#I think it was because the costume had primed me to expect something completely different

[off-the-deep-end]

In another case of I-didn’t-like-it-the-first-time-through-but-I’ve-made-a-complete-180: actually, Origin is bangin’.

I like the music and how the program utilizes the music! It adds to the elements and the elements add to it!

This may be the first time I really appreciated how organic Yuzu’s jumps and spins feel. He doesn’t really telegraph them; they naturally flow from the music and steps before.

Ugh. So good.

[miraculouscontent]

Hi, Adrien is handed things on a silver platter whereas Marinette has to work for them.

First thing’s first is just the concept of the love square. Chat Noir gets to interact with Ladybug no matter what because they’re heroes. Ladybug - who carries the weight and responsibility of heroism without getting benefited from it - is required to go to every battle due to her purification ability, and Chat Noir of course is going to show up because he loves both flirting with Ladybug and the freedom of being a superhero.

In addition, Adrien got his miraculous by helping Master Fu up (something that would be expected out of any semi-decent person; by the way, yes, I know the “””significance””” of the action, and it’s silly), whereas Marinette saved him from being hit by a car.

Adrien was allowed back in school with still no explanation from Gabriel (especially since he’s Hawk Moth) as to why he thought it was a good idea to send his son to a school where the very first akumatization had happened. It was Adrien’s goal for the episode alongside making friends, and Nino offered him friendship out of pity when Adrien sulked about how Chloe was the closest thing to a friend he had.

Chat crushes on Ladybug because she stood up to Hawk Moth in a speech dripping with confidence, caught what seemed like hundreds of akuma, and came up with a plan quick enough to save Mylene and Ivan from falling to their deaths from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Marinette (who Chat fell in love with one side of first, mind you, so already this is to his benefit), meanwhile, crushes on Adrien because the narrative gave her a falsehood about him never having any friends (i.e: no Chloe) and he gave her an umbrella while he was ten meters away from his actual ride (like with Fu, again, any decent person--).

Chat’s crush on Ladybug makes things harder for her because it causes him to throw tantrums mid-battle, get distracted and distract her because he’s busy flirting, all of which make her feel guilty for not returning his feelings. Marinette’s crush on Adrien makes things hard for her again because it causes her to embarrass herself while virtually everyone who knows teases/mocks her for it, their opinions of her even being dragged down due to the crush (see Alya with the Lila situation).

Chat is shipped with Ladybug by Parisians everywhere and Alya delighted in taking a picture of them kissing (that got posted on the Ladyblog without Ladybug’s consent). Likewise, the other LadyNoir kiss (that Ladybug had to do to free Chat from Dark Cupid’s control) was shown on live TV for all watching to see. Marinette’s kisses with Adrien, however, were either wiped from the timeline (in which Adrien got to keep a secret from her so he could date “””Ladybug”””) or used to humiliate her because Adrien was attempting a prank.

Ladybug realizes that Chat is in serious about her, not because he told her himself, but because he relayed it to Marinette who happened to be Ladybug. Marinette, on the other hand, has spent 3+ seasons attempting to confess her feelings to Adrien or make advances on him, all of which ended in some form of failure and some of which through no fault of her own.

Chloe shoved her in “Bubbler” (Adrien didn’t even check on her) and then Nathalie crushed the note she’d written on a scarf that Marinette put tons of time and effort into, leading to Adrien thinking it was from his dad.

“Copycat” was accidental and came on too strong, requiring its deletion.

She got distracted by Alya and forgot to write her name in “Dark Cupid,” her letter only further solidifying Chat’s crush on Ladybug.

She kept getting interrupted in “Gamer” after Alya chided her for using the event to get with Adrien (despite Alya doing the same thing for Marinette during the film in “Horrificator” while Mylene was MIA).

She wasn’t able to tell Adrien about Lila’s thievery in “Volpina” because the grimoire had to remain a secret.

The hat in “A Christmas Special” got given away within minutes and then not even brought back on-screen by Miraculous Ladybug (Adrien never even thanked Marinette personally for it).

Kagami came out of nowhere to take the fencing spot in “Riposte.”

Deciding not to make schemes only led to her embarrassment in “Gigantitan.”

She got made fun of and the notes all conveniently looked the same in “Backwarder,” leading to her mixing them up.

The macaron for Adrien (that Marinette would prepare every week) never got eaten by him and ended up causing the akuma after Chloe had emotionally manipulated Marinette into scheming with her.

Practicing on a statue (as per Tikki’s advice) in “The Puppeteer 2″ humiliated her when Adrien revealed himself as the statue.

She was embarrassed during the party in “Party Crasher” because she was pressured into dancing without her consent.

The timeline had to be reset in “Chat Blanc” and she had to lie to her friends that she hadn’t given Adrien the gift even though she’d actually succeeded, while the hat she made just for Adrien got written off as a gift from a random fan (which is an even worse fate than the scarf).

The confession in “Felix” was deleted by Felix himself before Adrien could see it.

And Adrien, meanwhile? Ohhhh boy, lemme tell you about Adrien.

He gets put into suggestive/close positions with Ladybug on many, many occasions, all for “free.”

He got a kiss from Ladybug in “Dark Cupid” that, remember, got photographed and put on live TV.

He got to goad the audience without consequence about he and Ladybug potentially being in a relationship eventually - gaining the knowledge that all of Paris was invested in LadyNoir to thoroughly stroke his ego - and then Ladybug had to act like they were a couple in “Prime Queen” to the point of holding Chat’s hand and saying that they were in love.

Likewise, “Glaciator” featured Ladybug having to act like a couple with him again, now to the point of kissing his cheek, and then Chat got a blush from her after he’d spent a good chunk of the akuma battle pouting that Ladybug didn’t come to the date he set up (that she hadn’t even known was a date because he purposefully withheld that information) despite her telling him that she’d have to see about it because she had plans.

He was reassured in “Anansi” on being “irreplaceable” after he made an unnecessary comment about being replaced by a turtle (Carapace).

He got to carry Ladybug around bridal style and also save her in “Sandboy” and “Reverser” respectively because she was rendered essentially useless without him, then got to save her again in “Frozer” after giving her the cold shoulder for rejecting his feelings.

He’s the one who got told by Marinette’s own parent not to apologize for how he feels in “Weredad” (note that Marinette herself never got this talk from Sabine, nor Tom, which very much could’ve prevented “Crocoduel”).

He got a cheek kiss from Ladybug in “Desperada” after getting to undo the very-much-against-the-rules identity reveal he made to her via Second Chance.

He got to look good in “Gamer 2.0″ when Ladybug was seeking advice from him despite the fact that her and Chat’s situations hero-wise are absolutely, completely, 100% different and he didn’t even try to take that into account.

He got Ladybug resting her head on his shoulder because of what she saw in a deleted time in which he - unbeknownst to her - lied by omission.

A fake Ladybug tried to kiss him on two separate occasions, “The Puppeteer 2″ and “Ladybug,” much to his delight (something to note is that the fake Adrien who went after Ladybug in both “Chameleon” and “Felix” tried to force themselves on her).

He got the “jealousy” moment from Ladybug in “Heart Hunter” and then a hug from Aquabug in “Miracle Queen.”

He received no repercussions for taking Ladybug out on a date (that she wasn’t aware was going to be a date) in “Gang of Secrets,” at best having to apologize for her behavior to the people around them.

He got reassured that Ladybug “couldn’t do this without him” in “Guiltrip,” even to the point of being told that she “probably doesn’t tell him enough.”

He got told by Ladybug that she would never abandon him in “Hack-San” because he was guilting her sulking about how his not knowing her identity would mean that he’d never see her again if she left him somehow.

And before you think this only extends to the romantic aspects of love square, let me tell you now that it definitely doesn’t.

Marinette entered the bowler hat competition and had to defend her own work to the judge.

She ran for class representative and had to earn the trust and faith of her class in “Darkblade” when put up against Chloe’s bribery.

She did whatever she could to make sure Juleka got her picture taken in “Reflekta.”

She had to actually craft a pair of glasses suitable for Jagged Stone in “Pixelator” and then make a gorgeous album cover for him in “Guitar Villain.” (note that this partially led to “Troublemaker” where she was just happily wanting to advertise her parents’ business, and the writers multiplied her Adrien pictures for the sake humiliating her when it was caught on live TV)

She had to work to get ungrounded by improving her attendance in “Simon Says,” because she had been busy being a hero.

She worked to try and get Nathaniel and Marc to get together on a project, knowing it would be good for both of them.

She set up an entire celebration for her bully to try and make said bully feel good about herself in “Malediktator.”

She did Kitty Section’s designs and costumes in “Silencer” and then had to go protect them from being stolen, along with her friends’ music.

She had to wear multiple miraculouses in “Kwamibuster” in order to go against Kwamibuster and get back both the ladybug earrings and the cat ring.

“Gamer 2.0.” Just... “Gamer 2.0.″

She made a whole complex lockbox to protect the Miracle Box in “Gang of Secrets.”

She worked to reach out to Zoe in “Sole Crusher” even after Zoe trashed her in front of the school, going as far as to try and comfort Zoe’s akumatized form.

She had to stand up for the movie to be fixed in “Queen Banana” because no one else would.

She has to work each and every akuma battle as Ladybug, figuring out Lucky Charms that can range from simple to complicated, while simultaneously dealing with a partner who relies heavily on her plans and will occasionally make things harder by either throwing tantrums mid-battle or distracting her.

And meanwhile...

Chat Noir got to throw the blame onto Ladybug for Theo’s akumatization in “Copycat.”

Marinette covered for him in “The Collector” when he was the one who recklessly lost the grimoire by not being careful with it.

He got handed Fu’s identity in “Syren” after whining to Ladybug, throwing blame on her and trying to bribe Plagg so they’d tell him, threatening to quit while Paris was underwater, and all of this while Marinette herself only got to meet Fu because she had the grimoire on her.

He was given the moral high ground in “Malediktator” despite not having to actually care about Chloe enough to call/check on her.

He got to sit back in “Chameleon” and not concern himself with judgment or comment on the situation with Lila, even going into “Ladybug” where he continues to inform no one about Lila (including Marinette, who briefly believed that Lila came to her senses and was willing to make amends) after Lila got Marinette expelled, despite the complete lack of risk on his part considering who his father is and how harshly Lila would be dragged through the mud if she dared to trash his reputation.

He clumsily trips in “Captain Hardrock” in a fashion that reveals an instrument he happens to play, leading to him getting invited to join Kitty Section within seconds of being on the Liberty. (so when Adrien is clumsy, it’s to his benefit, and when Marinette is clumsy, it’s to her detriment)

He never got called out for distracting Ladybug and digging for details that could relate to her identity in “Kwamibuster” (which, again, forced Marinette to do all the work to fix things).

He got a party thrown for him in “Party Crasher” by Nino, and also guys that Adrien had never put forth effort into interacting with or befriending (Marinette had also been through more with all of them sans Nino).

He got to force Ladybug’s favorite traits of his out of her in “Truth” because she was under the influence of Truth’s powers.

He got off the hook for sacrificing himself in “Lies” by flirting about Ladybug’s “irresistible angry little pout,” and also never got repercussions for flirting with another girl while dating Kagami.

He never had to face consequences for smashing a chimney in “Sentibubbler,” even as he was dismissing the gesture because he knew Miraculous Ladybug would fix it.

He didn’t have to apologize for his behavior in “Hack-San,” whereas Ladybug "had to” for telling someone else her identity (the details of why - i.e: that she was having a mental breakdown and needed a release from it - being completely left out) and not telling him that she was leaving (when she literally hadn’t had time to tell him anything; do note as well that Adrien didn’t have to do the same in either “Backwarder” or “Startrain”).

He received no consequences and was in fact rewarded for allowing the akuma in “Wishmaker” to hit him, a choice that Viperion has to live with because it caused him to see both Ladybug and Chat’s identities (meaning now Luka - someone who, like the guys in “Party Crasher” - Adrien has done virtually nothing for - can support Adrien since he knows).

And I could go on, I really could, but my point is that Adrien is given all of the sympathy and sad points while Marinette basically never is. Just like how he was born swimming in money, fame, and adoring fans, the show hands out praises and all the things he’s ever wanted because he’s sad.

He doesn’t have to try. He can whine and complain and vent to Plagg about how “replaceable” he is because the show will mollycoddle him to the moon and back. They’ll put his crush on Ladybug’s shoulders to make her feel guilty while Marinette is over here having to bust her butt just for a chance at Adrien recognizing any semblance of her feelings, and he goes on being blissfully ignorant of them so he doesn’t have to suffer like Ladybug does.

In addition, Marinette has to either be “““making mistakes”““ or embarrassing herself in order to get screen time because the burden of lessons fails upon her, whereas Adrien can be name-dropped without even doing anything.

It’s not just the love square that’s unbalanced, it’s everything between these two. Ladybug is scolded and punished for the slightest act of selfishness while Adrien is encouraged and rewarded for being selfish and demanding things. Marinette has to work to be noticed (and sometimes won’t even get that much) while all Adrien has to do is put on his best sad face and the show will bend over backwards to either give him exactly what he wants or make him the sympathetic one through the narrative.

Even if Adrien had known about Marinette’s crush at the time that Ladybug knew about Chat’s, it wouldn’t matter, because the tipped scales in how they’re treated would still make it so Marinette is the one at fault for “dumping her feelings onto Adrien” while Ladybug is still forced to interact with Chat even if his advances make her uncomfortable.

[tomorrowsdrama]

2020 Year in Thirst Pt. 2

Sometimes, I will watch a drama for the plot/premise/substance and be rewarded with a surprise hottie, and it’s the best feeling ever!  It’s like finding money in your pocket that you didn’t know about.  The following list of dramas can be described as:

Came for the plot, was rewarded with a surprising side of thirst

1. Flower of Evil

Brief Summary: Lee Jun Ki plays Baek Hee Sung and Moon Chae Won plays Cha Ji Won, his wife who is also a detective.  What Ji Won doesn’t know is that her husband, Hee Sung, is actually Hyun Soo, a man on the run from a murder that he did not commit and also a suspected accomplice to a series of murders committed by his father in the past.  Oh yeah, his dad secretly tried to groom him into being his protege/murder partner.  Because of how he was raised, HS believes that he has no emotions and is simply putting on an act as the perfect husband and father.  His “parents” are in on the ruse and are actually the ones who forced him into assuming their comatose son’s identity.  Anyway, of course things from the past start to catch up with HS and his wife is somehow assigned to investigating his old murder case.  She of course feels betrayed, but also conflicted as she discovers her husband is not who he said he was and a prime murder suspect.  Things get even more complicated as the real murderer re-appears with fabulous long hair and tries to frame HS for the murders.  In between all of this are delicious make outs between the couple and at least one instance where they banged so hard, HS was wiped out the next morning.

Surprise Thirst Factor: I checked out this drama fully expecting to drop it because the promos were so misleading and unappealing. But boy was I in for a pleasant surprise!  Not only was the drama super addicting, it also had some nice eye candy in the form of Lee Jun Ki being a completely unrealistic house husband who satisfies in the housework (The man cooks and does the laundry!), childcare, and bedroom and Kim Ji Hoon’s glorious mane of beauty making viewers have a moral crisis over lusting after a homicidal maniac (who turned out to be a real loser without murder daddy around to clean up his mess.  It’s ok, we’ll always have his hair).

Yes, work that hair honey.  It’s the only good thing you’ve got going on for you (the character, not Kim Ji Hoon)

The chemistry between Lee Jun Ki and Moon Chae Won was fire and the make out scenes were soo believable.  Like yes, these two beautiful people are really into being married to each other and understandably want to make out all the time. 

He’s the primary caretaker for their daughter and it’s just *swoons.*  Not all thirst traps come in the form of sexy abs (although I would not mind if he wanted to flash some).

2. Six Flying Dragons

Brief Summary: The story of young Yi Bang Won (who later becomes King Taejong) and the founding of the Joseon Dynasty.  As short as it sounds, that really is an accurate summary of the drama haha.

Surprise Thirst Factor: I started watching this drama because I heard it was a great sageuk and I’m a big fan of Yoo Ah In.  Even though I’m a fan of his acting, Yoo Ah In doesn’t necessarily get my hormones raging so I wasn’t expecting to be so thirsty while watching Six Flying Dragons.  But then.  BUT THEN.  Byun Yo Han showed up in all his scruffy tortured deadly killer glory and my hormones woke up and said hi, hello, who are you, what’s your name, what’s your sign, can I get your number?  The deadlier and more tortured his character got, the sexier he became to me.  Sorry Yoo Ah In, you’ll always be my acting boo, but Byun Yo Han’s got my thirst.  Byun Yo Han looks so good when he's sad and/or covered in blood, it makes me feel like a sadist for thinking that I wouldn’t mind if the drama made his character cry some more.

3. Ever Night S1

Brief Summary: As a child, Ning Que witnessed his entire household get massacred because of a prophecy that the child of Hades will be born from the house and bring about the Eternal Night.  Somehow, he managed to escape and was the lone survivor.  He finds a baby buried in a pile of dead bodies as he’s fleeing and names her Sang Sang.  The two orphans grow up inseparable from each other and do whatever it takes to survive in the harsh, cruel world.  Ning Que earns money by becoming a deadly mercenary and Sang Sang takes care of the household affairs.  At one point, Ning Que becomes a disciple of the powerful Fu Zi and somehow gets entangled in the struggles between the Holy Sect and Demon Sect.  A bunch of beautiful women fall for Ning Que, and the drama tries its hardest to convince us that he has chemistry with and reciprocates the feelings of one of them (i.e. Mo Shan Shan), but anybody who was even half paying attention knows that the only one for Ning Que is Sang Sang.  They are the OTP of all OTPs and take “ride or die” to a whole other level. Oh also, their height difference is the stuff manga dreams are made of. Ning Que is a “good guy” but also not a “good guy” in the sense that he is not above doing whatever it takes to seek revenge and is only out for himself and Sang Sang (and later, his older brothers and sisters from the academy).

Surprise Thirst Factor: Chen Feiyu is an attractive person but I could not in good conscience thirst after him because he was literally born in the year 2000.  It did not help that he was only 18 when he filmed Ever Night and looked every bit his age.  My thirst may have no shame, but it does have its own set of principles and one of those principles is thou shalt not lust after those born in the new millennium!  Luckily for me, Second Brother is played by Dylan Kuo who is a beautiful, elegant, tall man

and Brother Chao is exactly the type of rugged and manly that I am into.  

(you don’t have to be)

who looks better when wet

AHEM. Yeah.

Sixth Brother is also not so bad with his scanty pounding work attire,

4. Novoland: Eagle Flag

Brief Summary:  Asule is the prince of a tribe in the grasslands who is held as a royal guest (i.e. hostage) in the Eastland Empire.  There he meets his two future best friends, Yu Ran, a free spirited princess who is descended from a race of bird people, and Ji Ye, an emo neglected/shunned son of a concubine who is probably the best fighter in the empire.  Ji Ye loves Yu Ran who is a ball of sunshine to his Johnny Raincloud dark emo self.  Yu Ran loves Ji Ye back.  Asule loves both his friends and will do anything to protect them.  The world decides to fuck over best friends Asule, Ji Ye, and Yu Ran for no reason as they try their best to just live a peaceful life away from all the political scheming and fighting.

Surprise Thirst-worthiness: I was completely content with enjoying Eagle Flag purely for its story and substance.  It’s seriously a wonderful, yet heartbreaking drama and the scale of the production is amazing.  No cheap $10 costumes here.  Also, the direction is beautiful/artistic and not the run of mill “let’s shoot it and complete it as fast as we can.”  The two main actors were cute, but not really my type.  Then the drama decided to give Ji Ye the “Sexy Bloody Tormented Killer Makeover” and all of a sudden your girl was rushing to MDL to check Chen Ruo Xuan’s birthday and calculating his age.  I am simple, predictable, and consistent when it comes to my thirst and give a character some scruff, long hair, angst, and some bloodlust and I’m all yours.  I am literally:

Is it wrong that when Ji Ye showed up looking like this ready to kill his mother’s torturer

I thought, yes, can we have him kill another? 

5. Run On

Brief Summary: Im Siwan plays Ki Seon Geom, a national track runner from a rich family who is a bit of an oddball and marches to his own beat.  Although his words can sometimes be construed as rude since he has no filter, they are also completely honest and have no hidden meaning.  He also has his own personal code that he lives by and he will stick to it no matter how negatively it may impact himself.  He meets Oh Mi Joo, a translator with her own strange quirks and sparks fly as Mi Joo is assigned to be his interpreter.  

Surprise Thirst-worthiness: I kind of watched this drama by accident.  I had read about Im Siwan starring in a new drama but nothing I saw from the description or promos for Run On appealed to me.  Nor did it give me any information about what the drama would be about.  Then one day, I just happened to be browsing Netflix for something to play in the  background and decided on Run on since I thought I wouldn’t be that invested.  What a happy accident that turned out to be because I’m so in love with this drama right now.  This is a case where the thirst does not stem from the character’s physical appearance, but from the intensity/charisma the actor brings to the character and the character himself.  Ki Seon Geom is so odd, but so appealing at the same time and Im Siwan is so magnetic in the role.  Prior to Run On, Im Siwan wasn’t really my type physically.  In fact, I always scratched my head whenever people called him handsome in dramas (I know, I know, forgive me).  So color me shocked when I found myself swooning all over Im Siwan in the second episode of Run On.  Now, it’s like I have “Im Siwan is attractive” glasses on and he looks attractive in everything to me.  I want to gobble up all the dramas he’s been in.

[makeste]

what do you think about the sexualization of the girls in the anime/ manga?

it’s not my favorite thing! but at the same time... how to put this. like, on the one hand, I’m not thrilled about things like Momo’s skimpy costume, Hagakure’s complete and utter lack of a costume (JUST GIVE HER ONE THAT WORKS WITH HER POWERS LIKE WHAT MIRIO HAS), and Mineta In General. but on the other hand, I also have to acknowledge that it could be a lot worse though. Mineta is always shown getting his comeuppance, and the writing makes it clear his behavior is very much frowned on. most of the girls actually do have completely reasonable costumes that aren’t pointlessly sexualized and are very practical. and compared to a lot of other shounen series, BnHA actually doesn’t have much in the way of gratuitous up-skirt shots, random scenarios of the guys accidentally walking in on the girls changing or taking a bath, perverted characters that actually get away with being perverted and it’s implied that it’s fine because they’re handsome and don’t ~really~ mean anything by it, and so forth. the handful of times we have seen ecchi-er stuff (chapters 17 and 100 come to mind), it has at least been very brief. and while I was and still am disgusted by Mineta groping the 15-year-old Tsuyu’s chest way back when, at the same time I appreciate that she reacted by being all “THE FUCK” and immediately trying to drown his ass. because as bad as it still was, at least it wasn’t some sort of cutesy ~accidental groping~ where a character touched her boob by accident and she was all “KYAAA!! BLUSH!! SLAP!!” and we all had a lighthearted chuckle. like, even though this was presented as comedic, it was also presented as very gross and not to be tolerated.

please don’t think that my saying “it could be worse” means that I’m at all okay with it though! because I’m not! a manga series where young girls aren’t sexualized every two seconds and are treated with respect should be the bare minimum! it’s the ground level! and he doesn’t even always hold to that! but at the same time, BnHA doesn’t just exist in a vacuum with no real world context. it’s published in a country which has a long history of being frustratingly sexist and way too casually accepting of harassment, and super repressed in day-to-day life while being absurdly horny behind closed doors. and all of this is generally accepted as being just the way things are. while the #MeToo movement was sweeping through other countries and raising awareness of sexual assault, Japan started up #KuToo which was a movement to... allow women to wear shoes other than high heels to work. like, that’s the bar we’re currently at. sexual assault is apparently barely even on the radar?? first we need to allow women to wear shoes that aren’t painful and actually wear glasses if they need to wear glasses?? so, yeah. needless to say it’s going to be a very steep hill to climb. (which isn’t to say other countries are so much more enlightened, but I’m just saying that Japan still has quite a ways to go here in general.)

anyways I’m veering off track, but my point is that even though BnHA has its problems, I feel like (a) it has been improving in this regard, (b) even at its worst it was not nearly as bad as a lot of other manga, and that’s not nothing, and (c) there is almost an expectation in Japanese manga culture to have some perverted stuff, is what I feel. which is messed up. but it also means that I’m less inclined to view it as harshly. or maybe a better way of saying it is that I do view it harshly, but I’m more inclined to sigh and move on and not dwell on it. because it’s so ubiquitous that I almost feel like I have to do that or else I won’t be able to enjoy anything.

and also fwiw since she’s the one who’s taken center stage more recently, I should own up to the fact that I have no problem at all with Miruko’s raw sexual magnetism and big dick energy. like for me that’s different than the kids. she’s an adult and she’s sexy and confident and incredibly powerful and has agency for days, and has actual muscle and not just junk in the trunk, and so if Horikoshi can’t stop obsessing over showing close-ups of her thighs, then you know what? I am not gonna complain. if you’re gonna add sex appeal, then honestly, that is the way to do it. it was hot as fuck and he depicted how strong she was without once undermining it or being condescending in any way, and when she got all bloodied up he didn’t rip her costume in dubiously strategic places, and when she eventually did get brought down it was after meleeing half a dozen High Ends entirely on her own without giving an inch. it was amazing, and so much better than sideplots about high school beauty pageants or teenage girls signing up to do hero work only to end up starring in commercials.

so I guess to sum up, I wish it was better, but I also try to take a realistic view on it knowing the culture, and am grateful for the good in what we do have. I said earlier that I thought Horikoshi was improving with regard to this subject, and I do think this is true. he has eased up on it a lot. enough that I almost take it for granted, even. when I first tried to read Vigilantes, there were way more barely-there skirts and suspiciously low angles than I had seen in a hot minute, and I was kind of taken aback by it, because I just wasn’t used to it anymore. because BnHA prime just doesn’t have it. and I am grateful for that. there’s a certain amount of privilege in being able to flip my shit whenever Horikoshi does do something egregious nowadays, because it sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s so rare. but it doesn’t mean I won’t be pissed about it though. again, these standards should be the bare minimum standards. that they unfortunately aren’t doesn’t mean that he is off the hook. so yeah. those are my somewhat disorganized thoughts on it.

[cosplayinamerica]

I was digging through my tumblr and found probably the first cosplay interview for Cosplay in America - Maridah. The interview was posted Aug 24, 2010

------------

I’ve seen Maridah at Fanime and Anime Expo for the past two years. When I started this book project, she was cosplaying Saber and completely mobbed at both cons I saw her at. I decided to shoot her an email to ask about her cosplay.

Well, first of all, tell me how you got into cosplaying ?

I attended a magnet high school for theater, so I had taken a few costuming classes. This was around the same time I became interested in anime and wanted to go to a convention. At the time ‘cosplay’ was just starting to gain interest in america, and it seemed like a fun idea for me to show up to a con in a costume if I was going to go…I ended up making 3 costumes for myself and a couple for friends for that first con. One of these was an Auron from Final Fantasy 10 for a friend, which meant working with leather and all sorts of things I hadn’t tried before in school. From the get-go I was taking on challenges, something that I think has stuck with me. As soon as the convention started I was hooked. I made so many good friends that first con, and cosplay really appealed to my interest in making costumes, so it was a perfect fit.

I had ask folks on my Facebook/Myspace as to what questions they like answered. Two of these questions is “How do you pick which character you want to portray?” and “Do you enjoy group or solo cosplay more?”

I love group cosplay. I have made so many good friends through cosplay, and cosplaying with them is great. Even if it’s people I’ve never met before, I’d rather have people to pose with and chat with. If I’m posing alone, it’s okay, but standing around by myself can be really boring. The costumes that I have had the most coverage of at cons were solo costumes, and while it is great to have that recognition of hard work on costumes I’ve wanted to make, I still end up wishing I had friends involved.

It’s sort of up to chance what I end up cosplaying, and each costume is done for different reasons. Only a portion of the costumes I start for myself get done. I’ve given up making a lot of my costumes sewing stuff for others. Hopefully I can turn that around a bit! I have a list of things I want to do, but this list ends up being ignored quite a bit because there are so many factors. I try to pick costumes of characters I like, but occasionally I pick ones I feel are more look appropriate.

It is really random what ends up being made in the end, though. Half the stuff I work on is picked according to what show friends want to do because I like doing group work. The other half is stuff I really want to do, even if it’s on my own sometimes. The end result is aways the same with every costume, regardless of motive. I’m over budget, but it’s fun~

Can you tell me about what you wore to Fanime ’09 and about the construction of it ? How long did it take ? Was it harder than you thought ?

For Fanime 2009, I wore Armored Saber from Fate/Stay Night. It was about a month and a half before the con when I started working on it.

The majority of the costume is made of a thermoplastic known as Sintra. I patterned out each piece of the armor, then transfered the paper pieces on to the plastic. I used a scroll saw to cut it all out, which took several days of work. I sanded the edge of each piece to give them a slight bevel and a cleaner look. I used a dremmel to take off sharp corners and fix up shapes if they didn’t line up right or couldn’t be cut to shape with the saw. I used boiling water to shape the smaller pieces, and a heat gun for the side panels. After shaping them, I primed the pieces, sanded them, and sprayed them with paint, then used a clear coat to seal them.

Not every piece of armor worked out as planned, so a few pieces were remade last minute out of thick craft foam.

The sword was made out of balsa and wood putty. The wood was sanded and sealed, and sprayed in the same way as my armor. I was short on time, so it ended up being rushed. I drafted out my own pattern for the dress. The sleeves are reinforced with thick interfacing to keep the shape they have. The base wig was found locally. I bought loose hair and made a few wefts on my sewing machine and the braid. The wig was styled in an evening, and involved hairpins, a little hot glue, and a ton of Got2BGlued hairspray.

The costume was about as hard to make as I expected it to be. Difficult, but not impossible for me. I had not worked with many of the materials I made it from before and it was a learning experience.

What were folks’ reaction to your Saber when you were out at the cons ?

It was different depending on the person. Generally other cosplayers were just intrigued, and wanted to know the ins and outs of the construction. Little kids seemed to think I was something akin to a character at Disneyland, and wanted pictures, which was adorable. I had some guys who seemed to think I was a mannequin or something, and seemed mystified by my ability to talk, which was funny. I met some cool people who liked the series and they gave fan approval on my hard work. Others were quick to ask me where I bought everything, and seemed skeptical of my answer. It was a totally mixed bag, but over all, I had a lot of people interested in photographing the costume and there was plenty of positive feedback. It was a good experience.

Did you do any of the Masquerade ? I thought your outfit was pretty awesome and curious if you entered any contests.

Thank you! I haven’t entered a masquerade. I’m not really into competing, honestly. I might consider being part of a group with friends some time in the future, but I don’t see myself ever entering a masquerade on my own. I’m honestly not motivated enough to deal with the hassle of getting signed up, doing rehearsals, etc. If more conventions had hall cosplay contests, I would most certainly give one a shot, but there aren’t many of those that I know of. It also kind of goes against why I cosplay. I just really like to make the costumes and I want it to be fun to wear them. I don’t need a trophy to tell me I did something well. I get that award every time someone asks for a photo.

A friend of mine suggested this question : If you could cosplay anyone and time, money and technology were of no concern, who will it be ???

If I could, I’d want to make an awesome Motoko from Ghost in the Shell with a full scale tachikoma I could ride in. That’s pretty close to impossible, but I can dream, right ?

And finally, I’ve been asking everyone what cosplay means to them ?

Cosplay is a important hobby for me. I love the process of making something well. It’s a hobby that lets you exercise so many skills, and it’s always challenging. That’s partly why I love it. The big thing for me is the people I’ve met because of it, some of them have become dear friends I hope I can always call that, even when we’ve moved on to other hobbies and interests.

Okay, thanks a lot ! Hope to see you out at future cons ^^

www.maridah.com

[solange-lol]

not so typical love song - ch. 7/13

Chapter Title: Love Me

Words: 3,332

Art by @lizzybizzyo! <3

[ one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight (coming soon)]

read on ao3

—

Thanksgiving came and went, and soon Bianca was on her train back to college, leaving a quiet house in her absence. 

They talked, of course, more than they had talked over the phone. But they never went in deep about anything. Nico never brought up his secret, and Bianca dropped asking about homecoming all together.

It felt like she already knew. Nico came so close to telling her just to get that weight off his chest, but every time he was about to bring it up, he didn’t. 

It felt so dangerous with the circumstance he was already under. Technically, he had already come out to two people, but something about telling someone face to face out of his own will terrified him. 

Deep down, he knew Bianca wouldn’t care. So why was he so scared?

The same reason he was scared to tell any of his friends, probably. He didn’t want anything to change, didn’t want their view on him to change. And if word got out, the best thing to ever happen to him would slip away. He couldn’t lose Blue, not now. 

Not ever.

Drew’s voice cut through his thoughts, as she finished her long list of plans for Christmas break, before asking “Anybody else going somewhere for Christmas?” they had been folding programs for the show at this rehearsal as people were getting fitted for costumes.

Nico shrugged as if he had been listening to what she had been saying the entire time. “Staying here. We have a classic di Angelo gingerbread decorating contest.” He said as he folded the program in his hand that he realized he had been clutching, unfolded for a few minutes now.

Piper grinned next to him. “I was the judge last year with Jason. You should have seen Nico’s house! Covered it with red frosting to look like blood with dead gingerbread men and ghosts! Called it his gingerdead house”

Nico tried to ignore the sound of Will laughing across from him, blue eyes squinting as his smile grew. He was there helping out backstage, mainly just to bother Lou Ellen and Cecil. (And to not let Nico get over his crush, apparently.) His gaze moved quickly from Octavian (ew) to Drew, who was rolling her eyes.

“What about you, Piper?” she asked, switching focus.

Piper shifted uncomfortably. “My dad will probably be away on a shoot, so either I’ll fly out to be with him, or I’ll be home alone,” she said, trying to shrug it off, but Nco could see the sadness in her eyes.

He patted her knee. “Come over to my house if you need to. I’m sure my parents would love to have you as a judge again.”

When he looked up, Will was smiling at him again, making Nico’s chest clench. 

“I’m going to a cabin with my mom,” Percy grinned from where he was sitting, not helping them at all. “No WiFi, just me and my mom and the lake.”

“In the middle of the winter?” Piper asked. “Won’t it be frozen?”

“Yup. Prime ice skating conditions.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “I hope you fall in,” her muttered, earning another laugh from Will, making his chest even tighter. 

“We don’t usually go anywhere, but I think my mom is planning a trip for me and my siblings this year. Bonding, or something,” Will says after a moment.

“You have siblings?” Nico asked, surprised. He never recalled Will ever mentioning them. “Do they go here?”

Now it was Will’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Oh, um, yeah. I have a sister and a brother. Kayla and Austin.” His smile was still there, but there was an emotion in his eyes that Nico couldn’t quite read.

“Cool,” he said, softly, not wanting to push Will any further, although it left him with more questions than answers. 

Next to Will, Octavian suddenly sucked in air through his teeth, dramatically dropping the program he had been folding. If that weren’t enough to convince Nico that he wasn’t actually hurt, he grabbed his finger with a dramatic “Owww.”

Nico sighed. Wherever Octavian was going with this, he didn’t like it. “You good?”

“Yeah, paper cut,” he responded, giving Nico a look saying come with me. Nico could see that perfectly clear, but he chose to ignore it. When he did, Octavian continued. “Nico, do you know where the bandages are?”

“Yeah, they’re right back there in the supply closet,” Nico said, still not giving in.

“You mind showing me?”

Nico had to stop himself from groaning. He wanted to scream at Octavian to just leave him alone for once, but there was no way out of this situation he was stuck in. Octavian, always concerned about himself, didn’t know how to take a hint either. He nodded his head towards the closet, and Nico just sighed as he stood up. Worried glances from both Piper and Will followed him, but he shook it off.

“Be right back,” he assured them, which only seemed to settle Piper as he followed Octavian to the back.

When they walked into the closet, Octavian spun on his heel. “I don’t actually have a paper cut.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Nico muttered.

 “I don’t want to have to leak your emails, di Angelo, but-”

“Look, you can’t bring Blue into this,” Nico cut him off angrily. “If he found out my emails got leaked, he would disappear. He’d never talk to me again.” Just the idea of it made tears prick at his eyes. 

One of these days, Octavian is going to push too far, and Nico is going to break. 

Octavian just shrugged. “Yeah, he probably would. Internet’s a freaky place to meet people.”

Just as Nico was about to argue back at him, Piper walked through the door, causing them both to panic.

“..Freaky Friday!” Nico said suddenly, trying to recover from anything she might have overheard.

Octavian nodded along. “Fun movie.” It wasn’t great acting (better than his fake paper cut bit) but Nico appreciated the coverup. Octavian was still far from a decent human being, but at least he didn’t out Nico. Yet.

Piper looked between the two of them, a confused smile growing on her face. “You guys are weird,” he states, before moving to look around the closet. “I just came to get a band-aid. You were right, those programs are a bitch.”

 Octavian elbowed him, signaling Nico to say something. He quickly thought of an idea, bracing himself as he began to talk. Please don’t hate me, Piper. 

“So, um, Octavian was having some trouble with his lines, so we were thinking of going to the Waffle House tonight and go over them, run a few scenes, if you wanna come,” he said quickly, trying his best to seem natural about it. Please don’t hate me, Piper. Please don’t hate me.

For a moment, Piper’s face dropped, as did Nico’s stomach. Please don’t hate him. He messed up. Please don’t hate him.

Then, the smile was back. “Really?” she asked earnestly. “That would be great, actually!” Both relief and guilt flooded Nico.

Octavian patted him on the back the moment Piper was out of sight again. “Good work di Angelo.”

“Go to hell, Octavian.”

—

Nico slipped out of the Waffle House the moment he noticed Leo standing outside, most likely on his break. 

Actually, he was escaping the hell that was his booth with Piper and Octavian, as well as Octavian’s multiple attempts of flirting. He was hurting Piper, not that she realized, and it was hurting him in the process. Leo just happened to be the perfect excuse to get him away from all that.

Leo Valdez is a junior, though Nico’s never really talked to him that much before. They’ve had a few classes together over the years, and Nico knows he’s good friends with Piper and Jason, but for some reason, he’s never really seen him around. He’s also a waiter at Waffle House, apparently, and something about him is setting off bells in Nico’s head.

Nico doesn’t think he’s Blue. Leo is like a ball of fire, while Blue is a calming wave. And yet, there’s more than one side to a person, so he hasn’t ruled him out yet. And besides, maybe he’ll at least be interesting to get to know. 

He shivered, pulling his jacket tighter as he walked over to Leo, who was typing something on his phone. “Were you in my Bio class last year?” Nico asked, and Leo looked up from his phone, surprised.

 “I think so, yeah.”

“Were you there last year when some kid ate the flower we were experimenting on while we had a sub, and she emailed our teacher who had to email the class because it turned out the flower was poisonous?” 

Leo grinned. “Yep. That was me, actually, who ate the flower.”

Not the response Nico was expecting, but he’ll take it. “Wait, really? What happened?”

“Called poison control, got it all sorted out.” Leo was still grinning, sort of mischievously like he was planning it all over again. “Somehow I lived through.”

Nico smiled. “Somehow.”

Leo glanced back at the restaurant. “Nancy’s glaring, that’s my cue to go. See ya, di Angelo,” he said, tapping one last thing on his phone before he walked back inside while Nico just stood there and watched.

He wasn’t completely sure if Leo was Blue or not. Sure, he wouldn’t mind if Leo was Blue. He was funny and charismatic, which was helpful to have in social situations. And he was pretty good looking. (Or maybe Nico just had a thing for curly hair.) At the same time, though, it felt like maybe their personalities were completely different. So was Nico just making it up because he liked the idea of it, or did he actually believe it? He wasn’t really sure.

Until his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Only a second ago had Leo been typing something on his phone. That last tap before he went inside could have been him hitting the send button. If it was that perfectly lined up, could it really be a coincidence?

Leo’s voice echoed in his head as he read the email.

From: blue0919@gmail.com

To: bettertoburn@gmail.com

Date: Nov 30 at 5:57 PM

Subject: Holiday Horrors

My mom is currently planning a trip for Hanukkah, which I don’t think we’ve ever done before, but I think she just wants my siblings (still weird to say) to feel okay coming into this family. Obviously, I still don’t really know that much about them, but I really hope they like me and feel as safe here as I do.

It’s also sort of scary because I imagine when I tell my mom, I’ll probably have to tell them too. I just hope that doesn’t change anything/

My dad wanted me to see him, spend a day with him over the holidays, but I passed up. He’s already shown me all that he can give me, I don’t need anything more. On the other hand, though, my mom told me he’s bisexual, so maybe I could get my first real coming out over with him. Or not, I don’t know. Do I trade up my first experience just for it to be easy? I feel like I need to get used to it not being easy.

Maybe I’m just going crazy.

Love, Blue

From: bettertoburn@gmail.com

To: blue0919@gmail.com

Date: Nov 30 at 6:01

Subject: re: Holiday Horrors

I don’t think you’re going crazy Blue. Crazy brave, if that’s what you meant. And crazy caring and compassionate at that. I’m sure your siblings love you for all your efforts. If they haven’t yet, they will. Take it from experience.

Love, Angel. 

Nico grinned to himself all the way through Blue’s email, as well as his own. He might not know who Blue is, but he knows what kind of person he is. Maybe it’s better that way. And something about that email made him consider maybe, maybe coming out to Hazel. She’s the one person Nico knows would love him through anything. 

Oh, and Leo isn’t completely ruled out yet either.

Nico’s got a lot to think about now as he heads back inside to the table from hell.

When he slid back into the booth, Octavian was dramatically leaning over the table, pointing his finger at a smiling Piper. “You, Piper McLean, deserve a goddamn superhero.” Immediately, his good mood is gone as he rolls his eyes. 

Ugh, give him a break.

—

“Octavian used to annoy the crap outta me, but he’s actually kind of...” Piper shrugged, looking out the window. “I don’t know. Not as bad.”

Nico sighed, gripping the steering wheel. There was a pit in his stomach that was weighing him down with guilt. He so desperately wanted to do the right thing, but honestly, he didn’t even know what that would be anymore. Tricking Piper like this, though, he knew that wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure what would make it better by this point, so he brought up something that could distract him.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about your parents,” he said quietly as if he might be waking a monster. He found out pretty quick what was happening inside the restaurant when he got back. Octavian had pushed her, maybe a little too far, about her past. While it sort of hurt that she easily told him over Nico, he assumed it was his fault for never asking. “I just never wanted to make you uncomfortable.”

Piper shrugs, turning away from the window but still not looking at him. “Yeah, I don’t mention them that much. Kind of messes with my image.”

“What image?”

She shrugs again. “The girl who's only been at this school for a year and doesn’t want to be known as the one with the famous dad, or the mom that left them. The girl who's angry and sad all the time and has a history of being a kleptomaniac. A girl who still believes in love.”

Oh. “I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to.”

Nico cleared his throat. “You still believe in love?” he attempted to scoff, but his heart was beating so fast he just sounded nervous.

“I don’t know, maybe.” Piper glanced over at him. “Have you ever been in love?”

Nico didn’t say anything for a moment. He didn’t know what to say. What could he say right now? Anything, really. He could tell her everything. But at what cost? 

“I think so,” he said, before he pulled the car over.

Nico could see Piper glancing around in confusion, maybe almost nervous as they slowed to a stop. God, what if she thinks he’s in love with her? There’s no way he’s getting out of this without telling her.

“Piper?” Nico asks, not really sure what he’s asking. He takes a breath.

Piper gave him a look he couldn't read. “Yeah?”

“I’m gay.”

It came out almost like a question like he’s asking for acceptance. The words hung in the air for just a moment, then-

“Oh,” she smiled, and the tension broke. “Okay.”

“You can’t tell anyone though. Nobody really knows, and I don’t really want people to find out yet-”

She shook her head. “I won’t, I promise.”

“Okay,” he whispered. His heart was still beating fast, but warmth filled his chest. 

He did it.

They sat in silence for a moment, not making eye contact, before Nico asked, “You surprised?”

“No.”

“So, you knew?” he asked, fearfully glancing over at her. How many other people knew?

“No,” she assured him. 

“But you’re not surprised?”

Piper smiled again, and any nerves he had left completely drained from his body. “Do you want me to be surprised?” she asked genuinely.

For the first time, Nico smiled softly too. “I don’t know,” he said almost laughing as he looked back out the window. 

“Okay,” she was still looking at him; he could see her smile out of the corner of his eye. “Well, I love you, so…”

He let himself glance over at her, trying to ignore the pegging thoughts in his brain reminding him how much he would be hurting her right now if she knew. The warmth in his chest was gone, and now it was just tight with all the love and the hurt. Maybe he didn’t believe in romantic love (he honestly didn’t know yet) but there was some kind of love in this world, and he was so lucky to have it.

But what if she knew? “I love you too.”

Her smile, softer than before, hurt more than anything else.

Nico let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, turning on his blinker as he began to drive again.

“There’s no one behind us you don’t need to-” Piper started and Nico almost laughed. The moment was over, maybe he could stop thinking about it.

“I know, just being safe.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and Nico could tell she was still smiling at him.

He tried to ignore the tightness that still remained in his chest as they drove away.

—

When Nico got home that night, he went straight to his room. He opened the window that led to a small balcony and climbed through. He sat down, leaning his head against the fence and looked up at the stars.

When he was younger, so much younger that the memories were faint, his mom would take him out here before she died every time he was scared or upset. He could hear her voice in his ear as he stared up at the sky.

“If things are changing-” she would tell him. “Just remember the stars are still there. Even if it's cloudy at night or if the sun is out, they’re still there. Find peace in that.”

What would she think of him now?

He pulled his phone out, wiping away a stray tear that tried to escape, and opened his email.

From: bettertoburn@gmail.com

To: blue0919@gmail.com

Date: Nov 30 at 9:05 PM

Subject: You inspired me

You inspired me tonight, Blue. I came out to one of my friends and it went really well, so thank you.

I hope everything goes okay with your mom and your siblings, but I’m pretty sure it will.

Maybe afterward we can ride this bravery train and come out to each other for real? I’m dying to know who you are.

Love, Angel

He sent the email before he could overthink it, and went back inside to do homework, giving the stars one last glance.

Right before he was about to fall asleep later that night, he got a response.

From: blue0919@gmail.com

To: bettertoburn@gmail.com

Date: Dec 1 at 12:11 AM

Subject: re: You inspired me

I actually came out to everyone tonight. I thought it would be easier to just air it out now and let them think before we were stuck together with no escape on whatever vacation we’re going on. 

Everything went surprisingly okay. My mom of course was supportive, saying she would make me flag cookies for pride month and everything which was very sweet (literally). And my siblings were also nice about it. I really don’t think they care as much as I thought they would. (I almost made a joke about how I got it from my dad, but I didn’t want to push things.)

And you’ve got it all wrong. It’s you who inspires me.

I’m really glad everything went well with your friend. I’m just not ready yet for you to tell me. The real me. I’m sorry.

Love, Blue

(P.S- if it helps, I can’t stop thinking about who you are either. Someday soon I’ll tell you. Just not yet).

(P.P.S- Happy December! Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits and all that)

Sure, Nico was disappointed, but it was okay. Blue had said someday soon, and all Nico had to do was hold onto that promise.

[ryuukia]

[Translation] Tsukihana Kagura Cast Presentation: Asagi (Growth)

Happy New Year, everyone! Continuing with Ryota’s translations (many thanks again), now is Growth’s time to shine. Next up will be my set of units, SolidS and then Quell.

Please don’t repost/retranslate/reuse this translation. Likes and reblogs are appreciated!

Nation: the affiliated country’s name Flower name: the name as a dancer Dance technique: the name of each person’s characteristic dance Dance props: the name of the tool used while dancing (there are cases when none are used)

Eto Koki

“We are Asagi. We will continue to pray for the world’s peace.”

Nation: Asagi ※Chief

Flower name: Kogetsu (Lonely Moon)

Dance technique: Kibanasanga (Scattered Rimy Flowers)

Dance props: Folding Fan / Inscription: [Gurousu] (Growth)

His family is the owner of a vast plot of land which they inherited from their ancestors. From there, they started finding success in agriculture and forestry. Moreover, their businesses continued to expand as they ventured in manufactures, sales, import, and even financing. They are a very wealthy family.

His father came from the nation of 'Asahanada' after falling in love with the Eto Household’s only daughter. In an attempt to woo her, his father became an excellent Flower Dancer and has once become a 'King of Flowers'.

Being their son, he has shown outstanding qualities since he was a child and for the past 15 years has been expected to be selected as the 'King of Flowers'.

Yaegashi Kensuke

“Asagi’s dance has a fast and slow tempo so it’s a lot more trying than you’d think~!”

Nation: Asagi

Flower name: Hekikuu (Cloudless)

Dance technique: Ryuuryokukakou (The World’s True Nature)

Dance props: Folding Fan / Inscription: [Shinra] (Blessings Between Heaven and Earth)

His family runs a food manufacturing company. The products his family makes are called “Yaegashi Sealed ●●” and are beloved by the locals. He couldn’t forget the “Tsukihana Kagura” he saw once at the “Tsukihana Festival” so he’s aiming to become a Flower Dancer.

Just as he was thinking of wanting to work very hard as a dancer for someone, Koki introduced him to a man he didn’t know (Mamoru). He was surprised at first but after getting to know Mamoru, he began to accept the idea. He's a very attentive man who usually knows how to make someone move just by taking a glance from head to toe at the person.

Interview with Eto Koki (Growth)

Q. Please tell us about the highlights of this stage play and your impressions or story behind your partnered dance.

Our dance has a lot of parts wherein I move far away and then closer to my partner so, when I was trying to move to my position, I accidentally hit Mamoru with a violent swing of my arm. I’m really sorry about that time (bitter smile). I will promise to show you a wonderful performance while being careful as well.

Q. In Tsukihana, all 12 nations have their own specialties, but if you could come up with a new specialty for your own country, what would it be?

Negi-yaki.

Q. Lastly, leave a short message for the fans.

Tsukihana Kagura has a total of 12 songs. Each of them are flowing with personality so I would be really happy if you listened and found all of them. Personally, aside from Asagi’s, I quite adore listening to Asahanada’s and Geppaku’s music. I wish that you would be able to find a favorite as well!

Interview with Yaegashi Kensuke (Growth)

Q. Please tell us about the highlights of this stage play and your impressions or story behind your partnered dance.

You can tell from the costume (I think?) that I will move around a lot~! I jump and move around so much. On the other hand, Ryou dances so elegantly. The complete difference in atmosphere is interesting. We actually do something different from each other halfway and then at the end, our movements become perfectly matched! It gives me goosebumps! Check it out, okay~?!

Q. In Tsukihana, all 12 nations have their own specialties, but if you could come up with a new specialty for your own country, what would it be?

Yaegashi Sealed Spring Onion. (It’s delicious!)

Q. Lastly, leave a short message for the fans.

The Yaegashi Seal is everywhere so there's Yaegashi Sealed dango, bread, and even ramen! Look forward to the amazing Yaegashi Family Seal that sells everything (laughs). We interact a lot with members we don’t usually interact with, too~!

Sakuraba Ryota

“Beautiful things are wonderful, aren’t they?”

Nation: Asagi

Flower name: Houki (The Prime of Womanhood)

Dance technique: Ryuuryokukakou (The Beauty of Spring)

Dance props: Folding Fan / Inscription: [Kuromonji] (Black Letters)

He hails from a wealthy household that specializes in foreign trading. Ever since he was young, he has been used to having any selfish whim of his granted. He is a bit of a mischievous and antagonistic type of person.

He seems to be attracted to things that don’t go his way. One reason that he loves dancing is because his own body doesn’t move just to fulfill ideals.

He is childhood friends with Koki and Kensuke, and while he says a lot, he thinks of the both of them as precious friends.

That is exactly why, he was a bit wary of Mamoru when he suddenly appeared in their lives.

Fujimura Mamoru

“I wish that the tears I saw that day would go away… I will dance for your sake.”

Nation: Asagi

Flower name: Yakou (Light in the Darkness)

Dance technique: Shiran (Purple Light)

Dance props: Fox Mask / Inscription: [Kokuko] (Black Fox)

He is a young man who was always on a journey. Though he felt at ease once he got back to Asagi, he fell unconscious right in the middle of the street in the capital city.

Fortunately, Koki happened to be passing by and picked him up. However, Mamoru was in a slightly malnourished state because he had scarcely eaten for two weeks.

Mamoru was not someone who was suited for survival in the first place so, Koki couldn’t find it in his heart to abandon him. There, their strange life living together began.

It all started with an act of just helping another person out. However, after seeing Mamoru’s mysterious and entrancing dance, Koki proposed to have him join as a dancer.

Interview with Sakuraba Ryota (Growth)

Q. Please tell us about the highlights of this stage play and your impressions or story behind your partnered dance.

My dance with Ken has choreography that emphasizes the difference between our personalities. There are a lot of contrasting movements that perfectly show our differences. However, I am doing my best to practice to make those differences fit together. It’s because we’re dancing as partners that I think I have to show how good we are together.

Q. In Tsukihana, all 12 nations have their own specialties, but if you could come up with a new specialty for your own country, what would it be?

Asagi Soft-serve Ice Cream.

Q. Lastly, leave a short message for the fans.

Unlike 'Kiso Sekai' we are living in a very peaceful world this time. It’s because this world is very peaceful that I can be as selfish as I can. I have a lot of selfish requests that will take everyone for a spin ♪

Interview with Fujimura Mamoru (Growth)

Q. Please tell us about the highlights of this stage play and your impressions or story behind your partnered dance.

This is my first time dancing together with Kou-kun so every day, my heart was pounding and I was freaking out. Though, when we start dancing, I don’t have the liberty to think about that (laughs). Gentle movements have a different difficulty from the fast movements, I think. I can’t afford to look messy and I can’t fail. In a lot of ways, my muscles were very sore (laughs). I will do my best to not lose to everyone!

Q. In Tsukihana, all 12 nations have their own specialties, but if you could come up with a new specialty for your own country, what would it be?

Asagi Ramen (with lots of spring onions~)

Q. Lastly, leave a short message for the fans.

This time, we’re in a very peaceful world. Meaning, there’s a lot of daily life scenes. There are a lot of ad-libs and daily jokes, too. To the point where you’ll think “Wait, this unit’s doing that, too!?” (laughs). It would be very nice if everyone laughed along with us, too ♪

If you want to support Ryota and her work, you can buy her a ko-fi right [here]. I also have my own [ko-fi] page and [commission page] linked here.

[sternenteile]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

tagged by:  @battleshell​  ;  we all care blue, u do, i do, we all do tagging:  holy shit my whole dash because exorbitantly long memes are the BEST. i aint even sarcastic when i say that, i love this kind of shit. u GOTTA do it.

my muse is:  canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [ he is in two fandoms, in fact. he is both a fan-favorite from super mario rpg, the very first in the line of mario rpgs we’ve gotten over the years, and a pretty popular smash bros. request. he even got a mii costume in 4 and a spirit in ultimate as a result of the love. he’s very beloved, to the point that i’d, even as a geno fan myself, deem him a bit overrated. why? b/c where is all the love for all the other smrpg characters!!! they are all good. i love them all. ]

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ i mean ?? i’ve met and seen many people who have/had crushes on geno so ??????? but i don’t think it’s like. that. ghfskjhgsg??? ]

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ oh yes, he is undeniably very strong, both in personality and in battle. he is often seen as the level-headed straight man of the party in smrpg (which, in the case of my geno, is... semi-applicable LMAO), a star spirit with unwavering bravery and confidence. his in-battle stats are also pretty crazy, favoring geno as a glass cannon and enemy sweeper. he is also the only character in the game to have a move that will insta-kill any enemy besides bosses. well, and exor. idk why exor, but there ya go. needless to say, pretty much everyone in the fandom agrees that geno is a powerful mfer. why wouldn’t a literal, living star be? ]

Are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK. [ as i mentioned before, there is no shortage of him being underrated in the fanbase. i’d even say he’s a little overrated. some people treat smrpg as ‘that game with geno in it’ rather than everything else it has going for it. i love star boye as much as the next gal, but pls appreciate smrpg as a whole. it’s such a vibrant game with a colorful world of characters to love. ]

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO. [ he is actually, completely central to the plot. the subtitle of smrpg is legend of the seven stars, which directly relates to geno’s core mission: to find the seven star pieces and restore star road. the rest of the gang had different ambitions, but they all ended up banding together over geno’s objective. one could argue he mostly is the exposition-granter and could be replaced with anyone else, but i feel he’s irreplaceable. smrpg would be so different without him, like it or not. ]

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [ i wouldn’t say he is the protagonist, obviously, as that is very much mario’s spot. that being said, he is a pretty obvious deuteragonist for smrpg, given how much the plot revolves around him. he’s relevant to mario, for sure, as well as peach, mallow, and bowser. he’s relevant to many characters beyond them. he represents the fight for everyone’s wishes to be able to come true. he’s, uh... very relevant rofl. ]

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. [ the star spirits are somewhat known in the mario universe as entities capable of granting wishes, kinda like fabled gods with a tinge more evidence and reality to them. geno himself isn’t a known name, not like the seven star spirits of star haven, but his people are decently known. he, however, is not. ]

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. [ he is basically the epitome of ‘good’ until you overthink star society like i do lol. not all wishes can be granted, what constitutes as a ‘good wish’ is subjective, why some good wishes still can’t be granted anyway, etc. it puts him more towards neutral good with a dash of lawful and an undercurrent of chaotic, given his rebellion against his superiors. ]

How strictly do you follow canon?  —  i mean, it isn’t hard to be strict to mario canon when there isn’t that much of a foundation to work with anyway lol. it’s all rather simplistic until you get into the nitty gritty of it ??? that said, geno is built on a lot of headcanon. like, a lot a lot. star society and its rules for star spirits of his kind, his relationship with rosalina (a matronly figure), his relationship with the seven star spirits, the fleshing-out of his basic personality traits shown in smrpg, etc.? headcanon upon headcanon.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  a star possessing the form of a children’s toy, like toy story but with more cosmic pew-pew. a chill and sassy guy still learning the ways of how earth (and other planets) work on a more intimate level, meaning there will be lots of adorkable moments as this curious one makes discoveries. sometimes attempts to innovate with what he learns to be ‘ahead of the curve’, leading to interesting results. (he likes to sip bubble tea, but replace the tapioca pearls with star bits. good result. mopping a counter-top because it would be ‘more efficient’? not-so-good result, got him lots of stares.) straight outta the 90′s, so be ready some of that rad 90′s slang and know-how from back in the day. (what do u mean they’re bringing back dunkaroos? that’d mean they stOPPED MAKING THEM?!?) very intrigued with new technology, became stuck to his smartphone upon discovering them, fell into the time-sink that is animal videos on youtube. he’s humble and likes to relax, have a good time, and relax w/ the squad. video games, netflix binges, the whole nine yards, he’s gotchu. he is a hell of a fighter and loves to fight, as well. help him push his abilities, and he’ll help you with yours.  likes being a little shit for fun, only to an extent (harmless moments of impishness, not serious, hurtful pranks). has a sense of humor that is easy to tickle, even with stupid dad jokes and classic puns. the brother-friend that will fire lasers at ur enemies for u. likes to play violin. cute. super cutie. v. tiny in his star form. almost five whole feet of sparkly, twinkly fun. likes super soakers.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  despite intrigue to learn more about the world around him, there is only so much that he does know. societal norms are often beyond him, and there are just so, so many earth hobbies he is not aware of. without handing him a bone, it makes him a little more limited than someone who’s more savvy. he is prime slice-of-life material, but that may also make things rather dull in an rp without an extra twist to spice things up. (thankfully, his being a total SNOT sometimes helps with that.) in canon and strictly in canon, geno doesn’t really have much personality, something that this geno has plenty more fleshed out. a good chunk of fandom finds him to be incredibly boring and droll, to which i personally disagree, as there are little things in smrpg that hint towards him having more to explore.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  funnily enough, seeing smash bros. fandom railing on geno fans + hyping him up all at the same time made me revisit smrpg after having only played it as a teenager. i expected geno to be a boring slate of nothing like fandom often portrays him, but i found that i was terribly wrong. with a newfound perspective on him, noting little details that defied my expectations for this li’l guy, i decided to give him a geno whirl and see what kind of expansion i could do with his character. the amount of lore i came up with him and started wondering about piled on and on and on, and i realized that he had so much more potential than what nintendo and square properly tapped into. (some of it is also a matter of being timely, though, meaning later mario materials such as rosalina, star haven, etc.) i wanted to flex out that potential and see how much i could fill this little doll up with, and lo and behold, i rp him today with extensive amounts of development poured into him with love. to put it simply, there was so much untapped potential that i wanted to share with the world, to show geno the love and in-depth exploration that he deserved, to show that he was more than what he was given.

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  chattering about mario lore with pals, whether it relates to geno or not, reading, watching shows or videos that remind me of him, learning more about cosmology and the universe we live in (and boy, i’ve learned a lot of neat stuff!), revisiting my childhood (the 90′s) since it’s very geno-appropriate, drawing The Boye, literally anything to do with playing, watching, or doing ANYTHING with smrpg/paper mario 64/smg1&2, and probs a lot more. i’ve got a lot of fuel in me for this guy lol.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? [ on one hand, of course i hope that i do! on the other hand, i mean... nintendo and square don’t do jack for him, so i think almost anyone can do him more justice than they have, lbr. it’s... not hard... :’) ]

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? [ ok i gotta just copy-paste what blue said in her response because my god, she nailed it: “you know when you have a concept and in your own mind you can see it clearly, without fuzziness or confusion, but you can’t seem to put it clearly into words without it turning into an essay because you need to connect all the other points that’s in the single concept you envisioned? yea.” basically, this but in spades, because i have a huge amount of headcanon and lore that i’ve either not gotten around to writing about yet or am purposefully staving off (wink wink). i have written a lot for him, though! it’s just... comparatively so little to what all i’ve thought up over-time. ]

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO [ not! often! enough!!! ]

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO [ all i know is fine dining, breathing, and adorkable starman. ]

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF? [ funny enough, i’m pretty damn confident in my portrayal, albeit still very modest. i mean, i am at least confident that i give depth to a character that had so little, and i feel like geno is just... real. (not literally ofc i mean like, he FEELS realistic.) he’s got character perks, character flaws, strengths, weaknesses, personal issues, ongoing obstacles, relatable themes where appropriate, interests, knowledge (or lack thereof), daily routines... i could go on. if nothing else, i at least feel good about trying to make geno feel less like some exposition character and more like a person. considering he wants to achieve personhood that most of his kind never gets to find, it’s oddly poetic lmao. ]

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO. [ eehhhhh. i mean, i guess it’s fiiiIIINE, but i often feel like i lack a certain pizzazz, something that’ll keep people interested and intrigued with what i write, giving enough material for them to adequately bounce back. on the same token, i like to babble with my prose, so i often worry about going on and on and on way too much. stale, quantity over quality, substance-less writing is what i fuss over the most. ;; ]

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO. / SORTA. [ sensitive to empathy and other peoples’ emotions, yes. i’m an insanely empathetic person, and i have a lot of love to give. that said, with only few exceptions, i have a pretty iron-clad skin. sometimes, i daresay it’s to the point that i often misjudge what other people can take, and i feel i can end up being too harsh and forward. that being said, it is also a good thing at times. harsh or not, if i feel a certain way about something, i make that shit known and i make it known as loud as it necessarily should be. i don’t beat around the bush; rather, if i have a beef, i will make that beef known. consequently, if i have love to give, you damn well better be ready to swim in a pool of hearts and your favorite kind of cookie (if applicable). ]

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  as long as it isn’t complaints with lack of substance/reasoning, yes! even if i may not always agree and may take things with a grain of salt, i am insanely receptive to criticism, even over the pickiest things. it’s something i’ve grown used to due to prior rp venues being particularly harsh. i will never throw a fit or act like a child if there is something i could do better with geno. in fact, there always will be! i’m not perfect, and i love to hear about ways i can improve and do better. it’s paramount in a hobby like this.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  —  LET’S-A FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  sure, i’d love to know! it can make for some neat conversation!! c:

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  that’s a’ight. i’m sure there are things about my geno that won’t resonate with everyone, especially given he’s a very sentimental character for old fogies like me lol. as long as there is no disrespect thrown this way, it’s all good. this stuff is subjective, after all.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  oh, a lot of people really hate geno lol, but i’m guessing this means personal portrayal only. in such a case, i would be curious as to why, admittedly, but i acknowledge that i am not owed anyone’s reasoning. if they really, absolutely hate my geno, then it’s their prerogative, whether they want to give a reason why or not. again, it’s all good unless immaturity and disrespect rears its head. i won’t tolerate that and will ignore any such behavior.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  sure, it happens to the best of us!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  i’d like to think that i am! i’ve often had people tell me that i’m very nice and mature, but of course, i have no right to say how i come off to other people. that is not in my territory to judge, only theirs. that being said, it’s not easy to upset me or anger me, and i’m more often willing to listen and pal around than not. i’m the living embodiment of (shrug). i am just (shrug).

[almondharry]

you look so good : three

you look so good [10.8k]

“Don’t do it, M.”

“Do what?” Her voice was all too innocent. 

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Part three: Neumann’s Game Theory 

Neumann’s Game Theory

July 5, 2003

Genevieve’s forearms were gripped in an iron tight hold. Her mother’s long and bony fingers wrapped around like medieval vine; they curled and held Genevieve in place. With lips set in a thin line, her mother’s perfectly plucked brows were drawn in a scolding glare. The strength behind it could cut diamond.

“How did this happen?”

“I… I don’t know,” Genevieve mumbled. “I was playing and running really fast and I didn’t see the rock.” Her chin met the center of her collarbone. Loose pieces of gravel rolled under her shoe, the crunch calmed her. It was her favoured alternative over maintaining the heavy eye contact that glared from above. A drop of red splattered onto the pavement.    

“Oh, Genevieve.” The defeated sigh that slipped from her mother’s lips had less to do with mourning the dress, but more to do with the innocence that framed her rose tinted glasses. “Darling, there is only one thing I ask of you.”

Genevieve was no foreigner to her tone. It was laced with a classic sweetness, one that teachers liked to lay on thick when explaining instructions to kindergarteners.

Genevieve waited. She poked a finger in the horizontal slit of fabric that hovered above her knee. The broken threads were an easy fix; she had seen her mother tackle far worse from her work. She hypothesized it would take her six minutes at her sewing machine to restore the misalignment. It wasn’t those fancy new electric ones that had ten different settings. It was fashioned mechanically and had a joint foot pedal that Genevieve pretended was its best friend. It was humble and did all the required stitching.

“Yes, Mama?” Thin red streaks slid down the sides of her leg, tiny rivers went their separate ways. They darkened the navy blue of her dress.

Her mother’s eyes skimmed over Genevieve’s features in desperation. They took in her sweaty hairline, scratched cheek, and pouty lips.

Her tone dropped to a hush. It was a secret meant to be sealed between only them. “Never chase a boy, Genevieve. Don’t do it.”

***

October 31, 2019

Genevieve wasn’t used to the stop and go. It was something she never thought twice about when she was younger and needed to get across town, but now it was painfully obvious. A middle aged man in a green tie and second hand suit sat across the aisle from her. His ankle crossed over his knee and a newspaper open in his lap. At the front, three seats folded up and made room for a teenage girl in a wheelchair. She untangled the cord of her white headphones. A mother attempted to calm down her shrieking toddler. The boy, red faced and wet with tears, stomped his feet and waved his arms impatiently.

Genevieve didn’t mind the ruckus. Between being trapped in a self-imposed exile at a still library or the solitude of her apartment, the hustle of the city gave her much needed normalcy. Her head pressed against the window, she regretted her decision when the driver hit the brakes suddenly. The potholes on the concrete made her bang her forehead several times, but she kept it there because she liked to see her breath fog up the glass with each little puff. The cloudiness stained the window for a second before it disappeared. She enjoyed counting her exhales to pass time.

She was at a prime number, sixty-one, when the buzzing of her phone interrupted her recording.

Incoming Call. Meena.

Her thumb slid across the screen and she brought the receiver closer to her head. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

“Where are you?”

“Right now? Just by King Street. Shouldn’t be any much longer. Maybe twenty minutes tops.”

“Well, hit the gas, you’ve been requested.”

Genevieve mentally went over the list of people who beckoned her. She had already texted Liam and informed him that she was running slightly behind schedule. That only left Niall.

“Niall?” She laughed. ”Tell him I can’t give him a ride tonight, my car is at the shop.”

“No, not Niall— wait, how are you getting here?”

“The bus.”

“Ooh,” she hummed in realization. The toddler was now invested in a juicebox, his nose sniffled and palm wiped at his eyes for dried tears. There was still honking on the street and Genevieve nodded along to the soft music from the car radio beside them. “Those things are never on time, no wonder you’re so far away.”

“Sixteen minutes now.”

“I could’ve given you a ride if I had known.”

“It’s alright, I’ll be there soon anyway.” Green Tie flipped the page, Genevieve briefly glanced at the stock market numbers. “What’s going on there? Have they got on yet?”

“Nope it’s some poetry thing right now, they won’t be up until later. Liza said something about two more people on the set list.”

The invitation for Liam and Genevieve had stretched out to a few more familiar faces. It was Halloween night, that meant The Cabinet had colourful drinks, orange and yellow streamers on the walls, and faux cobwebs lining the bar tops. Usually Ted wouldn’t have put much thought to it, but when he noticed the direct correlation in risen sales, he made it a full blown out theme. There was a popular promotion; if you came in with a costume you get a small percentage off your drinks.

“Liam just popped into the loo to fix his face paint. There’s a guy here with a very detailed Ironman getup. Niall has taken a liking to a brunette in a lingerie set. I think she’s supposed to be a bunny, or a hamster. My drink is making my lips blue.”

“Riveting.”

“I think so too. It makes me a more believable zombie while getting me buzzed. Talk about a two for one special—” There was shuffling, ice cubes clinking against glass—“oh shit, I think… I think I see Professor Biggins.”

Genevieve groaned. He had become a common topic of conversation with Meena. She would mostly drag his name through dirt for giving her a mark that she strongly argued she didn’t deserve. He was the type of professor that had a God complex. To do above and beyond in his class—the only thing that Meena allowed herself to do—you had to fight through the trenches with your own bare hands. “Don’t do it, M.”

“Do what?” Her voice was all too innocent.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“It’s a perfectly casual setting. I’ll just buy him a drink and ask him to give me his thoughts on my rough draft,” she said. “I have a copy on my phone.”

“Really? Are you serious?”

“Okay, well it isn’t a rough draft.” She let out a disgruntled huff. “It’s actually my final that I worked my arse off for the past week. But I’m not gonna let him know that, of course. Knowing him, he will rip it to shreds and make it seem like a mess of jot notes instead of well developed arguments.” Genevieve heard a gulp over the line when Meena threw back her drink. “You know I saw Lucy Wallace leaving his office hours in tears. Lucy Wallace! Can you believe it? I’ve never seen that girl with less than a four point oh, and he broke her, Gen.”

“Oh my God, leave him alone, he’s probably there to relax and not be bothered by students.”

She scoffed. “Relax? If I can’t sleep because of this bloody essay then neither should he. It’s only fair.” Genevieve could picture Meena squirming off her bar stool. “And if he really didn’t want to run into his students, he should’ve thought of that before choosing a pub on campus.”

“You’re walking towards him, aren’t you?”

“Yup, ten steps away,” she said, without an ounce of shame. “I hope he recognizes me behind this makeup. For being such a young prof, you’d expect him to be somewhat lenient and not have a stick up his arse. I swear to you Gen, this man hasn’t a clue what mercy means.”

“I’m sure you’ll give him a proper schooling on it then. With the whole definition and everything.”

“And nothing less,” Meena agreed. “Text me when you get in, yeah?”

“Take it easy on him.”

“Not a chance, see you soon.”

***

Genevieve spotted Liam instantly. His Captain America shield, leaned against the wooden peg of the table, really gave him away. A simple light fixture dangled above them and spilled a dull orange hue. Across from him, Angie sipped a pink drink and Liza was in the middle of telling a story with expressive hand gestures. A witch hat contained her curls and matched the long black maxi dress that she had on. Genevieve grimaced at the dried beer on the floor; the soles of her shoes grew tacky with every step towards the table.

“—She was a complete psycho! Had too many screws loose!” Liza exclaimed with brows at her hairline. “I had a feeling from the start, Liam! But it seems like anything I say falls on deaf ears!”

Angie rolled her eyes with a bored expression. The jewelled bracelets that covered her wrist hit against the neck of her glass as she brought the rim to her lips. “She wasn’t that bad.”

“She wouldn’t let you come out with us.”

“That was a... misunderstanding.”

“She refused to get along with any of us for more than twenty minutes.”

“Some people like to keep to themselves. Introversion and all.”

“She threw your clothes off the balcony and almost started a fire.”

Angie hissed at the painful memory, her face crumpled as she swallowed her drink. It was easy to mistake her reaction as a liquor burn. “Okay, yeah, maybe that bit was a little too much.”

“Wait a second, she threw your clothes? From the balcony? Don’t you live on the twenty second floor?” Liam’s eyes could drop out of their sockets and roll on the table like a pair of dice.

“Lived. And it was the whole suitcase, unzipped, the whole shabang. Quite the show.” Genevieve’s eyes wrinkled with amusement when Angie waved her hands in a jazz like theatre fashion, a sarcastic smile pulled at her painted black lips. “I was just happy that my clothes broke the fall for my laptop. But she did manage to crack my camera lens.”

“She sounds delightful,” Genevieve said at last when she approached close enough to the group. Her teeth caged her bottom lip to bite a smile. Liam’s head whipped around and he stood up to grab an empty stool to join the table.

“Gen, don’t get her started, please,” Liza scoffed. She leaned forward and wrapped an arm around Genevieve’s neck to pull her in for a quick hug. Despite being taken aback by the immediate friendliness, Genevieve relaxed into her embrace. “We prefer not to have a reenactment of her many grieving nights. Thank you for making it.”

“Of course! Liam wouldn’t let me miss it. When do you guys go on?” Genevieve balanced herself on the stool after her jacket was shrugged off on a nearby hook. She shot Liam a nod in thanks.

He raised his glass of beer. The foam rested well below the halfway level. He pointed his index finger at it and his brows curled in question. Genevieve’s lips mouthed ‘sure’. He threw back what was remaining of his drink down his throat before he headed towards the bar. He slid at the empty spot beside Niall, who didn’t pay any attention, too engrossed in the brunette in front of him. He was given a twisted pinch on his side, he jumped and yelped in his seat and Liam snickered as the brunette walked away.

Liza’s eyes snapped to the inside of her wrist, they doubled in size when she analyzed the hour and minute hand. “Shit, in about fifteen. I should get going.”

The Cabinet was far from a fancy establishment. Genevieve recognized a few people from her course littered around the space, everyone had a drink in hand. There was a modest platform that served as a makeshift stage. Amps, mics, and a keyboard was plugged in and the thick black wires resembled withering snakes.

Liza’s block heels sounded against the floor as she hurried towards the side of the stage where a crouched down Zayn fiddled with a specific setting on the amp, dressed in all black. His neck arched towards her when she was close enough. He had a guitar pick between his teeth like a toothpick, it made his smile crooked. He plucked it out and  gave it to her in exchange for the microphone in her hand.  Beside him, another girl turned the knobs on a bass, probably giving it some last minute tuning.

“If I remember correctly, you must be Gen. Liam and Liza mentioned you a bit.”

“I am. All good things, I hope?” She laughed.

Genevieve was impressed by Angie’s outfit. Her shirt’s bell sleeves were wide and the length of her skirt stopped at two inches below the knee. Layered necklaces and rings glinted under the light. A scarf tied across her forehead held back her hair, but it peeked out slightly. It was the crystals on the table and a deck of cards that founded her hypothesis. “Let me take a guess… you’re a fortune teller?”

“Close, try again.”

“A gypsy?” Her voice squeaked in a higher pitch.

“I’m Angie, the tarot reader.”

“I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know the difference at all.” All the trinkets that laid on the table overwhelmed her. There were crystals in all shapes and sizes and charms that sat in a green bowl.

“Don’t worry, most people don’t. Here, do you want to give it a try? My great aunt swears by this deck.” Angie raised a brow. “She said something about how she had it spelled by a Sufi in India. Just between us, I think she’s ripping off the storyline of The Monkey’s Paw. But with her, who knows? Or maybe it’s the retirement home rotting her brain.”

“What is this exactly? How does is work?” It piqued an interest. Genevieve watched closely as Angie scooped the deck of cards to shuffle with expertise.

People tended to be a bit wary about myths, legends, and the ‘other world’. Genevieve understood the fascination that came along with it, but her belief regarding the supernatural was as weak as a packed public library’s wifi signal. Her belief stayed with something she could see and understand. For her, this was the existence of concrete numbers. If anything, a deck of cards was just another application of game theory. It was all permutations and combinations that were behind seeing the past or forecasting the future, not magic.

“There are two types of reading. You can do a question based or more of an open reading,” Angie said. “We’re gonna do an open one because that was the only one my aunt was willing to teach an eight-year-old on a snow day.”

“Sounds good, how do I start?”

“After the deck is shuffled, I’m going to lay out four piles of three cards each. All you have to do is tell me which pile you gravitate towards and we can go ahead with your reading.”

Genevieve nodded.

Angie’s fingers tapped the edges to align the corners; soon, the pile was neatly ordered. She gripped the two ends of the deck and bent them in a concave curve. One of her thumbs let go and the tension released, the cards slapped against one another in a harmonic way. After the shuffling, she distributed the cards on the table, her fingers looked like they were snapping at a poetry show except no sound came out, the card between her thumb and index prevented it. The cards were faced upside down, the intricate swirly blue pattern was identical on each card.

“You know what to do,” Angie hummed after she finished with the deck. She took a generous sip of her drink while waiting for Genevieve’s response.

She rapped her fingers on the table. There wasn’t a specific reason as to why her fingers drifted to tap the second pile to her right. Maybe because Genevieve’s hand was already propped on the table and it was the nearest deck her fingers could reach. Or maybe it was the Indian Sufi controlling her actions. Whatever it was, Genevieve hoped for the best.

Angie flipped the three cards over to reveal their faces. The blue pattern was replaced with three distinct images.

“Wow,” Angie said sharply under her breath. A whistle blew from her lips as she scanned the cards to interpret their meaning. On the first card, three women stood over flowers and fruit, all holding identical cups in the air. The second card had a skeleton in black armor riding atop the back of a horse. In his hand was a black flag. The last card had a royal figure behind a veil, a well-built pillar at each of her sides. “Three of cups, death, and the high priestess. Now that’s a complicated combination.”

“How so?”

“Well the three of cups means friendship which goes against the death card. And not to mention the high priestess means new knowledge. Which is a bit off. I think this has more to do with—”

Genevieve smelled his cologne before she saw him.

She felt heat lift off his skin from his close proximity. The space was packed, leaving him no option but to step into her bubble. His presence made Genevieve’s spine solid as a metal rod. The little hairs on the back of her neck bristled. Threatening scavengers wheeled hungrily above their table.

A glass full to the top was slid in front of her, the frothy foam almost dribbled over the rim.

“Don’t listen to her, this is all rubbish,” a voice to her left sounded, his breath hitting the shell of her ear. Genevieve wiggled on her stool at the jet of warmth that shot down her arm.

“Harry, you twat! Not on the cards! You know I have to give them back!” Angie lurched forward to swipe the cards nearest the drink. She began to collect all the spread out cards into her deck with a scowl. Genevieve could’ve sworn she felt a shy lingering palm hover over the small of her back, but Harry wasn’t brave enough to actually do it.

“It’s best you put them away before you give away another false reading. Wouldn’t be the first time, right Ang?” His voice was light and airy. It gave Genvieve the impression that Angie was the easiest to pick on in their group. From jokes about scorned exes to innocent jabs here and there, she took the brunt of it all.

As if it was even possible, Harry leaned further towards Genevieve, she was half a centimeter away from falling off her stool. He tapped the wood beside the glass with his pointer finger. “Liam sent this over by the way.” Genevieve nodded, without turning in her seat. Her throat was too dry to give a response, she gulped down her drink like it was water.

“Oh piss off,” Angie brushed off. Her eyes scanned Harry’s outfit and her mouth dropped open in offence. “What happened to the pirate get up? Wait, hold on a minute, do you guys know each other?” Her curious eyes bounced back between the two. Was the Indian Sufi working overtime?

Genevieve downed a large gulp to refrain from spitting her drink out. “What? No! Why do you ask that?” Genevieve coughed before Harry could answer.

Angie shrugged. “Looks like you coordinated outfits.”

Genevieve’s eyes snapped to green ones before they flickered down to his chest. The print was a carbon copy of the fabric that hung off her shoulders except for the number in the dead centre of the shirt. Thing 1. Thing 2.

Genevieve rolled her lips as she tried to think fast on her feet. Harry saw it in her eyes, the acute sense of panic. The answer being a simple yes prompted too many questions. Genevieve didn’t want to get into the how’s and the why's. It would be like untangling knotted necklaces that had very thin chains.

Sure, they did know each other at a different time. Now, years apart, the answer failed to uphold any truth. It was the same as admitting they didn’t know the other at all. Something passed between the two of them—a mutual understanding, a silent conversation.

Harry cleared his throat, his attention gravitated back to an expectant Angie. “By coordination, you mean picking the most common shirt as an excuse for an outfit, then yes, of course, we coordinated. Along with whoever is wearing a size small in this halfway across the world.”

“Forget it, I need another drink.” Angie’s curiosity went as quickly as it came. She slid off her stool and marched towards the bar. Her necklaces and rings jingled together like windchimes with every step.

And then there were two.

Harry pretended not to notice Genevieve wrap a broken fray of her jeans around her pointer finger. It was one of her many ticks. She picked at her clothing before an important presentation, a tricky exam, confrontation. She gave the thread a hard tug and it ripped off. She had one leg crossed over the other tightly on her stool. Her thumb caged the first knuckle of her ring finger.

Harry attempted to make eye contact, and she met his gaze for the length of a heartbeat.  

Harry watched as Genevieve released a relieved breath. Her tongue ran over her lips. “Thank you,” she sighed.

Neither of them knew if it was for bringing her drink over or keeping the veil on their past.

Before Harry could respond, there were two taps into a microphone. The electric shrill came to a stop; heads turned towards the stage.

“Having a good night everyone?” The small crowd gathered near the stage grew slowly as Liza adjusted her mic stand. It was like the beginnings of the holy mecca. An incoherent response was given in a cheer. “We’re The Red Day, thank you for having us! Our first song is one I’m sure will sound somewhat familiar. Here is Nine Hearts!”

Niall and Liam whooped and hollered from their new position closer to the stage. Encouraging claps and cheers were shouted. Angie raised her drink in support. Meena abandoned her professor for their set.

At the first few chords of Liza’s guitar and Zayn’s keys, Harry’s head turned to catch a glimpse of Genevieve’s reaction. He didn’t know if her music taste differed from what it was. Was she still into the same bands? Did she still hate karaoke? Somehow he thought his questions will be answered with a hopeful glance. Then his chin met his shoulder, a frown pulled at his lips. The stool beside him was vacant. She left a wet ring of water on the table, the only proof of her presence.

Genevieve was no longer there.

***

Sweat coated the back of Genevieve’s neck and the high points of her face. Drinks sloshed over rims and a couple drops misted her skin. The small space began to feel like a furnace, the dial set at the highest setting. Energy vibrated with ease through the huddle of strangers she found herself among. Her lack of height and the dim lighting did little to aide her view of the stage. Genevieve elbowed towards the flash of blond that caught her eye.

The song switched when Genevieve stumbled beside her friends.

“There you are!” Niall screamed, but his voice was muffled. He trapped her neck in the crook of his elbow, pressing a messy kiss to her matted hairline. “Haven’t seen you all night!”

“You have me now!” Genevieve knocked elbows with a boy who rushed to the bar. Her index finger and thumb squished Niall’s cheek. Even with the facepaint, his skin was flushed a certain shade of red he only got when was buzzed or severely sunburnt. “What’s this?”

“I’m a mime!” His costume only registered to Genevieve when her eyes landed on the black and white striped shirt. Her mouth parted in a drawn out Oh.

He pushed his drink into her hands before his raised to spread in front of him, an invisible glass barrier became apparent.

“You’re the loudest person I know, whose brilliant idea was this?” She snorted when his face contorted into extreme expressions. “Could’ve mistaken you for a clown. It’s more fitting.”

That prompted a deep chuckle from Liam. He was an arms length away. A blue drink in hand. With closed eyes, he nodded his head to the mellow beat of the music. A few lighters were in the air.

“Two costumes in one, I am going above and beyond! For the people, you know?”

“So generous.” Genevieve helped herself to his drink. It would be something that Niall would snatch from her if he was sober. Instead he swayed with the rhythm and mouthed the lyrics obnoxiously all while he clutching his heart.

Genevieve could only imagine the heat of the potted stage lights aimed at Zayn, Liza, and the unnamed girl. Sweat beaded their temples. She hadn’t been lucky enough to familiarize herself with their sound. As Genevieve concentrated on the music, a stubborn knot in her shoulder dissolved.

Liza was the frontwomen, a guitar strap slung around her neck and red lips kissed the mic. Zayn was a natural behind black and white keys, practiced fingers knew their placements as if he was recalling the alphabet. No-name controlled the bass with expertise, the sound traveled through floorboards and made toes curl. They were skilled at holding down a beat. The tempo and chord arrangements went together effortlessly. It testified to the hours spent at their craft.

Liza’s voice was deep and rough and settled in your bones. Zayn occasionally leaned forward into his mic to add light harmonies that complimented her voice. The contrast between them made for a balanced sound. The amps thundered as they progressed into the pre-chorus. The crowd became rowdy with anticipation. It was an electric, needy, callous disorder.

“I need to pee,” Liam winced, his eyes pinched in pain. He was in the middle of a funny dance. He adjusted his bulge and shoved his unfinished drink into Genevieve’s hand.

Genevieve’s protest didn’t make it out in time because Liam was gone in a flash. Her mouth hung open. His figure drowned in a sea of people.

The song neared an end. A roar flooded the bar, the praise and claps were deafening. It was obvious as daylight, they were pocketing hearts away with every strum of a guitar. Liza’s chest heaved to catch her breath. Her hair bounced as she crouched down, the mouth of a plastic bottle met her lips. While she hydrated, to keep the momentum up Zayn pressed closer to his mic.

“Evening everyone—”

Niall cupped his palms around his mouth in a makeshift megaphone. “Yeah, Baby!”

Zayn closed his eyes and exhaled a shaky breath before he gave an acknowledging nod. “And Niall.”

“Woo!” Niall—an embarrassing soccer mom on the sidelines—didn’t quite know when to stop with the positive reinforcement. A couple heads turned towards Niall and by association, Genevieve. Zayn began to thank the crowd and plugged the student radio that he had started with Liza as another place to find their music.

Genevieve’s elbow dug in the soft pillow of Niall’s side. “You know him?” She raised a brow and pointed her chin towards the stage.

“Who? Zayn?” Genevieve nodded in confirmation. “Top lad. I smoke with him at the back after every gig. You should come. He has the best stuff.”

Genevieve’s jaw hung open in mock offence. “He’s your pot buddy now?”

“That’s what you get for abandoning me.” Niall shrugged. “I move on fast, you know?”

Genevieve recalled the last time Niall had reached out to give his invite. It was one of those weeks where too many things piled right after the other. Where days blurred into one because professors couldn’t grasp the concept of strategically placing due dates, despite having fancy doctorate degrees. “It was finals week!”

“More the reason to do it, if you ask me.” He wiggled his brows. He sighed when she pouted. “Don’t be jealous, there’s still enough of me to go around.”

Genevieve rolled her eyes freely and took a swig of the amber liquid, it slid down her throat with ease. The chords of the last song floated into the air and Genevieve didn’t bother to fix the strands of hair that stuck to her face. Her feet swayed with Niall’s, featherlight and carefree. Their arms pretzeled each other’s shoulders as they lost themselves in the music. It was a mix of knocking knees and withholding the other’s weight. Their drunken stumbles didn’t hinder their experience, if anything, it amplified it.

Liam and Meena nursed their drinks on the other side of the bar. Attempts at reclaiming their spots proved futile as the crowd grew more relentless and chaotic. All hopes of a good view died at once, like an annoying house fly under a swatter.

Meena caught Genevieve’s glazed eyes. They held eye contact, it was something they did at parties or pubs. Touching base to make sure all things are in order. Are you okay? Do you want to leave?

Genevieve shot her a thumbs up with a bubbling smile to dismiss Meena’s worries.

Meena narrowed her eyes on Genevieve’s shoulder. Her own fingers came to pinch at her top. Don’t you sleep in that?

And?

It’s wrinkled.

Genevieve spotted Meena’s professor over her shoulder. He laid some bills down on the table and folded his wallet. He then made his way slowly approaching Meena. Of course, he wasn’t in her peripheral so she had no idea. Genevieve raised her pointer finger and pointed behind her. After half a second of confusion, she turned around and plastered on the fakest smile for Professor Biggins; a perfect enactment of a comedy and tragedy masks. And so the conversation of her shirt was dropped.

Liza and Zayn wrapped up the last song, coming to a graceful end. They said their goodbyes and were off the stage in no time. Zayn proficiently folded the stand of his keyboard. Liza made sure her guitar was snug as a bug in its case.

It was a blur. Niall shoved around the group of people which were taking too long to dissipate. Genevieve squeaked when a harsh tug trapped her wrist. Niall lead her towards the door of the back exit where Zayn and Liza helped themselves to a few water bottles. Their equipment leaned against the wall.

Niall threw his arms around Zayn instantly, the sudden force caused him to stumble back. Zayn recovered easily from his falter, then beamed at Niall with a wide smile.  

“You lot killed it! Insane! Absolutely smashed it!”

Genevieve nodded at Niall’s words. “It was amazing to watch, I’ll be sure to catch the next set.”

“We will definitely let you know when we get it lined up.” Liza glowed with post stage euphoria. You could reach out and practically touch the energy still buzzing around her. “Oh, Zayn! This is Gen!”

The quick introduction was met with a kind smile and nod.

“Ah, yes! Liam mentioned you.” Zayn’s thumb struck towards the iron gate. A red exit sign was fixated on hinges above. “We’re going out for a quick smoke. You’re welcome to join.”

It was a common theme, Genevieved noted. There was no awkwardness or tough exterior that needed to be cracked to befriend Zayn, Liza, and Angie. No deadbolts or fastened chains, instead a welcome mat situated boldly outside their door. Genevieve found herself taking a step in.

“Liz, you coming?” Zayn inquired when he spotted Liza shuffling towards the opposite direction.

“Gonna grab some drinks first. Rum and Coke good for you?”

“Yeah, hurry back.” Zayn pushed open the door and they stumbled outside one by one.

The cool breeze made it seem like they just exited a sauna, the heavenly contrast stretched a wide dopey smile on Genevieve’s lips. It was a narrow alley of two red brick walls. Flies circled the lined dumpsters, but they were far enough that the smell wasn’t unbearable. She had been here on many occasions. She once held back Meena’s hair as she vomited in the corner, then again when Niall needed a place to quietly cry after his first breakup, and once more when Liam became insanely paranoid after a happy pill.

Zayn and Genevieve bounced back the typical introduction. He studied life sciences, had three younger brothers, and was doing research with a professor Genevieve once had. Alongside his work at the radio, he proctored exams and did part-time hours at a record store down the block. He smiled with his tongue flattened behind the row of his top teeth. He had buzzed his hair to purposefully display the tattoo behind his ear.

Niall and Zayn got talking about the upcoming game. They made light conversation until the door flung open, abruptly. It slammed against the wall with great force.

“Fuck.”

The ugly screech of metal against brick didn’t falter Genevieve. The sight the door revealed did. Zayn grabbed the swinging door just before it had the opportunity to collide again.

“Jesus, H, you’re gonna have to pay a fortune if that falls off its hinges,” Zayn warned.

“All I have is ten quid.” The self deprecation was laid on thick, a nonchalant shrug tacked on the end of his sentence. In his hands were tall glasses, the pad of his fingers turned slightly white from their hold. “—And your drink.”

“Where’s Liz?” Zayn asked holding his drink to his lip as he looked over the rim.

“She popped into the loo for a bit,” said Harry. She is thankful for the few drinks circling her veins because it helped lessen the intensity of his gaze when he noticed her standing there. “She’ll be out with Angie in a minute.”

It feels like she’s in elementary school and in trouble. Her previous departure was still fresh in his head, it flared an insecurity in him that he thought was long put to bed.

Lately, Genevieve made him feel one prominent emotion. Her quick dismissals made him invisible, like a little boy in red shorts at a gym class line up that everyone knew would be picked last. He was a blackened steel pot pushed to the backburner. However, the difference between that boy and Harry was the years that separated them. He has learned the art of confrontation. He won’t hide in bathroom stalls during lunch, he will not cower from her rejection. He is here, whether she likes it or not.

Genevieve avoided him by taking an interest in the sky above with her fingers braided behind her back. She expected him to hand the drink and turn around, but like always—she is proven wrong about him.

Genevieve doesn’t realize how tight the ally was until Harry’s shoulders brushed the crest of her collarbone to take the vacant spot beside Zayn. She had instinctively pressed her back to the rough brick wall to create as much distance as possible. The back of her sneakers squished old cigarette butts lodged in the cracks of the pavement. She held her breath for a moment and deflated when the only thing left of him was a gust of wind.

“Perfect.” Zayn dipped his fingers to the back pocket of his jeans.

They were pre-rolled. The white of the paper is less transparent at one end and more opaque on the opposite. The two joints are rolled into a twist in a way that doesn’t make the length lopsided and uneven.

Genevieve wasn’t an habitual or chain smoker. In fact, she hated the smell of reminiscent smoke. She indulged herself every once in a while. Especially when the pace of everything increased to uncontrollable speed, when deadlines weighed down on certain pressure points and occasionally, when Niall begged her to. It was effective to take the heaviness off her, the feeling of carrying extra body weight would evaporate.

Zayn and Niall picked up their conversation, Harry adding his two cents here and there.

You can hear stumbling drunks coming out from the front doors of The Cabinet. A pair of heels dangled from a girl’s grip as she made a run to cross the street with a friend. It was nearing the time where tabs were closed out and cab rides would be split.

“Fuck,” Zayn groaned with one spliff trapped between his lips and the other one behind his ear. He patted his front and back pockets like he was looking for his car keys or wallet. His brows frowned as he repeats it again. “I think I dropped my lighter.”

“Oh, that’s no problem.” Niall waved. “Gen, you always keep one on you, yeah?”

It’s humiliating.

The simple question among different company wouldn’t be much of a concern. It was innocent and didn’t hold much significance in a stranger’s eye. But Harry’s ears perked up and brows jumped at the little piece of information. The way his eyes fixated on her added a double meaning, it was enough to make something crawl under her skin.

Tiny centipede legs stomped all over her. The scales of a snake slithered itself around her neck, gradually suffocating her airways. Her mouth filled with live cockroaches.

Genevieve’s stomach churned.

“Gen?” Niall elbowed her side, breaking her out of her trance.

“Yeah?”

“Lighter?”

“‘Course.”

It was a weak fumble, her fingers trembled as she plucked it out from her back pocket. It was the most mundane looking thing on the planet. The white colour was chipped at the sides. The sparkwheel was dulled, but worked just fine. The flint spring was probably a bit beaten down.

With the back of her nail, Genevieve flicked the guard off. Her thumb pushed down and her free hand cupped around the igniting spark. It took two tries before the fork gave away and released the gas from the valve. A candle light heat absorbed into her skin. She brought the flame towards Zayn. His face was a soft yellow, and the tip of the spliff glowed a burnt orange. The flame died when it was no longer needed. His hollow cheeks inhaled a drag. Lips curled and he hummed in content. When he exhaled, a pungent smell of cannabis floated through the air.

Zayn handed it to Niall before swapping it out with the unlit blunt. Genevieve repeated her motions once more.

“Shit,” Niall sighed in bliss. “This one’s a good one.”

He handed the joint to Genevieve. Her thumb and index finger pressed the rolled paper to her lips. The smoke was smooth and Genevieve held it in her lungs for a moment. White smoke puffed out and Genevieve wishes it was thick enough to block Harry’s intentive peering. Zayn offers him a hit, but he declined by raising his drink to his mouth.

Genevieve takes another drag and taps off the ashes before passing it back to Niall.

It goes on like that for a bit. A calming silence fluttered between them. It took about twenty minutes for the high to settle in. There is an upward buoyancy in oil which is greater than the downward force of its gravity. That is why oil floats when mixed with water. Genevieve’s insides feel like someone stirred a spoon in the mixture; uneven bubbles of separated oil danced towards the surface freely.

She noticed her reactions weren’t as sharp when she laughed a beat after Zayn’s joke. It was easier to smile; two invisible strings pulled at the corners of her lips like she was a puppet in a grand show.

One side of her face was warmer than the other. The alcohol and weed blurred the edges of her view, but she felt his eyes on her. She stamped her eyes shut and threw her head back, soft giggles broke through. Everything was funnier when you were stoned. Her knuckle collected an escaped tear from her glassy eyes.

If Genevieve was sober, Harry would’ve looked away when she caught him. There was something charged in the air. He hadn’t seen her like this much before. She anticipated him to blink away when Genevieve locked her eyes on his. But he was shameless, and as usual, she held his stare for a moment too long.

Her fingers swiped the blunt from Niall. She took another hit in hopes of deluding herself into thinking that the tension between them was imaginary.

She inhaled too quickly. The smoke trapped in her windpipe and she spluttered a few coughs. Her eyes stung and fresh tears surfaced. Genevieve passed the spliff back to Niall and tipped her head back. The wall behind her propped her weight as she took a minute to calm her breathing.

In her compromised state, she could only think one thing clearly. She had to get out of here.

“I’m gonna grab some water.”

She didn’t wait to hear their response. She pushed herself off the wall. The door pulled open under her grip and Zayn and Niall said something she couldn’t make out. Her eyes squinted to focus under the soft yellow lighting. She made a beeline towards her jacket. It was easier to navigate the premises since a large amount of people had filtered out. Genevieve took out her phone and typed away.

Going hooome. -Gen

A bing sounded from her phone. The name of the group chat lit up as she wrestled an arm into her jacket.

If you wait half an hour, I’ll take you. Need to sober up first. -Meena

Gen whyyyy, stay for a bit longer! -Liam

I’m so stoned. I’m gonna go home and stuff my face with food. Or sleep. -Gen

Don’t worry, M! I’m already out! Where are you btw, didn’t see you? -Gen

Washrooms! There is a huge line :( -Meena

A girl is wearing a nice skirt, should I ask her where she got it from? -Meena

Munchies? -Niall

You know it -Gen

Eat a bag of chips for me -Niall

Maybe two -Niall

Ask her about the skirt. I have my money on H&M -Niall

Text when you get home safe -Liam

Genevieve walked for five minutes. The door of The Cabinet was far enough to be a miniature entrance of a dollhouse. She had missed the last departure time of the bus and decided the crisp night air would make for a sobering walk. Her reflexes were still a bit delayed. The traffic lights glowed on the sidewalk pavement until she harshly blinked to steady the blurred image. Everything was sluggish, her vision muddled and a few green and red circles floated about.

She recalled the corner shop from her childhood house, it sold cheap DVDs. The sleazy man at the counter never denied burning them illegally. The image quality was broken and poor. Her hands were a clump of squared pixels that took a minute to buffer.

The last button of her jacket was secured when loud footsteps mirrored hers from behind. She gripped the metal chain link of the bag sat on her shoulder tightly.

It was dark. Especially now that she passed the strip of convenience shops, no open signs lit up the streets.

She inhaled a shaky breath through her nose and a jagged puff came from her parted lips. The sweat from her palms caused her grip on the bag to slide down.

It could be nothing. Maybe she was hearing things. She didn’t want to assume the risk of turning around. Instead, she counted her steps from each lamp post to the next. They weren’t consistent. The range was from ten to sixteen. The mean would lie around twelve. The mode was eleven.

Before she began to compute the median, she choked on a sharp intake of air as the footsteps neared closer than ever.

Her neck stretched and examined her surroundings. You were intentionally supposed to put yourself in a very visible place or somewhere where a witness could be found, something she once read in an article online. Genevieve made note of the houses that still had their lights on.

“Are you avoiding me?” An exhausted voice huffed out. Impatient with a hint of naked hurt. “You are, aren’t you?”

Fear clenched her jaw. Her brain waved tiny red flags, the ones that topped cupcakes. The familiarity of the voice shot a clear fishing line and sank its hook in the flesh of her shoulder. The reel was being taken in and slowly she turned around. The crunch of gravel distracted her from the erratic thump thump thump of her pulse.  

“Harry?” She wheezed. She expected his name to roll off easily, but she stuttered and added another syllable. His name sat on her tongue with the weight of a rounded pellet.

“‘Course, who else would it be?”

“Holy fuck.” Stress alleviated only when he stood under the light of a lamp post. Her shoulders eased as the impending horror diluted. “Don’t you know not to creep up on someone who is walking the street alone? I thought you were a murderer!”

“Oh–shit, I didn’t think of that,” he confessed with a sheepish smile. A wave of humility flooded his features and he glanced towards the sky. With his fists deep in his jean pockets and head thrown back, he never looked more youthful. “Well if it’s any reassurance, I’m not.”

“Lovely.”

He spluttered a laugh at her impassive tone. “Is that a new thing of yours? Not answering questions?”

“What gives you the impression I’m avoiding you?”

“You ran out of there like a bat straight out of hell.”

“I have an 8 a.m tomorrow.” She didn’t. “Nothing personal, don’t be so sensitive.”

Harry uttered a string of words under his breath so incoherent they never made it to Genevieve’s ears. His boot kicked a pebble off the sidewalk to the empty street. Genevieve and Harry watched it skip twice before it laid in an anticipated still.

His boots resumed their trek towards the direction she had previously set her path to. It was a line of residential houses. Each one had identical roofs, a sharp triangular hat. He passed four houses before it dawned on him. He didn’t feel another presence trail after his shadow. Long legs halted in an abrupt stop. He peered to his left before he turned around fully, arms raised in question. “Well, come on then! What are you waiting for?”

“What are you doing?”

“Walking you home.”

Genevieve snorted. “That is the last thing I need”

“Oh, come off it. You’re out of your mind, literally. And you yourself said that there are actual murderers on the street.”

The prolonged silence didn’t falter for a moment. Crickets chirped and a frog groaned from the nearby pond. Genevieve held his stare without remorse. He needed to offer a compelling reason as to why walking her home was his concern. It hadn’t been for the past three years. She was far from a little girl who needed her hand held to cross the street.

It took a moment, but he finally caved.

“I’m headed in that direction anyway.”

Genevieve didn’t throw him a bone right away. His proposition molded into a clay-like fixture and took shape in Genevieve’s mind. The newfound tangibility allowed her to rotate it on an xyz plane to analyze from every which way.

Her weak inhibitions, admittedly the reason behind her decision, coupled with a lack of energy to put up a fight contributed to possible human error. She dragged her feet towards him, a ball and chain clasped snug around her ankle. Her mother’s words vanished into thin air.

The moon, a clipped toenail, played a game of hide and seek with surrounding clouds. It would peek out every other second—a shy toddler that clung to their mother’s calf. Thin overgrown grass blades swayed with the wind and became italicized, upright, then italicized again. A steady and delicate whoosh sounded between them rhythmically, their own personal metronome.

It was alien to walk side by side him. Short legs worked twice as hard for every step he took. To her memory, it was never this demanding. Her breaths, once even, began to puff out in quick jabs after a few steps. It blemished the silence and perked Harry’s ears. In an instant, his pace was adjusted and Genevieve was no longer the victim to his strides.

Harry’s index fingernail scratched above his top lip. It was his attempt to hide a budding smile. “You smell like maple.”

Harry had a tendency to short circuit, there were times he blurted out a phrase or thought meant to be kept in the space between his ears. He had explained it to her as an involuntary muscle spasm, he could control the twitch at times but he would slip up once in a while. His statement was full of surety, an irrefutable fact. For a second, she ignored it.

He turned to her with a boyish grin, it coined a painfully deep dimple to his left cheek. It conveyed that this was no slip up, it was deliberate.

“What?” Her laugh was dry and perplexed under his observation.

“And weed, but mostly maple—like the syrup. Is it a new perfume?”

Genevieve pressed the neck of her shirt to her nose and sniffed the cotton. She only smelled the weed. “I think you’ve finally lost it. Haven’t you?” Harry grinned to the floor, bashful and content. His hair flopped on his face. “Along with a couple of inches. Finally figured out where the barber is located?”

“You don’t like it?” He feigned offence.  

“Doesn’t matter what I like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your ears. It’s different, that’s for sure.”

“Good different? Bad different?” He prodded. “You gotta give me something to work with here.”

“Neither… I guess? It’s just changed, is all.” The pathway curved into a right turn. They passed by a low shrill of a heater attached below a window. “People change, it’s expected.”

“Not as much as we like to think, no,” he countered, his fingers threaded his hair back. “You are a prime example, haven’t changed a bit.”

Genevieve was unaware if he had taken to being the devil’s advocate as a part time hobby, but regardless she took his bait. They still had quite the trek to cover. “What makes you think that?”

“Well for starters, you still run a bit late.” A snicker fell from his lips, adolescent yet collected. A thumb jutted out from his closed fist.

“Well, it is better than not coming at all.”

“You only drink Stellas.” His index finger appeared. She felt like he put her smack dab in the middle of a boxing ring. He was red gloved offence which left her to fulfill the defence vacancy.

“—A classic. Can never go wrong with it.”

“Can’t smoke without coughing.”

“Hey. Happens to everyone. Mild error.”

“And carry that lighter.” The slow ringing in her ear ascended in volume like a train arriving at a platform. Tight sheets of saran wrap roped around her face. “One that’s not yours.”

Ah, there it was.

Her lungs were empty, winded as though he had delivered a suckerpunch to her gut rather of a small observation. Out of the four fingers, his middle one had a metal band. An ornate rose— bloomed, its petals laid vulnerably wide open. Would it leave a scar? Her bottom lip cushioned the front row of her teeth as she sorted her brain for something, anything.

“It’s a very useful tool. Comes in handy multiple times, more than you can imagine.”

He had a good eye, perfect vision, and an even better insight to see right through her.

Harry pursed his lips. “I’m sure it has.”

The shift in the atmosphere right before it begins to pour mesmerized Genevieve. The air would be stale and thick. It held a suffocating weight and the unbearable humidity made it harder to draw a breath; each inhale came through the narrow valley of a plastic straw. That’s how it felt standing beside Harry. She had forgotten about it for years, but now it mocked her head on.

“But these—” the pad of his index finger tapped his temple twice—“These are new, right?” He expertly switched topics when her head bowed down and an ashamed stare fixed on the pavement for a moment too long.

The reply wasn’t immediate and Harry kicked himself for bringing it up in the first place. He disrupted the natural current of the conversation and it was achingly obvious. He should’ve kept his mouth shut, probably even locked it and tossed the key down the gutter. They don’t talk about it, it’s something they don’t do.

A punishing silence dragged on for an eternity. She forgot how to string together a sentence. Time was needed to collect the pieces of her scattered brain.

Eventually, she gave out a long defeated hum. “They are, how do they look?”

The glasses sat on the bridge of her nose were wide framed. If you looked closely they had a tortoise pattern, the colour of toffee. When she smiled, the apples of her cheeks pressed to the underside of the plastic.

“So good.” He didn’t miss a beat.

She smiled, halfheartedly.

Good. Nothing had felt good for a long time. Genevieve didn’t realize it for a while. Denial was a wicked witch that masked what lay in front with a dozen spells. The days continued to come one after the other. Consecutive and strict. Then Mondays got confused with Thursdays. Months came and went. And suddenly it was years later. Everything was gone. He was gone, until he wasn’t.

“Enough about me.” She cleared her throat before it knotted in on itself. “How’s Esther?”

“Annoying as ever.” He rolled his eyes, words dipped in fond admiration. It was love, gentle and timid. “She doing great. We’re talking more now.”

“That’s good,” she sighed. That was the bitterest pill of them all. Harry was good. So good.

“She wanted to meet you.”

Her head shot up, she brought her hand to her chest. “Me?”

“Yeah, she asks about you a lot.” Genevieve gulped at the piece of information. She assumed Harry would have avoided bringing her up to others. The only way Genevieve could see herself in his current life is as an abandoned cardboard box, shoved in the back of his closet. Only opened to reminisce about what was. “Didn’t know how to tell her you won’t pick up my calls.”

“I got a new number. Dropped my phone in the toilet.”

“‘Course you did.” Her building came into view and Harry feels like someone flipped an hourglass. Each grain fell too quickly. Harry’s vision darts around his surroundings as if he is in search for a lost valuable. He doesn’t look for an item in particular, but he hopes to find another topic of conversation to prolong the definite departure. His hands tremble. No matter how tight his fist clenched, the grains slipped.

He began his sentence without knowing how it will end. “You should… you should come over for dinner.”

The helplessness in his plea made Genevieve question his invite. “Dinner?”

Shaky fingers combed his hair back. He gripped the crown of his head in tepid frustration. “Yeah, or I don’t know, lunch? Breakfast? Brunch?—”

Genevieve saw the anxiousness grow in his eyes, a beast slowly rising from its slumber. If he had all the time in the world, he would spend it on completing his list. They would be there all night.

She knew better than to make promises she couldn’t keep. Committing to dinner with a non-existing appetite wasn’t at the top of her list, priority wise.

“—This is me,” Genevieve stated to put him out of his misery. A yawn escaped her. She wanted nothing more for her pillow to bear the weight of her head, which felt like a million pounds and more.

“I know.”

She coughed in her fist, a flush crept up her neck. Of course he knew. She busied herself with plucking the bundle of keys from her bag. “How far off are you?”

“Oh not by much.” His unclear answer made Gen tilt her head. A question mark hung in the air. “Just that way,” he added. A thumb pushed towards the street on the left. It didn’t even have a name plate on it.

It was one of the things about him that made Genevieve red in the face on multiple occasions. It was never a linear answer with him. He danced around to an nth degree. What do you want to eat? Anything. What time can you come around by? I don’t know, maybe seven. Where will you be at Tuesday? Can’t tell. Can you do this for me? I’ll try. At times, Genevieve wanted to dump a can of grey paint on him because that is the only colour he knew.

“Where do you live, Harry?”

“Are you inviting yourself over?” He was all cheek and wit. A tactic Genevieve saw him pick up from the master himself.

“Just answer the question.”

Genevieve doesn’t know why his living accommodation takes an interest. She conditioned herself to stop caring for his well-being and whereabouts ages ago. That’s something they don’t tell you about broken friendships. You can never resort to a hundred percent erasure of someone. There is no backspace or delete button.

Maybe a part of her wanted to know if he was actually safe, secure and stable, or if it was a front. She wanted a person to compare herself with. Sometimes Genevieve pictured them as two athletes on a track field sprinting towards the finish line. The white line signified growth, healing, and closure. Genevieve was always behind him.

“Edison and Fourth, apartment nine,” he clarified. His weight shifted from his heels to his toes. “It’s decent, but has a slight mice problem. Zayn has set up traps.”

Genevieve blinked robotically when she mapped the intersection in her brain. She frowned when the red pin dropped on the map. “That’s like a thirty minute walk in the opposite direction.”

“I’ll manage, I think I saw a bus stop not far away.”

It would’ve been a much shorter and efficient route straight from The Cabinet. Instead, his insisted pit stop tacked many more steps than needed.

“You really didn’t have to go out of your way to walk me.”

“Yes I did,” his firm tone didn’t waver. The next words flowed like ripples do in a river. “I always will.”

Genevieve slipped her fingers into her back pocket and retrieved her phone. It was warm from her body heat. Her thumb hovered over the screen until it lit her home screen, the bottom half of her face illuminated with a fluorescent light. Her thumb tapped over an application before she typed in the address previously given as the desired destination. A bubble popped up with a potential driver and route. “I’m calling you an uber.”

“No you aren’t. It’s a waste of money.”

She looked up with a bewildered expression. “Don’t be crazy.”

“Cancel it.”

She hadn’t confirmed it, her credit card information covered the screen, but she wasn’t going to let him be privy to that. “No.”

It was unexpected, to say the least.

He jolted towards her in a way that blinded her eyesight to only the colour of his shirt. Red. Red. Red. Her nose brushed against cotton over his shoulder, lint rubbed against her nostrils. His smell reminded her of the grocery store aisle with all the detergents and softeners.

The lack of distance distracted her for a moment. “What are you—hey give that back.”

His fingers brushed against hers were like hot coal. The device was swiped away as if he had the hands of a practiced kleptomaniac.

“I said I am fine as is.”

Maybe it was the effects of alcohol and weed that set something off in Genevieve. It flicked a switch that she had no idea existed, his fingers crawled deep in her chest and pushed the lever up. Anger bubbled and frustration swelled in her. The simmering volcano rose.

“Can you just stop! All of it!” The pads of her fingers dug into his shoulder as she gave a hard push. He staggered back two steps from her force. When space was created between them, Genevieve exited a narrow tunnel, seeing the whole picture and not just some biased misrepresentation. “Showing up everywhere, giving me drinks, walking me home.”

Harry’s face crumpled like a ball of paper being thrown in the nearest trash can. His posture slumped, shoulders caved in on themselves.

“That’s a bit harsh, no?” When Genevieve didn’t reply to him he bit his lower lip. His unsure steps neared her, his voice dropped to a different modulation. Tender and watchful. “Genny...”

“—No, no.” Her words broke by a parched laughter that bordered hysteria. She backed away cautiously when his eyes glimmered with something. He was doing it again. The signature pleading glaze enticed its prey. It got him many things in life: assignment extensions, a bed, with a blonde if he was lucky. “I’m not doing this with you, not again.”

“Can you just hear me out?”

Genevieve’s expression was frozen in a revengeful scowl. She compressed her lips together, an attempt to not spew out nasty words. The skin around her lips turned a shade of white from the lack of blood flow to the vessels. There was only so much self control one could contain. She reserved her ration for a particularly complex problem or when Jonah was getting on her last nerve. Genevieve hadn’t penciled in a portion to give to Harry in such a long time.

“What’s there left to hear, Harry?” She exploded and his shoulders dropped immediately. A yellow light turned on behind a window pane in the building above her from the sudden raise in volume. She inhaled a slow breath in order to contain herself. Her fingers knotted in her hair and she inadvertently felt her throbbing pulse. Her hands motioned in the space that divided them. “This, us? Whatever you’re trying to find again, is not there. You’ve got an amazing life, even better friends. Hell, they’re probably a thousand times better than I ever was.”

“Not true, don’t do that—”

“You don't get it, do you?” Her voice croaked. Genevieve trained herself to not break composure near Harry. She memorized the floorboard to such a detail that she could navigate the house blindly, but now her weight gave away on a loose piece of hardwood and it creaked. “You’re making me think about it all again and it won’t be long until I go weeks without sleeping. I need you to...” Her nostrils flared to inhale a breath, she held it in her lungs as if it delayed the inevitable. But the silence spoke.

I need you to leave me alone. I need you to go away.

He shook his head rapidly. Stern determination fixed in his every word, “I’m not doing that. Not again.”

“Why the hell not?” She spat. Her nails pressed stinging half moons into her palm. Her words, rather vindictive and eroded, were rightfully just. “You were so quick to do it before.”

She looked into his eyes, they were level headed and cool; a complete juxtaposition when compared to hers. Harry wondered when her face became gaunt and the darkness of eyebags took up a permanent living.

“Genny.”

She wasn’t five years old anymore, but a horizontal sting settled above her knee. Her skin ripped open, red splattered all over the floor. He wore red. She saw red. She spilled red.

“I’m tired, Harry.” Admitting this made Genevieve feel small. She closed her eyes and waved her white flag.

Being around Harry was gruesome. Genevieve could only compare it to a drained battery. She didn’t have enough fuel to do this with him. The cogs were rusted from not being used in ages. He brought the rim of a metal container to her lips. His fingers clamped on the back of her neck to keep her in place as he tilted the container up. He poured battery acid down her throat. Concentrated sulfuric acid blackened her insides and poisoned her with every sip.

“I’m so tired.”

***

“On Hallowe'en the old ghosts come about us, and they speak to some; to others they are dumb.” - Hallowe'en by Eleanor Farjeon

---

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[positivelypetty]

A REALLY long rant on the Joint Training Arc.

Okay, so since the Joint Training Arc is basically done, I thought I would share my various opinions and adress certain issues that A LOT of people had with this arc.

But, before we get into the actual rant, I think I should distinguish the difference between an opinion, criticism and just plain antagonism.

Here is an example of just misinformed toxicity:

This is just being TOXIC!!! You can’t shelter these horrible comments by saying “it’s just an opinion.” Please don’t act like after 4 years of really enthralling writing, he’s now the worst writer ever. Instead, explain why you don’t think this was the best story choice, instead of being clearly misinformed. It’s nothing absolutely terrible, but just a simple example on how people can be so demanding and completely inconsiderate to the creator.

“Forbidding” Horikoshi from writing is actually ridiculous. He WROTE AND CREATED your “precious sons” that you love so much. So, if you claim that the manga is now utter trash because it doesn’t personally cater to you, please abandon or take a long break from the manga/anime to maybe clear your head. Thank you.

We don’t need any more toxicity in this fandom than we already do.

Now with that said, let’s talk about the arc! (Also keep in mind that these ideas spurred from Reddit so, I decided to expand on it)

1-B vs 1-A situation:

I've been reading a ton of comments too, the good, and the bad and it's fine, everyone has their opinions and that's cool, but for me, it didn't seem it was about who won or lost, it was more about how each class was taught. And this boils down to both Vlad and Aizawa.

Vlad has obviously been pushing his students and their quirks to the max in regards to working in teams. This shines through in all of the fights they all work together very well and know the strengths and weaknesses of each other as well as their enemies. They go into a battle with a plan and are ready to execute the plan flawlessly.

Whereas Aizawa I believe has pushed for more individualist thinking style, and I think this comes from his basis of fighting villains. No one will come to save you, you have to be able to handle yourself whether escaping or defeating. He doesn't coddle his students, and he does push them to the brink as well. What's interesting is Class A has had more hands-on experience. With Aizawa’s teaching style I think they sometimes have a harder time working with one another and they can fall apart with their teamwork. HOWEVER their real-life experience has taught them that the best-laid out plans can not go as plan, and they are able to utilize their 'individual' thinking to fight regardless of a plan falling through.

I found it really interesting and I think there's value in both ways of thinking for Vlad and Aizawa. For Class B, they will have to learn how to abandon a plan that's not working and strategize on the fly, and Class A will have to hone their teamwork for long-running battles.

And let's be honest, these are just kids, pushing their bodies and minds to the limit, I don't find Class B to be 'trash' just because they lost, they still fought hard and worked better together in the long run then Class A. Class B didn't have any dead weight with their battles, everyone was utilized and contributed to all their fights. People are so set on who “won” or who “lost” the battle, that people overlook everyone’s overall individual quirks and techniques. I personally believe that many of the 1-B students were amazing and are forces to be reckoned with. It’s just that 1-A knows how to handle themselves when things don’t to go to plan rather than 1-B (as mentioned before) which gave 1-A the upper-hand in most of the battles, but I can definitely name a few fights where Class A's members were carried by their team.

Now to address the Shinsou thing:

To everyone who was PRESSED that Shinsou didn’t win....

What do you expect from Shinsou? I feel like people were overestimating him. Even with those cloth bindings and his quirk. All you need to do is shut your mouth, grab his cloth bindings (at best he has a few months training) keep focusing on him,restrain him, and boom you're done.(I obviously know it’s not that simple, but basically) I love Shinsou, I really do, but he’s basically Aizawa (I love Aizawa too don’t get me wrong). Aizawa mentioned that it took FIVE YEARS for him to truly master his quirk, and even though since this is the younger generation, so he’ll probably get the hang of it sooner, how long as he really been “training” his quirk under Aizawa? Definitely not long enough for him to go 1v1 with someone who is a close combat fighter. (It really isn’t that shocking that Deku won, he could probably win without Black Whip). Don't get me wrong Shinsou has improved MONUMENTALLY but not to the extent of 1-A who has direct experience in fighting villains. I just think people are mainly mad that 1-B lost is as because they think Shinsou won’t get into the Hero Course. Like chill. One of the main reasons 1-A won in the first match was because of Shinsou, so I think that proves that he is MORE than capable to get in to the Hero Course.

The whole OP Deku thing:

First off, I honestly don't expect him to ever match All Might at his prime in terms of consistent pure raw strength. Deku isn't a giant man of pure muscle, so I don't think he'd be able to go 100 and maintain it like All Might could. Deku is more of a person of different techniques and strategy, rather than brute force. Like, I don't know if Deku is going to be throwing punches that can blow away a city block.

That being said, each generation is getting stronger. Like, Endeavor will be surpassed by Todoroki by the time he graduates (if it even takes that long). Iida is already faster than Gran Torino. In the very beginning of the manga, they mentioned Deku will be the strongest holder of OFA, since it gets stronger each generation. Deku will have formidable rivals if the other strong students also reach their full potential. Hell, those rowdy kids we saw at the makeup exam already had really strong quirks at their young age. Generational power creep means that everybody around Deku will get way stronger than the current pros.

I understand the sentiment that Deku doesn't need more quirks, but Deku's quirk development was already approaching a plateau in terms of being able to fully control what power he could handle. He'd just work on his technique and slowly get stronger and stronger. Sure, he's gonna eventually be able to punch/kick hard enough to shoot himself around in the air, but we've already seen that stuff (plus Bakugo does that too). I know Horikoshi is creative and will develop some cool moves for Deku, but Deku's struggle to control OfA was mostly over. All he had to do wast master OFA steadily and he’ll be good. More quirks means that he may unlock more quirks when he's able to use more %. So instead of reaching 30% and just being X amount stronger physically, he may unlock a new tool to try and master/incorporate into his combat toolkit.

If this is a negative turn for the story, we won't even be able to tell until many, many more chapters are released. We may look back and decide that this was a bad move, but we shouldn't assume that's the case when it was literally introduced TWO WHOLE CHAPTERS AGO. (even though I don’t think it was a bad move AT ALL)

What I hope to see in future Arcs:

I think what fans would really enjoy and we could all use some real Deku character development. Deku’s my favorite character, but I feel like people can’t connect to him as much as someone like Todoroki, because his lack of emotional development. He’s indeed way more confident then he was in the beginning, I still feel like he has low self esteem. Someone needs to tell him that he’s worthy of this mega powerful quirk. ( he needs it 😭)We know so much about him, but rarely see him living his day to day life outside of training, costume updates and the occasional villain attack. Last time we got anything close to development in was only told through Aoyama's development.

These next few chapters will definitely give us something, but only as it relates to One for All. I'd honestly like to know Deku's thoughts about his situation, he seems determined that's for sure. Does he feel stressed, uninformed, unprepared, scared...resentful? We can infer a bunch, I'd just like to see him talk to All Might, Bakugo or his mom about it.

In Conclusion:

Honestly, to me,It never seemed to matter who won or lost any of these matches people were gonna complain regardless. When Class A wins they call it predictable and when class B won they say call it BS or plot amor. Even when it’s a draw people got upset saying Todoroki was disappointing. Some people wanted the matches to be fleshed out over a couple of chapters rather than rushed, then a few weeks later complained that it was taking to long. Bakugo wins his match quickly and those same people lose their minds about how they wanted the match to be longer. People complained about Horikoshi not letting the girls shine in battle after the second match, but conveniently forgets Tsuyu was the MVP of the first match and Kendo and Mushroom girl made 1-B win the second match. (AND WE’RE NOT GONNA FORGET HOW URARAKA AND MINA DOMINATED THE MATCH)Then you have the people who say all of 1-B is worthless and then Juzo and Tetsutetsu prove otherwise. Now we have people think Deku is OP but in this new chapter it seems that he much has a limit to using these other abilities but I’m sure that won’t stop the myriad of complaints. Every week the same people come to see the spoilers and complain based off of a fragmented non-contextualized summary of the chapter and wonder why they enjoy the chapter itself less. Maybe going into a chapter with a negative outlook will do that. The part that irks me is that virtually everyone whose binge-read this arc seems to enjoy it only seems to be us week to week readers with a issue. Either way I hope the discussion going into the next arc are far more level-headed constructive than they have been.

I think this will be one of the arcs that played out better once it was animated. Individual panels maybe favored over the anime, but overall pacing will surely favor the anime. Waiting week in and week out, over analyzing every short chapter has really done no favors for fans and Horikoshi.

[zuka-themed-username]

Impressions: Spreading Golden Wings / Music Revolution! (yukigumi 2019 tour)

This has been a long time coming, apologies! As I didn’t write any notes at intermission this will be a shorter, more generalized opinion of the Monday, Oct. 14th performance in Kawasaki. It was two days after the ‘worst storm in Japan in 60 years’ according English news, and ‘violent typhoon no. 19′ in Japanese, which, they weren’t wrong. It was terrifying and exhausting, and I cannot imagine having to put on a brave face and perform like everything is totally fine just a day later. Both sections of Snow Troupe did however, and I will be forever impressed. It does not however, make me inclined to enjoy Spreading Golden Wings any more than I am able to, though this may be the first time I buy a blu-ray for the revue. More thoughts below the cut! 

I’ll be popping back into my bullet point format from here. 

This is the Revue’s first performance in カルッツかわさき (Culttz Kawasaki, honestly love the name). It’s beautiful, and reminds me of many new performance spaces - bright woods, streamlined design, open lobby and a ton of stairs. The seat I had is still considered S seki, and was pretty nice, though I’m glad I had my opera glasses.

The program is a nice light blue with just Nozomi Fuuto (Daimon) posing in her primary Music Revolution costume (black & silver w/ huge white gems and metal circles). I wish they had a Maaya Kiho (Kiho) variant or a cover with them together, but that’s totally fine.

I did write some notes on the train ride back to Tokyo, so I’ll be using those as a jumping off point. Note that the day before I had seen Star Troupe’s GOD OF STARS, so many of the notes are phrased comparatively. Spoiler-free until the [s]

Spreading Golden Wings

‘limited set’ 

It’s a touring show, and frankly I’m glad they don’t have to take a lot with them, as they may run into damaged roads on their tour south, but I was still surprised at the sparseness. It didn’t help that the aesthetic was medieval European, which made it look a bit like a televised Shakespeare production. However! This allowed you to focus on the scene without worrying about missing something. Unlike Grand Theater / Tokyo runs where people see a show several times, I would hope tours are designed to be seen once. Thus I’m glad I didn’t leave thinking, ‘oh next time I’ll look at opposite side of the stage, I missed xyz’. 

‘single scenes, no additional side scenes’

This is something that made GOD OF STARS simultaneously amazing and terrible, as there were always 45 people on stage doing something elaborate. Spreading Golden Wings was the complete opposite. It felt old-school, to be sure, but I cannot recall a single scene where something was happening outside of the range of what my opera glasses could see. People could be spaced out across the stage of course, but they were all participating in the same moment. It really highlighted acting choices, especially considering a surprising lack of underscoring allowing you to hear every footstep and breath. The recording of this will flawlessly capture what yukigumi was aiming to project, which will be great to see again.

‘Daimon cackles into and out of a scene’

I will briefly break down the plot and characters in a bit, but there is an early scene where the villainous Vittorio, played by Daimon, enters the room where he is holding Clarice, played by Kiho, captive, and her laugh as she enters was identical to the laugh she gave as she left two minutes later. I thought it was fantastically over the top and well within the aesthetic of the work.

‘Kiho is ... befuddled / confused / flabbergasted -> meta for her character?’

I had a hard time with Clarice in this show, let’s be real. Kiho used her huge eyes to her advantage, looking woefully overwhelmed for the first 80% of the show, and confidently winging it (and therefore vaguely panicked) the last 20%. I would love to hear Kiho’s thoughts on the character, which may be in a Kageki somewhere if someone has the most recent issue.

‘Asami Jun just obsessed w/ Daimon’

I can’t speak for Asami but her character, Falco, gets one of the few solos to solely sing about how everything he does is for Vittorio. If you want to memorize the ‘ために’ grammar pattern do I have the song for you. It felt very St-Just 2.0 but it was still super engaging and later provided some shock value. 

‘few interstitial chorus scenes’

I completely forgot this half of yukigumi had ~40 people in it until they would do a dance to establish the scene. The show starts with quite a long prologue, but I still forgot them completely until they would all pop up again to either establish a new location, tone, or event. It is very reminiscent of hoshigumi’s Elbe from earlier this year. This show  does not require more than a dozen people for the plot, so when everyone shows up in roles clearly not meant to directly impact the story it was quite a surprise. 

‘purposefully better sword work’

There are a few fight scenes / sword training scenes in the show, and the choreography for them becomes increasingly complicated as the show progresses, which was a nice touch. 

[s] Kiho especially makes a dramatic improvement as the show progresses, which makes sense thematically, but by the end she’s legitimately holding her own against otokoyaku who have generally had more fight training (unless she did for Mibugishiden, which I have not seen)

[s] ‘clearly a repro of the 85 show’ / ‘tbh can’t tell what has changed’

Alrighty so it’s time to dive into the core of the interest around this production - the fact that it was originally a taidan / tour back in 1985, and that when this show was announced it was immediately followed up with, ‘we’re rewriting some things to make it fresh for modern audiences’. It was not relabeled in the same way as Elbe was with ‘Once Upon a Time in Takarazuka’, but there was a significant amount of notice paid to the fact that some things would be different. My question though as we went into intermission was, what changed? Reading through the plot on takawiki, the beats are the same. Full disclosure, I am not fluent in Japanese. There is a great chance that it is simply a nuance of language that perhaps makes the motivations behind actions more gray, but it does not change the fact that the scenes still play out with the same result. I believe there is an additional love song at the end between Daimon and Kiho because they sound ~amazing~ and can emote ~so well~ but that was perhaps the only thing that felt fresh to me. Everyone that betrays someone still betrays that person, questionable scenes of consent still look quite questionable, the interesting shift from lady to page boy was still fun to see. But I believe they were the same as before, and I don’t consider acting choices within scenes to allow for ambiguity to be rewrites. That’s just the benefit of restaging a production. Perhaps the chorus scenes were fleshed out, but I was expecting shifts in plot, character arcs, or concrete visual differences in motivation. I would love for a full breakdown of this show once the recording is released at the end of January. 

[s] ‘some spicy scenes, audience was caught up’ / ‘whip scene? :o’

Here’s a brief breakdown of the core plot after me talking around it for 10 minutes 

Daimon plays Vittorio, the lord of an Italian city state of Lago that is always feuding with the nearby city state of Bolzano. He kills the lord of Bolzano, and takes his daughter, Clarice (played by Kiho) prisoner. She of course is not on board with this. When she meets him, however, she is shaken up by his attractiveness, and he declares that she belongs to him now, no questions please. He attempts to force his point, she clumsily whips out a dagger that she loses immediately (sigh), and he is now charmed and attracted, and decides to teach her the basics of sword-fighting which will definitely not be needed later. Meanwhile Vittorio’s old bff/prime minister/secret admirer Falco (Asami Jun) is Not Having It. After clearly demonstrating to the audience his, honestly no other way to phrase it, love of Vittorio, we see that he will do whatever it takes to ensure Vittorio does not become weak in his love for Clarice. 

Various plot things happen that put Clarice in danger and Vittorio saving her / demonstrating his passion for her, and eventually the prime minister of Bolzano (Clarice’s father’s old city state) Guillermo (Kujou Asu), catches on. This results in Vittorio and Clarice being captured, with Vittorio chained, whipped (by Falco!) and leaving without an eye. 

Sometime later, Clarice, now dressed in disguise as a page boy and seemingly willingly with Vittorio, delivers a message to Guillermo from Vittorio, challenging him to a duel.

Vittorio (+1 sexy eyepatch) and Gulliermo (-1 for losing his cool and planning to use poison to win) duel. It is sanctioned by the Pope, who should be busy doing holy things but here we are. Several people jump into the fray after the attempted poison, Clarice shows off her sword skills like a boss, the Golden Wings of Vittorio’s city state arrive, and all is well. There’s a brief bit at the end where Vittorio and Clarice declare their love for each other, and curtain. 

I definitely left out some side plots and characters because I wanted to get to my thoughts on a few main scenes I saw and wish I saw. 

bed scene - early on in the show Vittorio forces himself onto Clarice. Daimon being Daimon leaves a bit of space as she looms over Kiho, but Kiho squeaked, there is no other way to describe it, and I wanted to gasp with surprise. Everyone and their mother had stopped breathing and stared through their opera glasses, collectively releasing it when Kiho went for the knife (after quite a hold - it was clear she had the release point on the scene and leaned into it) 

whip scene - I was like, ‘oh this is scandy what’s going to happen’. It’s not as dramatic/musicalized as 1789, but I was still surprised. The only thing that pulled me out of it was the lack of cuffs on the wall XD. Daimon just held her arms up, shout out to that arm strength. Anytime someone gets whipped it’s pretty intense, and Daimon is great at pulling out strong emotions from pain. The yells, ooooof.

the scenes between the escape and the duel challenge - I really want to chalk this up to my lack of language, but I wanted more scenes between Vittorio and Clarice after their escape and before the duel, as it’s quite clear Clarice isn’t going anywhere. (Even back to her own home city state that she must not be welcome in anymore) I think that would have been a great place to add some softer moments, not just grand displays of affection due to a traumatic circumstance or misdirected force. Doesn’t have to be a coffee shop scene or even a wound-tending scene, but perhaps Clarice working with Vitorrio to account for his new lack of depth perception? Or another sword-fight training scene? I just wanted more Daimon and Kiho but not at the dramatic extremes of this Shakespearean-esque drama. 

All in all, looking back on Spreading Golden Wings I had a better time than I originally thought. I never doubted for a second that yukigumi: top star edition wouldn’t put it’s all into this smaller scale production. Every scene oozed with intention, strong acting choices, and when it allowed for it, beautiful songs and choreography. I only wish the source material was a bit more... nuanced? Though there is charm in it’s clear presentation and design. As I type I waffle back and forth, so I will simply move on to Music Revolution. Once the recording comes out however, I’d love to hear other folk’s thoughts. 

Music Revolution

I f*king loved this revue, and I did not see it coming. I had assumed a scaled down GT/TT revue would feel sparse but I was shut right the hell up immediately. First things first my journal’s incredibly vague bullet points.

‘got more and more fun’

This is so basic yet so true. Usually there’s a slump in a revue for me somewhere, a slower ballad or dance section, but I only got more hype as the revue went on. Spreading Golden Wings felt short due to the generally straightforward plot, but if you told me Music Revolution was 2 hours I would say sure, and I loved every minute.

‘’Music is My Life’ is so damn fun’

Thanks for the detail, past me. But truly, hearing crisp English, incredibly strong and beautiful yukigumi voices, sharp choreography... it was a dream. I was charmed to no end by how clearly Daimon loved that song. This feels like it could be a main theme for her moving forward, or one that comes back quite a bit for yukigumi or zuka as a whole. One of my favorite moments.

‘Lots of dancing, Daimon’s voice almost too strong?!’

This no doubt was bolstered by seeing hoshigumi right before (sorry not sorry) but it felt like yukigumi was dancing so hard all the time. Clearly the folks not in Spreading Golden Wings just went twice as hard for the revue as a result. And Daimon was in the thick of it, matching beat for beat to only then belt some amazing notes. After spending the previous week in hoshi taidan sadness / cheer it was so refreshingly perfect. Her couple of solo moments were mesmerizing, and I’m so glad I can sink back into my yuki love while waiting for hoshi to ramp back up. 

‘amazing music, classical remixes so fun, trumpet and sax go home’

does the orchestra travel with them?? because if so, the f*king brass section went berserk during the jazz dance section and I nearly had a heart attack. It was so off the walls that they have to had recorded it in advance - it was way too hardcore to repeat every show. I wanted to applaud for the solo like you would in a standard jazz concert but alas. 

similarly, this revue has the highest proportion of my favorite thing in revues - classical music remixes. Idk if they are popular but I love hearing the orchestration choices and genres they throw at classical melodies, and what bonkers choreo they toss in there as well. 

‘adlib sections were stronger, lots of space’

While there were not extended sections to adlib an entire scene, there were some spots where the troupe or Daimon run into the audience. As it’s a tour, there is a bit of space in the song for the folks to navigate different sized halls. For this performance, Kiho was singing for Daimon as she jogged through the first floor, and as she made it back up to the stage she went to regard the folks in the first row before realizing she didn’t have time. ‘Ah shoot I have to be back up there the song’s almost done’ she remarked with a laugh as she hopped back on stage to regard a smirking Kiho. It was pretty fun, and it was nice to see her not panicked about it. Kiho had the song covered, there was still underscoring for her to make it back, and she had a charming way of commenting on it. Yay adlib improvement! There are some other places during full troupe dances where they can shout out the city / prefecture they are in, which Daimon and co. were quite inclined to do as she is from Yokohama, the capital of the Kanagawa prefecture where the show was happening. 

I wish I had more concrete notes for this, like I do GOD OF STARS, but I hope this provides a bit of context when you get a chance to see it for youself. It’s not my favorite yuki show by any stretch, it’s honestly probably near the bottom, but it’s not from lack of effort or enthusiasm. It serves a unique role and no doubt checks off some square on Daimon’s ‘how to conquer Takarazuka’ bingo card so for that I’m glad. The revue on the other hand, is one of my favorites. I’ve never had such a stark contrast in my opinion on two ‘acts’ before, which in and of itself is fun to reflect on. I really like where yuki is at right now, and cannot wait to see Once Upon a Time in America. 

Stay tuned for the most overlong and overdue look at GOD OF STARS this side of the Pacific. 

[benisasoftboi]

So on Friday night I made this post:

Which I expected that maybe ten, twenty people would see? I didn’t think anyone would really care about a joke about something so old and obscure, and it would just get lost in all the Detective Pikachu stuff. Instead, within five hours, it had become my most popular post. 

I know it’s still not a huge number, but it’s still way more attention than I’ve ever received for anything... ever, so I’ve been thinking about Pokemon Live a lot since. Which has been bad, because this morning I had to take a very important political economy exam, and instead of thinking about Bretton Woods or Marx, I was thinking about Pokemon. I nearly referred to my country’s former Prime Minister as ‘David Camerupt’. It wasn’t good. 

I need to expunge my thoughts. Specifically, my thoughts on one topic in particular - the way this show treats, or rather mistreats, the character of James. Because I truly, truly love Pokemon Live. I do. It’s one of the most glorious dumpster fires I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a poor quality recording of. But this is the one thing I definitely don’t love.

I don’t expect anyone to read this. I mean, I said that last time, but this time I really don’t. It’s a long essay on a niche topic, and it isn’t even funny. But on the off chance it’ll get you to stick with me, I promise that there will be pictures of Andrew Rannells cuddling puppies at the end. 

So,

How Pokemon Live Mistreats James, and Why It Matters:

The Mandatory Mentioning of The Actor

I’m guessing anyone who knows anything about Pokemon Live also knows that now highly successful, Tony-nominated Broadway and television actor Andrew Rannells was in it playing James. And if you didn’t, now you know why I’ve mentioned him twice now. I’m a big fan of this guy.

He hated this role. Absolutely despised it. Apparently the show was a miserable environment to work in for everyone. The costumes were uncomfortable. The audiences were unbearable. There’s a making of for this show, which can be viewed on YouTube in its entirety - I’ve watched the whole thing more than once and you can see in every cast member’s eyes - there’s no light there. They’re all dead inside. It’s almost heartbreaking.  

To be clear - he’s the only one of these people I, or anyone else I’ve seen, ever makes fun of for this show. And that’s because he’s fine. He’s fine! He’s done very well for himself and talking about it won’t hurt his career, and there’s just always something really hilarious about seeing very successful people in terrible things, isn’t there? Chris Hemsworth in Saddle Club, Zach Braff in Babysitter’s Club, literally everyone in Foodfight. It’s not malicious or in any way intended to be punching down - just poking fun at a really good actor’s really bad early work. It’s not even really making fun of him, more that he was in this.

But there is one reason he hated the role that I don’t find so funny, and that’s that he felt the people that wrote the thing had made James a grossly over-the-top, borderline-to-over-the-line (depending on your tolerance) homophobic stereotype. And... yeah. They undeniably did that.  

Rannells understandably dislikes the character, and to be honest - that makes me a little sad. Knowing that musical!James is probably the only version of the character he (and likely a lot of parents who saw the show, and other cast members) ever really encountered, that’s a huge shame. Because if we go back to the anime the musical’s based on, the one I, and many others, grew up on, James is quite different. In fact, I personally consider anime!James to be the best character in the entire Pokemon franchise.

Why We Love Team Rocket 

Just want to quickly note that I can only discuss the anime up to about halfway through the Sinnoh seasons - I’ve seen basically nothing after that. My childhood was some original series, a lot of Hoenn, and a fair bit of early Sinnoh (somehow skipped over Johto almost entirely, don’t really know how that happened). If any of this is now not accurate, well - it’s not really relevant for this discussion anyway, but I still apologise. 

The Team Rocket trio, James especially, is, pretty queer-coded. This is not unusual for villainous characters in children’s media before the 2010s, so much so that I would guess that a lot of the time it wasn’t even being done deliberately - it was just that common a trope that it was all but expected your show would have at least one flamboyantly effeminate, villainous bloke. And James - especially early James - has no qualms about showing his feminine side:

Notice that Jessie adopts masculine attire to match - she doesn’t always do this, but I like that they have her at least do it sometimes. 

Team Rocket’s disguises became less and less likely to involve cross dressing as the show went on, but it’s one of the things best remembered about them. James also has a strong association with roses, and possesses several other feminine mannerisms. Arguably he’s far more downplayed than most other villains of the type (even more so than others present in Pokemon - Harley’s a great example, who was also, coincidentally, played by Andrew Rannells), but it’s present. And while yes, obviously in real life none of those things should be taken as definitive indication of a person’s orientation, and straight men are perfectly capable of twirling around in pretty dresses - in fact, I fully endorse it - this is fiction. Specifically fiction from the early 2000s. And in fiction, certain things are intended as visual cues and shorthand.

So I really, really doubt we were supposed to think James is entirely straight (I personally have always thought that he’s actually bi, but I’m not opposed to alternatives). You could make the case, but like. Come on.

But how is this different from musical!James? And how is this different than any other villain like him? Very simple. Anime!James has depth.

Not a tremendous amount. It’s a children’s cartoon made to cash in on a popular video game. But he, and Jessie and Meowth, are among the most well-rounded characters in the show’s cast, in a way that’s actually very relatable. It helps that they aren’t actually very villainous people most of the time. I know so many people who grew up with the show that loved, rooted for, and identified with them over the actual protagonists, by a mile. Myself included - I can remember two separate James-centered episodes that made me cry as a kid.

And these three are particularly beloved by young LGBT adults. We know from their backstories that they all came from rough circumstances - Jessie desperately poor and struggling to get anywhere or be recognised, Meowth having changed a fundamental part of himself in attempt to gain love and instead being ostracised for it, and James running away from an abusive household. They’re three people (/Pokemon) who felt alone in the world, that have now found each other. And whether you view Jessie and James’s relationship as romantic, friendship, or found family, it’s far more compelling than any other relationship in the show, at least to me. They may be criminals, but it’s not hard to see why some kids - especially the kids who might already feel like they’re just a bit different - would latch on to them. 

Even if you didn’t know James’s backstory, he still has a character. He’s frequently shown to be the most moral of the trio, he has a stronger bond with Pokemon than honestly even Ash - even more of a running gag than his flamboyance is the fact that his pets love him so much that they just wanna hug him all the time, with inevitable slapstick consequences - he has dorky hobbies like bottle cap collecting, and he’s even occasionally shown to be a bit of an environmentalist. Yes he is in many ways a stereotypical camp villain - but he’s also more. And that’s why we love him. 

And I’d bet anything there probably were some little boys who watched the show and saw James and thought ‘that guy’s like me!’. And yeah, that guy is a villain, because god forbid a maybe-gay character also be a good guy. But more than any other character like him that I’ve seen, he’s also always been a person. And considering how most of the other options kids like that had at the time were either one-note villains or nothing (and even now it’s sparse pickings) - that’s valuable.

And then there’s Pokemon Live.

*long, long sigh*

Oh, Pokemon Live. You beautiful disaster. 

What did you do to my boy?

Is there nothing that better encapsulates it than the bit where James asks Giovanni where Mecha MewTwo (...I know) “stands on campaign finance reform, social security and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”?

First off, I like that James is politically engaged! Good for him! Completely out of character, but still!

And I do find this line incredibly funny, but I want to be very clear about why I find it funny. The line is funny because referencing a real world American discriminatory military policy in a Pokemon musical is just... so completely absurd. It’s super jarring and when I first watched it, I had to pause it so I could stop laughing about the possible implications of Pokemon Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Is there a Pokemon American military then? Pokemon Democrats and Pokemon Republicans? Pokemon Bill Clinton? POKEMONICA LEWINSKY???

It just raises so many questions.

Also Rannells’s delivery is incredible.

But the thing is, that’s not the joke here, is it? The actual ‘joke’ is ‘HA HA HE’S GAY! HE SAID THAT BECAUSE HE’S GAY!’. Which gets even worse when you think about it and realise that this situation is really just a gay man (I don’t think there’s any doubt about it in this particular incarnation, is there) asking his boss whether or not he thinks people like him should be discriminated against. How is that a joke? (The answer is that it isn’t.)

Which makes it that much more inappropriate for a children’s Pokemon musical, which is sort of, in a dark way, almost funnier. It’s that juxtaposition of something kiddy and cute with something that definitely isn’t. 

But hilarious as I find it, given the chance to I would go back and get rid of that line. I dislike what it implies - that being a gay man is nothing more than a punchline - more than I like the absurdist humour. 

And that’s the whole problem with how they chose to write James for this whole thing. They took a really good example of how you can have this type of villain while also making him a good character, and they turned him into nothing more than a stereotype.

You could say ‘but it’s a much shorter story than a TV show! They wouldn’t have time to make him nuanced!’, to which I would say 1. He doesn’t have to be nuanced, he just has to be slightly more than I’M GAY and 2. There have been 21 Pokemon movies at time of writing, two of which came out before Pokemon Live did. None of them, at least of the ones I’ve seen, committed any character assassinations like this. The first one even had another baffling reference to real world America:

That’s so out of nowhere and silly that I laugh every time I think about it (the Minnesota Vikings are an American football team, if you didn’t know). See, Pokemon Live! It’s possible to do jokes like that which aren’t at the expense of a minority group! Wow!

The anime even has examples of how you can do the gay jokes and make them funny. They are very rare in the show (beyond the humour of James’s personality), but remember the whole Flaming Moltres joke? It’s actually great. It’s a couple of good puns, it’s possibly Rachael Lillis’s best delivery in the whole show, and, just for confirmation, I’ve shown the clip to a few actual gay men in my life, who all said that they think that it’s very funny, and totally non-offensive. The joke is still ‘lol he gay’, but it’s also a neat play on words, it feels very in character for both of them, and it doesn’t have the same malicious, taunt-y feel of the Pokemon Live ‘joke’.

Look, the Pokemon anime is far from perfect. There are lots of moments where you have to grit your teeth and remember when it came out. But it still gave us a really, really wonderful character, and he absolutely deserved better than this.

Do I Still Love Pokemon Live?

Yes.

Even with all of this, it’s still an absolute masterpiece of unintentional hilarity. In some ways, this makes it funnier. Of course, of course, it couldn’t just have terrible costumes and a nonsense plot and really, really bad rapping - of course it’s also kind of offensive. Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be.

And I would love to talk about all the things I genuinely love about it, and maybe I will one day.

But the thing is, it’s also representative of everything that was wrong with gay-coded characters at the time, something that the show it’s based on came way closer to handling well than most other stuff of its time, no less. And that, as a whole, isn’t funny at all.

So I want to be clear. I love laughing at this show because it’s a weirdly earnest cash-in musical for something that definitely shouldn’t be a musical, with endless bizarre, quotable moments - not because the way it warped this character is actually funny. I love laughing at the character’s lines because they’re absurd choices for a Pokemon musical - not because they’re in any way funny on their own. And I love laughing at the fact that Andrew Rannells was in it because he is so much better than this - not because this is what I think he should be reduced to.

And speaking of, here’s those pictures I promised:

I love one man.

[veridium]

(don’t) take me to church

foreboding chapter title, yes? well I had to continue Isabella’s ( @bitchesofostwick ) trend of titles being songs. and, in the spirit of procrastinating and needing a pick me up, here is part 4 of our ongoing shits-n-giggles dragon age modern au. 

on this episode, we follow Liv as she takes a chance on seeing Cassandra again, this time one-on-one. the meet-up has a promising start, but old habits die hard -- especially the fight or flight kind. 

part one // part two // part three 

--

She walks the long way to the shop, which is not the ideal option considering her combat boots rub her ankles wrong after she wears them long enough. No matter, because she has her headphones in up to an unhealthy volume. It’s the playlist Ellinor sent her last week of old classics so she stops playing the same five songs on blast.

When she shows up to the little corner hole in the wall shop, there’s no sign of her. The place is cute, cookie-cutter, but cute. Chalkboard menus on the walls and hanging plants in the windows. A backroom people use for meetings or study groups.

Pulling out her phone, she resolves to text Ellinor a proof-of-attendance while she finds the bathroom:

Here at coffee...gonna find out if it was a mistake.

Once again she goes to the mirror to check her face. Ever since she fixed her lipstick from having kissed Ellinor on her worried, sweaty head she’s been paranoid there’s a smudge out of place. All the while she dances in place, having scoped out the bathroom stalls for feet and finding herself conveniently alone.

It’s that one song from that 90’s bad, Garbage, the one she’s been jumping on her bed while singing out loud. The one she can’t resist singing out loud while she’s digging in her shoulder bag for her MAC lipstick.

“....My only comfort is the night gone black I didn't accidentally tell you that I'm only happy when it rains...”

She’s rocking back and forth when she finds the tube. She then looks pouts her mouth in the shape of an “O” while she’s singing along with the chorus of “ooh’s.” It’s then that she looks in the mirror and sees a face, confused but not horrified, standing behind her. Not just any face. Her face. That face that said goodnight and walked away with the manners of a nun. But nuns weren’t supposed to be that hot.

Olivia shrieks, and tosses the lipstick up in the air as she flinches like a frightened woodland animal. Garbage is going off in her ears about only being happy in the rain while she falls back, her combat boots failing her as one of them slips on a piece of tissue and a puddle.

She swings back, but right before she goes full horizontal, two arms hook under hers and break her fall. They do more than that, they damn near throw her in the opposite direction, they’re nothing but muscle. How is that possible? Olivia huffs as the wind is knocked out of her. She doesn’t lament or soak it in -- as quick as she can she shuffles her feet underneath her, turning around in her hold and pushing off her. In the blurriness of it all there is Cassandra, letting her go, hand pulling her white sweater down.

White. Oh, no.

“Shit!” Olivia yanks out her headphones, butt against the porcelain standalone sink. Her eyes can’t decide on whether to lock on Cassandra’s widened ones or the black smudge that is now on her pristine sweater. Like, really pristine. Does she iron her clothes?

“Shit, Cassandra,” Olivia grimaces and grabs for one of the paper towels from the outdated dispenser. “I’m so sorry, I-I didn’t...I didn’t see...shit, I’m so--”

“Olivia,” Cassandra says, calm and decisive as she holds her hands up to chest level, “It’s alright, are you okay?”

“I…” Olivia is preoccupied as she’s watering down the towel. “I’m fine, I was just...I meant to do that…”

“You...what?”

“I meant to...dammit, on your white sweater!” She bites her lip and turns back around, holding the crinkled, wet towel in her hands.

Cassandra blinks as they come to a stare-off, and she looks down at herself. Pulling her shirt out, she lowers her brow but doesn’t scowl like Olivia expects her to.

“Oh...that. It’s alright. I don’t really wear this sweater all that often, anyways. My Uncle bought it as a gift, but it’s...not really my style.”

Olivia holds her breath. “You...you don’t have to explain to make me feel better. I was being ridiculous.”

“You were what? No, that is--”

“I suck, I’m so sorry,” Olivia holds the towel out to her with a stiff arm, keeping her distance.

Cassandra pauses, but takes the towel from her. It’s like a reverse hostage situation: take the towel or else. The mortification level couldn’t be any higher.

“...Thank you?” Cassandra replies, but then grins crookedly. “But I think you need it more than I do.”

“What? Oh, nah,” she chuckles anxiously, “I’m wearing all black, I--” While she’s busy looking at her own outfit, Cassandra comes closer. Effortless but gentle, she reaches and wipes away smudged lipstick on the side of her chin. It’s quick, but just enough for Olivia to freeze like that same scared woodland creature, only now in headlights. A few strokes, and Cassandra steps back, crinkling the towel up and tossing it into the trash.

Olivia releases the breath from her chest, her knuckles having turned white as they clamp on the rim of the sink behind her. She didn’t have to get that close. She didn’t have to stare at her lips while she did that. That was not heterosexual. That was not...wait, shit. She has to say something.

“Uh...thanks.”

“I’m sorry if that was forward. I tend to see things that need to be done and just do them.”

You should do me then.

Olivia shakes her head to free herself of that visceral train of thought before she goes completely off the rails. “Uh, no, it’s fine. I just...I’m still a little dizzy from the...the thing I just did…”

“...the slip?”

“The...yeah, that.”

“That’s okay. Um...how about we go and order? If you haven’t already. I just got in.”

Olivia softens her grip on the sink but doesn’t move. Part of her wants to push her out the way in run. Another part of her wants to slide back onto the sink and pull her in, and really ruin that damn sweater. It’s the prime time of sapphic panic. Ellinor would be laughing her emotionally constipated ass off.

“Order. Yeah, hah,” she breathes, stepping forward. “Right. Let’s do that.”

They make it out the restroom and Olivia manages not to put her other foot in her mouth while they order and find a seat. She orders a chai, and to her surprise, Cassandra orders a mocha. Sweet and frilly when she expected her to go for something rugged and unaffected, like a cup of dark roast black with no cream, no sugar.

“I wanted to thank you again for inviting us to the concert,” Olivia says, holding the mug to her chin with both hands, having settled a bit since her slip. “But then again, maybe the true show were the geeks we were with.”

Cassandra laughs softly and sets her cup down on the dish that came with it. “That’s a good point. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He won’t stop texting me about her. She really doesn’t give a lot of leeway, does she?”

“Ellinor?” Olivia smirks, “well, let’s just say one year for Halloween, I wanted us to have old timey costumes. I showed up wearing a princess dress, and she showed up in a furry vest and whiskers drawn on.”

Cassandra tilted her head. “What was her costume?”

“Oh...uh, she went as the rat that carried the plague,” Olivia slipped out before pressing the mug to her lips.

That wins a heart chuckle of disbelief, which in turn makes more butterflies flurry in Olivia’s stomach. Not a good sign. Cassandra then leans onto the table with her elbows, her forearms stacked on top of one another. Her body language and confidence is inescapable and slightly infectious.

“Let me guess, your dress was black?”

“Hah! How did you know?” Olivia mocks. 

Cassandra blinks softly and grins some more. “Just a hunch.”

Olivia looks up and finds herself lost for words despite the simplicity of the conversation. She tucks her ankle behind the other and puts her cup down, all the while Cassandra is staring at her. It’s not entirely unfamiliar to be the center of ogling attention, but with her it is different. Scary, but different.

She stares back, finally courageous enough. But then, a ‘ding’ goes off. Then another. Then a third. Olivia looks but her phone screen is black. When Cassandra rolls her eyes and sighs, the source of the sound becomes clear. She pulls out her phone from her back pocket and starts scrolling. She frowns and loses all brightness from her face.

“Everything okay?”

She shakes her head and starts typing. “It’s fine, it’s just...my family.”

“Oh, hah, I know how that goes.”

“They’re just...busy, and won’t stop group chatting about every little thing. There’s an event today. I have to run youth group later.”

Shit. Church stuff. Olivia swallows, trying not to look phased. “Oh? Youth group?”

She sends a message and locks her phone, setting it on the table corner. “Yeah. Today’s discussion is supposed to be about chastity and virtue. They want a woman to be able to discuss it with the girls, because, of course,” she says, matter-of-factly, like it’s just everyday stuff.

Olivia nods and rolls her lip. “Yeah, of course. I mean, it makes sense. Someone who can be realistic and approachable...someone who knows. Like, it’s good to hear from someone like that that you don’t have to be perfect.”

“...Yeah. Kinda like that,” Cassandra’s expression goes a bit off for a moment. Olivia, of course, fixates on it with all of her anxiety. Her hold on her mug tightens, but otherwise she keeps her composure.

“Listen,” Cassandra blinks, looking off over Olivia’s shoulder before focusing back in on her. “You should come around sometime. I think you’d find th--”

“What...wait, you mean, go to your Church?”

“Well, yeah. If you want. I know it sounds kind of corny. But you...I mean, from what I know of you, you’re really booksmart, and I remember you saying you take philosophy. I see your parents at our services sometimes. The people are really nice, and I know everyone says that, bu--”

“Hah, Cassandra,” Olivia rubs her own arm, “I said I take political philosophy and marxist theory. I don’t get into theology much. And my parents...they...”

Cassandra shrugs a bit. “I think you’d find the categories are less isolated than you think.”

“I know they aren’t. But I study what I study.”

“And I study what I study. I think you could learn a lot from my side of the tracks, just as--”

Olivia chokes on her mid-gulp mouthful of chai, eyes going wide as she sets down the drink and coughs into her sleeve. Fucking fantastic. All the happy-go-lucky white noise music in her head fades to silence. This was all that she was after: convincing the scary girl who looks all lonely and pretty by herself that she needs the Holy powers that be to rectify her false logics. For as much as she has tried to keep an open mind, the trap doors lock in place quicker than a downtown crosswalk signal.

“Me?” she manages to cough up as her reopens her eyes, finding Cassandra leaning forward and looking concerned. “Me, learn...learn from...”

“Uh, yeah,” Cassandra reaches and offers her a napkin, which she takes quickly, and presses it to her mouth. “You okay?”

Olivia has the sudden desire to shove the napkin in her mouth and shut herself up. Yet, once again, she must answer. Wiping the corners of her painted lips and then her stained shirtsleeve, she tries not to blow steam from her ears.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just breathed wrong. Uh, Cassandra, listen” she smiles joylessly, tossing the napkin to table. “I...I really have enjoyed myself. You’re really nice, but, I’m not...I’m not in need of…” she looks over either shoulder before leaning in, voice going low. “I don’t need saving. Or...or proselytizing. I know I have a reputation, or whatever. My parents try to hang out with yours at whatever swanky, stuffy, pastel clubs they both get into. I’m the kid in the gated neighborhood who didn’t drink the kool-aid. But tying me down in a back room and putting a crucifix to my head while some guy name Trevor plays an acoustic guitar while...wearing acid wash jeans and drinking kombucha is...is not my thing. So, if you’re just trying to save my soul, I got news, you can…” she stutters while she stuffs her lipstick in her bag, along with her wallet that had been resting next to her elbow. “You can...just...not do that, okay?”

She gets up, and Cassandra stands with her, but she does not step in her way.

“Olivia, I didn’t m--”

“No, just...just let me go, I’m late for something. I’m sorry about your sweater,” she blurts out before rushing past her, leaving a half-filled Chai and way too many indulged daydreams behind. Finding the closest door, she escapes with her dignity barley intact, and rushes down the block until she finds a corner store to dive into and hide. Just in case her runaway initiative is followed.

She pulls out her phone again. Texting won’t do. She has to call. She tries, but Ellinor goes to voicemail. Typical. Who calls anymore?

She groans, staring at a store aisle shelf full of breads. Another call attempt, but nothing. Did she actually go to class? Or work? Or do something besides wallowing?

She decides to text again.

Abort mission!!! It was just the Churchie shit. I’m dying. Going home to hide.

With shaking thumbs she types and hits send. It’s still mid afternoon. Crap, had they been there that long? there’s a possibility Ellinor could be meeting up with Cullen already. If her day has gone south, she can at least hope hers stays on the up and up. Giving herself one more minute of precious hiding, she presses herself against the bread shelves, her forehead falling into a soft loaf of sourdough. She lets out a dreadful, aggravated whine, and hugs her arms to herself.

“Ma’am, can I help you?” a store clerk peaks around the corner, looking a mix of both concerned, tired, and scared.

Olivia doesn’t pull away, but simply responds with her voice muffled against the bread plastic. “I’m fine. Just...just...finding little options for gluten free…”

“Oh. Okay.”

[sure-as-eggs]

I feel like I’m missing something. Isn’t Ed making fun of Oswald’s limp/appearance just Ed being a villain? Shouldn’t he BE awful? I feel like people are holding him to good-guy standards. I hope this isn’t offensive. I’m just confused why people are mad that a villain is being a villain.

That’s a fair question, and I can absolutely tell that it was asked in good faith, so don’t worry!

I 100% agree that, as literal super-villains, the members of Gotham’s rogues’ gallery have to be interpreted a little differently than standard “good guy” characters… Oswald’s return to form after Arkham involves murder and cannibalism, and you kinda just go “oh hey, he’s back!!” Trying to keep track of who cut whose hands off so you know what to expect out of future alliances isn’t necessarily a ‘normal’ thing.

Let me see if I can try to explain why mocking someone’s disability or tapping into anti-Semitic tropes for a costume feels different to me…

One big problem here, right off the bat, is that Ed is a character we’re meant to root for.   He’s written to be sympathetic. We’re supposed to feel bad when bad things happen to him, and happy when he’s happy. Even in the scene when he’s literally strangled his girlfriend to death, the tragic music swells behind him as he sobs over her body, and it’s entirely his fault but his feelings are still just as important to the scene as his actions.

By comparison, the narrative never really sets us up to empathize with, say, Jerome or Jervis. I’m not saying you can’t do it, just that the show doesn’t expect you to. It is clearly not espousing the viewpoints it puts in Jerome’s mouth when he kidnaps Bruce: we’re supposed to be on Bruce’s side. We’re supposed to be happy when he wins and Jerome loses. We can feel that.

On the other end of the spectrum, we are meant to be sad when Ed shoots Oswald. It has nothing to do with either of their moral standing; even Oswald admits that murdering Isabella was a bad choice, though maybe not for reasons most people would be on board with. Oswald is a villain and a terrible person, and we are still supposed to care about him deeply and want him to be okay.

The upshot of all this is that the show has us primed to accept and excuse the things Ed does, to empathize with him and find some way to identify with him, or even to justify him. We forgive Sarah Essen for not standing up to the system. We forgive Harvey Bullock for his history of corruption. We (maybe, some of us,) forgive Lee for her self-destructive impulse to take the Tetch virus. We forgive Jim for whatever Thing he’s decided to do this week. We’re supposed to.

We forgive Oswald much worse acts. Again, we’re supposed to.

Would we forgive Ed more mundane cruelty? Are we supposed to?

There’s a different resonance to fantastical off-screen villainy like the way Oswald deals with his step-family than there would be to something immediate and petty and potentially familiar (potentially doable) like mocking someone’s limp. I really doubt many people out there have accidentally been tricked into eating their children, so it’s easy for all of us to move on from that scene. There’s a fairy-tale logic to it that we can all accept.

But I guarantee you that pretty much everybody with mobility issues has had to grin and bear it when somebody at some point in their life decided to play comedian. It’s not a fantasy to them. And it would hurt to see somebody they care about, even if they’re fictional, disrespect them.

…I’m going to risk getting too personal here and warn for self-harm for this next paragraph, so go ahead and skip ahead if you want, you won’t miss anything crucial, it’s just an example. I had a mild panic attack during the scene where Jim gets hit by the fear toxin and hallucinates Lee. I am years recovered, and I’ve handled scenes like Beth’s suicide attempt on The Walking Dead with little to no problem, but it took me quite a while to calm down from that scene because of how it was presented. It was framed as tragic and Bad, sure, but the lingering shot of the blood lapping between Lee’s breasts, the seductive “do it” whispers when Jim had the blade to his wrist… That scene didn’t reflect my experience. It didn’t CARE about my experience. That scene disappointed me after the excellent and nuanced way it handled Jim’s suicidal depression under hypnosis in Season Three, because it used something real people had really struggled with solely to create titillating drama for its fictional characters.

Okay, we’re good again. I’m not saying villains can’t be villains, or that dark themes and cruel actions can’t be portrayed, but we have to think about the reason we’re telling the story to begin with. If you hate Ed (and every other character) already for being immoral and a Bad Guy… Why are you watching the show?? If you write everybody off once they start down a villainous path, if you don’t empathize with them once they start taking actions you deem bad or wrong, if you’re not willing to suspend some disbelief and blur some lines to see through a character’s eyes, then who the hell are you left rooting for??

Again, if we weren’t supposed to care about Ed’s perspective, I think this would be a different issue. If I was sure the narrative would punish him for any Bad Guy shit he pulled, it would be another issue all over again. I’m thinking of Sal Maroni’s sexism in the Season One finale - that was GREAT. He was a bad guy being bad in a way that was going to hit home for female viewers, but nobody was rooting for him or thinking he was cool, and the climax of the scene was him getting shot in the face by somebody (a woman) whom we WERE supposed to think was cool.

It’s a badass scene with a sleazy character being sleazy and a violent character being violent, but it also conveys a message from the Real Live People running the show to the Real Live Audience: Sal Maroni is wrong. Sexism is wrong. Don’t do this in real life, don’t think you’re justified in pulling this shit, because it’s wrong.

Ed killing Kristen is another example I was really impressed with. Nobody pretends it’s anything but a horrific injustice, nobody on screen justifies it or wants it to have happened. Crucially, Ed himself knows it’s a tragedy. Seeing her killer regret what he’s done and continue to be haunted by it across seasons tells us that Kristen did nothing wrong, that it was a Bad Thing that should never have happened. Lee gets to voice that aloud, Jim gets to be disappointed and angry at the things Ed’s done. The viewers get a message completely separate from the act itself. The story goes out of its way to tell you that, even though you like Ed and care about him, there’s no excuse for his actions.

Who’s going to call him out for his anti-Semitic costume choices? Is Oswald going to bring it up if Ed is insensitive to his disability or mocks his mannerisms in a way that’s cruel to his sexuality? If it’s not addressed, then we have a problem. Because, while in-universe it might make perfect sense for Ed to be a total asshole, Ed isn’t real. And the people watching the show are. We tell stories for a reason, and if they result in anyone feeling justified in being more cruel or dehumanizing than they were before, then a mistake has been made.

…I’ve rambled for a long time here and I have no idea if I’ve made any sense.

Look, tl;dr: everybody watching Gotham has favorite characters, and all those characters have done terrible things. That’s OKAY. It’s natural to be fascinated and moved by the darker aspects of humanity. It’s healthy to stretch your empathy and your imagination. But at the end of the day, fiction becomes part of our reality. We carry things away with us. And stories have a responsibility to be cognizant of the messages and perspectives they’re supporting.

[furederiko]

The month of November 2017 had the show toying around with the idea of Blood Stalk's true identity, as well as Ryuuga's ascension to hero status. Was it successful?

I'll start with my classic note. This was meant to go up yesterday, and it could even be done Sunday night since I saw the recent episode live. But as usual... a 'Best Match' combination of my unreliable internet and my swaying health condition (yours truly and his limited internet have been both under bad weather for a good while) jeopardized my wonderful plan. Hmmm... IllBandwith form then? ;D As I've stated on my previous recap-view (that was posted earlier this month), starting with this one I will cover a batch of episodes that aired throughout one whole month. Since this one's for November, you can expect episode 10, 11, and 12. Enjoy!

10 - "Scheming Snake"

- Let's get one annoying bit out first. That scene where the three Prime Ministers meet and reveal their Lock Cards? One of the poorly-acted piece I've seen in the show so far, if not in ANY Tokusatsu. Come on, must they behave like disciplined robots, all lining up like school boys... when it's pretty much a casual meeting and not a televised event? And that over the top response by Midou and Tajimi? Those didn't feel natural. FAKE even, thus they grated on my nerves. - Thankfully, that's the only bad thing about this episode, as the episode picked up to better things almost immediately. Hmmm... so Sawa is indeed a traitor? That made her motive became... unclear. More than Gentoku who could easily tail Sento and locate where he lived, Sawa ALREADY knew about Misora's location. Heck, she has gone on and off to the secret hideout. If she IS working with Faust, why not hurry up and bring her back to the organization? I hope the answer to this mystery won't be as dumb as the way the writer handled Gentoku. It would be such a wasted potential. - Situation at the Touto building was intense too. Thanks to Stalk controlling the mechanical soldier (note to governments, don't rely on robots for security), there's so many human casualties! Intriguingly, it's too obvious he wanted to betray Gentoku as well, and used the Pandora's Box for his own scheme. I'm surprised that Gentoku didn't see this turn of events coming, when Stalk has been defying his command over and over again. LOL. Night Rogue vs Blood Stalk! - Of course, Ryuuga just had to ruin the moment. After knocking Smash-ed Kawai down, Ryuuga just had to hunt Stalk to the rooftop and became a third wheel. Yep, Sento called him out of the blue to inflitrate the building. An act that felt... forced now that I think of it, because soon after Sento arrived by air to rescue him. Why not just FLEW there right away, then? *sigh*. I guess the episode wanted to see them make up or something. - Double Battle Redux. Ryuuga dealt with Stalk with his glowing fist, and actually almost defeated him, while Build used FireHedgehog to press Rogue. It didn't end well for the latter, as Sento was broken out of his transformation... a condition that sly Rogue immediately capitalized to... take most of Sento's Full Bottles. Apart from one on his hand, the rest filled up the Pandora's Panel. So it's ELEVEN of them. Ain't that a bummer! - Does this mean, Ryuuga is going to become the second Kamen Rider?! Nope. Sento still has the Lock Full Bottle. And with Ryuuga's consent *grins* over his Dragon Full Bottle, Build's new form "The Security Fantasy" KeyDragon debuted. Cool design with great color scheme and neat finisher move aside, the Dragon side overwhelmed Sento that he just had to take them off. That's what you get from shaking that hand-sized Bottle too much too often, Ryuuga! Yeesh, that sounds... dirty somehow. LOL. - Stalk performed a twist, by using the TranSteam Gun to actually free Kawai from his Smash influence (turning it back to the webby Bottle form)! I did NOT know the gimmick could be used for that. This means Sento doesn't have to become a Kamen Rider in the first place, because all he needs is that gun to revert back the Smash. - Before Stalk presumably killed and did something creepy to Kawai, the scientist calls him... wait for it... Katsuragi. Yep, CALLED IT! *grins*... Stalk is INDEED Takumi. At the very least, that seemed to be what the writer wanted us to believe. If poor Kawai's words to be believed, then Takumi possesed a certain technology to 'fake' his death. Not really a tech though, because that creepy thing Stalk did to him? He used his hands to turn Kawai's face into Kuwata's. Yeeessh. How he could even include the glasses is beyond me (filming mistake IMO), but this fit with a snake's ability to... change skin. But wait, what does this mean? Is Sento the real Takumi with a different face then? Probably not that elaborate. I think Takumi killed someone else, and altered the deceased face into his. Suffice to say, he might be the Kamen Rider version of 'Kaijin Nijuu Mensou'. - Another bit that seemingly further hinted that Stalk is Takumi, was that clash of scientific ideals between him and Sento. Goodness grace, I LOVED this argument because both sides have a valid point. The Rider System as a military tool can be used for defense, but it's also designed to 'spill a lot of blood'. Science can be optimized to help people and bring joy, but on the other hand, it has also been used for mass destruction and humanity's decline. This dual-edged function is nothing more than a real life fact that we have witnessed throughout history. - This time around, Rogue got to ruin the fine moment. Mr. Pickpock... er, I mean Gentoku snatched three more Full Bottles from Sento's sleeve (Rabbit, Tank, and Lion). Our hero could no longer transform into RabbitTank, or used his Lion-powered motorcycle. Gentoku also had another win. His father Taizan had a heart-attack after Tajimi and Midou put him at a corner (a MUCH better scene for them compared to the intro). Gentoku has been made the Acting Prime Minister, which would easily put Faust's and Nanba's plan into motion. Dang... that hideous smile. - Oh, and yeah, Misora discovered a bug in the HQ. Should we even wondered who that belongs to?

Overall: This episode went back and forth with distractions, but really, the core of the story was pushing a theory that 'STALK IS TAKUMI'. I admit, it WAS my initial prediction when I started writing this essay too (after I've seen the episode around two weeks ago). But then our next episodes would slowly counter that notion, forcing me to change my tone. I have to hand it to the writers this time, because they somehow managed to fool me. Anyway, the episode was also intense. It had amazing action sequences, and ignoring Gentoku's sinister albeit slightly cheesy maniacal smile (that last shot was completely unnecessary, because it's a little over the top silly to be taken seriously), an excellent choice of cliffhangers. So it's another good one, albeit not as great as the previous two. Why? Because the whole theory was spoiled ahead of time so it wasn't as effective (obviously I had to compare this to Kyuranger episode 37 that aired the same day), and the whole 'bad guy snatching all good guy's collectible' twist was a repeated plot that we've seen... pretty much every year in the franchise. No originality there.

11 - "Hero at a Cross-Z Road"

- "Katsuragi is Stalk?", asked Ryuuga who just couldn't buy it. And after that, we got a new video of Takumi demonstrating... the TranSteam Gun and *drumrolls* Blood Stalk. Oy oy, apparently Stalk was created to be a 'perfect rival' to encourage hazard level's growth. It had a voice altering feature too, which is convenient. As in, ANYONE could become Stalk, even female characters like Sawa (turning into Smash ruled her out) or Misora. Hmmmm... - New Acting Prime Minister wasted no time to piss off the other Prime Ministers. I guess that's what you get when a deranged psychopath and sexual harrasser became a country leader, huh? Nope, I'm not trying to throw a shade to a certain... real life person here. Or am I? Hmmm. Now that he's on top, he's pissing off Stalk too, who used to be his partner in crime. Is that a wise thing to do? Probably not. - Sento's stuck with one Full Bottle, so the only solution to fight Faust was by relegating his Kamen Rider duty to Ryuuga. Well duh, wasn't it too obvious? After all, the Cross-Z gadget's CM has already aired since the previous episode. Problem is, Ryuuga needed to sync with his Cross-Z Dragon first... and that would require a whole episode to accomplish. LOL. - Birdwatcher? Ryuuga's costume cosplay joke already got VERY tiring to see. Can't the writer think of a better joke, or at least ditch this running gag entirely? Anyway, Night Rogue trapped Sento and Ryuuga so he could steal the remaining Full Bottles. Aaaah, the Rogue-Stalk feud has gotten VEEEEEERY tiring too. Felt like it's being dragged out a little too much. - Oh hey, even if the Lock and Dragon Best Match would malfunction, Sento still transformed on the scene. Very briefly *sigh*. You don't think a show entitled "Kamen Rider Build" would let Ryuuga entirely steal the spotlight, do you? Ryuuga tried to follow, but he hasn't had the 'desire to help', so it didn't work. - Sawa totally planted the bug, but instead of capturing her or telling the others, Misora confronted the culprit directly. Not a smart move, girl! Because it ended up causing problem... to Sawa herself. You see, Chairman Nanba is a world class prick. Since Sawa could no longer provide information, he put her for another use: turning her into Smash! That's the price of working and then become useless for bad guys, I guess. By the way, if she could become Smash, that means she didn't have the Hazard Level fit to become a Kamen Rider. Too bad. - Sento tried to deal with her, but couldn't hold his KeyDragon form too long. And Night Rogue has been waiting to snatch the other Full Bottles, because he still required 3 more. For what? Who knows. That's when Ryuuga came to the rescue. Again, predictable much? Turns out, Ryuuga visited Kasumi's grave (it's in Tatsuoka Cemetery Area A5 if you feel like giving tribute too... XD), and discovered a letter written by her encouraging him to help other people. Heeeey wait a sec, WHEN did Kasumi have time to write one? Aaaaah, I see what you did there... Sento! Thank goodness Ryuuga's head a little slow. Oh well, at least we got to see her memory again. - With a new spirit, Ryuuga lit up Sento's Build Driver, combined it with Cross-Z Dragon and transformed into... Kamen Rider REDACTED. Hold on, we already know his official name, right? Well, the show did NOT think so, and would prefer saving it for another episode (NOT kidding! *sigh*). He had a neat transformation, and this new Rider possibly became one of my most favorite second Rider thus far. I really dig his dragon kick attack/effects, and how the dragon part served as some kind of outer armor for the clawed interior. I'd argue he didn't need that Beat Crosser sword, but oh well... the "Million Slash" was cool, and Japanese kids need their toys. - Sawa has been saved, and revealed to the two that she's a spy. Naturally she would change side after this. Which was too bad, because the show could've played around with this potential much longer...

Overall: Aside from several important moment (Sawa x Misora, Ryuuga's reluctance and followed by his bromancing moment with Sento), this episode irritatingly felt dragged out. With a predictable story, it's as if it's a filler or some sort, eventhough it's supposed to be a grand debut for its official second Rider! I'm still a fan of Ryuuga's REDACTED form, but I also think the episode could have been better written and executed. Oh well, I have nothing else to say, so let's move on...

12 - "An Act of Conspiracy"

- Hey... no opening sequence? Was the episode meant to be 'special' then? Hmmm... I honestly can't see how, but let's just play along. Perhaps they need to retool it to insert the new Rider somehow... - Sawa admitted to be a spy for Nanba Heavy Industries, the biggest and influential industrial operation of the country. The company's good label is just a cover up, because they have secretly been doing shady military stuff, including controlling Faust. Turns out Faust has known about Nascita's true nature, but didn't do anything to let the Build team work freely. Was that really the main reason though? - Surprisingly, Sawa had no idea that Gentoku is the government guy who is connected to Chairman Nanba. Turns out, she became a spy in order to prove this link. Why? Her father was a researcher at Nanba General Research Laboratory, and was killed in the explosion set up by the government three years ago. So the whole espionage movement is personal to her too, huh? Well, at least we got a backstory for Sawa... who became the chained one now (goodness, this show sure loves its SM angle). - Thanks to Sawa's lead and Utsumi's leak, Sento and Ryuuga headed towards the abandoned lab. Apparently that's where Faust kept the stolen Pandora's Box. But of course, Night Rogue was in the vicinity, so a fight broke out. Since Sento could only shake off that one yellow Full Bottle, cocky Ryuuga (who got himself his own Build Driver! Aaaawwww ;D) got to be the leading hero. LOL. - Until Stalk showed up and... attacked Rogue, that is. AGAIN. Seriously, the whole riff between the two has been TOO PREDICTABLE that it's not even fun to see anymore! Stalk punched the wall, and what's hidden inside it? Pandora's Box and its Two Panels. One set was filled with Full Bottles (the ones Rogue stole from Sento), with seven others lying around. Ain't that mighty CONVENIENT!!! That means... Sento got to transform too! After all, Bandai still need to sell more toys... - Aaah yes, "The Scheduled Renegade" PirateTrain form debuted. Neat shoulder parts! It's still lacking its own weapon, but Band... I mean Sento would fix that up in the jiffy with the Pirate Platform. The arrow-shaped weapon has four levels of attack, and you can purchase one at.... uhmm, never mind. - Sawa decided to report her findings to Prime Minister Taizan Himuro who has been hospitalized. But the sickly old man was stubborn as always, so there's no way convincing him that someone in the government has been in league with Faust. She was forced to perform an acrobatic move instead! Seriously, that's a gutsy move jumping out of the window like that. I won't be surprised if Marvel Studios' Black Widow is her role model. LOL. - This was where Utsumi became the star of this episode. And by star, in an actual act. After spending 11 episodes basically serving as Gentoku's shadow without being given any distinct personality, things immediately sped up when Nanba old creep turned towards him for help. In an effort to clear both Gentoku's and Nanba Industries' names, Utsumi took on the mantle of Night Rogue as the Faust facility (hidden neatly under an actual dam!) got ambushed by the Touto Government. Oh come on, don't tell me you're surprised by this?! The whole affair was obviously staged, and the turnout was pretty much predictable from the get go. Pawn-boy Utsumi was merely used as a scapegoat, and seemingly got 'killed' in the operation. Sawa got her due last episode, this time it's Utsumi's turn. - Oh wow, that scene at the bridge was... silly. I basically rolled my eyes when Utsumi started monologuing, because the show somehow forced him to showcase emotions like... out of the blue. It's not working, and felt out of his usual stoic character. A great example to how this show LOVES to over-dramatized its moments ("You and I are both inside the same cage"... he said earlier. Yeesh!). Also... I think it's pretty clear that he was only sniped by Gentoku in the shoulder. His fall was NOT that high, so we totally would be seeing him more in the future. Beside, if Utsumi could transform into Rogue, that means his Hazard Level is high enough to become a Kamen Rider. - Sawa wanted to leave Nascita because her role has been completed. Sento said that's not the case, meaning she has been forgiven and now a full-time member of the team. Ryuuga also received an official name for his Rider form. Kamen Rider Cross-Z. Now where have we heard that before? What a real shocker this was!!! LOL. - This episode ended with Nabeshima calling Sento, saying that his memory has started coming back to him. He also secretly mentioned the name of the guy who told him to frame Ryuuga as Katsuragi's murderer... as the camera panned towards the coffee bean jar. - Really? Was that a hint of some sort? Another mere redherring? Because if it's indeed a hint, then it must be foreshadowing the one and only character related to coffee: Souichi Isurugi. By elimination only, who else among the series regulars with a mysterious shady past? Frankly... I'm not too sure I would enjoy this twist if it turns out to be the case. Unfortunately, I realized the signs are all there too. Remember how he had that startling magical ability back in episode 2? Just compare that to what Stalk did to poor Kawai just two episode prior to this one. Both involved... 'ALTERING SHAPE'! Uuugggggh. Let's just say... though it's sad to admit, I'd be completely surprised if Souichi is NOT the mastermind behind all things.

Overall: The last episode for November was a peculiar one. Aside from that sweet ending with Sawa, the entire episode felt... staged. Yes, just like poor Utsumi's sudden change in character. Does this mean Faust has been disbanded? Where would the show go from here now? Will it continue playing circles among its regulars? In a way, it's getting a bit hard to predict. But then after one stops and thinks about it, some things just feel too obvious and predictable. I'm starting to realize that I've developed an unhealthy love-hate relationship with this series. After it got better, the trajectory has gone south all over again. It's not bad, it has its devoted fans, and I will probably keep watching at least until 6-7 episodes. But I also want to be pleasantly surprised, the way "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" has succeeded in. Is that too much to ask for? Next Episode: Meet the Mind-Master... *mindblown*

Episode 10 Score: 7,9 out of 10 Episode 11 Score: 7,7 out of 10 Episode 12 Score: 7,2 out of 10

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Kamen Rider Build" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

[renaramblesaboutcomics]

Wednesday Roundup 1.11.2017

Late with a review? Me? Never! Maybe a little.

In my defense there are ten of them. 

Regardless, we have another Roundup with quite a diverse ensemble that I hope you all enjoy! I sure did. 

Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, DC’s Batman, Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Dark Horse’s Overwatch, Marvel’s Power Pack, DC’s Super Hero Girls, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II, Marvel’s Thanos - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages, Dark Horse’s Usagi Yojimbo, Lion Forge’s Voltron Legendary Defender Vol. 2

Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017) Robbie Thompson, Nathan Stockman

As people can no doubt tell from a glance over my blog as well as the rest of these Roundups, I’m actually quite the fan of this title, and have enjoyed this comic’s take on Spider-Man and, in truth, the entire Spider-Family more than almost any Spidey title in a decade now. At the very least of those that feature Peter. 

So this is a cute overview and relieves my stress over worrying that the title could be wrapping up soon since they’re promoting the next arc. I’m so glad to have this story of family and love~

DC’s Batman Halloween Comic Fest Special Edition (2017) #1 Steve Orlando, Tom King, Riley Rosso, Ivan Plascencia

I actually really enjoyed the Night of the Monster Men crossover comic from earlier this year, even if I think people would be best off if they waited like me until the whole trade collected everything and then bought it so they didn’t miss anything or read out of order. It was a good family crossover, used most of the characters to their benefit, and gave us some team ups we haven’t really seen used that much before, or at all.

So I really support the fact that this first issue of the arc came out to tease people for the Halloween Comic Fest because it’s the right amount of creepy and it exposes lots of new readers to members of the Bat family they may have not otherwise been exposed to. 

It’s a fun little free comic, and I recommend checking it out if you haven’t read the full storyline and would be curious about checking it out for yourself. 

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017) Robbie Thompson, Marco Failla

Being the huge fan of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur that I am, the hardest thing about the recent storyline has been that Devil hasn’t been in it and Lunella’s little broken heart breaks my heart every issue. So I was curious if that was going to be in the roundup and.... well, it wasn’t!

That means that, as could probably be predicted, the reunion between the two title characters is sure to be upon us, but it also kind of feels like these particular Primer Pages are.... really out of touch with what’s been going on in the comic recently, which kind of sets it apart from at least the comic primers I’ve read myself. I don’t know what to put this on, since Robbie Thompson has been the writer for all of these Primers and has done an amazing job thus far. It’s just a strange blip, I suppose. 

Dark Horse’s Overwatch (2016-present) #12 Michael Chu, Gray Shuko

Since I’m not really someone who’s played the video game for myself (I’m much more of a Let’s Play watcher), I view the world building pretty much entirely through the eyes of these comics we get. And that makes things... routinely difficult to decipher. Mostly because these are not coming out in a linear fashion to walk me through the worldbuilding. 

Heck, they’re not even coming out in order of issue number for us poor souls on the comixology train! 

So this is really one of my first exposures to how Overwatch functioned before it broke up, how the hierarchy worked, how the characters interacted. How... goofy everyone looks all wearing the same costumes and colors. 

It’s interesting stuff for sure and I feel like if I was more plugged in to the metatextuality of the Overwatch universe I’d not have the difficulties following that I’m describing, but there are only so many hours in a day.

The art is good but sometimes feels a little stilted, especially when it concerns fully portraying Tracer’s movements and time displacement. I’ve seen it used better but that’s more of a personal nitpick.

Why isn’t Overwatch trusted in England. Why isn’t Jack completely on board with sending a team in at first. No clue. Especially if this is Overwatch in its prime. But I suppose we’ll see. 

Or not. I don’t know if these comics actually fulfill any narrative structure since there are different writers and artists every other issue. 

Marvel’s Power Pack (2017) #63 Devin Grayson, Marika Cresta, Chris O’Halloran

So this one-shot was a blast from the past in multiple ways for me. First off, a Power Pack comic!!! Legitimately some of the first Marvel superheroes I read about outside of Spider-Man when I was growing up specifically because reprints of some of their issues were in the back of Spider-Man Magazine back when.... I was a kid and... subscribed to Spider-Man Magazine through a school fundraiser. Anyway. 

It’s also a play on my nostalgia for both having Devin Grayson as a writer and also having shoutouts to the fact that the Fantastic Four are still around and, by the logic of their last series, Alex Power is still with them. 

Devin Grayson is a writer I’ve had a complicated relationship with for years now, which her tag on this very blog can tell you in and of itself, but for all the reasons I’m incredibly critical of her writing, there is also the undeniable fact for me that some of her character work is genuine some of my favorite writing in comics when it’s restrained and kept to series and characters she clearly loves and understands a lot. For instance, I much prefer Grayson’s writing of familial relationships over her writing of romantic ones. And it’s quite obvious here that she at least understands enough about Power Pack to predict where Katie -- who is a character that unlike Julie and Alex we have not seen much of in recent years -- would be like as a growing teenager. Given, most of the issue is Grayson retelling an old story from the original Power Pack series.

While the framing and general premise is hokey, you really get the idea that Marvel is testing the waters of what properties they can really bring back in the new comic book landscape, especially with the note at the end of the issue compelling people who want more Power Pack to contact Marvel themselves. Which, personally, I will. Because I love my kids and I do think there’s a genuinely interesting place for them to inhabit in Marvel right now. Especially since we know Julie is pansexual in canon and I just really, really love Julie. 

The art also elevates a somewhat hokey concept to something really beautiful and modern, the breakdowns on every page are just gorgeous and I really have to give props here to Marika Cresta for that. 

And in general, I want more women to be involved with comics so this team would be one I’d really like to see more of, whether it’s a future Power Pack comic (fingers crossed) or not. 

DC’s DC Super Hero Girls 2017 Halloween Comic Fest Special Editions (2017) #1 Shea Fontana, Yancey Labat, Agnes Garbowska

Why this was chosen as a Halloween freebie is honestly kind of beyond me?The storyline of “Past Times at Super Hero High” literally has nothing to do with hauntings, curses, Halloween, or magic. It’s just the hang of kids from Super Hero High getting stranded in the Jurassic period and having to save their teacher. I guess... girls don’t like getting scared? Which by my estimation is an assumption which could only truly be made by either someone who never went to a sleepover party as a kid or doesn’t remember sneaking horror movies between friends without parental supervision. Kids eat up being scared. Kids also eat up anything with dinosaurs, but these things are fairly mutually exclusive when not a Don Bluth movie. 

Beyond my hilarious, if I do say myself, skepticism involving the choice of this particular comic being used as the Halloween comic of choice for DC to distribute from the series, it is a well written and well drawn addition to what has been an incredibly popular series for kids, especially young girls, who want to get more interested in reading superhero comics. And as I’ve made known before, that is something that is very important to me, personally. Comics for kids and comics especially interested in young girls, that doesn’t talk down or overly exaggerate gender differences are so important in nurturing the next generation of comic fans. I know, because that’s how I became a comic fan. 

It also is further proof that Shea Fontana’s run on Wonder Woman was criminally underrated and cut short as she really does understand how to write to the superhero genre tropes in a loving fashion and especially in exemplifying how strong and important the female characters are. 

I just wish the general lineup of the main cast wasn’t so white. Like, Bumblebee is one of the main Super Hero girls and she got entirely left behind within the first few pages. We do have Katana, at least, but representation for race is just as if not sometimes more important than just representation for women. I hope that’s something that becomes more prominent as the series continues. 

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II (2017) #1 (of 5) Erik Burnham, Tom Waltz, Dan Schoening, Luis Antonio Delgado

So I really adore Ninja Turtles crossovers to an extent that’s probably not healthy, and the previous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters crossover is by no means an exception to that, but one of the things that I could not have expected, even with as excited as I was for this comic to come out, was how much it tied into the ongoing storylines in both Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

No. Really! Seriously!

This is taking place between the last issue of TMNT that I reviewed and the next issue that will come out this month, which is why all five issues of this mini is coming out week by week this month. 

It’s honestly really amazing. 

The moment it opened up I knew that it was going to be Burnham and Waltz’ usual high standards of writing as well as Dan Schoening’s art (which also explains why his art has been missed on some of the recent Ghostbusters stories), but the moment we got to the “Ghost Realm” and saw not just Darius Dun from the IDW TMNT comics, but also references to his not-so-past murder I was like “holy crap I can’t believe that the consequences of storylines I’ve been curious about are finally coming to fruition here!

Of course that comes to its own difficulties -- as I mentioned in my review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universe, we’re increasingly getting to a point where the Ninja Turtles’ ongoing narrative just... isn’t self-contained anymore. And while that’s worldbuilding and expanding, but also makes it increasingly difficult to follow what’s happening in the main book unless you’re plugged into everything that’s going on in IDW. Which, if you’re not an immersive fan, can suck. A lot. I mean, for nerds like me who intersect with Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters and Transformers and X-Files and so on, that’s kind of cool and enjoyable. But for people who aren’t... Well, there’s a reason that comics have been pushed as more and more niche even as the superhero genre and comic-sourced media are growing into multimillion dollar properties. 

The art’s fantastic, the writing’s top notch. If you want to eep up with either properties’ storylines or if you just enjoyed the last crossover, I would absolutely recommend picking this up. 

Marvel’s Thanos - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017) Robbie Thompson, Ron Lim

As someone with not exactly the most cares in the world that Marvel has given a series to Thanos of all characters, I was kind of hoping this primer would, more than any of the others, sort of give me an insight to the appeal of the comic as a whole. And... really it didn’t that much. At least not by my estimates. 

I did enjoy the art quite a bit, and I love that the impact of the Guardians of the Galaxy has just been growing larger and larger thanks to the movies, but other than that this Primer really didn’t offer anything that really stuck with me personally. 

Dark Horse’s Usagi Yojimbo (1984-present) #163 Stan Sakai

So I did something with this issue that I rarely ever do, and that was that I looked around at other reviews online to see what other people were thinking as long time Usagi fans because... Well, to say the least the comics are always excellent but this time around I felt like I had read the comic before. Or, at least, that the storyline was similar enough that I was growing suspicious that somehow I had read the storyline before. 

It turns out, I hadn’t. I had just been confused because the spy character you can see in the bottom right panel has been around in other stories (and yes I know that’s a weird detail for me to get hung up on but that’s my brain for ya). And instead of confirming or deterring my suspicions I became exposed to a completely different trend in comic reviews right now. 

A.... strangely almost.... red-scare esque read of Usagi Yojimbo as pro-socialist???

We live in weird times, my friends. Where Usagi Yojimbo, a comic mostly about and making commentary on the history and culture of Feudal Japan, is being read now as..... socialist propaganda because the thief that Usagi and Ishida are after for most of the issue, Nezumi, is known for being a Robin Hood like character who steals from the rich and distributes part of his gains to the rest of the poor in the city, thus making him beloved and protected by the people who are more wary and unimpressed by the ruling class and police. Even though the eventual murder victim shown in the same issue is shown as having fallen on hard times and had his life ruined by Nezumi stealing from his business several times. 

But. Everything’s political now. And while I get that, I guess it doesn’t sit right with me because yes, that is a reading you can take away from this issue, but personally what always strikes me about Usagi Yojimbo as a fan is how depth and nuance are hidden by the seemingly simple. That has always been my compliment of the art -- which is simple, B&W, and toned, but full of deep details and very insightful use of environment and dedication to building spaces -- from this issue alone you can almost build a map of the city just from how Sakai lays out the art and how the chase moves through it -- but works just as well with the writing.

There is a commentary here on how opinion and loyalty is built by redistribution and how the class system as it was in Feudal Japan leaves injustice to be answered by outcasts like Nezumi and gangs like the Black Goblins, or how punishment in a justice system which is imbalanced discourages citizens from assisting law enforcement -- but none of those things are shown as without judgment or repercussions either. Nezumi’s own lawlessness is leaving him exposed to being hunted down by the gangs as well as the police, and to be framed for murder. There’s definitely repercussions shown for his victims, how they are left damaged by his actions and the injustice of their society to the point that they are desperate and get involved with crime themselves. 

There are no simple answers or simple interpretations from this issue. Just like there isn’t for Usagi Yojimbo as a whole. Our main character is not a benefactor of the system, but he is also involved in this case because of his friendship and loyalty to Inspector Ishida. Not to mention that Usagi’s associates are usually not the honorable sort like Ishida himself. And he has been involved with some questionable morality himself at times. 

At any rate, it’s usually against my style to read other reviews before I write my own but I’m glad I did this time around, because the common interpretation I’m seeing is.... oddly disconnected from the comic I read myself. So it was fun to do a bit of a deep dive. 

Lion Forge’s Voltron Legendary Defender Vol. 2 (2017-present) #3 Tim Hedrick, Mitch Iverson, Rubine, Beni Lobel

So. This was quite an unexpected addition to my pull list this week. They’re really cranking these comics out. I mean, it’s only been two weeks since the previous issue, it’s like they’re trying to be the comic version of the show in every possible way -- there’s not even breathing room between updates!

In all seriousness, this issue continues the honestly pretty solid quality that the last issue made standard, which again is just a complete shock to me because I didn’t enjoy the first issue. That being said, it still maintains the weaknesses that were proven last issue, too, especially in the alien designs and the general storyline we’re currently on. 

While I could definitely see this across-space amnesty mission as something that would happen in the actual show, there is a lack of urgency or even connection to Zarkon or the Galra Empire that is incredibly noticeable. For better or worse, the show keeps very close to its baseline of tension by having even mostly filler episodes have an impression and general outreach of the Galra Empire felt. Without that present in the current storyline and without anyone on Team Voltron even bringing up the possibility of the ongoing conflict with the Galra coming up, we feel a certain amount of disconnect and weightlessness to everything happening. And I’d argue that nowhere is that clearer than when Voltron is formed to fight the Big Bad of the issue but.... the Big Bad is defeated by.... Coran’s cold.... Which Coran gave it by.... breathing/sneezing on it in space. 

The art is a lot of give and take. I’ve said all I can on the fact that the alien designs aren’t feeling particularly original, but at the same time I have to credit the adherence to the style of the television series as well as the effort put into the backgrounds, really making even the scenes within the ship actually feel like the artist and writer had an actual location in mind for everything that was going on. 

At the same time, that adherence could also arguably be a hinderance. After all, we do see a lot of times where the characters look... strangely off model, or their expressions and poses don’t match the tone of what is happening or even what they’re saying (the panels I included above are a particularly egregious example of this). 

This all said, if you’re a fan of Voltron there really is a lot of reason for you to pick up the comics yourself. It’s not a supplement or introduction for the show, and in truth it’s not really making an effort to place itself in the show’s known timeline (somewhere between Seasons 1 and 3??? who knows). 

And those are the comics for this week! Did you happen to agree with me? Disagree? Think I missed out on picking up a comic that was good? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

But before I let you go, I have to (yes have to) plug once more:

I have exactly a month to pack up everything I own and move halfway across the country again which is not helping those financial crunches I mentioned before either.

As such, I really would appreciate if you enjoy my content or are interested in helping me out, please check out either my Patreon or PayPal. Every bit helps and I couldn’t thank you enough for enjoying and supporting my content.

You could also support me by going to my main blog, @renaroo, where I’ll soon be listing prices and more for art and writing commissions.

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