#Did he go the wrong way already?

[isqueedmyself]

Hallan's picture was created using Portrait Works.

Part Two I hurry through the knee-high heather until I clear the ridge behind our farm and on down the slope a bit into the next dale. Then I pause to catch my breath and consider my next move.

Chipping Over is the nearest village. I could be there by midmorning. There might be work available of a sort, but not much until the market at the end of the week. Also, this is the first place my mother will look for me, and it would be supremely embarrassing to be dragged through the streets by the ears by a screeching little old lady. I love by mum, but she does do that at times.

There's Fraymere House, too, Ser Bardach's seat. He'd likely have something for a brawny lad with a sharp ax. Of course, my mum is just as likely to show up there and scream until Ser Bardach laughs himself silly and sends me home.

Or, a day's journey up beyond the hills, there's the Barleymoor. I don't know why they call it that, since there's not a single ear of barley growing anywhere up there. There are meant to be ruins here and there, though, as well as hideouts of quite a few malefactors. Rich malefactors, they are, rich enough to have attracted lads from farm and village before.

None of those lads has actually come back to give an account of themselves, though.

Still, that's one place Mum's not going to come looking for me. And hey, maybe the malefactors are hiring.

I turn up the little valley and stride toward the source of its rivulet and the wide empty moorland beyond.

[quantumfeat72]

part of assassiffrin's bonnie hangout! he has a bit of a different fighting/teaching philosophy than canon siffrin...

(unshaded version of one of the panels under the cut because i'm proud of it and it's hard to see in the actual comic)

[deafening-radio-silence]

I think that Dr. Christina "I was an excellent soldier" Raynor needs to deal with some personal things before she's anyone's therapist, because she strong-armed more of Bucky's autonomy away from him than Zemo did within the series.

[pronouncingitwang]

adam scott says in the "inside the episode" of 2.07 that it allows the audience to "see the magic of gemma and why she immediately took over [mark's] life and his heart" and dichen lachman describes the ep in the severance podcast as "the audience getting to know [gemma] and everyone seeing what mark had that he lost." well, what about gemma? how much do we really get to know her? what did she lose? why did mark take over her heart?

they had 50 minutes for a Gemma Episode and they spent half of it on dead wife tropes and her smiling at mark with come-hither eyes while not giving us a single new fact* about her or a relationship outside of mark and mark's family. a subversion of the dead wife trope is not just scenes later showing they had an imperfect marriage bc mark (or nobody) is the problem in all of those scenes; you need to disrupt the idea that she was the perfect wife, and i don't think we get that. so much of it is explicitly presented through mark's pov. she doesn't hurt him at any point. she's just there being lovely or victimized as he loves or neglects her. everything we learned about her past gives more depth to his current grief but contributes little to our understanding of her current suffering or motivations. that could change with time, but for a first try, i think it's an abysmally bad showing

* that wasn't in mark's 1.07 monologue, his conversations with devon and alexa, or the the you you are pdf, all of which i think did a better job than this episode

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

There's a small moment in the Hunter x Hunter 2011 anime that I thought was pretty cute. It's close to the beginning, during the Hunter Exam, when they're looking for pigs in the forest. Gon slides down a hill, and Killua follows him, only for him to crash because Gon had stopped at the bottom of the hill. This scene!

It's one of those rare little bits added by an adaptation that really add to the characters - because yeah, this was not in the manga.

I find this anime is really good at adding little moments that either

are just cute or endearing

are fun extra interactions that show off the character dynamics more

actually highlight something about the characters in question

This one, I feel, does all three. First of all, I just love seeing Killua a bit more involved in their group before the eventual reveal of "he just wanted to be friends". It's really sweet.

But mostly, I think it's interesting that Killua assumed Gon was just messing around, when Gon was actually focusing his efforts on beating the challenge. Because, sure, Killua finds Gon somewhat intriguing, and he really wants to stick around him due to his desire for a friend - but Killua still sees himself as a class above pretty much everyone else there, and also as an assassin in a category so firmly removed from "regular kid".

So, Killua totally misreads Gon here. He assumes Gon is just doing a regular kid thing and attempts to mimic it so he can join in. It doesn't actually occur to him that Gon was tracking the pigs, or focusing on the task at hand.

It's a far cry from later on, where Killua and Gon are primarily a team effort - in sync, aware of the others' strengths, and taking each other quite seriously.

And part of it, of course, is that they just don't know each other very well at this point. But I think another thing is that Killua, during most of the Hunter Exam, is more invested in what Gon represents than who he is, necessarily.

His first friend represents rebellion against his family, childish enjoyment, and the desire for connection and understanding that he is not receiving. And even though, as time goes on, he grows more and more impressed with Gon, I really don't think it fully clicked that he wanted that friend he wished for to be specifically Gon until he was confronted by Illumi.

I also think Killua takes Gon a lot more seriously after the fight with Hanzo, and especially after Gon went all the way to the Zoldyck estate to save him. Before the Hanzo fight, Killua was outright irritated by Gon being ranked higher than him overall, and was even a little bitter at the beginning of the fight ("I could've dodged that easily" comes to mind).

By Heavens Arena, I feel they both have a much firmer grasp on, and appreciation for, who the other is as a person. Killua is more consciously aware of his investment in Gon as an individual rather than an abstract, and Gon is aware of Killua's crappy upbringing and is quick to be very supportive of him as he figures things out for himself.

During the Hunter Exam though, a lot of the interactions between them feel a lot like Killua is either mimicking or acting out "regular kid" behaviours, either because that's what he thinks Gon is already doing, or he wants to see if Gon will respond in kind.

Aaaaand... he does. :)

So, while they do not have what I feel is a true depth of bond here yet, the foundation is already being laid down for their powerful friendship - Gon and Killua both show an immediate willingness and enjoyment to go along with what the other wants to do and to try out what the other is good at, and they wind up having a whole lot of fun together right off the bat.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Chapter 110 is 13 pages long welcome to hell!!! so in a lot of ways this is just more fuel for a theory that I've had for a few weeks now, that's only gotten stronger with each recent season 5 episode, which is that the last episode of the season is gonna end on 110, and that Asagiri/Harukawa and Bones have been collaborating to make this happen, specifically because it's a major turning point that would be the only good place to end the season on.

When we started getting especially long chapters again (like from 25-35ish pages, with the exception of 107.5, the last two being some of the longest we've ever had), at first I just assumed that Asagiri/Harukawa got freed up from some other obligations they'd been having to cause the extremely short/half chapters, like promotional stuff for the anime/Beast movie, or working on light novels. But then 109 happened, with the "supposed" death of Dazai, and heavy emphasis at the end on how literally everyone is at their lowest point right now, and I got to thinking. 11 episodes is a strangely specific number for an anime season -- why not 12, or 13, or even 10, like you'd usually see? Why have we gotten suddenly gotten two 35 page chapters out of nowhere, that's almost unheard of at this point? They're both beautiful chapters, don't get me wrong (as always), and maybe A/H simply just didn't want to cut them in halves because they felt like the full emotional impact wouldn't hit/that there were no good cutoff points in them, but you can't deny that it's surprising, after all the shorter chapters we've been getting. Why has the anime been going at such insanely breakneck pacing for the most part ever since around the Sunday Tragedy chapters, even more so than it has in the past? So much so that it feels dangerously close to overtaking the manga?

Well, maybe, just maybe, it's because..... Asagiri decided a long time ago that whatever happens in 110 is the only point that feels "season finale"-worthy enough, in an arc that still isn't anywhere close to being completely wrapped up, and so both the manga and the anime have been specifically coordinated to reach that part within 2 and a half weeks of each other?

I've seen a lot of people now think season 5 will end with 109, and as much as my sadistic side would find that hilarious, I honestly don't think they'd do that and realistically don't want it to happen; it'd be so cruel to cliffhanger the anime for years like that, and just doesn't feel like a season cliffhanger BSD would do, a series that is ultimately hopeful and uplifting. Seasons 2 and 3 had a positive, conclusive ending; the only reasons seasons 1 and 4 didn't was because they're technically not really full seasons of their own, and are more like the first cour of another "season" that also came out that same year (seasons 1 and 2 both aired in 2016, so they're more like one big season, and seasons 4 and 5 have both aired this year, so they're also more like one big season, again taking into account how episodes 12 and 50 are not satisfying finales like episodes 24, 37, and hypothetically, 61, are). I really can't see season 5 ending with Dazai and Fukuzawa's supposed deaths, Sigma being unconscious and maybe close to death, Atsushi being vulnerable and limbless again, everyone we love still vampires, and the entire world being basically doomed; that's just too depressing and not like BSD at all. However, having said that, if it doesn't end there, there really isn't any good place to end the season before that, either, that feels in any way satisfying or like a finale at all. And so, to me, that only leaves after 109: chapter 110.

I think things are really gonna turn around next chapter. Like I said, everyone is at their lowest point right now, it cannot possibly get any worse, the framing of Dazai, Fukuzawa, and sskk at the end of 109 is telling us that; this is the time for the heroes to finally start winning again, with Aya being so close to pulling out the sword, and for all the thematic reasons other people have talked about to death that I don't need to go into here again. This upcoming chapter being so short again makes a part of me wary of 110 being "the one", so to speak, I won't lie, but at the same time, it's very possible that it needs to be that short because that's all the final episode of the season will be able to reasonably fit in, since it's already gonna be VERY close if they do make it all the way to 109. And at the end of the day, I don't doubt at all that Asagiri and Harukawa can make these the most monumental and game-changing mere 13 pages ever if they wanted to; a chapter does not at all need to be extremely long in order to be an important and impactful one, even if short ones we've gotten in the past haven't felt the most important.

An additional thought I've had, though this is much more crack territory than all this already is, is that since we know from Anime Expo that a Stormbringer movie at some point is highly likely (judging from Asagiri's reaction when someone brought it up), it's possible that chapter 110 and thus the final episode will involve the long-anticipated return of Verlaine and/or Adam, or at least some other major reference to Stormbringer, that would naturally and smoothly lead into a Stormbringer movie to explain things to people who haven't read the novel. It would make a lot of sense, especially since the s4 OP has the Old World sign behind Chuuya, which might be a hint that this has been in the works ever since seasons 4/5 were first in planning with Asagiri. We also know that Dazai and Chuuya's voice actors apparently struggled to record their lines together this season, which probably relates to 101 and possibly 109, but it could be 110 too.... I could be very wrong, as I'm no expert on this kind of thing, but I kinda doubt they would bring Chuuya's actor in for just the vampire growls, and Asagiri placing heavy emphasis on Chuuya's importance this season in that one interview gives me the impression that he's talking about much more than just 101/109. But that's the least solid evidence I have, that's just mostly based on vibes I get.

So basically, I think a lot of factors -- the unusual episode count, how close the anime is to catching up to the manga with three whole episodes left, the seemingly arbitrary recent chapter lengths, and the climactic events of 109 -- can tell us that 110 might be a very, VERY big deal. Again, there's of course no way this arc is anywhere near close to being finished, with so much left to address and resolve, but since it is currently incomplete in the manga, unlike the previously adapted arcs, if the anime was going to adapt it at all, they'd have to find a place that feels satisfying enough to end this season, knowing there won't be more anime for a long time after this, and so I think they specifically planned for that, from both Bones' and A/H's sides. 10 episodes might not have been enough to reach that point, but 12 or 13 might have been too many it wouldn't have been if Bones actually decided to slow down and let the story breathe the way it needs to, but this post isn't meant to criticize the anime, so maybe 11 was just right. And maybe Asagiri and Harukawa specifically pushed to make recent chapters longer than usual, in order to make sure that the manga reached the story content in 110 the monthly release right before season 5 was to end.

Is this just copium? Absolutely. Am I going to look like an absolute clown in two days when this post ages like milk? Probably. But the evidence is There, so let me just enjoy my delusions until Sunday, okay 🥂🫡

[camgoloud]

he still has his tonsils. by the way if you even care

[theprincessandthepie]

LOOK AT HERRRRRRR <3333333

[psychopomp-namine]

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[oxventure-text-posts]

I'm gonna be honest with you guys, the urge to do the same thing I did with the oitd silhouettes, aka slap text posts onto the art with no knowledge of their canon personality other than what they did in the trailer and pulling from the fandom's perceived personality for them, for the new oxventure characters revealed in that trailer is so real

[cicada-candy]

I get the sense that Nina is gonna haunt the next season.

[jaffre]

doctor confirmed that 👉 this guy 👈 got pcos and i just got an implant to at the very least get my whacky periods under control and hopefully get them to stop entirely

[sporadicboinglerstealer2000]

I'm starting the think Emhyr's plans are just bs. Right I was thinking last night about it all and pretty sure we can all agree both Emhyr and Vilgefortz plans for Ciri are like the worse out of any of the factions that want her (the lodge and elves are both shitty too but I feel like are not as bad compared to these two twits, not by much still bad) But Emhyr says he'll '...beget her a son who will beget a son.' which would not work for his plans of making Nilfgaard a powerful empire since the elder blood can only remain active in the female line, so Vilgefortz must have omitted some details there. However his plans for marrying Ciri will only speed up this process by one generation. Like if he was normal about this and was like 'this is my long lost daughter' (easy to tell cos they look near identical and Ciri has the obvious looks of her mother and grandmother so anyone who met those two women (like Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia, Calanthes relative) could verify that) then it would either be his foretold grandchild or great-grandchild who would be the actual prophecy child who would inherit his grand empire. However if he got his way then his son and grandson would have half of the gene because they aren't women and wouldn't be able to carry the full elder blood gene, so unless it was a family of controlled incest then the power he wants would just cease to exist. (I doubt getting the Nilfgaardians behind his whole Targaryen family would go down well).

Another thing, if the plan went accordingly and Ciri was on the ship with them then he'd would of sent away Pavetta anyway, which would make it all sooo much worse because Ciri would know he was then (even in the books she notes something familiar about him which would make sense since she was 5 when he 'died' so a part of her could have some recognition). Though admittedly that probably wouldn't happen since I think Vilgefortz would've gotten rid of him and then had both Pavetta and Ciri for his own sick plans. Essentially Emhyr has justified this incest by speeding up the process by a generation because he's impatient. If he hadn't attacked Cintra and instead sent some messengers to Calanthe being like 'hey it's me, your son-in-law I'm actually an emperor and Ciri will be my heir and as such Cintra will join Nilfgaard' then there's Cintra secured. Presumedly he had the whole incest plan the whole time looking for Ciri (I assume so anyway) and only changed his mind after Geralt tore into him, Yennefer didn't want her daughter to cry, said daughter cries so he lets her go. Like he only saw reason after having it pointed out to him? Also the fact it's obvious Ciri is practically identical minus the hair and probably eyes (are his eyes described?) If the incest plot didn't exist then he could just be like 'i've searched for you my long lost daughter you're an empress' then things could've gone a little better, only thing is now Ciri may actually want to go with him (I can see Geralt and Yennefer being able to accompany here or at least allowed to live), but no and I fail to see why at least a version of this couldn't happened.

[theladyfae]

i think human nature/family of blood is a really good two parter in how it manages to show how full of shit ten is 🫶

[brutal-out-here]

As someone who despises misunderstandings with a burning passion, watching an entire war begin because of one and then said person who misunderstood finding out about the misunderstanding and continuing to let it go on is so so awful to watch