#I've started reading the manga recently and it's been fun :>

[layawayh2o]

Digital art and the Sketch (◕ᴗ◕✿)

Transcripts below

Toitsuka reita: So there was this hot chick and blah blah blah

Aiura mikoto: Kusuo~ why don't we all go to the store and find some new clothes, and blah blah blah

Akechi touma: Recipes for coffee jelly appear in cookbooks published in England as early as 1817. The earliest recipes call for coffee to be mixed with calves' foot jelly and sometimes call for isinglass or other clarifiers. After the introduction of packaged gelatin, most recipes call for the gelatin to be dissolved in the hot coffee and then molded.

In the early 20th century coffee jelly was promoted as a healthier alternative to hot coffee, as it was thought the gelatin would absorb excess acid in the stomach.

Jell-O launched a short lived coffee gelatin mix in 1918, but the dessert never gained widespread popularity outside of New England. Today, coffee jelly may still be found in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and other New England states. Durgin-Park restaurant in Boston, which opened in 1827, still offered coffee gelatin made with leftover coffee from the previous day as of 2016 blah blah blah

[kozachenko]

[Click for better quality]

Ok so as a sort of followup to that Yachie drawing, I did one of Yachie as well. I already had a pretty solid idea in mind (though tbh drawing her wasn't as fun as drawing Saki) but I'm overall pretty happy with this drawing.

Artist's Notes;

So I knew that I would never forgive myself if I completely missed the oppurtunity to give Yachie face scales, which is something that I haven't really seen many people do yet. I do feel like I could've pushed it a lot more, but I'm liking the direction my take on her is going.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to talk about some of my headcannons for how Hell's fashion works since I've had this on my mind for a while. So ever since I refined my own design for Zanmu, I really liked the idea of having there be some connection between her and Satori in their clothes because they're both the defacto "leaders" of their respective Hells, and then I had the idea of having Hell's fashion trends mimic real life history where it mimics whatever the upperclassman are wearing in someway? I've always been really fascinated with the idea of how Modern Hell works as a society and also how Old Hell was impacted by it's abandonment, and while I am aware that the animal realm isn't exactly Hell and is moreso it's own thing right next to it, I imagine that there would be some overlap in the fashion and culture due to their close proximity to each other. Of course, I still kept a lot of elements in from Yachie's original design, the only thing I really added to the outfit was the jazzed up sleeves and the bottom of her shirt as well as those cool triangle things ZUN added to her shirt in 19. I also have her some nice and sharp nails since I thought they fit her. I also tried adding some scales onto the tips of her ears though tbh IDK how well they read. Her colour palette also ended up becoming a lot more teal than I had anticipated, but I honestly like it as I love it whenever people make Yachie's colour palette and design a lot more teal. I also wanted to try and differentiate her face from Saki's, though I do plan on experimenting more on how to avoid same face syndrome, as it's a problem that haunts me in my dreams. There's not really much I can say here aside from "hee hee clothing rendering go brrrrrr" and how the Clip Studio Paint charcoal brush is really all you need for any given piece and it is literally the only brush I use aside from the occasional airbrush for lighting (sometimes) and the blend tools. I've been doing a lot more simple character art recently and I've just been waiting for a cool enough idea for a full blown piece.

Though now that I've talked about some of my headcannons about how Modern Hell works, I really just want a Touhou manga spinoff about Modern Hell. Like, please ZUN I'm begging you, just do it, it would be so fucking cool because Touhou 17 is literally the only time in modern Touhou when we've been to Hell proper, does modern Hell have any settlements of Oni and other Youkai? Does it have cities? Towns? Villages? What's the technological level of Hell? How do they keep sinners from pulling a Touhou 17 and summoning a fucking god to save them? Where do all the characters associated with Hell as of right now fit into everything? You can't just drop a character like Zanmu who is stated to essentially be the king of fucking Hell and then not elaborate further on how she fits into the general framework of Hell! Is she officially the king or is this more of a "true mastermind using the official king/ruler as a puppet" type deal? How does the Animal Realm fit into all of this? Did Hecatia purposefully create Hell so it would be right next to the Animal realm? Did it just appear there on it's own once Buddhism started popping off on Earth or was it established once Zanmu established Modern Hell? How long was Keiki a problem for, and how did that affect the rest of Hell? Seriously there are so many unanswered questions here and I don't know if I just need to read an interview Zun had where he was asked these same questions and if so please tell me because these questions have all been stirring in my brain for quite some time and I really wished we'd just get a new fucking manga instead of going over the same settings in Gensokyo over and over and over and over again dear god. Like, I get that there's still a lot to explore with what we already do have, but it would just be really nice to see the Animal Realm get a little more explanation as to how it fits into the overall grand scheme of Gensokyo's worldbuilding because that would just make such an already interesting idea for a setting in Gensokyo so much better.

I'm hoping to get the drawing for Keiki done before Touhou 17's 5 year anniversary, though I am willing to postpone that and take my time on it and I also have something coming up where I won't have access to my main drawing tablet for a while so it might be a while until I post again, maybe, who knows, consistent posting schedule? Who are they, I've never heard of them. I do fully intend on talking about my thoughts on Touhou 17 though, even if it's a day or two late, it's Touhou 17's birthday month so it still counts! Also because out of all the Touhou game anniversaries, this is the one I care about the most because Touhou 17 was the first Touhou game I played and 1CC'd(???) on normal, and even though it has plenty of flaws (i.e. the many missed opportunities for it's gameplay, how unbalanced the mechanics are and also screen visibility), I'm always going to have a bit of a soft spot for it and I think that the game's strengths make up for some of it's weaknesses in my opinion.

[thankskenpenders]

And now for something new

So, here's something I was never planning on doing, but I just couldn't shake the idea... Thanks Ken Penders is gaining a sister blog featuring an entirely different comic franchise!

Introducing... Thanks Steve Ditko, a blog where I read the Earth-616 Spider-Man comics, starting all the way back in the '60s! It's gonna be much more casual and less thorough than how I run things here on TKP, though, which I'll explain in a sec.

If seeing me post weird bits from old Spider-Man comics sounds fun and you need no further info, then just head right on over to Thanks Steve Ditko. But for longtime TKP readers, I know you probably have questions...

Number one: Why?

Spider-Man's always been my favorite superhero, and with the Spider-Verse movies kicking ass and my excitement building for the new Insomniac game, I've been in a Spidey mood. Inevitably, a thought occurred to me: Maybe I should actually read the comics that everything else is built off of and see the wildly varying contributions of all the original creators, rather than filtering them through big budget adaptations. If I can power through One Piece and all these other manga with hundreds of chapters, it can't be that hard... right?

And, well, after a few issues I quickly realized that my options were to either clog up my other accounts with random Spider-Man panels for years, or to just make a side blog. And so the side blog was born.

Two: Will this blog replace Thanks Ken Penders?

NO!!!!!!!!!

Okay but prove it

To allow the two to exist side-by-side, Thanks Steve Ditko will have a different format than what Thanks Ken Penders developed. Rather than an in-depth guided tour that critically analyzes every story beat of every issue, TSD will just be a place for amusing panels and brief thoughts as I casually read the comics at my own pace.

If you've seen me make a few tweets about reading Spider-Man recently, I'm basically just moving that to a dedicated Tumblr. It's a place for me to dump these things so that it doesn't fill up my media tab on Twitter for the next decade. (You know, assuming Twitter is still around in a decade.) There will be many issues where I only post two panels that I thought were funny. There will be issues where I don't have anything to say at all. Maybe I'll reach a run that I just cannot get into, and I start skipping around more. Who knows!

This may sound similar to what I thought this blog would be before it blew up. Aside from the simple fact that there's already mountains of Spider-Man commentary out there and therefore less of a void for me to fill, one of the main steps I'll be taking to avoid repeating the past is not enabling an ask box on TSD. I do not need people to ask me to go into ten times more detail on everything. I do not need to write seven essay-length responses to questions about Spider-Man minutiae every day. I do not need a place for people to chide me for not covering certain scenes, issues, or ancillary series.

It also won't have any kind of update schedule. I'm trying to keep it very casual. I'm reading these comics at my own pace, and if I feel like sharing a moment or commenting on something while doing so? It goes there. That's it.

(On the subject of format changes, I'm also listing the issue, writer, and penciller in the body of every post. This is a thing I wish I'd done on TKP so that people didn't misattribute every weird Archie Sonic panel I post to Penders.)

Three: So when will TKP come back from hiatus? You said it'd come back after you finished SLARPG!

I don't know! Sorry. I have a couple things on the backburner right now for TKP, but I'm not sure when I'll get back to proper updates where I read more comics.

I wanted to bring TKP back this year, and that's still possible. The main hurdle is that I want to reread my own archive (again) as a refresher, which is, uh. A lot of posts. I've developed a high standard for myself on here, and I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job right if I forgot half the ongoing subplots and character arcs and didn't bring them up in my analysis. Especially when I'm discussing the work of an author as obsessed with continuity as Ian Flynn. Unfortunately, the nature of this blog means that every time I go on another long hiatus for Life Reasons I have even more comic continuity to catch up on than last time.

(This is a big part of why I'm making Thanks Steve Ditko an extremely casual blog instead of promising to become a Lore Expert on 60+ years of Marvel.)

Mostly I've just been very burnt out this year after having finally finished a video game that took almost eight years to make. I haven't really had the energy for any creative projects, including TKP. But I feel a little bit of a spark here with Spider-Man, so I'm chasing that feeling to try to get back into the swing of blogging about comics - no pun intended.

So, basically, bear with me on this as I start this low-energy side project. But hopefully folks will enjoy Thanks Steve Ditko as its own thing, too.

Look forward to goofy shit like this

[gojosattoru]

Hello everyone! Hope you are doing well cuties! I've missed you all so much! ^^ *hugs* So I'm doing this post to announce that I will start taking commissions again. I have been working as an illustrator, it has been really fun, my boss she's cool and has nice ideas but the issue is... she doesn't pay me on time... and sometimes I wait till 2 or 3 weeks till she pays me.. I'm really needing to gain more money... I have been trying to find a second job but it has been difficult.. No matter the curriculums I send.. no one responds or they say i don't have enough experience....... I'm really getting frustrated..

So I'm coming back, fortunately I have been feeling much better lately thanks to my psychologist and my medication. I want start editing again and tho on opening commissions on Tumblr and for Twitter! I can make icons, headers for both websites (or for any other social media if you want) I too have been doing a lot of chibi drawings, (you can see them on my art page on twitter and my blog and sideblog @letsbeeart) if you are interested and you could help me, I would really appreciate it :) If anyone wants to request feel free, but if you could give me even a small ko-fi :https://ko-fi.com/gojosattorus it would be wonderful, if not it's okay i'll do requests nonetheless ^^ so the prices for the commissions are these:

Headers alone are 10$;

Icons (anime and manga) alone are 3$;

Batch of both they are 11$. 

Chibi Commissions: (i should say this, if you want to commission me chibis please ask for fandoms i'm into! Since I'm more familiar with them and gives me more motivation to draw it helps me a lot! Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail are good too ^^)

1 Character -> 25$;

2 Characters -> 35$

+ Characters -> 50$

with background -> 15$

It would be awesome if you guys could spread this post around as much as you can…Sorry for coming out of the blue with this.. I have been on hiatus for a month and a half due to my mental health and now I suddenly appear to open commissions (like i said i can take requests too you could give me a lil ko-fi if not it's alright too) but I have been thinking a lot recently since I don't gain THAT much and my boss always delays the pay day.. I should do something to gain more money! I have been practically doing nothing recently... So if you could support me, even just a lil it would help me a lot!.. Thank you for all your support, love, kindness and strength you have been sending to me recently and for keeping liking everything I do guys, makes me really happy whenever I see your messages ; U ; I will keep doing my most effort to create the best for you guys and I hope you like them and can enjoy too! Thanks for reading and to reblog. Anything you are interested in, or any doubt, you can always message me and we will talk things through. Wish you all the best and I love you very much!! 💖💖💖💖 Have a lovely day/night! *hugs* Take care!

[artifeast]

Cursed Dungeon Meshi AU, with a vague attempt at the manga's style. They are 17 inches shorter than their canon heights. Maintained the height differences though!

Telesphore is an elf of course, Colette is a half-foot/tallman, and Eisen is a gnome. WAY too many miscellaneous thoughts about this AU under the cut. There miight be worldbuilding spoilers if you haven't read the DunMesh manga and bonus material

Telesphore is an elf because, obviously

Eisen's a gnome because that gave me a decent height difference with Telesphore while still giving him strong magic capabilities. He might have a bit of dwarf in him, though

Colette's mother was a half-foot, and her father is a tall-man with a half-foot grandparent. Colette is still taller than the average considering her heritage (I did MATH about this. and jsyk the numbers worked beautifully). I wanted her to not be particularly innately magical, and also this would give her an appropriate height in comparison to Telesphore and Eisen. Like, the AU is already gonna be cursed with how Telsie has to get shrunken, but it'd be even worse if Colette was a tallman and 8 inches taller than him LMAO

Colette still has the Kingmaker in this AU, though I forgot to draw it. In this, it's an ancient elven magical artifact.

Colette's still 25, while Telesphore and Eisen are the same age (190). I made an age comparison chart for the Dungeon Meshi races a while back, taking into account both age of maturity and life expectancy, and according to it, 190 makes Telesphore the equivalent of about 29 and Eisen the equivalent of about 47.5, which is close enough. This AU loses the dynamic of Telesphore being alive for hundreds of years longer than Eisen, and in fact makes Eisen the older one of the two (aging-wise) from the very start, but eh, I think it still works. There's still lifespan angst since Eisen only has 50 years before he hits the average life expectancy for gnomes, while Telesphore has another 210 years. Also I think them remaining the same age, as opposed to canon, but still aging differently is kinda fun.

The Kingdom of Valor is somewhere in the middle of the Eastern Continent, landlocked like in canon. The population is primarily half-foots, but there are also a good deal of gnomes and dwarves, as expected from the region. More interestingly, there is a community of elves.

Within Valor is the Seltsamwald, a bizarre and massive surface-level dungeon in the form of a dangerous forest that stretches for miles, held in check by incredibly powerful ancient magic forming a barrier around it. The elves are investigating it and maintaining it. There is no immortality spell in the Seltsamwald. The lord of the dungeon has not been found, but doesn't appear to be particularly active; in fact, despite being clearly contained and rather active in terms of monsters, it retains many properties of a natural dungeon. Some have theorized that it actually is a natural dungeon that's spread too far, perhaps cultivated by a mage in ages past, that was then sealed closed when it grew too powerful. However, it's not sealed entirely shut, and is kept alive mostly by the elves investigating it. There is very limited non-elf foot traffic, with it mostly being criminals that sneak into its maze-like forest. The Seltsamwald has been kept stable like this for hundreds of years. More recently, a group of elves have formed a small town within the dungeon as a sort of research post, named Sorbus.

Also within Valor are at least two magic schools, located there due to the plentiful mana from the Seltsamwald. One is for gnomish magic, and one is for elven magic.

The Desrosiers were half-foots. Ariadne is a tallman that's managed to prolong her life using ancient magic. (Though even still, in this AU she probably murdered Eisen's parents when he was the equivalent of like... 37, rather than 18)

I've spent a LOT of time thinking about it and I've decided not to try to translate the revolution and the closed Kehrseite portal situation into this AU. It's much easier to say Telesphore not being able to go home is just… a personal issue, because he's a wanted criminal on the Northern Central Continent, LOL. And the revolution's just a huge mess... I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I excluded the Good Neighbors/elves from the proceedings, though. These fantasy medieval ages are allowed a little populist revolution

[quietbooklion]

What happened to Kings of Paradise?

Lately, I've been having some thoughts about Kings of Paradise mainly because how it just stopped updating for years. Aside from the manga adaptations and the NSFW stories that were recently released in the EN app, there hasn't been any kind of update in regards to the main stories for each of the characters.

When KoP was first released, I was honestly surprised by how very mature and sexy it was. Voltage really went above and beyond to deliver a story about an MC getting divorced and finding love again. Kiyohito stole my heart and of all the guys he's my favorite with Kaisei coming in second.

I stopped reading KoP stories after a while because I lost interest and when I found out the later season stories had this love triangle thing going on, I really couldn't find myself wanting to continue the title. Fun fact about me: I don't like love triangles. In the end, I haven't played the title in a LONG time. Not even Kiyohito could get me to replay it.

Even so, I was very much looking forward to the new love interests. Kaisei really was interesting and fun since he's so eccentric compared to the others. The one I was looking forward to the most was the doctor, Tsubaki. That man is so fine. I was eagerly anticipating his story thinking it could get me back into playing the title again.

And so I waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... and waited...

After literal years of no updates I started to wonder if it was dropped. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked at the JP app and saw that Tsubaki and Blood Moon were removed from the line up. Yes, you heard me, removed.

I was beyond disappointed when I saw that in the JP app. More so because this isn't the first time Voltage has dropped a title without giving it a proper conclusion, like how it was with Rose in the Embers.

KoP was fairly popular if my memory is correct, so I can't see why Voltage would all of a sudden just drop it and not give any kind of update. Now, I know that first and formost, Voltage is a company and if one of their titles isn't bringing in the money, it'll get dropped. That's just how it is even though I don't like it. Still, why KoP of all the titles if it was fairly popular to the point where Kaisei was added to the VIP room. It got a manga adaptation for christ's sake. Why drop it??

Also why put a lot of side stories inside the VIP room gacha? Now that really makes me mad that those stories are locked behind a gacha.

After seeing Tsubaki and Blood Moon getting removed and years of no updates, I think it's fair to say Voltage dropped it and has no plans to go back to it unless they announce something. Which is a shame because I know lots of people loved that game and the characters.

[vampirecatsw]

Transmigrator Kaito AU

part 2:

(lol i haven't written any resembling a fic for this au yet but feel free to ask questions)

Kaito's favourite manga is Detective Conan. Instead of crossing over with Magic Kaito, it crosses over with Yaiba.

The Yaiba content annoys Kaito to no end because he's jealous~ He's like "Ugh, crossing Conan over with say like, a Phantom Thief would be perfect! Not Yaiba! >:("

He's definitely read and written Kaitou KID / Detective Conan crossovers HAHAHA

(I still need to do more research about Yaiba but I know there's Yaiba characters in dc so that's why I chose this. Sorry I don't know much about Yaiba but I thought it would be a fun idea)

Kaito picked it up when his dad died and still reads it to this day. Yes, it's long running series too :)) He reads it in his downtime, including before and after heists. He's basically memorised every detail.

Out of all the characters, Conan/Shinichi is Kaito's favourite character. When Kaito got frustrated, he always came back for him. And he's a huuuuge fanboy as well! He knows all the little details >v0 and admires Shin-chan a lot.

I'm still deciding on making this romantic ShinKai or queerplatonic (like some third thing other than platonic and romantic) but eh it's still in the air ig. Kaito adores Shin a lot either way.

Kaito doesn't know that in the final chapter of Conan, it was revealed Shin and Ran decided they had a sibling relationship. Kaito keeps trying to wingman them in increasingly absurd ways that makes Shin think he's actually trying to serenade Ran.

When the final chapter is going to come out, Kaito goes on a heist but everything goes wrong. He ends up finding Pandora, but Snake finds him first and manages to mortally wound him. As he bleeds out on the rooftop, Pandora drenched in blood and lying in his limp hands, Kaito's last regret is how he never got to read the final chapter of Conan.

More details below cut:

~

Suddenly, Kaito wakes up to a vicious pinch in his cheek.

"Ba-kai-to! Wake up! I've been calling you for the last 5 minutes!"

"Ow! A-Aoko?? Wha-"

Kaito raises his head and sees... his normal classroom? Huh? Was everything just a dream? That final heist?

Kaito quickly pats down his chest. Nothing hurts... except for his sore throbbing cheek, and he's clothed in his normal school uniform, not the KID suit.

He keeps glancing around, trying to find any differences. Aoko's still standing in front of his desk, hands on her hips and a concerned look on her face. The classroom hasn't been filled up yet and the board is still freshly cleaned from yesterday, meaning it's the morning and class hasn't started yet. Akako hasn't arrived either. And Hakuba's reading a newspaper about Kudo Shinichi...

Huh?

Kudo Shinichi???

Kaito lunges over his desk. "Hey! Give me that!"

Hakuba is too stunned at the sudden attack.

Kaito rapidly skims through the article .The paper crinkles in his trembling grip.

"Kudo Shinichi, the Heisei Holmes has done it again! He solved another case flawlessly last Monday..."

Hakuba adds hesitantly, "Yes? Kudo Shinichi. He's been making a name for himself recently. It would be a pleasure as a fellow detective to work alongside him one day."

Hakuba says this all naturally, like Shinchi's been real this entire time. Like he wasn't just a manga character yesterday.

Kaito gulps ...There's no mistake. The impossible has happened, and Detective Conan is somehow real.

~ Kaito in this AU is just... a Kudo Shinichi fanboy. He's absolutely ecstatic to challenge Kudo Shinichi. He's even more excited to amaze his critic, and every time they meet, Kaito's pokerface works overtime to hide his delighted blush and adoring grin on his face. Jii is so confused but also very supportive.

... Kaito really wants to squish Shin-chan's cheeks and tease him until his entire face turns a pretty pink, dangers be damned.

Meanwhile Shinichi keeps getting annoyed by this clingy thief who keeps coming back for more. What's so interesting about him anyways??? Why does he keep teasing him???

(This au also includes pre-conan and during conan. Kaito is extremely charmed by Conan and his pokerface works extra-overtime than when he met Shinichi. If that is even possible. After every heist he screams in his pillow and recalls every moment)

Extras:

Kaito takes a solid week to slide himself into the Kudo Shinichi fan-server and cement himself as the Shinichi Expert. After a month he actually gets elected as co-president. Yes he's absolutely insane.

Kaito regularly sends fan letters to Shinichi, even after his 'disappearance'. They always wish Shinichi the best and includes random funny snippets of Kaito's day. They're addressed as "Kai-san" and are pretty polite. They always come with Kaito's genetically engineered blue and red roses that he grows in his garden. He doesn't gift the blue roses to anyone but Shinichi haha

Akako does exist in this universe. It's just that she sensed such a major disturbance that she stayed at home and researched it vigorously to make sure the fabric of space-time wasn't unravelling.

Kaito is like a proud peacock whenever Shin/Cone shows up. He literally pulls out all the stops and Jii is confused, yet very supportive. Agasa who provides the gadget just sighs at the huge and absurd list. It doesn't escape his mind that it happens whenever Conan/Shin attends a KID heist.

OVA 1 is really fun so I thought it would be extra funny for it to be somewhat plausible in this au. Not sure if Yaiba would be turned into a manga series when Magic Kaito becomes the main crossover (if that makes sense). When Kaito robs the sword, he would use his knowledge to cause the most chaos. Yes Kaito read Yaiba out of spite, and also 'know thy enemy, know thyself'

[animalinvestigator]

any manga recommendations?

yessss oh my gosh always, gladly. so honored you would ask little ol me about such a thing... i haven't been reading much lately so here's just a little list of things ive picked up in the past few months or things i've liked for a long time..... all of them are on mangadex so just look em up... Im editing this to put them under the cut sorry i didn't do it before ive been on the clock for like 4 hours and im tired Lights cigarette

fool night yasuda kasumi !!! it's currently ongoing and i recently got caught up... if i had to describe it in two words.. "post-chainsawman." it's very similar in a lot of ways, but has very different priorities.. what i really like about it is that it has kind of a tighter focus on the "poverty and capitalism" angle that chainsawman definitely covers but doesn't really devote its full attention to. in a world where the sun no longer shines, plants can't grow, so humans are constantly at a deficit of oxygen... to combat this, government facilities offer a payout to desperate people who can't afford to live if they allow themselves to be "transflorated" -- basically fed on by a magical spiritual plant that will eventually kill them and release oxygen in their stead. one such desperate person undergoes the procedure only to find he has the special ability to communicate with transflorated bodies after theyve passed... and then he becomes a Plants Detective and shenanigans ensue. Super good it made me cry... art is beautiful..... definitely worth a read if youre looking to pick up something ongoing

babel no toshokan by tsubana - stumbled upon this after reading the artist's other work "wakusei closet" on a whim... this shorter story is much preferred and has engraved itself deeply on my heart. a girl with a strange set of beliefs about reality enters a strange relationship with a boy who can read everything that's ever been written just by touching an identical sheath of paper..... seriously so good. give it a go if you want something short and sweet

planet laika & scorched earth of love by mayuri yoshida, this is a short manga and one shot bundled with it that has been one of my favorites for like FOUR YEARS NOW!!! mayuri yoshida's sickly cute animal people + loving intricate lineart combine to create a really unique visual aesthetic. its about the titular laika , as in, the dog launched into space, who has since become the ruler of a planet of dogs, and her plot to take revenge on humanity. also she has a lesbian wife. the one shot is so good too SO DONT MISS IT!!!

anyone who has heard me talk about comics for the past year or so probably knows i've been trying to get Just yknow everybody on earth to read dead dead demon's dedededestruction by inio asano. nothing i could ever possibly say about it could do it justice it's seriously my favorite manga of all time. it's about being in love with your best friend and the end of the world and aliens and politics and the internet and stuff. asano's art is truly breathtaking and unlike anything else on earth, the characters are all infectiously lovable, and it's just like... endlessly life affirming and heals my heart in a way i have a hard time articulating.

and last one... not strictly manga but i have really enjoyed keeping up with wanan's webcomic no home recently... its a long one, but i read about 275 chapters of it in like 3 days, because it's that hard to put down, LOL... extremely inspiring character writing and also just insanely fun, eunyung became an all time favorite character of mine on impact and it has one of those casts where you can't help but have fun watching them be together in literally any situation. it's about a bunch of kids with shitty family situations trying to figure out to learn to live with eachother. its an extremely good example of mundane character drama being written so compellingly that it will make you start slamming your head on walls at work. Speaking from experience.

miscellany... everyone tells you to read witch hat atelier, do it its good... everyone tells you to read dungeon meshi do that its good... Chainsaw man part 2 is getting crazy right now ...... uhhh... i have a billion more so if none of those interest you let me know and i'll share more. thank yew so much for your interest in my opinions and i hope there's something here you can appreciate!!!~~

[maddascanbe-blog]

(I've been out of a drawing mood recently, so you get never before seen sketches, whoo!)

"Yeah I've watched My Hero Academia. Do I like it? Um- Well I have seen it..."

I started watching Miraculous Ladybug because I heard it was kinda bad but at least interesting bad. I watched MHA because people told me it was good, and I feel a little lied to...

I didn't make it to season 4 for MHA, and people tell me I jumped off at a bad time, that I need to push through to the good stuff. But if the good stuff is blocked behind more than 4 episodes I'm giving up. MHA's was blocked behind like 12. (Based on what I've been told is happening in the manga, I made a good choice...)

Don't get me wrong, the concept is interesting, most of the extended cast is wonderful, I like most of the character and costume designs, and the animation is absolutely beautiful at times but BOY did I struggle with this shows pacing and some of its cast. I mostly held onto the show for the So Bad It's Good factor, similar to why I've watched every episode of MLB despite disliking a good third or the episodes.

Naturally I had to shove these two shows together at least twice. Anyone who reads my Ao3 regularly will know I started Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies, but these two were actually from my first concept of a crossover. Where Izuku has both the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculous and uses the Cat to be vigilante and the Ladybug to be a hero student. He justifies this with, it's not illegal quirk usage if it's magic.

In the story plan he uses the Cat first, so I tried to pull more heavily from his different hero outfits early on (plus his scarf from later), as well as a few of All Mights costumes since I figured those would be rattling around in his head at the time.

For the Ladybug design, I figured he'd intentionally try and differentiate himself from Bakeneko, and because he's a bit more confident and feels more put together the suit reflects that. I still brought in a few references to his later hero outfits with the stripes on his arms, the placement of his armor pads, the face mask, and his shoes (which I hate, but they fit), etc. I added bright blue to the pallet because it looks nice, and his hair is still green, I just didn't color it here. Finally, Tento's face makeup, which I just thought was fun. He has black around his eyes and white freckles.

[maleyanderecafe]

YOU SAID YOU HAVE SOME GOOD FEMDOM STUFF??? 👀 I'm always down to hear some cute men moaning and whining 😩💗

I mostly do manga and webcomic, but if you're looking for drama cd, I would suggest this translator since she has quite a lot of femdom content, though you'll probably have to find the actual sound tracks by buying them or searching for them on sound cloud.

My own translations are on baoto, though it is mixed with like some yandere smut and some other random things (like BL and other non-smut oneshots). You'll have to pick and choose from there since I mostly just choose whatever femdom stuff I want and translate it. I'll just give some ones off of it. Most of them are oneshots.

When I prank my handsome boyfriend, he's so cute, I can't stop teasing him - no penetration and mostly just handjobs.

Overthrown for the first time - Elite X Pretty Boy/ First Switch ~Soft Fluffy Wife x Elite Husband~ - these two are mostly switch stories but do have some femdom in it.

Be honest with me, Kyo - Older girlfriend wants to tease her virgin boyfriend - cute story about a couple and the boyfriend's first time.

Tsukiko-san wants to tease her younger husband - exactly what it says on the tin, newly wedded couple has sex

Miyoshi wants to make a Younger Dog Cry - basically a lady recently broke up after finding out she likes femdom and sleeps with a coworker after he asks her out.

If that's the case, then I'll do it - this one is a series with a reasonable age gap (28/40). It's very shoujo like in storytelling.

Some other ones:

Life of the Tachibana's ~ The Wife Can't Help but Dote on Her Husband! ~ - very cute fluffy smut one. I did the typesetting for this one.

If I Have a Chance, I Want to Warp My Boyfriend's Fetishes! - series is pretty cute. I think the couple is pretty switchy.

Anything by Necomiya is pretty good though they mostly focus on nipple play stuff.

Tonight I Will Have the Carnivorous Boy Yuki-kun - Yuki-kun is pretty cute though it does start off a bit dubconny.

If you are looking for yandere femdom smut, that's tough luck because I've been looking for a while too.

In the Doghouse - is the new recent one with a yandere in it. I haven't read all of it but from what I read it's pretty good.

My Cute Stalker Idolizes Me Too Much - this one is very cute, even if the yandere is very light (he's basically a stalker worshipper type) but he does get dommed so that's always nice.

Anyways, I usually translate the Chinese version of things so I can better my Chinese reading skills. Let me know if there's anything you want me to try translating. Typesetting is super fun.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 138 thoughts

ruby's honkshoosnorkmimimi pajamas are back fuck 137 this is REAL cinema

All joking aside, there's a lot less to talk about in (MOST) of this chapter, though that's obviously by design. This is a cool down chapter (FOR THE MOST PART) to give us (SOME) breathing room in the aftermath of the RBKN fight and while it's not totally devoid of substance, it is for the most part just a good time spent with some members of the cast who haven't gotten as much focus lately and it does what it sets out to do pretty well, aside from some minor gripes here and there. I won't lie, I smiled a ton while reading this one even if I don't have so much as half as much to say about it as I did 137.

That said, my first gripe off the bat is the biggest one which is, once again, the total lack of reaction from Aqua to… literally anything that just happened. 135 didn't really go that deep into his feelings and despite 136 very deliberately highlighting Aqua's presence during the filming of that pivotal scene and even focusing on his stunned reaction to Ruby's adlib, he is jarringly absent from 137 and the return to Aqua focus here (even if we are still being excluded from his POV) feels all the more sudden and strange for not patching that back up. I've already said a ton about what I think of Aqua being written this way recently so I'll just reiterate that if this is an intentional choice, I still really don't like it.

Moving onto things I did enjoy about this chapter: basically everything else! For some reason that panel of Taiki outside Aqua's place in his car absolutely fucking killed me, if nobody makes an edit of him saying GET IN LOSER WE'RE GOING SHOPPING i'm gonna have to do it myself. frill's lil sippy drink too. god bless.

Taiki and Frill are honestly kind of he MVPs of this chapter. Their banter is fun and Frill is, as usual, an unparalleled delight. Her inviting Memcho along and casually admitting it's because Mem is her oshi……. Frill is the most powerful Oshi no Ko character because she can effortlessly flirt with girls AND boys. Bisexual women truly are stronger than God.

himekawa crashing his car is like the funniest thing that's ever happened in this manga imagine being the wettest funniest most pathetic little failboy in a manga where aqua hoshino is the lead character

mem continuing to be the last person to realize she's in the manga she's in was also really good. the psychological toll of being the only normal person in oshi no ko

The talk that the gang has when Mem finally starts putting two and two together is basically my other only gripe about this chapter, though I do really like it in a lot of other ways. Mem's expression when she finally puts together just how young Kamiki would have been when Himekawa was conceived and what that means for both Kamiki and Airi was more excellent expression work from Mengo -- tbh she has been killing it on the character work in general these last few chapters.

This does, however, imply something very interesting about the movie which is that Kamiki's victimization at the hands of Airi may not be part of it. If it was in the script, this would not be new information to Mem the same way Himekawa and Aqua's relationship is but she seems genuinely sincerely aghast when she puts it together. This (AMONG OTHER THINGS) raises some really interesting questions as to exactly how Kamiki (or 'Boy A', as it seems) is being incorporated into the movie's story and how his relationship with Ai is going to be portrayed.

From here, this potentially recontexualizes Himekawa's lack of reaction to the script. He didn't learn this information through those means and in fact seems to have taken the role specifically because he already knew and because he feels some sense of responsibility or even just a desire to take on and purify the weight of the sins his parents committed. This does resolve my issue with how quickly Himekawa seems to adjust to this new information, because it turns out to not be new info… but it does end up just sort of coming back around to my original issue of Himekawa not being given the time or focus to process this.

Honestly… now that I think about it, it's kind of a lot worse?! Given what he shared of their (presumed) family history with Aqua in chapter 68, it's pretty clear he had no idea what Airi had actually done. Aqua himself only finds out the truth in chapter 98 so we can presume he shared this info with Himekawa at some point… just, you know, entirely offscreen with no indication this had happened or that they were still in regular contact and, once again, with no time or focus spent on Himekawa finding out and coming to terms with the idea of his mother being a child rapist. We've had almost 40 entire chapters since that point… are you really gonna tell me we had no time for that??

It's frustrating for a lot of reasons but mostly because it makes this conversation fall a little flatter than I think it COULD have if we had more time following Himekawa as he processed his feelings about it. Just one of those things I wish OnK would take more time to breathe with.

rip himecarwa we'll never forget you

ANYWAY. LET'S TALK ABOUT THE REAL STAR OF THIS CHAPTER. BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK

i'm only mostly kidding here the explosion of kamiki thirstposting in the wake of this chapter was so funny we are all hoshino ai

Anyway, all joking aside, this was a really interesting conversation in terms of the implications it has for Kamiki's involvement in the movie. Off the bat, it addresses the issue that's been kind of the elephant in the room which is that you can't just… make movies about real people without their permission! This chapter explicitly clarifies that everyone involved in the movie gave their permission for it to happen (which explains some of the in-universe fictionalized elements; without permission to do certain things, the story has to be changed to accommodate it) but that the movie equivalent of Kamiki doesn't even have a name. Given that this is a movie intended to 'kill' Kamiki as revenge, it raises some shrimptresting question as to wtf the final product will even be

This also confirms Kamiki to be at least a step or two ahead of Aqua here; some folks were speculating that he had Nino as his spy on the production but given Kaburagi's presence here - and the fact that he most certainly seems to know more about Kamiki than he's letting on - it looks to me like my man already has people at the top feeding him information. Not only that but he's sponsoring the very movie supposedly set to destroy him? Very shrimptresting… I don't know that we'll find out what Kamiki's up to anytime soon but hearing more about his involvement was exciting anyway.

also just one final shout out for that final page of Kamiki. It feels like Mengo changed his design a bit so he's not so much of a flat out Aqua Clone and I do like said changes. my man hasn't slept a DAY since ai died.

[shiro-s2e2-erukinzu]

Anime only watchers and people who aren't caught up with the Manga, BEWARE... Cuz I'm about to discuss Spy X Family Mission 87... You have been warned...! 👌

[SPOILERS AHEAD FROM THIS POINT ON]

Man, it's been awhile... BUT WE'RE FINALLY BACK BABY!! 😆

And as I suspected, today's chapter turned out to be a pretty chill one...!! 😄 So let's talk about it, shall we? 😁

First off...:

WHAT KIND OF EXCUSE IS THAT FIONA (AND OR WISE!?!?) 😂 If I heard that someone fell from the fourth floor to the first floor, I WOULD'VE ASSUMED THAT THEY DIED!! 😵

(Also, Mr. Gorey from Mission 67 shows up, nice[?] to him again...! I guess... 😌)

Anyway, Mr. Gorey is there to drop off the medical files of the VIP patients, but then the "nurse" comes in to tell him to leave Fiona to rest, and I just as I suspected, the "nurse" was actually Handler!! 😆

It always nice to see Handler / Sylvia and it's also nice see how much she cares for her agents...!! 💗😊💗

We also get some confirmation that Fiona's training in woods might've actually saved her from being in even worse shape than she already is...!! 😆

I LOVE THIS CALLBACK!! 😆

After that, this happens...:

HAHAHAHAHA!! 🤣😂

This just confirms for me that Handler is the goat and can read her agents like a book!! 😖

After seeing what Fiona was up to, we cut back to the Forgers and...:

OH MY GOSH...!! THE PROGRESS!!! 💗😍💗

We're finally getting confirmation that Yor's cooking is GETTING BETTER...!! 🥹

I've been hoping since Mission 24 that we'd progressively hear about how Yor's cooking was getting better and better...!! But, that didn't really happen until JUST NOW...

...IN MISSION 87...!! 😤

Oh Endo, what am I gonna do with you...? 😌

Moving on, after breakfast Loid heads to his room to rest while Anya and Yor spend some time together...!! 💗🥹💗 Yor asks Anya if she had fun at the zoo, which of course she did, and shows her mama what she got at the zoo...!! And just like in Short Mission 3, Bond gets jealous...!! 😁

But instead of ripping up her new plush pal like he did with Agent Penguinman, he ruffles his fur to look like a lion to get Anya's attention!! 🤭

After seeing Bond look like a lion, Anya asks Bond to try to mimic other animals to varying degrees (Elephant Bond was not a success, while Giraffe Bond was... 🤭😂🤣 You get idea...!! 😁)

After that, Yor fixes Bond's hair brushing him and seeing how happy he looks, Anya wants to get her hair brushed as well...!! 💗

This just warms my heart to the highest degree...!! 💗🥹💗 (I am loving all this BONDing time between the three of them...!! 💗😭💗)

Then... The man, the myth, the legend; FRANKY RETURNS!! 😆

And Anya tries to have him get his hair did, but Yor declines because she thinks no one will recognize him...!! 🤣

Poor Franky...!! 😌

Finally, Loid hears the commotion and comes out of his room, only for him to immediately go back into his room...!! 🤣

And that was Mission 87, a fun return after a four week wait that honestly felt like forever!! Seriously, I don't know why, but the wait for this chapter really felt like we waited TWO WHOLE MONTHS instead of just one...!! 😵

Besides my horrible sense of time, this chapter was an absolute delight...!! 😊 From Sylvia and Fiona's interaction to Yor and Anya's mother daughter time (with Bond), I enjoyed it a ton...!! 💗😁💗

I'm excited to see what's next for our favorite manga / anime family, the Forgers and what Endo is gonna put them through!! 😁

But before I go, I'd like to do something that haven't really done before, recommend a series I've recently became a fan of...!! 😄 The series that I'm recommending is called Undead Unluck...!! I started reading it two Thursdays ago, and...

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE IT...!! 💗😍💗

It's about an undead guy who meets an unlucky girl that causes bad things to happen whenever someone touches her... The undead guy (Andy) wants the the unlucky girl (Fuuko) to give him THE GREATEST DEATH EVER, and then their journey begins...!!

I don't know if it'll be everyone's cup of tea (especially from just that short synopsis that I just gave 😅), but I think that if y'all just give it a shot and stick with it for a bit, you'll (hopefully) be enthralled by the amazing cast of characters, their development and the crazy world that they live in...!! 😁 (Or you could also just watch the anime for it that's coming out in October, but I still suggest reading as well...!! 😊👍)

Sorry to disrupt my usual flow of my reviews to promote another manga, but I honestly haven't had another manga that has grabbed my attention this much in recent years since Spy X Family and Chainsaw Man, and I just want more people to give a chance after I myself ignored it for years...!!

Anyway, that's all I'll gotta say because now I gotta go read Chapter 173 of Undead Unluck since I finally caught up to the series last night...!! 😁 So until the next mission, take care, be safe out there and be kind to one another...!! Later!! 👋😁

[uriekukistan]

ur one of the only ppl i follow that i know likes tokyo ghoul, and i just started reading it for the first time! (friends tried 2 get me into it when i was younger via the anime but i did Not Wanna so this is actually my first real read of it) i just started tg:re, so i have been Dying to talk abt it with somebody.. if u dont mind, who are ur faves? :3

omg im glad you did not watch the anime actually. the manga is infinitely better 🙏 okay this is not the place for me to rant against the anime let me move on before i get carried away

my number one fav and ofc the namesake of my url is urie <3 idk how far into :re you've gotten but i think he's like. the first to get introduced if im remembering correctly? but you might not get the vision Yet depending on how far you've read, but i just love an angry lil guy w daddy issues who cant express his emotions properly <3 no personal reasons for that at all.............his growth ends up being really nice too you'll see you'll see

another brand of character i like is the guy who can't stand coming in second in anything but always does, and has a one sided beef with the person who beats them every single time, so i also love takizawa. i don't wanna say too much abt him bc i don't wanna spoil the fun for you but he ends up having a really cool arc too

im realizing as i type this out most of my favs are either from :re alone, or get the majority of their development in :re im really trying to hold my tongue so bad rn,,,,,,,

idk if you've met saiko yet? she spends the entire first volume of :re asleep lmaoooo but she's great. i love how she's a character that stands for kindness in a world full of hate and different groups trying to kill each other all the time

recently i've come to appreciate eto more as well, i dont think i liked her much at first, but one of my tg mutuals is a big eto fan and i think that's helped me appreciate her more. also bc said mutual rbs all the posts i rb thinking "oh this post is so me" and adds the eto tag......okay maybe i am like her. also again with the daddy issues characters good lord pls pay that no mind,,,,,,,

cutting myself off after this one but i love both of the kirishima siblings :3 touka is so cool, and i love how her rough exterior hides how gentle and emotional she really is. i love characters like that. and ayato, he's so snarky and fun, but again, his roughness hides how much he cares. i don't think this qualifies as a spoiler (i mean it gets confirmed in :re, but i feel like it was implied in the first half of the series), but after touka kills those doves in retaliation for killing hinami's mom, ayato starts killing doves too, because he also has a rabbit mask, to detract attention from his sister.....so it ties that first incident to him rather than her :')

UGHIDGF i love tokyo ghoul so much, but i barely talk abt it anymore sorry to my tg mutuals :') pls come ask abt it anytime im happy to discuss !! glad you're liking it so far tho ! do u have any favs yet? i'd love to hear more of your thoughts :3

[everythingismadeofchaos]

Hey so I have to ask this question. I am an old, and I've been trying anime sporadically for literal decades (since I saw Twilight of the Cockroaches in the theater), but I couldn't find much I liked and didn't really start getting into it until I saw One Punch Man season 1 after it first came out and before season 2 and it made me laugh and just have a wonderful time. At that point I realized there probably was a lot of anime that was worth my time, and I started looking for it, and what I discovered was that anime is actually like most things: most of it is crap and has no interest for me, but some of it is really good and some of it is fantastic. So just recently I found Dungeon Meshi.

I love Dungeon Meshi. It's inspired me to actually try reading manga, which I've never been able to enjoy before. I sporadically tried comics over the years, but it still hasn't stuck even when it's material that I'm really interested in; I don't know why but it just doesn't work for me. Manga never has either, although I haven't really tried it much. But now I've tried reading Dungeon Meshi and I'm having kind of mixed results but I'm happy I'm trying it even though it's kind of diluted by the fact that I've already seen this story in the anime. I'm really looking forward to another manga by the same author that I ordered the other day at the suggestion of somebody on Tumblr, when I previously asked for advice. I have high hopes that I will enjoy that more than I enjoy the DM manga simply because I've never seen the stories before. Apparently there are seven short stories; that should be fun.

But my question is this. Is the inherent creepiness of anime what's really holding it back in the west? All of the sexualization of young girls, and even leaving aside young girls there's this phenomenon I'm going to call "the chainmail bikini effect" because it kind of parallels a phenomenon in Western fantasy, that all really screws up my enjoyment of the story. I can't bloody stand harem anime. I find it so, so aggravating. And the thing is, I'm really curious about this other genre with all these other ideas and settings and conventions and I really like all of that stuff. It's just the creepy pseudo-pedophilia and hypersexualization. I feel like most anime wants me to be a pedophile and that's creepy as fuck.

So how much other anime is there that isn't like this? One Punch Man really wasn't, although there were one or two characters I guess who were kind of parodies of the genre, which makes sense since the whole thing was a parody, but there's got to be more. I mean I loved Ascendance Of A Bookworm, because even though that was a young girl there was absolutely nothing sexualized about it. I loved the Saga of Tanya the Evil. It really stands out and is completely different from anything else that I'd ever seen in that genre, although it does remind me a lot of a book I read a couple of decades ago called The Blue Max, which they completely ruined in a movie starring George Peppard; the book is about this character sort of fighting against his own personal demons and losing, but the movie character is just a positive decent neato white hat hero guy and it ruins the whole concept. Tanya is like that book (not the movie obviously).

What else is out there in this department? What am I going to enjoy like Delicious in Dungeon because it doesn't carry these creepy garbage ideas? Suggestions actively solicited. And thank you very much in advance for reading this wall of text.

[titanrpg]

how i learned ttrpg design, part 3

you can check out part 1 here and part 2 here

as always, this is about my personal experience learning ttrpg design, and i claim no particular expertise or authority on what constitutes "good" game design

3

so far, i've discussed the games i drew on for the start of my ttrpg education. now let's talk about how to improve (when you need to/if you want to). now, i'll say i don't think "improving" is a great way to think about it. i prefer to think about it as "how to be aware of the tools you need to accomplish your design goals"

for some people, the three games i've discussed are plenty for them to get started. these people tend to like experimenting for themselves and then doing more research when they need help. (i fall in this category.) other people may want to read more before starting in earnest. this is also a smart way to go. (obviously you can go overboard with researching so much that you never actually start, but we are far from that place here.) either way, at some point you'll need more information than you currently have.

how do you find the wisdom you seek? the best answer is simply asking for help from people you look up to/trust. but i've never been good at asking for help, so uhhh this post exists

quick story time. i recently visited maryland to go to my partner's sibling's wedding. in a local comic shop's manga section, i saw this book. i was like, oh fun, it's a manga about kids playing a goblin slayer ttrpg.

but then, when i opened the book...

mechanics!!

it's a TTRPG!! i don't know anything about goblin slayer, but now i'm combing through this book for cool tech. of note so far: at the end of every round of combat, each player has to make an attrition check. fail that, and your fatigue score goes up. at 4 fatigue, you fall unconscious. at 5, you die. punishes long fights and incentivizes players to find alternate solutions. it uses only d6s. and there are sections of fiction illustrated with beautiful manga art. these choices feel old school to me, but it came out in 2019. now i'm really excited. i'll get to see what japanese osr is like!

to me, this pursuit of ttrpg tech feels like discovering an ancient library and searching through old tomes for the power i seek. and there's an online version of this that anyone can dig through for ttrpg tech: osr blogs

old school renaissance/revival, or "osr," as far as i understand it, is a ttrpg genre/design paradigm, typically along the lines of old school d&d. i'm not the best person to explain this, but the way i think about this school of design is it tends to prioritize player skill over character skill. it's the difference between solving a puzzle and rolling to solve a puzzle. because of this, they often make really cool mechanics for challenging players that don't just amount to "roll a 20, do the thing." they also tend to share their thoughts on traditional blogs.

here's an amazing, meticulously catalogued library of keystone OSR posts

by marcia b., @/traversefantasy on twitter, who has an OSR blog of her own using marxist and freudian frameworks for analysis

rise up comus

by josh mcCroo, who's working on a game called his majesty the worm. pretty sure i don't have to say anything else

permanent cranial damage

by ava islam, whose assertion that "Armour Class and Hit Points are the same thing" blew my mind when i was starting out

goblin's henchman

which is where I found the hex flower tech that i adapted for HEXFALL's main mechanic

and one non-OSR blog, that of jay dragon

yes i am a possum creek fangirl. this blog is bananas good. if you haven't read up on playground theory, oh boy you're in for a treat

final takeaway: you never know where you'll find new tools and ideas!

obviously credit people and don't use what's not yours. but have fun and share cool tech with others when you find it!

hope this was helpful <3

p.s. another place that apparently used to have a ton of ttrpg activity was google+. every so often i hear whispers of digital libraries filled with all sorts of salvaged g+ ttrpg treasures. never seen an invite link with my own eyes though. if you hear anything, let me know, will ya?

[mostlymilkwood]

We're halfway through 2024! I know this has been a big Yuri year for you. What are some of your favorites you've read this year?

I will make every year a Big Yuri Year going forward!! but you're right, I've been making my way through my backlog and checking out new stuff as it hits but here are a few!

Monthly in the Garden with My Landlord We are forgiving Kitano Miyako for the crime of being a landlord because the series she's in is very sweet and gay and I like it a lot!! I'm not actually one who's into low conflict manga but there's just enough bite every now and then in Monthly, be it through Miyako's past in the idol industry or Asako's past breakups, that I think it strikes a great balance. I was also thinking the other day about how the main trope of this is kind of… There Was Only One Bed House lol. Anyway, it also nice to have the story keep going after the build up of the main couple getting together, I'm going to miss it so much once it finishes in the coming months :((( Fav panel:

Sukeban and Transfer Student Stella art that's made to mimics an 80s manga style to reinforce the time period it's set in? Sooo Good!! I love comics as an art form!! I love seeing them doing shit like this that only comics can do!!! I wish this was licensed so badly!! Anyway it's got a fun setup of two high school losers being losers in very different directions, which is always fun. I hope I get to read more of it soon! Fav panel:

False Marigold If I had a nickel for every yuri manga I'd read where the dual protagonist was a blind girl called Lily, I'd have two nickels! This has a lot of interesting elements at play, you've got the time period being the 1910s (ish??), you've got Lily's blindness, her love for Hana's brother and the fact that she doesn't know he's dead, and finally you've got Hana's failed attempt to kill Lily and her now pretending to be said dead older brother for Lily. So Like, It's A Lot!! A great mix of bitter sweet feelings from a lot of characters, I can't wait to see how it all plays out in the end. Fav panel:

How Do We Relationship? Ha ha haaaaaah. God. I'm late to the game on this series, it's already 12 volumes in and I kept seeing people who don't normally talk about manga, or yuri, or yuri manga say it's a really good and devastating read, so I was curious! THEY WERE CORRECT ON ALL FRONTS. Hat's off to the author for the total rug pull after volume 4 where you learn this is not a "story about what happens after you start dating someone" but is actually "a story about what happens after you breakup with someone"!!! God!!! But honestly, I can't say I've read anything quite like How Do We Relationship, it's rough sometimes but super compelling, it captures the college adolescent really well! I'm almost nostalgic for all the drama of my college days haha. Fav Panel That Is Driving Me Insane:

OKAY BUT LIKE, WHY DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT YURIA IS JUST DRAWN AS AN ELF???? HER HAIR NORMALLY COVERS HER EARS SO YOU DON'T SEE THEM TILL THEIR FIRST TIME NAKED TOGETHER AND IM JUST MEANT TO NOT THINK ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHE'S AN ELF?? WITH POINTY EARS AND TEETH??? IT'S NEVER MENTIONED BY ANYONE!! THIS ISN'T A FANTASY SERIES WHY DOES SHE LOOK LIKE THAT???

Shoutouts: I Want to Make Black-Knight Fall In Love With Me! and The Helpless Saint and the Powerless Princess, they're recently started in Yuri Hime and I've been enjoying the first couple of chapters that are out so far, looking forward to seeing where they go this year!