#I think it was because of my feral hyperfixation on this comic because now that I'm done

[me-and-my-forty-fandoms]

I've been thinking about castoff a lot

[yeetus-feetus]

"Tim doesn't sleep" this

"Tim actually loves sleep" that

He can do both guys. He can do both.

As someone with messed up sleep schedules myself, sometimes you stay up for over 40 while hours. And sometimes you fall asleep anywhere anytime because sleep is fucking awesome I love it why didn't I sleep sooner? I can sleep for two while days if I wanted to, and I have.

I think Tim could be the same. He's not just going to be one or the other, that's not how people with actual sleep disorders work.

Let Tim be a feral gremlin who doesn't sleep for while weeks sometimes because he's working on case files. But also let him love sleep at the same time. Let him fall asleep in weird places like the stairs or a gym bench or in the middle of the bat cave floor. If he wants to he can sleep anywhere anytime. Because his sleep schedule is fucked my dudes.

Falls asleep on the floor instead of going to a meeting. Hasn't realized he hasn't slept or eaten for over 48 hours because all his attention has been preoccupied on a case file he's been hyperfixating on. Misses dinner because he let himself sit down for 2 seconds and now he's conked tf out. Tim falling asleep literally anywhere anytime he's not hyperfocused on something. Sleeps so long that when he wakes up he can't even remember what year it let alone where tf he even is.

Fell asleep in the vents, oops, he gave everyone a heart attack because they couldn't find him. Can't go to sleep when he's on edge and his brain is going a thousand miles a minute, needs to finish -insert task- before he can relax but then he gets distracted by several other tasks and oh shit what fucking day is it? When was the last time he slept??

The comic potential of both "sleep is for the weak" and "sleep for a week" being true is missed out on because you're all fighting over weather he doesn't sleep or he falls asleep all the time.

Both are true!!

Tim is a mess okay! An efficient mess, there's obviously a method to his madness. He looks messy but trust me there's a system. And that involves his revolving sleep schedule of mystery. It's probably because he's neurodivigent.

It seems like he can only be one specific way to certain people because you're not seeing all of him.

Bonus points on coffee not actually keeping him awake. He drinks the coffee/energy drinks because it helps him sleep when he's buzzing with anxiety actually. Stop looking at my boi from a neurotypical point of view lol.

[crepes-suzette-373]

I once wondered if there's an "evil version of tsundere", and I just finally remembered that there are. It's called tsungire or yangire. Basically it's like tsundere and yandere, but without any visible "affectionate" (dere-dere) moments.

Like, I usually say "tsundere" here because it's what people know more, and I haven't found the correct term yet before, but I think yangire/tsungire are more appropriate terms.

Well, you can argue that the "dere" is sort of there in the anime, but it's not really there in the manga.

The tsungire and yangire are typically just cranky/crazy by default, but they might sometimes have a target of obsession. Sometimes, there's even a very very very lowkey "dere" feelings for that target. Doesn't have to be romantic, but it's things like caring, affection, concern, companionship, etc.

If/when they do, they don't make an obvious show or talk about it. Outwardly it's just a constant stream of barbed wire, and if the dere is actually there, it's kind of hard to filter out from all the violence/insults (according to Pixiv anyway).

That's it. That's what Niji is doing. He's really like a feral alien who doesn't know how human behaviour works and even if he's being nasty it's fascinating to look at.

This here is probably the yangire:

And then it feels more like tsungire here:

(basically that whole part of Germa returning to cover for the Straw Hats' escape, starting from him taking the initiative to ask about the Straw Hats on the phone)

More serious analysis (sort of) below.

Niji acting like this to Sanji is about the same like Law insisting he doesn't like Germa in the comics, but rambles on and on and on about them to the point that the fandom for the most part just agree that "He totally is a Germa fanboy".

I wrote this post about why I think the brothers actually all wants to get along with Sanji, they just have a very terrible perception of what is "normal" and what to do when something is "not normal".

And see, my read of why Niji in particular is so fixated on Sanji is this:

Until proven otherwise, I think this means they had to re-train Niji to also take over Stealth duties because there will be nobody to wear the Stealth suit. And I think Stealth Black missing is what's making Niji so crazy about this.

Not necessarily because he hates doing stealth, but for some people, the awareness that "something is supposed to be here, but isn't" is very aggravating. Even if they don't actively interact with or particularly need "the thing", just knowing that it's not there makes them abnormally hyperfixate on the "thing" instead.

In this case the "thing" is a "someone", but the point is the same.

For whatever reason, there is this "shadow" of the Number 3 space that is constantly present in Germa. The number 3 raid suit exist. There is the number 3 chair ready for Sanji somehow. It's like they can't ever forget that "number 3 should be here, but is gone" no matter what they do.

And because Niji is probably the one affected the most, both because of his personality and the practicality of how things work, he is the one that lashes out the worst.

He doesn't like that Sanji isn't there. When Sanji's there, he's behaving "wrong" and that makes Niji mad.

(Plus, the alternate take on the Stealth technique is that it actually has nothing to do with Stealth, but he himself called it that because he's just so fixated on "Stealth Black" missing, which is kind of even worse)

Also:

Once again, now that we know Sanji can do this, I desperately want to see him and Niji both do that vanishing act to an enemy and just kick that enemy to oblivion.

[risingshards]

Spring 2024 anime review!

It's time for my annual anime season review! I had a lot more shows to watch this season than last, which at times got a bit hectic! It's not quite done yet but it's done enough that I think I can put this up. Warning: Long post incoming where I ramble about the many anime shows I watched and personal reflection about how Going Through It™ affected my watching.

Laid Back Camp Season 3: My fav of the season, I'm obsessed with these camping girlies and any more time with them is always a treat. The combo of the suspension bridge arc with the wacky over the top arc is a fun jarring one, and the last trip was so sweet. Rin and Nadeshiko felt even gayer this season which is impressive, they're the most girlfriends to me, Chiaki and Aoi too (or maybe I should just ship full camping polycule???) It was only a few second scenes too but I love that they added Aya into the later arcs as well. I've been in a rough place mentally for a while and it kicked into a new gear this summer, so the comfort vibes of the show hit differently. I'm a super anxious person so chill times where everything is OK is such a nice escape from the world. Shout out to the OP/ED for being my favs this season! Also highly recommend both sub and dub, because the dub cast is SOOOO good once more. Celeste Perez is so fantastic as Rin, and Morgan Laure Garrett does an incredible performance as Nadeshiko. The whole cast is so great I could ramble on and on about them.

Whisper Me a Love Song: Not technically done yet as eps 11 and 12 are delayed, but in spite of the production woes this one has my heart this season in that "I love the manga and am happy to see this animated, I am hyperfixated, and warts and all I love watching it and get way way WAYYYY too sensitive about it seriously chiral go touch grass instead of having anxiety attacks about an anime" kind of way. The voice cast is SO perfect and everyone fits their characters so well and it's a treat to see the manga adapted. Himari and Yori's fluffy relationship was so sweet and I teared up a lot at their big moments. My beloved Aki got so many delicious angsty scenes while also showing her as not a bad person, just someone who's caught up in a crush while heartbroken about her true love leaving her (a true love that she didn't even realize was true love). Speaking about that true love, Shiho getting to be a feral cat storming into the proceedings is a treat, and I love that we get to see her earlier in the anime than in the manga.

The downsides ofc are the production that delayed two of the episodes, and now has the last two pushed to a later date, and my big qualm is the festival getting skipped over (well still kinda animated in the visual comic they released with the voice actors doing great on it), that's a bummer. I can see structurally what they were going for, 6 eps for Himari/Yori and 6 eps for the very popular Aki/Shiho storyline, and having the 'lost' ep voice acted helps a bit. But ughghggh even with all that...IDK it's still my babg and they're my babygorls so I'm rooting for 11 and 12 to be really great and for me to not engage with any fandom discussion about it LOL. Like I said this one had my heart this season, and when something latches onto your heart like that, I think it's good to cherish that a bit.

Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night: I heard the buzz a few episodes in about this and was hooked pretty quickly. The animation quality was great, I adored the characters, and I loved the queerness in it with the nonbinary talks, trans yakuza ladie, the kiss, and while I wish they went more in on the romance, we still got a lot of queerness that I don't want to count out. It's another case where I really need to disengage with what people think about something when it's special to me (that might be the moral of the season, honestly). My big downside for this is it got a little too stressful for me, the big fight towards the end of the show kept me up at night. I might be going through it pretty bad if watching anime does that to me BUT we stay silly.

Train to the End of the World: I didn't realize until I saw a post about it like yesterday that this had the same director as Kill la Kill and Gurren Lagann and in hindsight yeah that tracks. This was such a wild ride, I love a good journey story and this scratched that itch well. A group of girls go on a weird, hilarious, and heartfelt journey via train through a bizarre world? It made me really want to write a journey story. Funniest show of the season by far, crazy visuals, fun action, each episode being a strange little journey on its own helped the vibe.

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio: This was a really cute one, bubbly gyaru x stoic girlie is a fun dynamic. Going by the structure, I assume this was the first 3 light novels adapted, since each arc was 4 eps IIRC. I hope the light novels get translated here because I'd love to see where the story goes next. My downside to this is this one also got STRESSFUL stressful in that like social kind of way as the main duo deals with stalkers, assholes online, shitty voice directors (I hope that voice director that was giving Yasumi a hard time gets super fired in season 2) and that took away from the fluff at times. Still was a definite highlight of the season.

Nijiyon Animation 2: Maybe even weirder than the first season, I was really glad to get more of this one, weekly 3 minute adventures of a wacky gay harem really is good for the soul. I love the vibe of like "yeah we're doing this premise this week let's just go with it" that a lot of the episodes had. Do Season 3 cmon!

Vexations of a Shut in Vampire Princess dub: I am a big stan for Vexations, and this dub has not disappointed so far (I think just one or two episodes to go for it), VERY well cast with Brittney Karbowski (of Railgun fame) putting in a STELLAR performance as Komari, showcasing all the facets of Komari's personality, like her spoiled bratty princess side, her anxious about being plopped into a dire situation side, the theater kid performance that helps her through this, and many other sides, it's really fantastic work by her. Vill, Sakuna, and Millicent are standouts as well (every Millicent scene I needed to pause afterwards because wow 🥵).

I also watched the back half of Dungeon Meshi (which is so big rn that I feel like I don't know what to add? It's great!), the new Spice and Wolf which was nice, Bartender: Glass of God which was VERY chill, and a coworker friend rec'd Condition Called Love, but I did not really enjoy that one.

All in all despite the bumpy road, I was really happy with this season and got SO much yuri. I do still need to watch Girls Band Cry and will rectify that soon, I just had way too many shows to watch at once.

Next season I am mainly looking forward to My Deer Friend Nokotan, and started watching Suicide Squad Isekai mainly for the ED lol. Next season big goal also: Chiral touches grass and her hypersensitive ass stops getting so worried about what other people think of the anime she watches and to just enjoy the anime hyperfixation while it's in full swing like this.

[moccasins]

ramblings of a lunatic

you guys don't understand how absolutely feral reaper makes me. i need to stick him in a tupperware and shake it. i need to spin him in my mind and take his comic apart panel by panel until i have every line memorized

this fandom both ruined him to the point he's unrecognizable and made him better with collective headcanons and ideas and those get so mixed up that nobody knows what he's really like anymore. i've never had a character that i've hyperfixated on this bad. i want to cry when i think about him.

he's so pathetic and he's kind of a horrible person but he's a god so are his morals really the same as ours? would we care what ants think of the way we act? do you think we could summon him the way someone summons a demon, or do you think we'd pray to him like other gods? do you think he hears soft wishes for death, or pleas for a loved one to return?

i need people to point out his touch issues too because i have touch issues from trauma and now he does because i said so. he would think about it, wishing to hold someone's hand or have someone to sit with while watching movies, platonic or romantic idfc, but when he has the opportunity to do so he can't take it because he's scared. he's scared of touch and he's scared of himself.

RAHSHRHHRGRHTHT I'M ON MY KNEES I NEED TO SEE HIM MORE. I NEED TO SEE HIM IN NON SHIPPING RELATED POSTS AMD FICS AND I NEED HIM TO BE SHOWN HOW HE REALLY IS. HE WOULD NOT BE DEFEATED BY NIGHTMARE OR INK OR ERROR OR ANY OF THEM BECAUSE THEY ARENT GODS LIKE HE IS. I KNOW THERES GOD HEADCANONS BUT THEY ARENT DEATH. THEY DONT CONTROL PEOPLES LIFESPANS OR KILL WITH A SINGLE TOUCH.

I NEED TO SCREAM ABOUT HIM TO ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN UNTIL THEY GET TIRED OF ME BECAUSE THERE ARE NO WORDS IN THIS WORLD THAT COULD TRULY DESCRIBE HOW INSANE HE MAKES ME FEEL

[dreaminginmysoup]

Okay so this is what I'm going to spend my lunch break on ig. I am... so sorry, this got away from me.

I've actually gotten this a bit, WHY Infinite of all people?? He's a War Criminal (assuming that Mobius has an equivalent to the Geneva Conventions), he's a terrible person with no remorse, he talks like an anime villain, he's a badly written character in a badly written game.

BUT, he's also my babygirl.

I'm kidding- kinda- but the appeal in Infinite for me lies in a couple of different aspects of his character.

Let's start with the surface level reasons.

It's early 2022 and I just saw Sonic 2. I am now sucked into a brand new hyperfixation that will destroy my life. In my rush to consume as much sonic content, I go and watch playthroughs of the most recent mainline title: Sonic Forces. And there I see him, Infinite. He's a villain's villain, sadistic and with a flair for the dramatic, and you can't tell me that his theme song doesn't go hard as hell, because it does.

In that moment, I was thrown back like 10 years to when I only listened to Linkin Park and had a fixation on drawing wolves. In a way, he was nostalgic for me. 12-14 year old me would have gone feral over this guy, and now in my 20s something primal was unlocked.

He has a very simple color palette and design, but it's also very iconic, and I think most of us can appreciate a good mask, the white dreads and skeletal patch of white on his back also add to the appeal of his design. He's an unrepentantly edgy character, and for a game that came out years after that stopped being cool, that is very, very charming for me, he feels like a time capsule for the late 00s and early 10s trends, which considering forces probably began development in the early 10s, isnt too surprising.

So let's get into the more detailed reasons why (I am so sorry for how long this already is, it got away from me I swear)

Now the thing about Infinite is that he isn’t... very well written, honestly. But we all knew that. The main game gives us nothing except that he's evil, Episode Shadow gives us that Shadow "destroyed" his squad

I'm still in denial about them being dead

And the dlc also highlights his inferiority superiority complex "I am NOT weak" yeah we know the memes, and that's what he's most remembered for, unfortunately for him.

The comics probably give us the most, which still isn't a lot, but shows us him with his Squad, people who seem to have trusted him, even if that didn't serve them well in the end. It also shows us Infinite’s "deepest desire"- a desolate world, and how he's willing to team up just to get that and then...

That's it!

There's some more reading between the lines we could do, but this is going to be long as is ;_;

So a big part of the appeal for me is wondering about the possibilities for him and his character. How close was he to his Squad? Why did he want a desolate world? How much was the Ruby's influence versus his own desires? What was he like before he met Eggman, and when it was just him and his squad? What was his childhood like? What's this guy's deal???

I like thinking and wondering about character motivation, especially when it isn't made clear, and Infinite is one of those mostly unclear characters despite being a major antagonist. And that's the fun in him! The lingering question of why he's Like That is so interesting to explore.

He's a War Criminal. He's a terrible person with no remorse. He talks like an anime villain. And I like to think of in universe reasons WHY he's like that, or if he really is even like that at all, or if he could be redeemed. Think about how Sonic fans like to bend over backwards to explain Shadow’s terrible writing in various media, that's me with Infinite except I have only scraps to go off of, but by God, that won't stop me from making it into a meal. Infinite is a character full of possibilities and potential and if SEGA can't see that, then I'll just do it myself with the like 6 other Infinite fans out there. Also just saying, but I would trust Ian Flynn to give him a redemption arc in the comics, SEGA PLEASE-

In short: he's my babygirl.

infinite-likers tell me why you like him, i want in on this party too

[pluckyredhead]

Please Care About Aquaman With Me: Everybody Has a Bad Time in the Bronze Age

Thank you for returning to my irregularly scheduled Aquaman micro-hyperfixation! Last time, I talked about the first 35-ish years of Aquahistory. Now we’re up to 1975 and comics have developed longer plotlines and gotten angstier and more melodramatic - and major characters are fair game to be killed off. Gwen Stacy died in 1974, but the death this post kicks off with is even more shocking.

CW: Child death, comic book sexism.

The very short version of the setup is that Black Manta has captured Arthur, Garth, and Aquababy. He puts Aquababy in a glass ball full of air (instead of water), which he will suffocate in after a few minutes, and Arthur and Garth in an arena to fight to the death. Once one of them dies, he’ll fill Aquababy’s prison with water.

So just to make this absolutely clear: to save his biological son, Arthur will have to kill or be killed by his foster son.

He doesn’t hesitate for a second.

I know we talk about Bruce being a bad dad all the time, but at least when Ra’s al Ghul tried to make him chose whether Tim or Damian would die, he offered himself instead. Arthur had that option here! And yet.

The look on Garth’s face here absolutely kills me and this is the comic that made me start going feral over the Aquafam. Of course absolutely zero time is spent on his emotional reaction to this, but the only father he’s ever known not only just tried to kill him - he made it clear that he doesn’t actually consider Garth his child. “That’s my son up there! My son!!” THAT’S YOUR SON DOWN HERE TOO, ARTHUR. The fact that he calls him “Minnow” while he does it (one of his two long-running nicknames for Garth, the other being “Tadpole”) makes it hurt even worse.

I think this moment, too, is why Arthur and Garth basically never refer to each other as father and son. On paper, they have a similar relationship to Bruce and Dick and Roy and Ollie, who acknowledge their father-son dynamics all the time. But despite Garth saying Arthur’s like a father to him in his very first appearance, after this, they just...don’t say those words. Arthur is Garth’s liege and his friend, but he is not his father.

(Mera is still his mom. He loves Mera so much.)

But wait! It gets worse!

Arthur and Garth escape the arena and shatter Aquababy’s prison, but it’s too late - he’s suffocated. He was only one year old. The panels aren’t graphic - it’s still only 1975, after all - but I’m still not sharing them because that is too sad to make anyone look at.

Black Manta flees, and Arthur tells Garth they’re going after him, but Garth refuses:

Oof.

Arthur - this is so horrible - gives Aquababy’s body to Topo, his pet octopus, to bring home to Mera, and takes off after Black Manta. This is basically like having your dog do it. He doesn’t even bother to break the news to her himself. In fact, he spends literally months away chasing Black Manta but then just, like, fighting crime. Like, he teams up with Batman at one point. What the fuck is wrong with you, Arthur? To make matters worse, it turns out Aquababy WASN’T EVEN DEAD and Mera spends several issues desperately trying to save him but fails, so if Arthur had spent more time thinking about his wife and son(s) instead of revenge, Aquababy probably would have lived. Arthur’s the worst.

Meanwhile, Garth decides to figure out who his real parents are, so he does some digging and discovers that he actually comes from a hidden society of purple-eyed pacifists called the Idylists, and his parents were actually king and queen, but his father went crazy and decided to start a lot of wars for no reason so his people, uhhhhh...killed him. And exiled the queen, hence Garth being born in Atlantis and not Idylist-ville (later named Shayeris). Weirdly this all makes him feel much better and he decides to make up with Arthur? Okay, Bronze Age, okay.

The Aquaman comic was canceled, then briefly uncanceled, then canceled again by the end of the decade. Arthur spent the remainder of the pre-Crisis universe leading Justice League Detroit, a low point for the team, while Garth lurked around the fringes of the Teen Titans but wasn’t a regular member at this point. (He did team up with them while attending boarding school in Scotland, though. He wore a kilt and the Titans fought the Loch Ness monster. It was great.)

Then Crisis on Infinite Earths happened and Tula became canon fodder, dying early on when the radioactive monster Chemo poisoned the water she was swimming in.

Garth was devastated by her death, to the point that he was still very actively mourning her a decade later.

After Crisis on Infinite Earths, new origins had to be established, and Arthur’s came in the 1986 Aquaman miniseries. (I’m going to be covering the rest of the 80s here, which is stretching the definition of “Bronze Age,” but...deal with it.) This miniseries brings in a high fantasy element to Aquaman comics for the first time, with a grandiose plot about Ocean Master stealing magical crystals from undersea cities like Atlantis and Thierna Na Oge. It also establishes the idea that "brother fighting brother” is a key element of Atlantis’s mythology and destiny. Anyway Arthur wears a blue wetsuit and has an emotional affair with the queen of Thierna Na Oge.

Bro, you’re still married.

This was followed by the 1988 Aquaman Special, which didn’t really bring anything new to the table, and then the 1989 The Legend of Aquaman Special, which...did. Arthur was no longer the son of an Atlantean woman and a human lighthouse keeper; he was a fully Atlantean child, abandoned at birth because of his blond hair, following in Garth’s proud tradition of “an all-white city is racist to people who are extra white in a super problematic metaphor for...something.” On the other hand, we do get this phenomenal panel of Arthur hunting:

As a teenager, he encounters a human fisherman who teaches him how to speak and read, but one day the fisherman is killed by Atlanteans for his connection to Arthur. Arthur goes looking for Atlantis, but is promptly thrown into prison, and we learn that his classic orange shirt and green pants are actually a prison uniform that he now wears to remind him of where he came from, which makes sense until you think about it for even a second. He could escape at any time, but he wants to find and speak to his birth mother, so he hangs out in prison, where he meets Vulko, who teaches him the Atlantean language. But then his mom dies before he can ever speak to her, so he breaks out and goes back to land and like, becomes Aquaman and hangs out with the Justice League and stuff.

Finally he’s like “I should go break all those other people out of jail,” but when he gets back to Atlantis he discovers that they’ve fixed all their political problems and he’s welcomed with open arms. Also, he’s royalty:

The current king does what no king would ever do and is like “Well, you should definitely have the throne instead of me,” and steps down. So these are the elements we’ll be working with until the New 52: no human heritage, royal on his mother’s side, abandoned at birth, foster fisherman dad. I wonder if that’s going to get super complicated?

(How do portraits work underwater??? Did this comic forget they were underwater? This comic definitely forgot they were underwater. This happens a lot.)

Then there’s the 1989 Aquaman series. Atlantis is temporarily conquered by giant alien jellyfish. So that’s a thing that happens.

More importantly, Mera abruptly goes crazy because her baby died...*checks notes*...14 years ago, and her delicate lady brain can’t handle it, so she attacks Arthur. I don’t mean to make light of the severe impact losing a child could have on one’s mental health, but the fact that she goes Comic Book Crazy while Arthur is basically completely fine is misogynistic as fuck.

While trying to fend her off, Arthur uhhhhhhh impales her and kills her. GREAT JOB, BUDDY. There is a very somber royal funeral.

LOL J/K. She’s from another dimension, so she’s immune to impalement, apparently! But decided to chill out in the coffin for a while anyway, I guess? This is the fucking funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Absolutely what you should do if your husband is as terrible as Arthur is, Mera is a queen in every possible way.

Anyway she zhwoops off back to her dimension like fucking Bugs Bunny unzipping reality and zipping it back up behind her, and Arthur cries. It’s great. (Oh, and also he steps down from being king, which is probably a good idea because he’s terrible at it.)

Next up: the nineties! Well, part of them. Also, my favorite Aquacharacter!

[notsolstice]

Hey!! So that post about wayward son (after realizing not the song) made me monkey side-eye my bookcase to the two novels on my bookshelf and I googled what ppl's beef w her is and long story short, books are in the garbage lol. I literally only bought them bc of the Kevin wada art and never got around to reading them, so yeah waste of money, but no skin off my nose. That being said, you got any recs for some good books?? I don't think I have a particular preference, but I'd def prefer non-fiction (I get enough of real life from daily news articles tbh). If it's too much work, don't hesitate to trash this ask, but I just thought I'd give it a shot since u seem well read and I literally don't think I've read anything extensively since I hyperfixated on the Sherlock Holmes anthology for 16 hours straight lol

oh hell yeah successfully tricked someone else into thinking i am well-read

and oh yeah i know i joke but yea don’t read rainbow rowell’s books because it doesn’t matter how many beautiful covers she gets from a collab with a high profile asian american artists there’s no excusing her first mess of a book. plus the fact that they’re apparently making a movie (???) she’s really not trying to apologize or rehab her image very well lol

BUT ANYWAYS idk if you meant fiction instead of non-fiction but if you’re after non-fiction unfort I will not be of much help since I’ve read like, 2 non-fiction books in the last 10 years and I almost exclusively read genre fiction so apologies in advance if this list is useless 2 u. also just fyi i don’t really read modern YA because I’m a crotchety grandmother so if you are looking for YA that is more woke then I will also not be of much help here. and don’t read the raven cycle no matter what tumblr tells u

the southern reach trilogy by jeff vandermeer. the books are probably my all-time favorite sci-fi literature ever, although calling them sci-fi is probably not accurate. more like magical realism science fiction? first book starts with a team of all-women scientists exploring an area that is hostile to humans on behalf of a shady institution and things get weird from there. the second book drags a bit but it is SO worth it trust me. don’t watch the movie

piranesi by susanna clarke. this is her most recent book, and I’m reccing it instead of her first book, jonathan strange & mr norrell because piranesi is a quick read compared to jsamn which is 800 damn pages long and dense as HELL and probably a little intimidating if you’re out of practice reading. however I do also recommend that if you have the patience.

DISCWORLD by terry pratchett. the discworld series is actually about like 50 books or something ridiculous and ugh ok I was trying to keep this not intimidating but it’s so worth it I promise. dw was a foundational text to my sense of humor which, actually hm. that might not be the best endorsement but whatever. it started out as just a parody/satire of those trashy fantasy books from the 70s-80s but it expanded into its own universe. also you may know it if you watched/read good omens, sir terry was the other co-author besides neil gaiman. you do not have to read them in chronological publishing order btw, they’re actually more like comics, where you can pick a character/set of characters and read their series within the larger canon. there are a lot of reading order lists out there so it’s pretty easy to pick one and start, but I can definitely help more if u want!!!

salt: a world history by mark kurlansky. ok this is a non-fiction book I just picked up and it is very interesting despite the title but this has exhausted my recs for non-fiction i’m sorry. or you can read the giant book about cancer the emperor of all maladies which was great but wiped me out on non-fiction for about a decade

the matthew swift series by kate griffin. i think it’s got some other fancy name as a series title but i literally cannot remember it right now oh well. not the highest brow of Great Literature but i loved this series about a sad man brought back from the dead to do magic with garbage bins and telephone booths. and it’s a series of books about adults doing magic but in no way can it be described as “harry potter for grownups” so that earns it points immediately

wilder girls by rory power. oh wait I did read one YA book that I liked!!!!! this is kind of similar to jeff vandermeer’s writing, although a little less intense. there’s a lot of body horror and feral teenage girls and is delightful to read if you were at any point in your life a feral teenage girl

the starless sea by erin morgenstern. skirting the edge of YA with this one but it was fun and gay and what you should read instead of wayward sons. or just read some spn fanfic i got recs for that too

I have a lot more books I’m trying to read now but I feel like this is a decent place to stop before I start recommending chuck palahniuk and embarrassing myself with my cishet male taste

[clockworkowl]

So, in the last couple weeks I made the happy mistake of discovering Ryuu Ga Gotoku and now have a feral obsession (and a PlayStation5 and 7 games to play when I am not actually very good at normal video games [I have always been a button masher]) and it’s really funny because somehow this wasn’t the first time I’d run into the series because I remember reaching a certain point in the let’s play channel I was watching them where my brain went ‘Wait! This is the game with the adult baby fetish gang fight isn’t it?’ Which means I have to have seen the original PS2 version of Yakuza 2, so how, how did I somehow manage to watch someone play this game without realising how amazing they are? (Logically I’m guessing I only saw side quests and not the actual plot, and that perhaps I only saw parts of 2, but still.)

At any rate, I have come to quickly realise that Goro Majima is on the very short list of my favourite fictional characters of all time, and that he and Kiryu hold the same level of OTP ship truth for me that Phoenix and Edgeworth do (funny how the only 2 ships I actually feel strongly about being OTP are ones where one of the pair reads very strongly as ace, so strongly that it doesn’t even feel like projection). I’ve been down the AO3 Kazumaji tag rabbit hole and this weekend I found this fic, which is not just incredible in how amazing the writing is, and how perfectly in character every character feels, and every scene feels to the game where if I hadn’t just hyperfixation watched 3.5 games worth of play-throughs back to back to back just before starting I would think they were things I I had 100% just watched (and I will now probably end up Mandela effecting them into the game. ) (and good thing I am far enough and know which ‘fix it’ things that mattered are changed cause I may have been extra sad to find out that’s not how some characters stories went.). But it is also one of the best treatment of a ship where a character is on the ace spectrum and the fic is interested in exploring the experience of that character figuring their sexuality out and where the boundaries of it are that I have ever read. It seems to have been in limbo for a couple years, but the author did give it a final finished chapter that functions as a closed gate (not a conclusion, but not cliffhanger in an abrupt sense, more like a post credits sequence where you know they want a sequel in the works) I truly hope that the author feels the urge and inspiration and everything to once again come back to it, as much for my own selfish desire to get the full happy ending it seems was originally in the works and to just keep reading it, but also because it sounds like the 2020s have been as much a baseball bat to the emotional skull for them as they have me (and many others) and that was what happened to the planned chapters, so I hope that they heal and come through whatever it is they were going through happy, or at least happier, and well. (I know I get weirdly invested in AO3 author notes, and the culture on the site of people providing us all free creative output to consume their labours, but yet pleading our forgiveness for not posting for awhile or being a day later than they guessed on a new chapter dropping, and sharing all kinds of reasons for it like we deserve an explanation and they’re worried we’ll be angry.) So basically all that was just to drop the link to the work here, so someone who stumbles across my blog here might also find it. (And I guess it’s a sneak peak of my inevitable rambling explanation of how come it’s taken/taking so long to finish the next part of the class trial AxF comic. :) )

[that-spider-witch]

Webcomic Recommendation: Silver Tears

TL;DR: If you, like me, loved Happy Sugar Life for its general themes and were left wanting something similar, I have something for you!

If you are familiar with my blog and the content I enjoy, you might know that I have two very big weaknesses: Cuteness and Horror. They are my aesthetic. Combine the two in a way that doesn’t take away from one or the other, and I’m instantly sold.

One particularly morbid hyperfixation of mine it’s a perfect example of this: The manga Happy Sugar Life, by Tomiyaki Kagisora. It’s about a mentally unstable teenager girl (Satou) who becomes obsessed with a little girl named Shio. Thinking that this obsession must be “love”, she abducts the child and keeps her locked away on their shared appartment, while also trying to “protect” her from those that search to destroy “their happy sugar life” together. This includes pedophiles and people who are as messed-up in the head as Satou herself, but that also includes Asahi, Shio’s older brother, who just wants to discover what happened to her missing sister and save her.

While the main character was almost completely devoid of morals and the plot itself can seem a little icky, to say the least, I was immediately enthralled by the aesthetics, the pretty artstyle and the psychological horror aspects of the plot. The combination of the cutesy atmosphere and traumatized characters, plus the theme of “children in danger” that I love so much in horror, made me love the story.

A saving grace was that, while Satou’s “romantic” obsession with Shio had pedophilic red flags everywhere (No people, you can call it a “motherly bond” all you want, she still kissed an underage child on the mouth and wanted to marry her. No mother figure on their right mind does that!), their... relationship was strictly non-sexual. Still, when it was over it left me hungry for a similar story, one with similar themes but preferably without the child grooming. 

At SmackJeeves, main home for nearly all amateur webcomics, I found this little hidden gem titled Silver Tears. And because it’s just three chapters long so far and absolutely no one else is talking about it, I will!

Plot, art and general thoughts under the cut:

Plot

“The 320 year-old vampire Aled Winter finds a severely injured and frightened werewolf child in the middle of the forest. Despite the hateful relations between the vampires and werewolves, Aled chose to save the child's life.”- Plot description on the website.

Silver Tears takes place in a Urban Fantasy world where vampires and werewolves exist alongside humanity. Elves and demons are also mentioned by some characters, with the latter being already implied to having a role on the events behind the plot, but both species have yet to make an appearance.

The plot begins when, after a night of hunting, our main character Aled and his friend Chika spot a mysterious young man wearing a hoodie and with his face covered in blood. Fearing that the guy could be a Revenant (A vampire who has lost their human soul and has become a feral monster), Chika goes after him before he hurts anyone else while Aled goes the opposite way to find the prey the suspected Revenant left behind― And if it is still alive, kill it. Leaving no human witnesses seems to be the modus operandi of vampires in this world, at least when it comes to Revenants.

What he finds instead is a werewolf child, no older than four years, who has been left for dead after the hooded vampire sexually molested him. Despite the very strong discrimination between werewolves and vampires, Aled can’t bring himself to kill the poor boy and decides to rescue him. After he and Chika escape the hooded man (Who is shown to be a humanoid abomination of sorts that leaves even Chika, who is stated to be 2026 years old and a “Queen” of some kind, terrified), he takes the boy back with him to the home he shares with some other vampires and decides to take care of him, despite being told that if it is found out that he has a werewolf child in his custody (and a severely scarred one at that), it would change the already hateful relationship between vampires and werewolves for the worse, and both sides would clearly end-up wanting his head on a plate.

Meanwhile, the hooded man is still on the loose...

Who is that monster? Where and how did he got this boy? Where is the boy’s family? And who exactly is this boy to begin with?

My opinions: 

On her notes, the author mentions that she was inspired to draw this comic after writing an essay against the sexual exploitation of children, and it shows. So if you are fearing that this is a comic about a twisted “romance” between a young adult and a child, rest easy because I don’t really think the plot is going on that direction.

Everything else though,like the ever present feeling of dread, the wholesome cuteness of the poor child who’s the center of this whole mess, the mentally disturbed characters, the grey morality... This webcomic has everything I loved in Happy Sugar Life and some more. If I were to describe this comic from the three chapters we got so far, it would be “Gender-bender Happy Sugar Life with fantasy and without pedophilia”. And I don’t know about you, but that’s a complete win for me!

There this enthralling mystery surrounding the two main characters: Aled and the child (Nicknamed by Aled as “Ulv”, since he can’t tell him his own name because of what could be selective muteness, if he had one to begin with). We don’t know absolutely nothing about Ulv’s past, and since he doesn’t seem to be able to talk he can’t give any important information himself. Aled, meanwhile, seems to have been a victim of rape himself in the past, if his shadowy flashbacks are any indication. In any case, he doesn’t take Ulv’s situation lightly, and we are shown that he is willing to kill to keep him safe.

The gray morality is strong on this one: While our main characters are shown to be seemingly good people, they also don’t think much on human life or, in some cases, the lives of even those of their own kind. As an example, when Aled and Chika leave some unnamed human guy unconscious in an alley after feeding from him, When Chika questions if it’s okay to just leave him there, since he could die from the blood-loss and the cold, Aled just hand-waves it and says that he doesn’t think so, but that “no one would miss him” if he did. Maybe his family would, but no one else. Chika accepts this, and they keep moving. The dude is never mentioned again. And that’s just the completely spoiler-free example I can think of right now.

All in all, the plot and the characters have been really interesting so far, and I can’t wait to learn more about them and the strange and scary world they live in.

The Art

If the image above wasn’t any indication, the artstyle the comic uses is very manga, even if the strips are still read like a Western webcomic. Said artstyle can get a little amaterur-ish in some panels, and sometimes characters look like they came from the pages of some “How To Draw Manga” book. 

Don’t let that fool you, though. While the author admits that she still need to practice some things, the art can get really, really pretty. The body horror, while not Junji Ito-level of creepy, it’s still very well done, and I can’t think of any page of the comic so far that was “bad” or anything like that. The author puts a lot of love into her art, and that love shines on the final product. Some of the pages and panels look like they came from an actual manga.

LOOK AT HOW PRETTY THAT IS: The wolf’s eye, the creepy smiling shadows.. Just, gorgeous.

General thoughts:

I love this webcomic so far. The plot, the characters, the art... Everything.

I recommend everyone to give this comic a chance. And if the author is reading this: Please, keep up the good work. You are doing great.