hua, that ghost king dared shelter her.” - yes omg give me the forbidden hua cheng lore i love this for him for real it goes along nicely with xie lian’s principles about giving another cup. god i love shared values

“Hua Cheng poked again, and a small hole appeared on the wall, as if the wall was made of tofu.” - how’d he do that. why is this a ghost king power. its useful tho

*me shaking qi rong when he pops up* WHERE IS THE CHILD

mu qing fu yao is here okay im happy now. once again no one has a good grasp on their secret identity and i love that. this inn has descended into chaos and im delighted and im glad lan chang is back

“The good ol’ kitchen was suddenly squished and crowded, loud and noisy. Fu Yao was chasing that fetus spirit leaping up and down, Lan Chang was chasing after Fu Yao like she had gone mad. Half of Qi Rong’s face changed shape by the way Xie Lian was pressing him down on the chopping board, his back turning into a target for those yellow talismans Fu Yao hurled while being observed by a crowd, and Lan Chang would step on him from time to time.” - this is pure chaos. i love that mu qing was in that room when the mob checked and he didnt say a word didnt open the door just sent out a talisman as a warning. king your disguise is transparent

“Xie Lian remembered the way Feng Xin laughed until he was hoarse when he first heard that verbal password all those years back, and couldn’t help but feel nostalgic, even though it wasn’t the right time.” - awwwww omg im emotional about this... faithful friend feng xin laughing at xie lian’s stupid joke password and remembering it!!! ;_;

“They have, but they’re not effective,” Feng Xin said. “Usually they’re the most diligent in scorning the Palace of Ling Wen, like they could do the job way better if they had the position. Now that we need them to take up the task, not a single one can do even half of what she does.” - typical... typical typical typical

also emotional about the fact that feng xin contacted xie lian at all.....

also!! emotional about lan chang as a mom and wanting to help out sick lil guzi.....

xie lian forcing “fu yao” to let him help “his general” is making me.... what is friendship if not playing along with your buddies little shenanigans while also making them accept your help

“Someone like Mu Qing, even though he’s narrow-minded, petty, sensitive and skeptical, has a bad personality, constantly guessing, doesn’t say nice things, likes to nag, always offending people and has a lot of people who dislike him, has no friends, can remember small, unimportant details for a long period of time…” ”Xie Lian went on in one breath with a straight face, but in the end he concluded with, “...But I’ve known him since we were kids, after all, he’s still got principles.” - XIE LIAN PLEASE AFJDLKSFJDL omg ive seen this quote before but i figured he was talking to someone else not actually to mu qing himself fgjasdkfjsl. god thats amazing. hey im gonna help you out because i care but i will roast you first <3

waaaaaait so is lan chang aka jian lan that girl from book 2 we took a page to talk about and then disappeared? that has to be it why else would we have stopped to discuss her

“Jian Lan spat on his face, then choking his neck, she slapped him twice again. “WHAT SHITTY SUPREME! YOU SURE KNOW HOW TO BLOW YOURSELF UP! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, THINK YOU’RE EVEN WORTH TO BE THOUGHT OF AS EQUALS WITH THE OTHER THREE SUPREMES? WHAT ARE YOU EVEN GOOD AT? YOUR THICK SKIN? OF COURSE I DARE HIT YOU!” - oh this feels so good i cant lie. YES GET HIM!! CHOMPING AND VIOLENCE YES!!!!

okay this description of cuocuo.... im... that sure the hell is a creature

this book is so entertaining bc i already saw spoilers for the feng xin/jian lan/cuo cuo reveal and yet i could never have predicted the circumstances that brought it about. imagine being feng xin. the heavens are in an uproar and your only friend/enemy has been jailed for possible fetus spirit-related crimes but he escapes along with this female ghost who keeps causing problems. you figure “fuck it lets see if dianxia kept his old phone number” and he has but then he hangs up on you. you’ve got fuckall else to do so you go find him. mu qing is there but he’s in his disguise the two of you were using so you could watch over his highness while staying aloof. you think you see hua cheng only he’s a chiild for some goddamn reason but who knows at this point. the female ghost is also there and theres a fetus spirit climbing trees and biting your arrows in half. you realize the female ghost is your ex and the little demon is your son. it bites you. what do you do

amazing that despite everything going on everyone is still playing along with the “fu yao” persona when it would probably be easier to drop pretenses at this point. then again tbh if i could explain my actions to my friends while pretending to be a third party.... i probably would so.. carry on

“With all his devotees gone, only Feng Xin still treated him like the Flower-Crowned Martial God and His Highness the Crown Prince. ” “...his protection charms were all seen as trash. However, Feng Xin was still determined and tireless in handing them out; telling Xie Lian, look, you still have devotees.” “After all, he was the darling of the heavens since birth, high and mighty. Feng Xin so naturally spun around him like he was the world, so how could he possibly have his own life, his own heart” “Whether or not that fetus spirit was Feng Xin’s son, if it was that period of poverty that made Feng Xin lose the girl he loved, Xie Lian wouldn’t be able to forgive himself no matter what." ohhhh my god this relationship i. im...

oh my god i still have 30 more chapters until book 4............ its naptime now i think

#tgcf liveblog #so close and yet so far......#i keep hearing tell of this fabled book 4 i must press onwards......#but now im sleepy.....#mouse mumbles

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steve0discusses · 4 years ago

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S5 Ep 4: But His Name Backwards is Nomolos????

World is still kind of a mess, so lets go back to Yugioh, during an arc that is so incredibly tame that no one has died. Not even a little bit. No one has risked the destruction of the ecosystem with Pegasus’ historical fanart drawn on digital playing card. No angry gods have done really anything. They’re all on break.

Except for Pharaoh, but Pharaoh isn’t that angry anymore ever since the Orichalcos thing. He mostly just talks about card matches I couldn’t care less about because it’s Grandpa and Joey.

hey you know what bro just noticed that I haven’t noticed over these past 4 seasons--Look at Yugi and Yami’s hair.

Yugi’s hair has 3 extra floppy down bangs by his eyes. I just always assumed those were the same number as Pharaoh’s bangs--but turns out no, those are Pharoah’s streaks but flopped down.

Which means when he de-charges, his hair just flops over directly into his eyes.

And now I have an urge to animate something for the first time in years (spoiler: I do not have the time to animate this.) because WHY would they never animate this hair flop for us??? The POTENTIAL.

Grandpa spends most of the time saying “Joseph, can you guess what card I’m holding???” and Joey is like “Why would I tell you that? I’m trying to play a game? Would you stop explaining the rules? it’s getting kind of weird.” and I got a little bit of an insight into what the homelife of Yugi Muto must have been like growing up with a Grandpa who is just always talking about cards.

It does explain why Yugi plays so freakin slow, though.

(read more under the cut)

This is clearly just a visual gag but also maybe this is also how the Doctor just gets around?

Speaking of visual gags and getting around, it’s our two most inconsequential minibosses, refusing to leave the series.

Y’all let me know last time that we are in fact, still in America, and I guess this is proof of it, because there’s no other way they could have walked here. I mean Yugioh is real bad at geography but they seem to have a good grasp of a big ass ocean existing betwixt Japan and the US.

Not sure where they got those rad Hobbit outfits, though. If this is their new look, I’ll accept it.

(Yes, this is a new font. Again, I’m trying out stuff to try and make it accessible. I will figure this out before the season is over)

Honestly, I didn’t think Rex and Weevil could get much worse than being dead. Thought that maybe waking up in a hospital bed after joining the Big Bad would be enough of a wake up call to the direction their life is heading.

But, considering that this arc has no real villain so far other than a guy who likes the color purple and bathing in milk...maybe that’s fine. It’s not a BAD thing to play cards, necessarily. This doesn’t make them bad people...it’s what you do with those cards.

Like destroying a Caltrain with it, for instance.

Unless of course, the amount of energy it takes to do a card hologram is the same amount as an NFT, in which case I guess that would make them bad no matter who you play against. But we live in a universe with Noah in it, who probably had enough energy pumped into that orb to fuel like 15 Americas. Fossil fuels seem to be just fine in this universe.

In fact I don’t think it’s ever come up? Surprisingly, Seto Kaiba has never had to deal with an eco terrorist, unless you counted Raphael. That is hella rare for a 90′s early 00′s show. I feel like they were contractually obligated to have at least one fossil fuel episode.

Well, good for the Yugioh universe, who managed to solve the energy crisis off screen. Good for them.

PS Hawkins said this and afterward was like “I just want you kids to appreciate what you’re seeing here today.” and it’s like damn Hawkins. Condescend much? This old guy is like King of Throwing Shade While Appearing to be Helpful.

Anyway, the gimmick of Solomon Muto is that he plays a bunch of history cards. Arthur Hawkins was super excited about it, but I feel like the other kids were like “We straight up have never heard of any of these old ass cards for a reason.”

Bro has informed that this card also sucks ass IRL, and like...I’m not surprised.

(grandpa’s font has also changed to something he’s actually wearing, and to something that is way more legible.)

To think that during the time Grandpa spent trying to get this dragon working, he could have been researching the damn God Cards and helping Pharaoh figure out his past history. Youknow...that history stuff that he devotes his entire life to studying.

Course, maybe Grandpa was smart enough to know NOT do that. I feel like Grandpa putting the brakes on revealing Pharaoh’s history is reason enough to just not open that Pandora’s box, but that will be another arc, I guess. This one we’re just showing some ancient dragon merch to sell toys to kids IRL. Gotta have your episodes to remind you that Yugioh is in fact toys.

Also, Hawkins proceeded to point out to Yugi in a way without literally saying it, that Yugi doesn’t go home often enough to distract his Grandpa with cards.

Which Hawkins followed up by throwing shade at Joey Wheeler for the rest of the match, since he was the only one here who stans Grandpa. You can see who Rebecca gets it from, is what I’m saying.

Joey reveals his only motivation to be here--which should be to get a plane ticket. Like their only reason to be in this tournament is already done?

But his other motivation is silly.

uh huh.

Tristan really did lay this specific dunk in the show. He is being given a plane ticket to do nothing. Wow, Tristan.

At least Joey’s motivation isn’t based on fixing some girl. For once Joey is just doing this for himself and not for a relationship that will never happen for at least several years, or to be a Father for his oblivious Sister. Thank you, show. Course I say that, and there could be another Mai arc right around the corner.

Anyway, there really isn’t much else to say about this arc other than Joey has finally bested his mentor in a card game. Still can’t best Yugi or Pharaoh or Seto or hell, probably even Tea or Mokuba if they ever pulled out cards again...

...but he bested Grandpa, who got polished off by being beaten up by several thug-like holograms.

Not sure why he fell over other than...something in the holograms must be real in this universe. There’s no other reason this would happen!

(honestly I can’t handle Grandpa’s face. It looks. SO BAD. There’s something offsetting about it that I really do not like, and I think it’s the eyes and the tiny nose and the very skeletal bone structure--I don't like it)

Like every person here is convinced that Yugi’s grandpa is one step away from keeling over and it’s low key hilarious to me. The man has died and been resurrected. You think Pegasus did that bad of a job??? Grandpa Muto will likely outlive all of you.

This show really can’t lift Joey without taking two more punches to get him back down. Like the show keeps telling me that Joey is a complete idiot, and he kind of is, but I want to point out that he is a talented idiot who was second in most of the tourney’s he’s been in and he should have killed Marik straight up if he wasn’t like struck by lightning first.

Yes, he got distracted and raced after Mai last season so he prematurely died, but that was clearly just a phase because I don’t see Mai here.

Yes, in the actual show, they each said “ohhhh” and it’s like...the brain damage on these kids. We need to get them back to school.

I think there’s like 30+ other characters introduced but the only ones I know are Rex, Weevil, Leon, and...the girl who hugged Yugi once? I don’t remember her name. But they’re probably next. I feel like this is a bit of a slower arc, but hey, if anything it’s easier for me to cap.

anyway, if you just got here, this is a link to read these in Chrono Order!

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

I’ll have you know I wrote this whole thing thinking Nomolos is a Fleet Foxes song and it hellllllllla got stuck in my head, but it turns out the word I was thinking of is Mykonos.

youtube

#ygo #yugioh #yu gi oh #recap #photo recap #S5 #Ep4 #Yugi muto #joey Wheeler #Grandpa muto #solomon muto #tea gardner #tristan taylor #duke devlin #Mokuba Kaiba #professor hawkins #at least this duel was short

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