#Hardboiled Heavies

[kaos-mass]

[fusions-hardboiled-artshack]

Today marks 3 god forsaken years since I’ve became obsessed over these freaks. Aughh the creatures…

Context for the one with the reddish/pinkish background, to me it looked like they are looking down at you after you died, they are welcoming you to hell.

And the drawing that started it all.

[gojira007]

Sonic Man really does fit in just about perfectly alongside Booster and Ted, and I VERY much appreciate the authentic Comic Book Cover feel of the composition; the expressions from Booster and Ted are also both pitch-perfect. The playing-card conceit with Zatanna and Heavy Magician is also brilliant, and I absolutely ADORE how much clear FUN they're both having; the trade in Hat Pulls is especially clever!

What with this Sonic x JL thing about to happen, felt like drawing some chars I like together real quick.

[wahbegan]

Something something Batman is a billionaire fascist discourse ignores the fact that Batman has his roots in the hardboiled detective story, which thematically was written at a time when trust in the police was at a catastrophic low and as such mainly deals with private detectives kinda extralegally cracking cases that the cops are either not solving or actively obstructing and his conflict with the police has remained a fairly consistent point in most of his stories outside the Golden Age of Comics, Commissioner Gordon is the exception not the rule something something

[not-available-for-comment]

Always forget how much I love roasted seaweed until I’m making these bowls and adding like. 2-3 times the recommended amount. 😄

One of my favorite hot weather dinners, and good for this weekend since I seem to have wrecked my stomach with stress this week.

I got imitation crab stick to put in it last night, and some frozen shrimp scampi to put in it later, but I might try and hunt down some smoked salmon and avocado too. Just really craving cold smoky creaminess right now.

[a-hardboiled-heavy-a-day]

Yooooo

She’s so cool I could gush about her all day, like there’s a reason she’s my favourite heavy like look at her.

The silly and the serious.

I was also going to draw her in the Akira pose even before the volume came out, I was even going to draw that for this ask but I really didn’t like how it was turning out so made the bellow image instead.

Words silliest & most powerful creature.

(She should have exploded Fang and his crew with her mind for messing with Jimmy btw.)

(Also tumblr actually let me know when I get an ask on a sideblog and be a functional website challenge (((impossible.))))

[wickedzeevyln]

Arroz Caldo

There were days when I felt like a salted wound, when any direction taken zaps with a sting, when the bone is undressed of its flesh and the wind blew on it like an insult. As if that wasn’t dramatic enough, clouds banded together and poured buckets of heaviness off their chest. Just in case, life wasn’t doing its job. I couldn’t wait to get home, to hide. But then, there was Arroz Caldo. A…

[sonichedgeblog]

Which of the 5 Hardboiled Heavies is your favorite? Support us on Patreon

[lullabyes22-blog]

Snippet - Breathe - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Vi goes against her old grudges.

Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

More Fanfic + Tidbits

Tip Jar

Snippet:

The answers don't come.

All Vi knows is this: the longer she stands there, the more likely someone's going to find her. She needs to go. Right fucking now.

A heartbeat later, a body rolls up to the surface.

The warmason.

He is thrashing, clawing for the basin's rim. The moment his hands seize the ebony ledge, he tries to haul himself up and out. Then the water spumes red, and a half-throttled scream tears loose from his throat. Beneath the water line, more red bubbles thickly black. The warmason's eyes bulge; his face goes from puce to gray. His legs kick frenziedly. A hidden force drags him back under.

This time, there are no ripples. Only deathly stillness. The water is as black as an oil-slick.

A minute passes. Two. Vi's eyes track back and forth, but nothing emerges.

Now's your chance.

They've drowned each other. They're dead.

Get gone—before you are too.

Except Vi isn’t bolting for the exit. She is lunging for the pool.

She doesn't think. A single eyeblink, and her helmet's off, the gun tossed aside. She leaps over the edge of the basin, and straight in. The first hot shock of the water makes her gasp. She plunges through the red-tinged waves stirred by the struggling bodies. Her legs kick; her torso arrows down, down, down  

It's dark.

The blood in the water stings her eyes. The chemical undercurrent of Shimmer burns her nostrils. An aftertaste, fouler, lingers in her mouth. Three potential corpses and Janna-knows-what are emptied into the water, and Vi can't see a damn thing. She can only feel around blindly, lungs screaming, revulsion riding a rill of bubbles to the surface. 

Her fingers touch against something cold and hard. It's like getting bitten by an eel. Vi's first reflex is to jerk away, but she forces her arm to stay put. Her hand curls around a wrist. No way to know who it belongs to. Grabbing hold, she tugs. The weight drags her down. She tugs harder. There is a sensation of two bodies, latched together, but loosely. The heavier of the two is anchored to the bottom. One final tug, and Vi feels the resistance slacken. The second body—the lighter one—comes loose. She kicks upward.

Cresting to the pool's surface is like swallowing sweet wine after a mouthful of rot-gut. Vi's head breaks above the waterline, and she gulps breath after breath. In her arms, a body floats bonelessly. Silco, head lolling, face upturned. His good eyelid is crimped shut. The shark-eye kicks off an irradiated glow.

The after-kick of Shimmer, or a death-flare?

Vi has no idea.

Treading the water, she hooks her arms under his armpits and yanks him to the pool's edge. He is heavy; waterlogged, his body's density seems to have quadrupled. It's no small feat to haul him up and over the pool's slick marble ledge, but she manages.

Dragging him higher, she lays him out prone, the length of his body flat along the tiles.

He is bare-chested and shoeless. His trousers adhere to his legs, molded tight as clingfilm. His skin is the color of marble, and about the same temperature. The Bowie knife, his favorite murder weapon, is still gripped loosely in one fist.

Vi's fingers go to the pulse at his throat. She finds it racing: a whipsaw's tempo. There's a pallor to his face that resembles a hardboiled egg, the shell shucked, a stillborn chick inside.  His lips are flaky white, and his body is shivering violently, and there are bruises deepening everywhere. The nastiest is a livid mottle at the juncture of his collarbone and his sternum. Another, seeping blood, blotches his scarred temple.  

Vi doesn't want to consider the possibility of brain damage, or how much Shimmer-infused water he's quaffed, or what he was doing fighting a Noxian warmason.  She hopes to Janna nothing's hit his frontal lobe and robbed him of—what?

His ever-flapping mouth? His unparalleled gift for double-dealing? His unerring instinct to put a boot up her ass?

His old self.

Blut.

Vi's gut heaves. He's a bastard. A murderous, lying, backstabbing bastard. And he'd probably kill her, if their roles were reversed.

But no one deserves to drown.

Her hands, of their own volition, work the wet hair back from his brow. His skin is clammy like weeping cinderblock. The rest of him's nearly as leaden. With two fingers, she roots through his mouth for obstructions. Then, she pinches his nose shut, seals her lips over his, and breathes.

One breath. Two. She repeats the process.

Not a spasm or a twitch.

Vi's own breath jitters as adrenaline redlines. She can already see the night barreling toward the doomed fallout: Zaun's Chancellor, discovered dead in the hot-house. His murderer, caught in the act. Her fingerprints all over his cooling corpse. Sevika, the Council, Topside's cream and the Undercity's scum, all united in their desire to see her dead.

And Jinx.

Robbed of a sister, and a father, all in one blow.

Fuck.

Silco's good eye stays sealed shut. The bad one stares up from its web of scar tissue: a dead thing in a bed of calcified coral. His mouth on hers tastes of metal and brine. Vi is close enough that she can see the fine tracery of blood vessels branching below the translucent skin of his temples. The man who'd once taught her to sing The Wave-Soaked Maiden—and here she is, trying to pour air into his stoppered-up lungs.

Again, again, and again.

"Breathe." Her hands pump his sternum. "C’mon, you rat bastard. Breathe."

[homestuckreplay]

CLOCKS DESTROYED: 5/1000

(page 1155-1172)

SO. THIS INTERMISSION, HUH. It’s all laid out pretty clearly. The Midnight Crew are trying to rob the Felt’s vault as revenge for the Felt robbing a casino they like (which we’ve already seen on page 833), and any amount of death and clock destruction along the way is just a bonus. It’s a sort of hardboiled noir villain pastiche, nobody here has any morals or is any worse than each other, and narratively the tone is more sarcastic and mean – ‘all aboard the idiot wagon!’ (p.1165) and ‘[i]t is for little children who poop hard in their baby ass diapers’ (p.1167). Time is important, games are important, and the mysterious leader Lord English is important.

It’s a lot of fun reading the point of view of an intentional villain – the narration has that slight over the top ridiculousness that makes it easy to get swept along in these schemes and also want to see these dead green torsos, in contrast to the Midnight Crew’s brief appearances in Acts 1-3, where we saw them externally and they seemed pretty stupid.

I know as well that there’s a lot of references to Problem Sleuth here – the inventory system, the hats full of candy, the item duality, the suggestion to build a fort, etc – which I’ll be reading in full soon so I’ll talk more about that then.

While the plot seems straightforward, there’s a couple hints to the contrary, especially ‘Best to avoid DIE (6) in any direct confrontations unless you want a temporal mess on your hands’ (p.1170). The Felt engage in ‘despicable time shenanigans’, and this is probably why the mansion has a thousand clocks that all need to be smashed – including the one Slick brought in with him. Without timekeeping abilities, it’s harder to mess with time. There’s also the fact that Slick either can’t or won’t kill SNOWMAN, the potential ‘significance’ of the rules card to blackjack (p.1169), and of course the connection between Spades Slick and Jack Noir.

Slick doesn’t recognize humans – the picture beneath the rug is right-wing comedian Jeff Foxworthy, and the laptop is Bing Crosby – while Jack has intimately encountered Dad Egbert, also a human. Jack liked the name Spades Slick but didn’t recognize it as his own – although it’s possible he could have been renouncing an old name, saying he’s no longer that person. And when Slick loads mspaintadventures, he reads actual Homestuck, not just the low poly Homestuck intermission from the Midnight Crew. So some kind of parallel universe might be more likely than progression through time, or even time travel.

Just having the Crosbytop is another link to Dad Egbert, who had the Bing Crosby photograph in his room. That photo plus any laptop would alchemize the Crosbytop. I love the idea that some of the Midnight Crew’s possessions could be things the kids have alchemized that got moved around through time and space – Slick’s hat is a regular hat, but could also be Dad’s hat + some oil collected from an imp. (side note: having a backup hat is such a Dad Egbert thing to do.) (side side note: if Dad kept candy in his hat, would it be Gushers, to combine his two great loves of his son and Betty Crocker?)

Slick doesn’t understand the term ‘captchalogue’, but does have an inventory system – and he has a rules card for blackjack which has a bar code on the reverse, not unlike how captchalogue cards have captcha codes. The card is also a key, so presumably the code can be scanned to unlock something, similar to how captcha codes can be used to create items. He also has a similar bar code on his arm (p.1163) just like the one on WV’s arm (p.677), although WV had no inventory system at all besides picking things up, and he recognized humans (John) immediately.

In the heist plans, Slick’s ‘heavy muscle and expert safecracker, Boxcars, is headed straight down to the vault’ (p.1172). There’s a small image of the vault here, and if I’m not VERY mistaken, we’ve seen ‘Boxcars’ with this vault before – carrying it to contain Dad Egbert (p.957). So this vault may also have traveled in time, or passed back and forth between the two gangs, or appearified, or SOMETHING. The link between these stories really isn’t obvious to me but I’m enjoying the mystery of it.

The intermission is incorporating color into the narrative text, especially green, which is used for ‘THE FELT’ and ‘LORD ENGLISH’ (p.1155), and all the individual Felt names (p.1170-1171) besides the O in SNOWMAN. Other colors are used for the Felt’s numbers, matching the colors of their hats. This isn’t the first instance of color in the narrative text – Jade’s red ‘<3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ to her grandpa on page 919 jumps to mind – but it’s VERY rare outside of characters’ notes and chatlogs, so stands out here. That shade of bright spring green is also very similar to the green on the Sburb logo and on John’s shirt; the only color seen on page 1. So, green in general, or this specific green, might have some overall significance. It definitely links the Felt to being Sburb NPCs, same as the Midnight Crew – could they be the inhabitants of the planet John’s on, and he’ll get to interact with versions of them in Act 4?

As further evidence for this, Sburb NPCs all seem linked to long-established analog games – WV, PM, and the light and dark kingdoms have been linked to chess (p.423-4, 721, 844; modern ruleset invented ~1500), while the Midnight Crew are linked to playing cards (modern deck invented ~1500s), and the felt to pool (invented ~1400s). This is different to the beta kids – John, Rose and Dave are all linked to in-universe video games such as Sburb, Problem Sleuth, And It Don’t Stop and Grand Snack Fuckyeah as well as John’s full collection on page 31. Jade as usual is a weird outlier who exists somewhere between the two, and is linked to real world board games, which are more modern (at least in their trademarked, commercial forms) – see page 772. Games are definitely a key motif in the story, so I’m keeping track of what games characters are linked to, and which characters don’t play games at all (Dad Egbert??)

[notomys-mordax-blog]

Part 2: Neve Gallus and the Shadow Dragons

Overall: 7/10

Important things first. I absolutely love Neve's design. Her casual outfit with the IDGAF unbuttoned shirt is 10/10. She's both very fashion-forward and feminine, but doesn't look soft. It's neat. The only real critique I have here is that I don't like how most of her face is hidden by her hat. While this felt like an intentional choice, I think it detracted more than it added to her vibes. 

Speaking of vibes, Neve's vibes are impeccable. She's a classic hardboiled detective solving mysteries and putting anything resembling a feeling in a box where it can't hurt her. They really leaned into the film-noir vibes with her voice direction with mixed results. Sometimes it's really effective, but other times it's stilted, especially next to characters who haven't been pulled out of a crime procedural. Overall, I really enjoyed her bit, but I can understand where critique about her voice direction comes from.

Despite her serious allergy to admitting her emotions, you can see how deeply she cares about the people around her by her actions. This worked really well in her interactions with the companions, but was a little bit more uneven when it came to Rook. I really liked seeing the social activities around the Lighthouse, but it was disappointing that Rook wasn't really directly involved in any of them. As a result they felt like an outsider (or like the Boss that people don't want to get too close to).

You could also see this with Neve herself. She liked to give the other characters small, practical advice and support for their problems, but didn't really seem to give Rook (who frankly, has more serious problems than a lot of his companions) the same treatment. I think this is really an area where the writing would have benefited from the addition of some barks and greetings to help link the "relationship-level-up" scenes and make it feel more like the characters are slowly getting to know each other, versus have an uneven sort of ladder where the relationship moves in jumps and starts.

This unfortunately also extends to her romance. I am the kind of person who really enjoys NPC romances. It not only makes me feel like the characters have more agency, but it is often a two-cakes scenario when it comes to interesting ships. The gender inversion of the detective x femme fatale of the pairing between Neve and Lucanis is really interesting, and they both use acts of service as their love language. Unfortunately, while the two of them have a lot of chemistry with each other, their chemistry with the player character is pretty flat. Lucanis's romance suffers more, in my opinion, because the content is so much sparser, but I also felt it with Neve.  My poor head canons need to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the Veilguard relationships work. 

Neve's role in the story is twofold. She helps provide a number of useful connections in Northern Thedas (Harding also plays this role). Additionally, she's our guide to Minrathous. For a Rook who does not have a Shadow Dragons origin, she's responsible for convincing the player that the city is worthy of saving. Personally I feel like the narrative emphasized how hopeless the whole situation in Dock Town a bit too much. I would have liked the narrative to give approximately 15% more weight to scenes like Hal and his fish-stand to show that Dock Town had good people and was worth trying to salvage.

Admittedly, I'm also pretty disappointed that we finally get to see THE BIGGEST AND MOST MAGICAL CITY IN THEDAS, but are limited to just exploring Dock Town which feels like a pretty generic fantasy dock town. I feel like this was a big missed opportunity. Frankly I would have preferred if Veilguard was set entirely in one city and we had the chance to really explore that one location. 

Neve is one of two characters who can become hardened. This is done not through her personal quest, but through an early-game decision to choose which of two cities to protect from a blighted dragon attack. Thematically I like how the game is moving away from good versus evil choices. One of the major themes the story was trying to tell was that there are sometimes no "good" choices. There are some interesting parallels between Solas and Rook and the themes of regret. What I found awkward here was that there really wasn't justification for why Rook played such a key role in the defence of the city (and subsequently why people outside of Neve/Lucanis blamed Rook for what happened). I also think that the narrative could have done a smoother job explaining that with Minrathous, the problem was not in the defence of the city, so much as it was the political implications. I think this choice would have felt more interesting if they worded it more explicitly to be a choice between protecting the civilians in a city from the immediate brutality of the dragon attack (Treviso) versus protecting the civilians in a city from the long-term brutality of an oppressive political regime (Minrathous). 

As a slight aside, I did feel like it was kind of goofy that Neve, who is a well-known public figure, could just waltz into a venatori gathering. 

Her personal quest is a paint by numbers affair. You help her with a case that spirals into a confrontation with her nemesis, a venatori mage. She needs to be guided through choosing to leverage the help of a shady organization, or crack the case through legitimate channels. It folded in nicely with the main story, but did illustrate the problems with the venatori as one of the main groups of villains.

Part of me almost wishes that the outcome of Neve's personal quest would depend on whether or not she was hardened, versus something that you explicitly chose. I feel like hardening Neve had much fewer implications on the story than hardening Lucanis, and I would have liked to see some story changes. 

The Shadow Dragons

I really liked the idea of the Shadow Dragons. I think they were probably my favorite of the factions. It was really brutal to see what happened to them if you chose to save Treviso over Minrathous. I also feel like their existence could have gone a long way in explaining why the culture of Tevinter was so different from what we might've expected given how it was depicted in the games based in Southern Thedas. Throw in a few lines about how attitudes of slavery in Tevinter have been shifting over the last 10 years due to changes in policy from Dorian and Mae, underground movements like the Shadow dragons and maybe, for bonus points, a certain elf who has been cutting his way through slavers. 

Not including Fenris in the Shadow Dragons really does feel like a missed opportunity. Quantum characters are one of the general design problems with the Dragon Age games. Getting to see cameos of characters from previous entries into the series is a lot of fun, and something that the series wants to do. Unfortunately, because of the complexities that would arise from the different configurations in people's worlds, these cameos either have to be super shallow so an NPC can be easily slotted in -- or people's previous canon need to be handwaved a-la Leliana-lyrium-ghost. Personally, I'd prefer half-assed explanations about why a character who should have been dead (or otherwise incapacitated) is back in action, but that's not really a good solution either. Frankly I think returning characters end up creating a sort of damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. 

Back to the Shadow Dragons. I liked them! I think my only quibble is that the Viper being the Black Divine was a weird narrative choice. I'm not complete with my save-mintrathous playthrough, so this might end up coming up more in the future, but thus-far, this revelation has been treated like a fun Easter egg. I also thought it was kind of funny (derogatory) that the ventatori who captured him didn't think to unmask the mysterious masked leader of the rebellion. I think the reason they didn't was because the narrative didn't want to deal with the fallout ... which is kinda lame. 

Another intrusive thought I had whenever I saw him was that there is a whole masked empire in the south, and whether or not people thought that the Viper was from Orlais. This is a dumb thought, but it is one that I couldn't help but think.

How I would fix it: 

Neve's storylines are folded into the main story much closer than Harding's. This means that resolving them would require addressing some of the deeper flaws in Veilguard's narrative. Despite my desire to write multi-thousand word essays analyzing the flaws of the game, I did ultimately enjoy playing it and would describe the experience as being a mostly fun romp with likeable characters and an interesting story that sometimes flubs the execution. I ran across a post describing DAV as one of the most polished unfinished games they've ever played, and this really resonated with me. 

The Venatori (and Antaam) were one-note villains with the same pedigree as Corypheus. Note how I didn't name a specific Venatori. Aelia, who was the main antagonist of Neve's route, didn't really have much going on besides "evil venatori blood mage". While I don't think we need to make the pro-slavery nationalists sympathetic, I do feel like they would be more effective villains if it was more clear what their goals would actually look like for the people on the ground. As an aside, my eye twitched a little bit every time the phrase artifact or ritual was used. This felt like a huge opportunity to add a little bit of flavor into the stew. I don't think we need major lore reveals, but what seems more interesting: "We've got to stop the Venatori from using an artifact to complete a ritual" or "We've got to stop the Venatori from using the Chalice of Lost Souls from making legwarmers soul weave"? 

Not specifying what the ritual or artifact was really made it clear that these things were just MacGuffins, and doesn't give the player any idea about why the Venatori are evil. While I think the scenes in Arlathan were they tortured animals while sitting on human chairs, it at least gave some specificity to their evil. 

The Tevinter presented in Veilguard doesn't really reflect how the Empire was presented in the previous games.  If the narrative choice to downplay racism and slavery was done because the creative team no longer felt interested in those themes or equipped to write them a statement should have been made to this effect. Regardless, the in-game cultural shift would be much less jarring for a returning player if some in-universe explanation had been provided. In the previous section I discussed a few different factors that may have shifted the attitude of the general population in Tevinter. This would help show the player that the Tevinter they've heard about isn't really representative of what the "average" Tevinter citizen is like. I think this could be accomplished really smoothly with a banter between Neve and Harding. Harding is surprised to see that the elves are treated more poorly in the South than in Tevinter. She can talk about the horrific blood orgies she's heard about. Neve can bring up that the average Tevinter citizen is horrified that the Danariuses of their country are how other nations perceive them. Additionally, this would help give the player a better idea of what the stakes for allowing the Ventori to get a foothold in Minrathous would be. It's the cultural traditionalists of Tevinter who want to go back to blood orgies. 

My making the Venatori more compelling villains, I think you'd end up fixing 70% of the problems with Neve's story. 

In terms of the other 30%  percent, this is really where you feel the pain of removing the small ways the player can interact with the companions. Even though walking up to the companion and overhearing "hey Rook" is narratively identical to needing to press x to initiate the same "hey rook" conversation, it feels different from a gameplay perspective. Adding this back in would help make it feel like Rook was actually talking to his companions. I would also have really liked to involve Rook into the slice-of-life activities at the Lighthouse! Let the player decide if Rook would be interested in joining a book club, or explore what kind of cook Rook would be. I think this would help the feeling that Rook is a weird boss who listens in on people's conversations. 

In Conclusion: 

I like Neve a lot and think that the idea of a detective procedural set in Thedas has a lot of potential. I really liked her interactions with the other characters (especially Bellara!) and enjoyed watching her slowly warm up to the party. It's just a bit of a shame that I didn't get the same sense of slowly building friendship from the player-character. 

As an aside, Tevinter Nights definitely enhances the experience of playing Veilguard. In addition to providing introductions for most of the companions, it also introduces a lot of important NPCS, this is where you see Neve first confront Aelia.  

As another aside, I'm tired of games with end-of-the-world stakes. DA2 is probably my favorite entry into the series, and it has a much smaller scale than the other games. I really would have enjoyed a game consisting of helping Neve unravel mysteries in Minrathous and think that narratively, that sort of story is much easier to tell in a satisfying way.

So those are my thoughts on Neve. I would drink whisky with her while we speculated on who the Viper actually was, but first we need to do something about those Venatori (explain what the heck the cult actually wants).

[pseudonymphomania]

Top 5 Bedtime Snacks

One

JELLO

Squishy fruit-flavoured little nothings slurped between your teeth and melted down your throat in a sinful perversion of science. It’s hydrating without the uncomfortable sloshing of liquids in your stomach as you’re lying there trying to sleep. I have visceral feelings about jello.

Two

LAUGHING COW CHEESE

Peeling the aluminum wrapper off should count as a fidget toy because it relaxes my brain and it’s a decent source of protein without being heavy.

Three

TWO HARDBOILED EGGS COOKED MEDIUM-WELL SPRINKLED WITH SALT AND PEPPER

Acceptable as a bedtime snack or breakfast or lunch. I’ve also been known to have these at dinner. There is no bad time for eggs unless you hate the very concept.

Four

FRUIT

As delightful as a jello but with more texture. Sometimes you just want something more solid and real like a cold honey crisp apple straight from the fridge and cut up in slices you can chew on as you draw your wretched drawings.

Five

DIALUCI

This one is my favourite and it is high in nutritional value and comes in many flavours. It keeps my brain engaged and body energized, ready to take on the next day. Highly recommended. Can sub in other ships for flavor and taste.

[silverwhittlingknife]

Ooh, interesting problem. I feel like it depends SO MUCH on what the person you're reccing to likes? So e.g. I might recommend Batman: Year One to someone who likes Raymond Chandler and gritty hardboiled detective stories, esp. the older kind. But I would not rec Batman: Year One to someone who loved Batman: The Animated Series and is now wondering about reading comics. You know? Miller has a Very Particular Tone.

This isn't a Batman comic per se, but for a very intro look at the character, I personally think Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman comic is fun and very accessible. It starts with a quick summary of Bruce and Clark's origin stories, it's got a solid buddy dynamic that's easy to enjoy, and you don't need any prior knowledge to follow along. It's very Batman is Like This and Superman is Like That, in a way that gives you a good feel for their more iconic styles.

Of course, it's so accessible that it's not quite the classic comics feel. I think it's true that No Man's Land is a good place to go, "Am I going to love comics in all their puzzling messy complexity or are they gonna be Not For Me?"

If you want a more-accessible-but-still-more-messy-comic-y vibe with a lot of Bat-family, IIRC Gotham Knights: Transference (the 2020 volume collects GK 1-12) is a lot of fun. It's clearly trying to be accessible - the narrative voiceovers introduce each new character and summarize backstories, and Bruce does a lot of musing about What Batman Is - but the story's still embedded enough in the aftermath of No Man's Land that it's got a more classic comics feel instead of the more streamlined vibes you get in Superman/Batman.

You might like looking through fantastic-nonsense's comprehensive list of intro comics, too!

I know this question gets asked ad nauseum in the Batman fandoms but if you had a friend come up to you and say “I want to read Batman,” with no other Batman experience or knowledge… what do you give them to read?

[randomthefox]

It's funny cuz, while Sonic has been associated with baseball before (and rightfully so, it being a game both America and Japan highly prize) it always felt a little like the cast of Sonic would be playing with an arm and a leg tied behind their back just playing on a regular diamond pitch with regular rules.

Half the cast would just send home runs flying out the park without even trying, and nothing would stop Sonic from just zipping from one end of the field to the other to play every possible position himself.

But XB from Tribe Nine feels like a version of Baseball that is TAILOR MADE for the cast of Sonic. For one thing the game is played with the ENTIRE CITY as the field, every single match is a cross country race. There's no home runs, because the entire city is the field so every ball is always in play no matter how far it's hit (though in the anime foul balls are still a thing). And there's no flyouts or force outs, the ONLY way to out a player is by touching them with the ball. It's a full contact sport, the players just straight up get into fist fights at every base.

I shouldn't even have to explain why that's PERFECT for the cast of Sonic. Add in the naturally zany topography of the cities in Sonic's world, and the potential is unmatched.

Watch this and tell me you can't see it with the cast of Sonic. Watch this and tell me it wouldn't be IMPROVED by it involving the cast of Sonic.

Only question is what positions would all the characters play. Feel like the team lineup would be Sonic Tails Knuckles Amy Shadow Rouge Omega Vector Espio. Can sub in other characters depending on the game of course. Eggman's team would be himself Sage Metal Sonic Infinite and the Hardboiled Heavies. Just trying to think of what positions they would play.

Feel like Sonic would be pitcher? Eggman and Sonic as the pitcher. That feels like a very main character-y kind of position. Tails and Sage would be catcher. Amy and Metal Sonic would be first base. Rouge and Heavy King on second base. Shadow and Infinite on third base. Espio and Heavy Shinobi on shortstop. Knuckles Omega and Vector and the rest of the Heavies as the outfielders.

Yeah I think that all works. My tism has spoken!

[centralcitylibrary]

Response to Death Battle's Bowser vs. Dr. Eggman: Part 3/3 - Analysing the Match-up

Welcome to part 3/3 of my response to Death Battle. This part will focus on my providing my own analysis of the match-up, and my conclusion at the very end of it. If you watched the whole episode, you’ll know that this absolutely required its own dedicated part just to focus on. For the sake of a fair analysis, this will operate on the same standards that Death Battle themselves operate, rather than my usual methods (assuming you’ve seen it prior).

You can find part 1 here, and part 2 here.

This is probably the absolute hardest Mario vs. Sonic MU to decide on. Both sides have so many options, it’s dizzying, and any side could pull out a win from just unveiling one of their strongest weapons at the right time.

In fact, these instant win weapons are so numerous on both sides, that it turns the strength advantage, usually a major factor in any fight, into merely another number on the list of victory conditions. As such, while I will still provide my own strength calculations, I’ll primarily be focused on each of these trump cards, and what options the opposing army has in stopping them – alongside how both combatants could leverage these trump cards.

Let’s first list out the actual trump cards both sides have, just to make things clear:

Bowser:

Castle Bowser – can warp reality on a universal level, given enough time to charge up.

Dream Stone – can erase people from existence, and if broken its pieces can be consumed for Dreamy Bowser, which empowers him based on how many dreams he can absorb – potentially a raw power option if it can absorb enough dreams.

Fury Bowser – can mind control and corrupt others while he’s active in the form, alongside sending people to another world, and lastly invulnerability negation. Requires Bowser Jr.’s paint brush.

Star Rod – can grant wishes and is on par with the Star Spirits, who created the Dream Depot.

Painting (King Boo) – sealing. Anyone who gets trapped in this cannot escape.

Several ghosts – operating under King Boo, their release can destabilise the dimension.

Mind control.

Power Stars & Grand Stars – raw power.

Pure Hearts – raw power (but even more), invulnerability negation.

Eggman:

Metal Virus – transmutes any organic member infected by it into a metal zombie.

Finalised Phantom Ruby Prototype – can create tangible illusions (effectively reality warping) that only affect those the user wants to affect, alongside inverting gravity, creating an infinite army, and banishing others to Null Space (which blocks dimensional travel) – has 4 copies.

Phantom Ruby (original) – the same as above, except it provides its own power source. All Phantom Rubies can only be used by those with enough willpower, which amongst Eggman’s army includes Eggman himself, Infinite, Metal Sonic, and the Hardboiled Heavies.

Modified Phantom Ruby Prototype – can modify memories alongside the above’s effects, designed to alter the planet’s memories – has 2 copies. Can create infinitely sized areas via his Egg Fields, and thus has infinite range.

The Chaos Emeralds – just… so many things. Including raw power.

Mind Control Cannon – mind control.

Jewelled Sceptre – raw power (again).

Reverie – turns dreams into reality (aka real reality warping).

Sol Emeralds – they’re like the Chaos Emeralds.

Cyber Space (Sage) – can trap people within, separating their bodies and soul, and even (slowly) corrupt anyone who tries to save them. Even if they can escape, they’ll be left involuntarily intangible.

Time Eater – space-time erasure (and by proxy, existence erasure), raw power (yet again).

Supreme – raw power (constant showings of raw power).

Now all of these tools should – in theory – be able to instantly end the battle, or at bare minimum instantly remove the opposing side’s standard army, leaving it to just the main 2 to duke it out. However, a vast majority of these trump cards has at least 1 method of dealing with them, usually multiple. These are all of the checks and counters to those trump cards mentioned above (if you’re familiar with competitive Pokemon, those terms should be familiar to you – a check is anything that can prevent an opposing tool from working once it’s actively on the field, while a counter is either outright immunity or can be brought on after the fact to counteract it).

Bowser’s checks & counters:

Transmutation magic (Bowser, Kamek) – can counter the Metal Virus, and can check the Phantom Rubies, Jewelled Sceptre, Reverie, Mind Control Cannon, and Time Eater. Cannot counter the Chaos Emeralds, as the latter are not only able to undo their own transmutation, but still work even while transmutated.

Reality warping (Castle Bowser, Bowser to a lesser extent) – checks the Phantom Rubies’ own reality warping; Jewelled Sceptre, Reverie, the Time Eater, and Supreme. Counters the Mind Control Cannon.

Item theft (Kamek) – checks the Phantom Rubies, Jewelled Sceptre, Reverie, and Time Eater. Because of the presence of both the Chaos Emeralds and Sol Emeralds, attempting to steal either of them without knowing how to control them will destabilise the universe, and Eggman’s knowledge on this fact will prompt him to leave the universe immediately while Bowser’s side dies, letting him gain a technical win. Phantom Rubies will not work for Eggman’s side when stolen. Some of Eggman’s items can check his trump cards.

Power nullification (Kamek) – can check everything except the Metal Virus and Sage, especially the Chaos Emeralds and Sol Emeralds. While both can be restored by positive emotions, Eggman has never done so himself, and likely can’t due to his poor genuine leadership skills combined with his immense ego; leaving Sage as the only positive bond he has in this fight. Counters the Mind Control Cannon, as it does not function without Hyper-Go-On.

Illusions (King Boo, maybe Kamek) – since the Phantom Rubies are all illusion-based, counteracting the illusions should be a functional check to them.

Bowser’s computer brain (Bowser) – yeah his computer brain. It can restore his memories, allowing Bowser (albeit only Bowser) to counter the memory altering effects of the Modified Phantom Ruby Prototype.

Minion Spirit – makes Bowser’s army immune to mind control from sheer loyalty, if they’re devoted enough. Should also apply to Bowser himself, and is thus a check to both the Metal Virus and the Mind Control Cannon.

Existence erasure (Dream Stone) – is a soft check to everything Eggman can bring out, albeit it’s possible for Eggman to send Metal Sonic, or a Replica of Metal Sonic or Shadow into White Space to search for and restore whatever has been erased, if Eggman’s forces can stall for long enough.

Data immersion (King Boo) – is a very soft counter to Sage, by virtue of being the only individual who can directly deal with her when she’s not piloting Supreme. Cannot check Supreme directly, as Sage was unable to hack any of the Titans and could only pilot Supreme because it had no pilot.

Invulnerability negation (the Pure Hearts) – can negate invulnerability granted by the Chaos/Sol Emeralds.

Raw Power & restoration (the Pure Hearts) – can counter Eggman’s strongest weapons by virtue of equivalent power and counteracting space-time erasure (assuming finite values).

Eggman’s checks & counters:

That weird illusion/selective reality manipulation (the Phantom Rubies) – can check Castle Bowser (and Bowser’s reality manipulation), the Dream Stone, and Fury Bowser.

Reality warping (Reverie) – can check Castle Bowser, the Dream Stone, Fury Bowser, and the Star Rod.

Memory Manipulation – can check everything that doesn’t come from Bowser himself, and even remove some of Bowser’s own checks and counters such as Minion Spirit or his allies.

Dimensional travel (Chaos Control, Sage, potentially the Phantom Rubies) – can counter anyone being removed from the battlefield by Fury Bowser.

Item theft (Forcejewels) – can unreliably check the Wonder Flowers, Dream Stone, Star Rod, Power Stars, Grand Stars, and Pure Hearts. Some of Bowser’s items can check other items of his.

Mind Control Cannon – can unreliably check King Boo’s painting sealing, by forcing King Boo to undo the effect. Not guaranteed to work, given the potential of true minion spirit, but given there is no indication King Boo is particularly loyal it should be more likely to work than not. Even if Eggman is taken out, Sage can use the mind control cannon on King Boo to undo it.

Sage – given she’s not a physical entity and is really on the EggNet, she should be able to ignore Kamek’s mind control and send Eggman out of range to command his troops from afar, or take direct control of Eggman’s army – a check.

Neo Metal Sonic – his bio-data copying means that he can become immune to any check/counter that comes from an innate ability of any of the Koopa Troop, which can potentially counter many of Bowser’s own checks and counters.

Damage transfer (rings) – checks Bowser’s Power Stars, Grand Stars, and Pure Hearts, as they allowed base Sonic to survive hits from The End, a being more powerful than even Solaris and Time Eater.

Shield (Sage) – is able to block hits from even The End, serving as a check to the Power Stars and even Pure Hearts.

Raw power (Chaos Emeralds, Jewelled Sceptre, Sol Emeralds, Time Eater, Supreme) counters Bowser’s Power Stars and the Pure Hearts (assuming peak values).

That’s a lot, isn’t it? But if you noticed, everything has at least 1 check or 1 counter to it, no matter how unreliable that check/counter actually is.

Some highlights include:

The Chaos/Sol Emeralds are only checked by Kamek and the Dream Stone, and attempting to steal them will in fact force a tie from the resulting destruction and destabilisation.

Kamek alone checks so many of Eggman’s trump cards that he’ll end up becoming a priority target as the battle goes on.

Metal Sonic, if he’s not shut down by Kamek, can continue to copy more and more of Bowser’s powers based off of the bio-data of him and his army, which means that with enough time he can gain a majority of the checks and counters that Bowser’s army has, and gain immunity from them as a result (albeit that likely came too late for it to influence the result of the Death Battle).

Sage, due to being part of the EggNet/Cyerbspace, can only be checked by the Dream Stone and King Boo, meaning she’ll become a top priority to deal with by the end of the battle. Piloting Supreme ironically makes her more vulnerable, given that if Supreme is destroyed while she’s piloting it she’ll die too.

Bowser’s computer brain is the only true method Bowser has to deal with the modified Phantom Ruby’s memory manipulation, and he’ll need to get rid of it as soon as possible if he doesn’t want his allies turning against him.

Supreme is the most dangerous of the raw power weapons on Eggman’s army, as it came in pre-charged and doesn’t need continued use of the Chaos Emeralds unless it were to get its power drained, and is invulnerable to conventional damage.

Altogether, the sheer volume of weapons plus the fact that every single one of them has the potential to be stopped in its tracks with the right set up means that ultimately this duel is going to come down to a quick draw – who can pull off a broken win condition first. Which, of course, means that stats is the next most important factor to bring up.

And I’ll be bringing out stats twice for each side, a calculated finite value, and their absolute peak.

Power:

Bowser (base):

Finite: 2.28012318407×10^108 Foe – Can defeat Culex, who claimed – after gaining a 3rd dimensional form – to be capable of destroying all of time and space. Assuming this would destroy the entire universe at every single moment in time down to the Planck time, and assuming the universe is as old as ours from Big Bang to present, this is the value required to destroy the universe. Mario (and by proxy Bowser) has gotten stronger since then.

Peak: Infinite – could defeat Culex, who claimed to be capable of destroying all of time and space.

Power Stars & Grand Stars:

Finite: 8.05115087719×10^50 Foe – 284 Power Stars/Grand Stars, with one possessing enough power to destroy the universe. Likely lower, as Power Stars are weaker than Grand Stars.

Peak: Infinite – unspecified boost from every single Power Star and Grand Star.

Pure Hearts

Finite: 2.28012318407×10^108 Foe – their amp allowed Bowser to defeat foes amplified by the Chaos Heart – which is strong enough to destroy the entire space-time of a universe (same as the Culex finite feat). Much higher to an unquantifiable degree, as every universe should bring back a roughly equivalent value.

Peak: Infinite multiverse – could threaten the entire Mario multiverse.

Eggman (base mechs):

Finite: 1.4125×10^48 Foe – can fight with Sonic, who while weakened could defeat the Erazor Djinn empowered by half of the World of the Arabian Nights, which should be comparable to a universe given it resembles Earth and has stars. Sonic has gotten stronger since then, and Eggman constantly upgrades his machines to match.

Peak: Infinite/2 – the World of the Arabian Nights includes an infinitely sized location, which should make the whole universe infinite in size.

Chaos Emeralds:

Finite: 2.28012318407×10^108 Foe – Solaris could destroy the entire space-time of a universe (same as the finite Culex feat). Much higher to an unquantifiable degree, as every universe should bring back a roughly equivalent value.

Peak: Infinite 4th dimensional multiverse – Solaris could threaten the entire Sonic multiverse (Maginaryworld is explicitly confirmed to be 4th dimensional, and when the (weaker) Paradox Prism shattered Sonic’s prime universe into the Shatterverse, it was divided into multiple universe sized spaces with separate space-times and ended with restoring the original universe within the Shatterverse, suggesting that a universe is a higher dimensional construct housing one or more 3rd dimensional spaces within).

Now that was power, and as you can see who’s stronger depends on whether we’re using finite values or infinite values (Bowser handily taking the advantage in the prior category, Eggman taking the advantage in the latter). But as I said before, raw power is not important in this fight, and merely a bullet point on the list of ways they could win.

The real important stat is speed, and well...

Speed:

Bowser:

Finite: 24,450,000,000,000,000 C (24.45 quadrillion times the speed of light) – Mario flew to the trial galaxies – located at the edge of the universe with a launch star (and back with a Power Star), and can react at these speeds (as evidenced by landing on his feet and picking up star bits on the way) – given this happens before Mario rescues Peach from Bowser, each trip should take no more than 6 hours to make, but I’ll be generous and claim it took 1 minute.

I know Death Battle claimed this trip took 3 seconds, but there’s a loading screen both to and from the Trial Galaxies, and when the loading screen ends Mario is already back at the observatory – and the trip to the galaxy features a menu while Mario is flying at high speeds (as evidenced by the moving speed lines), which doesn’t have any time limit to the player selecting the Star, making the true time frame hard to accurately verify.

Peak: 24,450,000,000,000,000 C (24.45 quadrillion times the speed of light) – Mario flew to the trial galaxies – located at the edge of the universe with a launch star (and back with a Power Star), and can react at these speeds (as evidenced by landing on his feet and picking up star bits on the way).

Eggman:

Finite: 48,900,000,000,000,000 C (48.9 quadrillion times the speed of light) – Time Eater erased the entire universe in seconds. Even though we see Shadow sent to White Space in the time it took to raise his hands, and Sonic’s chilli dog landed back in his hand instead of landing on the ground after he defeated the Time Eater, I’ll be strict and assume a 30 second time span. Eggman was piloting the Time Eater, and Classic Sonic and Shadow could each react to this feat happening to them, so by all accounts this should scale to Eggman’s reaction time (and the reaction time of his post-Generations machines). In addition, later in Frontiers base Sonic could react to the Titans, who are themselves empowered by the Chaos Emeralds.

Peak: Immeasurable – regularly battles Sonic, who could restore areas erased from time by the Time Eater with his raw speed.

… Oh. Even with being generous towards Bowser, and strict towards Eggman, Eggman still ended up faster. You could argue that I could be even more generous towards Bowser, or even more strict towards Eggman – and that’s true – however, the opposite is true as well.

If we treat both these feats as generously as possible Eggman’s speed feat should still be extremely close to Bowser’s, enough to have little relevance, while if we treat both of them as strictly as possible Mario’s half-universal trip has a lot more potential time to cross than Sonic’s chilli dog flight.

All of this, of course, while ignoring the fact that Shadow Generations just provided a better speed feat than before with no ambiguity, showing Time Eater erasing the universe in 12 seconds – and no loading screen, so the timeframe is exact. This likely wouldn’t be added into the voiceover, but would absolutely make it into the analysis & black boxes given information from Mario & Luigi: Brotherhood made it in.

And that’s just talking about the finite values, once we delve into their hypothetical peaks that speed advantage just gets exaggerated, and Eggman just speed blitzes Bowser’s entire army and wins for free.

If we exclusively discuss in terms of finite values then Bowser’s strong enough to one shot anything that isn’t a Super tier in base, but only his Pure Hearts form is strong enough to contend with those Super tiers. This raw power gap would also prompt Eggman to rely on his trump cards far quicker than usual (something he already tends to go for), making an incredibly close match, but ultimately one that Eggman should come out on top for.

This in addition to Sage being able to make millions of calculations in a short time span, whose battle strategy is said by Sage herself to be on focusing on the best method of survival, and whose intelligence surpasses even Eggman’s, thanks to her AI nature and being integrated with the Ancients’ Cyber Space.

Or in other words…

Eggman wins.

Thank you for reading my 3 part response to Death Battle – or at least reading any one of my 3 parts, I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the match-up, and I hope Death Battle going independent means that they can continue to push and evolve the show even further beyond what it’s been this last decade.

Happy independence!

[a-hardboiled-heavy-a-day]

It’s like 5 am for me but ITS HAPPENING!

ITS FINALLY HAPPENING!

GUYS!?!

THEY ARE BACK!

It’s all of them too not just one or two but all of them, Jimmy as well.

I’m going to draw a wonderful drawing for this momentous occasion!