#IGNORE MY INCONSISTENT ART STYLE SHIT IS HARD MAN

[beangusu]

no one asked but *drops a really gay sailor moon twitter art dump* ok see u guys later!

[thattimdrakeguy]

I feel like DC’s obsession with trying to make Damian look cute with massive head and scrawny bodies end up just making him look more like a fucking goblin cause he’s surrounded by people that don’t share the art style.

He just doesn’t look like a human anymore some of the time, let alone look like himself.

Like I already feel like always trying to make him small and giving him short jokes is redundant with it already being Tim things--especially since Damian was originally very TALL for his age (according to bios Damian was only an INCH shorter than TIM when they first met), which makes it just out of character and inaccurate when they pretend he’s short.

But I keep seeing this Damian page (I’m not showing it cause I didn’t wanna download it, everyone looks real crappy on it) cause “LOOK IT’S TIMMY IN IT”, but Damian just looks freaking monstrous. It doesn’t work at all.

People will eat it up, but I just have a hard time finding it cute at all, because it’s just forcing it so much to the point it’s just superficial and beyond.

(Ignore the dead bat, I’m not questioning his morality and think it’s even stupid he did that cause he was already past murder at this point.)

Like I prefer this--because, well, it’s consistent with what Damian’s supposed to look like. Like he looks unique, and it’s him, and his proportions aren’t off for an athletic then 10-year-old in a comic book aesthetic world.

But the same artist making Damian look like this--

or like this--

--is trying so hard to make Damian something he’s not that it just ruins the whole mood and vibe of the character.

(And those are the better looking examples of this, cause stupid bad changes or not it’s a good artist, others though...they sometime make him hideous...Also ignore the gun, I just already had this page saved.)

Does that even look like the same character beyond costume? It’s like when they draw Tim looking like a 40-year-old man...it’s not what he looks like: So why draw him like that? Cuteness isn’t a sign of quality, so I view it as just crummy work.

A lot of people love it--but if I thought what others did my opinions on pretty much everything would not be what they are. “Oh no, I think the obsession of focusing on Tim’s depression period to the point of making him a victim exaggerated beyond the comics themselves is terrible. What a crime.” “Tim’s characterization changing can only use being traumatized for so long, and in only so many ways before it’s just freaking forced” “Ignoring Jason’s problems with the Bat-Family to make them close ruins the chance for a better story and actual character development--how controversial.” “Red Robin ruined Tim in the long run.” “Making Dick just a chatty, sexy, fan service machine lessened his character really badly. Considering he was quite a mature young man, with his own problems and talents that he took to heart. A lot or at least some may think it, but it’s not often said.” “I think Geoff Johns’s Teen Titans ruined pretty much every one of the Core Four.”

Like look--I’m not gonna change the standards of how I look at every character. I’m not gonna make exceptions or anything. So forcing this whole thing with Damian just reaaally ruins him for me, because it’s all in an attempt to make him different. But I don’t want him to be different.

If they make a steep change, that is notably out of character with previous writing or personality things, it’s just out of character.

They keep making Damian out of character.

I know people don’t care cause, like, look at the fandom, there’s so much stuff where Damian is a literal baby or headcanons that go “Okay, hear me out: What if Damian did something he wouldn’t do? WOULDN’T THAT BE SO CUTE?!” or even just stuff that shows some people never met a kid Damian’s age.

There’s a lot of stuff about Damian as far as my thoughts go that’s changed since I read the original Batman and Robin series again--but also because of that I think all the random changes just stink. Cause he was a more interesting character as they just let him develop more naturally, and didn’t do the whole “HAHA HE’S A BRAT.” (like reread the original Batman and Robin, you’ll be confused why even other writers of the time wrote him as they did. It’s inconsistent af.)

Changing basic stuff about Damian, and changing the way his relationships with others work, and leading into the patterns of “HE’S BETTER” “OH NO HE’S BAD AGAIN” “HEY HE’S BETTER”, as well as the fandom ignoring the fact he still kept doing bad shit even in the series they like just because it panders to them. Like I think it all just sucks.

Plus some people’s idea of “character development”, is just plain Damian acting like a whole different character. He was raised in a cult, he has a very specific personality, he lives in a house with Batman. There’s a difference from him learning morals, and getting more used to non-cult stuff--and him just having a total different personality, or having him act immature in ways he just wouldn’t.

Kid helped a company with their finances, and they just treated it as just fine like he was an adult, like how he prefers to be treated, which I found endearing because it showed that it’s okay he’s different, and he’s shown respect. But having him do stuff he wouldn’t do, cause logically there’s no reason for him to suddenly change in such ways--that’s not character development, it’s just out of character.

But original Damian? Like what he was sort of meant to be originally by his creator. As much as I think the quality of the writing sucks. Just the idea from it, is something I like.

If it isn’t them, no matter the character, I don’t like it. I think it’s bad stuff.

[swimintothesound]

The First Annual Diamond Platters: Swim Into The Sound’s Ancillary End of the Year Awards

Whether you like it or not, it’s awards season. The time of the year when every music publication sits down to rank, order, and pass judgment on the last 365 days of art. As every outlet races to beat each other to those illustrious “end of the year list clicks,” I am only one man, and I just can’t compete. While Swim Into The Sound does still have an official “Best Albums of 2017” list in the works, this countdown is going to be a little different.

For the first time ever, I’d like to welcome you to Swim Into The Sound’s Diamond Platter Awards: an extravagant, ornate, and handsome way to recognize the past year of music. Grandiose, gaudy, and opulent, The Diamond Platters are the most exorbitant awards on the entirety of the internet, and the absolute highest honor of online music blogging awards.

Aside from poking fun at the seriousness of list season, these awards do have a purpose: to talk about music that may not be discussed otherwise. It’s always fun to see how everyone ranks albums each year (even if they start rolling in around November) but more often than not, most website’s “best of the year” list ends up coming off as rote rambling. A half-hearted and inconsistent ranking that merely regurgitates a months-old review with a few outlandish placements to get people talking. It’s the music blog equivalent of roll call, and it’s getting stale.

So with that said, The Diamond Platters don’t go to the “best” music of the year, but things that are worth celebrating for some other reason. Albums that triumphed in their category, artists that surprised their audience, or moments that were worth remembering. Hopefully funnier, punchier, and a little more out of the box than your average end of the year listicle, here’s my off-the-cuff (but official) ranking of several hyper-specific categories of my own creation. Enjoy.

Best Acoustic Reimagining

Winner: The Wonder Years - Burst & Decay

After a two year absence and an album that I wasn’t too hot on, the pop-punk gods return with an acoustic EP that reworks some of their best songs into a tender acoustic offering. Taking cues from lead singer Daniel Campbell’s solo outing, Burst & Decay marks the beginning of a new day for the band. The artistic fulfillment of the direction that they’ve been heading in for years now, all packaged up in a lush EP that allows the songwriting to shine as the crown jewel that it always has been. It’s a fantastic “fall album,” and the perfect soundtrack to warm lattes, wool scarves, and crunchy leaves. The album’s final track will leave you ruminating, thoughtful, and pensive, but that’s precisely what the band was going for and always has been.

Runner-up: Jeff Tweedy - Together At Last

The Wilco frontman treats long-time fans to a career-spanning album that culls the best songs from 30-years of music and reworks them beautifully.

Biggest Surprise of the Year

Winner: The Dirty Projectors - The Dirty Projectors

As is a recurring theme with this blog, The Dirty Projectors were a group that I’d never heard of until very recently. When the band’s futuristic self-titled LP dropped at the beginning of the year, I had no context. No knowledge of the band’s dissolution, bad blood, or previous relationships. I went into the record blind, only having the internet’s reaction to go on. Hailing the album as “3017 shit” I hit play on the album not knowing what to expect and emerged blown away. It indeed sounded like future music with crazy autotune, glitchy instrumentals, and bizarre vocal deliveries as far as the eye could see. As I learned more about the group and the backstory I grew to dislike the man behind the music, but that didn’t keep me from loving the unconventional left-field arrangements on this record any less. The Dirty Projectors is unlike anything else I’ve heard in this year or any other.

Runner-up: Ugly God - The Booty Tape

When XXL unveiled their class of 2017 freshmen, I was underwhelmed to say the least. Aside from elevating genuinely deplorable human beings, I hadn’t heard of most of the artists that made the list. Of the ten up-and-coming rappers that the magazine showcased, I came out liking Ugly God the most. His late-summer debut The Booty Tape is a 23-minute banger-filled escapade that combines a conceptual sense of humor with modern trap stylings. It’s what Das Racist would have made if they were around to witness the rise of Lil Yachty. Nothing on the tape overstays its welcome, the production in on-point, and Ugly God is surprisingly proficient throughout. It’s a joy to listen to, and that’s not something I thought I’d ever say about a dude who “only wants to sing about dumb stuff.”

Most Stank Face-Worthy Beat

Winner: Flume “Enough (feat. Pusha T)”

After last year’s immaculately-produced Skin LP, the Australian musician continued his flower imagery in 2017 with two companion EPs alongside various singles and numerous remixes. The high point of this era came at the very beginning of Skin’s second companion EP on the Pusha T-assisted “Enough.” Featuring abrasive blown-out instrumentation, “Enough” is a jaw-clenching and muscle-inflating track that will flood your speakers and blow out your eardrums. Perhaps the ultimate gym song, “Enough” is one of the nastiest beats I’ve ever heard in my life, and Pusha T is used masterfully. This track is a force to be reckoned with.

Runner-up: Kendrick Lamar “DNA.”

After two minutes of scene setting on the album-opening “BLOOD.,” an ignorant Fox News clip gives way to an aggressive Kendrick who begins “DNA.” by shouting “I got, I got, I got, I got / Loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA.” The song sees Lamar coming out of the gates swinging, but midway through the song, just as you think it’s winding down, the beat cuts out and switches. With only one minute of the track left, a countdown begins, and Kendrick starts spazzing out over an allegedly-improvised beat, created after the fact to cater to his flow. Placed over a sample of 1982 Rick James, the beat becomes swells to monstrous proportions, spiraling and booming, taking control of every muscle in your body and eclipsing every pure thought you’ve ever had. It’s one of the best moments in music this year and an absolute marvel to behold.

Best Album From Last Year That Took Until 2017 To Discover

Winner: Pinegrove - Cardinal

Listening to everything in one year is impossible. Sometimes albums and bands slip through the cracks, and in 2016 Pinegrove was one of those for me. The Run For Cover signees have seen an astronomical rise in 2017, becoming indie darlings within the space of a single calendar year. It took me many listens to discover what’s so unique about Pinegrove, but after I realized they weren’t just another Emo band, I began to fall in love with them in early 2017. With fantastically-composed songs like “Aphasia” and “New Friends” the group’s sophomore album is a fantastic jumping off point for a band that’s poised to continue to grow exponentially.

Runner-up: Camp Cope - Camp Cope

Much like Pinegrove, this Melbourne-based female trio also released one of the best emo records of last year. While it took a while to sink its hooks into me, this fall I hit a point where I couldn’t go one day without listening to Camp Cope’s self-titled record. If their second album’s single is anything to go off of, the group may already have one of 2018’s best albums on their hands.

Most Satiating B-Sides Collection

Winner: Angel Olsen - Phases

B-side releases are an interesting beast. Often created primarily to satiate the die-hard fans, it’s rare that an artist’s best work would be on a collection of things cut from a record, but here we are. While Angel Olsen’s My Woman was an easy choice for my Best Of list last year, 2017’s Phases represents a thoughtful punctuation to the end of this chapter. Featuring unreleased cuts from each of her albums, Phases is a perfect sample platter of Olsen’s broad and diverse sounds proving, once again, that she’s one of the most powerful women in indie.

Runner-up: Sufjan Stevens - The Greatest Gift

While Phases gets points for being comprised entirely of unheard material, Sufjan’s Greatest Gift should be commended for striking a near-perfect balance of B-sides, demos, and remixes. The “mixtape” collects outtakes from 2015’s landmark Carrie & Lowell, all of which bear the same brand of soul-destroying, death-ridden meditations and grievances. While Sufjan’s other 2017 album Carrie & Lowell Live represents a maximalist reimagining of the album, Greatest Gift represents the exact inverse: stark, subtle, and haunting renditions of the same tracks. Occasionally even more hard-hitting and impactful than the full album, The Greatest Gift is an incredible contrast to his 2015 record and the perfectly-placed bow atop this career-defining work.

Most Essential “Portland Anthem”

Winner: Drake “Portland”

As a native Oregonian, this year’s music has been a noticeable boon to our city. From local boys done good to songs specifically about our town, the Rose City has been blessed throughout 2017. God knows as Seattle’s Napoleon-complexed younger brother, we’ll take all the confidence we can get. 2017 may have been the year of flutes, but Drake’s “Portland” takes that woodwind-based phenomenon one step further into absurdity by heavily-utilizing the recorder. Assisted by Travis Scott and Quavo, “Portland” is an outlandish and bouncy anthem to life in PDX. While the album cut is fun, seeing the two perform the song live in May was a meta and goosebump-inducing highlight of my year in live music.

Runner-up: Sufjan Stevens “The Hidden River of My Life”

While almost all of Carrie & Lowell’s tracks depict life in Oregon, “The Hidden River of My Life” is a heartfelt (and surprisingly-catchy) song of in-jokes, references, and observations that can only come from having lived life our rainy state.

Reddit Commenter Who Should Be Reviewing Music

Winner: wonderbitch26 on Melodrama

When Lorde’s Melodrama dropped in June popheads across the world rejoiced. As often happens, that joy frequently translates into gay men acting so unbelievably extra that it begins to feel like an infinitely-renewable source of energy that we should be harnessing. In Melodrama’s album release thread on the /r/popheads subreddit, user wonderbitch26 posted an in-depth comment depicting an explicit and erotic tale of sexual dancing and BDSM-esque spanking that also managed to accurately portray what listening to the album is like. It’s a journey worth taking.

Runner-up: plzaskmeaboutloom on More Life

Drake isn’t exactly the internet’s favorite artist. While 2015’s If You’re Reading This represented a career-defining high note, his subsequent releases have been middling at best. In fact, in May I wrote 8,000 words over a series of four posts in which I simply tried to reconcile my love for Drake despite his recent downward trajectory. While I perceived 2017’s More Life as a slight bounce back, not everyone agreed with me, least of all /r/indieheads user plzaskmeaboutloom whose Simon Cowell-esque takedown of the album is meaner (and funnier) than anything I could have ever come up with.

Most Gallery-Ready Cover Art

Winner: Spoon - Hot Thoughts

It’s not often that a band’s ninth record is their best. While Spoon’s Hot Thoughts finds the group reaching a refreshing creative peak, one of the most memorable aspects of the album is actually its gorgeous cover. Created by Portland’s own Christine Messersmith, Hot Thoughts’ album art is a striking depiction of a human skull. Painted in vivid watercolor, you can spot the pattern of the canvas running subtly throughout the background providing the perfect texture and consistency to the entire piece.

Runner-up: Turnover - Good Nature

To be quite honest, I was disappointed with Turnover’s Peripheral Vision follow-up this year. While their 2015 album represented a jaw-dropping emo reinvention, 2017’s Good Nature seems to be content with simply extending those ideas into another release. While I’m not yet sold on the album’s musical contents, one thing is for sure: Good Nature’s cover is absolutely stunning. Featuring a child-like array of jungle animals underneath a bright pink sky, it’s a memorable and eye-catching display that also manages to be an excellent encapsulation of the music that lies behind it.

You Are America

Winner: Cardi B

Out of all the glo ups of 2017, none have been more astronomical than Cardi B. While her monumental hit “Bodak Yellow” tells her story quite well, she has gone from stripper to dethroning Taylor Swift and marrying a Migo all within the space of a year. When she’s not breaking records, her time goes towards being one of the most magnanimous and personable Instagram purveyors on the planet. From iconic raps to inspirational social media videos, Cardi B is a force of nature. In one year she gave us a chart-shattering anthem of empowerment, togetherness, and upward mobility. She’s the embodiment of the American Dream. An endearing story of success. The bitch everyone wants to be. Her story is what this country was founded on.

Runner-up: Perfume Genius

This year has been hard for most of us, but for Mike Hadreas things have been near impossible. His 2017 record No Shape is the tale of seeking out happiness and holding onto it for dear life. About finding joy and warmth in the face of homophobia, discrimination, hatred, and a world that seems stacked against you. As a society, America should consider ourselves lucky to have humans like Hadreas amongst us. If even a fraction of our future population is comprised of people like him, then we’ll be living in a utopia one day.

Most Impeccable Samples

Winner: Lil Aaron - Soundcloud Singles

While I gushed about Lil Aaron’s music in a post earlier this year, his combination of trap lyrics over 2000’s-era emo samples remains one of the most intoxicating things I’ve heard all year. From “My Own Worst Enemy” to “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” Aaron’s Soundcloud is a treasure trove of millennial nostalgia. Each song follows a familiar pattern, first luring the listener in with a sense of familiarity, then flipping expectations end over end as he hits you with clever wordplay, catchy melodies, and gut-busting bars. It’s a combination that I never would have thought of in a million years, much less imagined working as well as it does here, but that just goes to show the brilliance of Lil Aaron’s mind.

Runner-up: Jay Z - 4:44

Helmed entirely by No I.D., Jay-Z’s 4:44 represents a return to his earlier sound, once again embracing booming, chopped up soul samples. It’s a match made in heaven, and the samples pair with his voice so well that you begin to wonder why he ever got away from them in the first place. Thanks to this sense of familiarity, the entire album feels both comfortably familiar and brand new at the same time. 4:44 manages to capitalize on Jay’s past success while also standing on its own merits, and that’s all thanks to the record’s strong sample-based foundation.

Worryingly Prolific Output

Winner: Brockhampton

When I say “prolific output,” the distinction here is output that also maintains a high quality. So sorry King Gizz fans, 5 albums in one year is in an achievement, but we both know they’re not all winners. Texas-born, Cali-based BROCKHAMPTON is a group of 20-something 20-somethings who label themselves as a boyband. This year alone they’ve released three albums, one documentary, a TV Show, and embarked on a nationwide tour. They are young creatives incarnate, and I hope they never stop.

Runner-up: Sufjan Stevens

While not everything he released is from 2017, Sufjan Stevens has given fans more than enough new music this year to tide us over until his next record. From live reimaginings, b-sides, soundtracks, and space-themed originals, Sufjan has given us 3.5 albums of new material this year alone, and all of it’s great. And in the time that it took me to write and edit this he tossed out a Tonya Harding-themed loosie. The hits keep coming, and Sufjan is a true blessing.

Most Iconic Social Feed

Winner: Lorde’s Instagram

One of the few people I have notifications turned on for, Lorde’s Instagram has proven to be a never-ending waterfall of iconic tour pics, beautiful faces, and incredible fashion. In fact, my “saved” section might as well be renamed “Just Lorde” at this point because that’s 95% of all I ever save. She can do no wrong.

Runner-up: There is no runner-up

Best Incongruous Use of Hard Rock

Winner: Feist “A Man Is Not His Song”

I can’t believe I’d so severely misjudged Feist as a pop act. Like most of the world, I was first introduced to her in 2007 with the unparalleled (and unexpected) success of “1234,” and until this year I’d assumed that one breakout single was indicative of the Canadian songstress’ discography, but in reality, I could not have been more wrong. Feist’s Pleasure is an album that rides waves of aggression. Often focusing only on a guitar and Leslie Feist’s voice, it’s one of the rawest and most personal albums I’ve heard all year. A shock comes at the end of “A Man is Not His Song” where the chorus bleeds into a quick 22-second hit of Mastodon’s “High Road.” It sticks out like a sore thumb, yet somehow fits into the song and album so perfectly. This was only one of many revelations that I had while listening to the album, and a moment that truly needs to be heard to be believed.

Runner-up: Brand New “No Control”

While the whole of Brand New’s Science Fiction is pretty hard-rockin', the Emo trailblazers tend to shift between two styles on the record: sad, slow tracks and aggressive kickass rock. Late-album cut “No Control” lies somewhat between the two, featuring a whiny crooning chorus alongside distorted guitars. Around two and a half minutes in, the song fades out and slowly sputters out into quietness. There’s a brief pause of silence, and then a booming bass, fuzzed-out guitar, and aggressive set of drums are slowly turned up in the mix. Gradually gaining volume as they play, the instruments become louder and louder until the track ends in earnest. While it only hangs on for a minute before fading into the next song, the riff still remains a standout groovy moment on the band’s career-defining final record.

Most Charming Human Being

Winner: Claire Cottrill of Clairo

Claire Cottrill has been making lo-fi bedroom pop songs for years now under the name Clairo, but it wasn’t until this fall that her song “Pretty Girl” blew up. Having accumulated nearly 5 million views at the time of writing, the music video is simple, delightful, and impactful. Created on a day when “her hair was greasy, her skin was bad, and she didn't want to leave the bed” the video sees Clairo alone in her room singing and dancing along to the simplistic pop track. It’s utterly pleasant and completely disarming, a refreshing breath of air from the world around you. Still a student in college, I can’t wait to see what kind of art Clairo is able to unleash once she’s able to entirely devote herself to creative pursuits.

Runner-up: Alex Luciano of Diet Cig

The high-kicking, dog-loving, outspoken frontwoman to New York-based Diet Cig is a pom-pom-clad ball of energy and fury. With one of the most charismatic social feeds on the internet, Luciano is a treasure of a human being. Someone who’s joy and passion bleeds over onto anyone and everyone that she comes in contact with. A badass of the pop-punk scene.

Best Music Video

Winner: Charli XCX “Boys”

When Charli XCX dropped her video for “Boys” over the summer, the pop culture world collectively went mad. From trying to spot all the celebrity cameos to drooling over everyone displayed in the song, it became an internet-wide obsession. The song itself is a catchy earworm of a pop track, but the video is a sugary pink and instantly-recognizable classic that managed to get the internet talking, which is a feat in and of itself.

Runner-up: Jay-Z - “The Story of OJ”

On the polar opposite end of “Boys,” we have “The Story of OJ” which is a dark black and white video about race relations in America. While all of Jay-Z’s 4:44 is packed with urgent addresses like the one found here, “The Story of OJ” remains the best encapsulation of the album’s wide-ranging topics accompanied by pitch-perfect emulation of Fleischer Studios’ animation.

Best Collaboration

Winner: Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice

Maybe 2017 is bringing us together after all. From Atlanta trap stars to long-lost fables, and indie darlings, this year has been host to countless fantastic collaborations. Among dozens of great crossover albums, Lotta Sea Lice from Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile remains the one that sticks in my mind most prominently. Featuring breezy Sunday morning songs, this meeting of indie minds a genuinely pleasant listen that will take your mind off even the harshest realities of the day’s news. Sea Lice offers an escape into a world untouched by misery where continental breakfasts are always available, and it’s easier than ever to let everything go.

Runner-up: 21 Savage, Offset, & Metro Boomin - Without Warning

Filed under “things I didn’t expect to be this great,” Without Warning is a joint effort between three of the biggest names in hip-hop this year. Hot off a string of successful albums, this collaborative release finds the two rappers trading verses over some of Metro Boomin’s darkest beats of the year. Sprinkled with a handful of solo tracks and a couple of guest features, there’s just enough variation here to make for an incredibly compelling listen.

Most Fabulous Christmas Bop

Winner: Sia “Santa’s Coming For Us”

The chandelier-swinging popstress returned in 2017 bearing gifts in the form of Everyday Is Christmas, a collection of 10 original holiday songs. Kicking things off, the album’s lead single “Santa’s Coming For Us” is a jubilant and dancy track with just enough of a dark undercurrent to be enjoyed by all. If this song isn’t a Christmas classic next year, I will be severely disappointed in us as a civilization.

Runner-up: Phoebe Bridgers “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

Introduced on social media with the caption “this emo cover brought to you by the atheist who loves Christmas,” this post-album loosie sees Bridgers reworking one of the best holiday songs in her trademarked remorseful delivery. Accompanied by a lone guitar and bare instrumentation, this is the one Christmas song that’s guaranteed to make you cry at least one or two tears into your hot chocolate.

Best Use of an Englishman Doing Spoken Word Narration

Winner: King Krule “Bermondsey Bosom (Right)”

Framed as the later-album counterpart to “Bermondsey Bosom (Left),” “Bermondsey Bosom (Right)” is a jazzy and fluid track that uses Archy Ivan Marshall’s father to weave a brief but illustrative tale of darkness. Only one minute long, the song is a fantastic and moody diversion in an album that’s brimming over the top with unique ideas.

Runner-up: Feist - “Century”

As much as I like Feist’s Pleasure and her use of Pulps’ Jarvis Cocker on “Century,” this entry gets dinged solely for its mathematical inaccuracies. Next time you get this specific about the length of your dark night of the soul, make sure you fact check beforehand.

Most Anticipated Release of 2018

Finally, let’s end by looking forward at two records that I can’t wait to hear in 2018.

Winner: Snail Mail - Unknown Debut

From Tiny Desk performances to Matador co-signs, it’s been a banner year for Lindsey Jordan. Lovingly documented in my guide to female-fronted music in 2017, I first discovered Snail Mail back in May as they opened for Girlpool in concert. For the last song of their set, the group’s drummer and bassist left the stage, leaving frontwoman Lindsey Jordan alone in the spotlight facing a rapt audience. With just a guitar and a mic she played “Anytime, ” and I was left with my jaw on the floor. It was an awe-inspiring performance, one of my favorites of the year, and a moment that I’ll always remember. To see the traction they’ve gained over the past several months has been nothing short of incredible. Watching Jordan grow has already been rewarding, and her success is incredibly well-deserved. Snail Mail’s 2018 debut LP should be something else.

Runner-up: Shortly - Unknown Debut

Fronted by Alexandria Maniak, Shortly is a reverb-dripping emo act that I’d never heard of until I saw her open for Aaron West live. While Shortly only has two songs currently released, she’s already signed to Triple Crown records with a debut record scheduled for next spring. To say I was blown away by her live performance would be an understatement. Perhaps one of my favorite sets of the entire year, she took the whole room by surprise and had everyone listening with a hush by the time her first song was over. Based on what I saw, she’s currently on track to be the world’s next Julien Baker with sadder music, slower tunes, and more colorful hair. I absolutely cannot wait to see what the future holds for this promising artist.

[themyskira]

The 18th Letter: A Love Story - Part 1

I’ve been meaning to talk about this one for a while and, re-reading it, it’s even more awful than I remember.  Practically its only saving grace was that it was cut down from the originally proposed 96-page hardcover graphic novel to a 66-page three-parter that languished in the anthology comic Legends of the DC Universe, where it went almost completely ignored by mainstream continuity.

Christopher Priest has written acclaimed cape comics for both Marvel and DC, including what’s often cited as the definitive Black Panther run. Unfortunately, I only know him through his work on Wonder Woman, which, I think it’s safe to say... isn’t his best.

Writing about his experiences as an occasional WW fill-in writer, Priest describes the frustrations of having to treat lightly with the character and not rock the boat. Wonder Woman is, of course, a major corporate property, and it seems at the time (in the mid-to-late nineties) DC was particularly anxious to protect that. Says Priest, “I was absolutely forbidden from making Diana interesting”. (I take some issue with that, but okay.)

So The 18th Letter arose out of a desire to do something with Wonder Woman that had never been done before. A story that was “edgy and controversial” and had something to say about the character. A story that was “relevant to the political and social climate at the turn of the century” -- and one that “could only happen to Wonder Woman”.

Which is how we ended up with this utterly execrable story about a man who uses mass slaughter to blackmail Wonder Woman into fucking him.

Priest got one thing right: you ain’t gonna see any writer trying to pull this shit on Superman.

Needless to say, there are some heavy trigger warnings for what follows. This story is rife with abusive and coercive behaviour, attempted date rape, victim blaming, slut shaming, normalising of abuse and general shitty treatment of women.

Prolog

We open on scenes of a city being pounded by missiles and civilians dying horrifically while Wondy struggles against the bombardment.  In the accompanying narration boxes, an unseen character pervs after Diana.

She was too late. Much too late.

(Here we pause dramatically on what is meant to be Diana straining with the effort of catching a downed helicopter before it crashes, but instead appears to be a porno tracing worthy of Greg Land.)

Her name was Diana. And I adored her. Which was why I sent for her— in the most compelling way I could think of.

The most compelling way he could think of was a missile that killed dozens of civilians. Because this is a love story.

Diana’s surrounded by human desperation and she’s struggling to save them all. The people cry out to her in broken English, and a bearded man confronts her angrily: “Help us!! I demand it, American hero—!!” Diana protests that she’s trying and the man responds by slapping her in the face and screaming that she’s a liar.

…it’s hard not to read this as a cynical, simplistic commentary on American foreign relations. “We do our best to help them and they spit in our face and accuse us imperialism! We just can’t win!! Like, I know you’re dying and stuff, but do you have to be so angry about it? Can’t you see you’re making Wonder Woman sad?”

Okay, maybe I’m reading too much into it. It’s possible Priest is just trying in a hamfisted way to establish that Diana wants to save everyone and it pains her that she can’t, setting up a clear reason for to seriously consider the gross “proposal” she’s about to receive.

Voiceover again:

She was the soul of an unborn child incarnated within a body of clay and endowed with special gifts from the gods themselves. I was a homeless spirit cursed to wander the earth. Reaching out for a moment of peace— and finding only— a living death.

Then a blonde in gold spandex and rocket boots attacks Diana with a shooty-energy-staff.

Sigh. This is Helena Kosmatos, aka Fury, and she deserves so much better than what Priest has planned for her.

Helena exists due to an accident of continuity. See, after Crisis on Infinite Earths rebooted DC’s continuity in 1986, the modern Fury — Lyta Trevor-Hall, best known for her role in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman — still existed, but her mother — the Golden Age Wonder Woman — didn’t any more. DC had to come up with a new parentage for her, so Helena Kosmatos was introduced as a World War II-era heroine who is an avatar of the goddess Tisiphone, one of the three Furies.

I don’t believe she’d ever interacted with Wondy before this story, and I actually think reintroducing her in the modern era as a Wonder Woman supporting character was a great idea… if only it hadn’t been handled so spectacularly badly.

Diana and Fury’s exchange is clunky and reads like an unproofed second draft: Diana asks Fury who she is and why she’s attacking, but Fury responds instead as though she’s been asked who sent her. The answer to that is nobody: “I just heard you were coming here — and thought it was high time we met.”

Then she drops the bombshell:

“I’m your sister. And I hate you for what you’ve done to me.”

Then she proceeds to pound Diana into the ground while deriding her legendary powers. “Somebody told you you were unique. Somebody said you were her only child. You were lied to. And, ever since your first appearance, I’ve meant to correct things.”

(Check out Diana’s gravity-defying cape)

Diana breaks free and beats Fury into the pavement while protesting that her mother had no other daughters. Fury… it’s not clear how she does this, but apparently she uses her super-strength (and rocket boots?! fuck if I know.) to rapidly tunnel underneath the pavement and pop up behind Diana, then throws a tank at her and flies off.

those hips those thighs what the fuck am i looking at

(In retrospect, I don’t think they’re even rocket boots, I think it’s just shitty art.)

Diana is then approached by a soldier, who announces that she has been sent by “Michael Lysander, leader of the East Vladonian Resistance” — in other words, the man responsible for all the bloodshed. Her message: Come see my master and he will stop the war. Diana replies that she will see him only after he declares a ceasefire. The soldier says she will relay the message and, oh, by the way, Lysander “prefers to be called by his Epigoni birth name— Alcmaeon.”

The name causes Diana to make this face:

...yeeeeeeup, that’s what alarm and perhaps some puzzlement looks like, alrighty.

Voiceover again:

My agent saw it in her eyes. Alarm— and perhaps some puzzlement. It was a name she’d heard before. And, I’m sure she must have wondered… why a dead man wanted to see her.

Interlude: Parados

The Justice League discuss Diana’s decision to involve herself in the conflict in Vladonia.  The JLA’s charter prohibits taking sides in international disputes, but Diana’s mission in Man’s World is to bring peace, and in this instance, J’onn worries that these two mandates might come into direct conflict.  This is actually an interesting idea, and it’s a shame that Priest didn’t try to explore it in more depth instead of going full Indecent Proposal on Diana.

Interlude: First Episode

Three editing fuckups in one, with a title boxes that is

incorrect (it should read “First Episode”; the interlude is over),

uses the wrong lettering style (it’s inconsistent with all the other title boxes, which use a distinctive font and border), and

in the wrong place (it's at the bottom of the Interlude page, whereas it should be at the start of the following page).

Back to the voiceover.

Which was how I knew she would come. Immediately after I ordered the cease-fire. I could hardly breathe. After all, I’d waited a lifetime…

fuuuuuuuuck offfffffff.

Writing elsewhere about this story, Priest has described Alcmaeon as — direct quote — “Tom Cruise. He is the most arrestingly, unexpectedly charming and disarming person to ever appear in a DC comic … a guy most any woman on the planet would fall immediately in love with”.

So naturally he looks like Doctor Psycho’s younger brother.

Also, when Diana meets him, he’s cleaning a gross shit-covered toilet. Because he might be a supreme dictator, but he’s also a manly man of the people, I guess? His explanation is that he’s short on staff at the moment and, well… and…

um.

HE DOESN’T KNOW IF AMAZONS NEED TO SHIT

WHAT THE ALMIGHTY EVERLOVING FUCK CHRISTOPHER PRIEST

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU

WHAT--

YOU--

FUCK--

Alcmaeon invites Diana to dine with him — after his female lieutenants help her to “freshen up”, of course, because dinner with a sleazy predator just wouldn’t be complete without a change of costume into an outfit that he has specifically picked out.

If she stayed in there more than thirty seconds, I knew I could begin to build trust between us. And trust was all we needed. I’m sure she looked for cameras that weren’t there. Advanced science to trap her in my castle. Not yet realising I didn’t want to trap her— I wanted to win her.

mate, you’ve used the threat of further civilian deaths to lure her into your creepy castle and now you’re manipulating her into donning a hand-picked outfit and sitting down to dinner with you; I think we’ve already established you don’t give two fucks about consent.

Here’s Diana “freshened up”, by way:

Diana isn’t amused, either: “Children are dying, and you’ve got me playing games with some lunatic claiming to be my sister.” And again we run into some bad continuity. Diana has no reason to connect Fury with Alcmaeon, and in fact Fury explicitly said she wasn’t working for anybody. Considering this story reportedly took Priest almost three years to write, this is some very sloppy work.

Alcmaeon: Ah. I see you’ve met Fury. Diana: Fury? I’ve heard that name… she was a heroine… Alcmaeon: Yes. During the Second World War. Now she’s a little, well, loopy— and obsessed with me.

noooope nope nope nope nooooo thank you.

Things the world does not need more of:

Waifishly beautiful heroines driven mad by the inability of their female minds to handle ~terrible power~

Hysterical women antagonists acting craaaazy because of a maaaaan

Pretentious-ass writer bros sabotaging powerful heroines to prop up their Deep and Complex date-rapist warlord villain

Alcmaeon says that he has brought Diana here to fulfil a prophecy — the 18th Letter — and then dives into his backstory, and we get a half-page of prose summarising the story of Alcmaeon from Greek mythology. Here’s the potted version:

Alcmaeon’s mother conspired to kill his father by sending him into a fatal battle.

Alcmaeon killed his mother to avenge his father’s murder, and was hounded by the Furies for his crime of matricide.

He’s basically Orestes but less interesting.

Anyway, then some other stuff happened and he wound up being killed, it’s really not important to this story.

Diana’s getting fairly shitty with Alcmaeon now, particularly as she’s noticed that there’s a forcefield surrounding the palace, which he claims is defensive, but also conveniently prevents her from leaving. Not creepy at all.

And now we’ve come to the Indecent Proposal part of the story.

Alcmaeon bullshits long and hard about how this is his ancient homeland by right, and he’s fighting a war of liberation, and there’s going to be a lot more large-scale civilian death and suffering before it’s done, and there’s nothing that the UN or the US or even the JLA can do about it— but it juuuuuuust so happens…

“I’ll give it all up — recall my forces, end the bloodshed — stop the war — in exchange for one night with you.”

THE END WHAT A SATISFYING CONCLUSION I’M SURE WE CAN ALL AGREE THIS WAS QUITE THE ah fuck there’s more.

Alcmaeon is shocked!! shocked!! that Diana would even think that he’s trying to coerce her into sex against her will! Nonono, he’s just trying to coerce her into hanging out with him against her will, in the hope that she will realise the fundamental truth that they are meant to be together now and forever! Noooothing predatory about that!

And again, I remind you that this bloke is supposed to be the most sexy and charming and arresting man in the DC universe.

As Diana leaves to (ugh) contemplate his bullshit offer, Fury appears in the door and goads him.

Fury: Crash and burn, Alcmaeon. Alcmaeon: No… not yet, anyway. Her mission in life is to teach the virtues of her people. She wants to teach me. Fury: So do I, Alcmaeon. So do I.

And we end on a final voiceover from Alcmaeon:

She was too late. Much too late. Which was what I had in mind when I started that war. For the express purpose of winning her— in the most compelling way I could think of.

YEP. THAT’S RIGHT. This worthless shitheel started a massive civil conflict, killing innocent civilians and destroying countless lives, for the express purpose of coercing Wonder Woman into banging him.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they’re threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don’t think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things—of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance.” — Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist Another shooting, another day in America. Or so it seems. With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s fragile ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry. Take this latest mass shooting that took place at a small church in a small Texas town. The lone gunman—a former member of the Air Force—was dressed all in black, wearing body armor, a tactical vest and a mask, and firing an assault rifle. (Note the similarity in uniform and tactics to the nation’s police forces, SWAT teams and military.) Devin Patrick Kelley, the 26-year-old gunman, had served a year in military prison for assaulting his wife and child in 2012. Domestic disputes aside, Kelley—like many of the other shooters in recent years—was described as a “regular guy” by those who knew him. This “regular” guy’s shooting rampage left at least 26 people dead. President Trump and the Governor of Texas have chalked the shooting up to mental illness. That may well be the case here. Still, there’s something to be said for the fact that this shooting bore many of the same marks of other recent attacks: the gunman appeared out of the blue without triggering any alarms, he was dressed like a soldier or militarized police officer, he was armed with military-style weapons and clearly trained in the art of killing, and the attacker died before any insight could be gained into his motives. As usual, we’re left with more questions than answers and a whole lot more fear and anxiety. As The Washington Post reports: For some, the church massacre … reinforced a sense of unease that no place could be considered immune from possible violence after a concert ground in Las Vegas, a Walmart in Colorado, a Nashville church and a bike path in New York all became scenes of death and bloodshed over the past six weeks. That sense of unease is growing. How do you keep a nation safe when not even seemingly “safe places” like churches and rock concerts and shopping malls are immune from violence? The government’s answer, as always, will lead us further down the road we’ve travelled since 9/11 towards totalitarianism and away from freedom. Those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time. All of these measures play into the government’s hands. As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that has no basis in the truth. Still, why do these things keep happening? We have been plagued with trouble at every turn, from racial unrest and political upheavals to environmental disasters and economic bad news. Clearly, America is in the midst of a national nervous breakdown. Things are falling apart, and the inmates in the asylum are starting to turn on each other. This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by—is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long. When things start to fall apart or implode, as they seem to be doing lately, I have to wonder who stands to benefit from it. In most cases, it’s the government that stands to benefit by amassing greater powers at the citizenry’s expense. See, we’re like lab mice, conditioned to respond appropriately to certain stimuli. Right now, we’re being conditioned to be reactionaries capable of little more than watching and worrying. Indeed, we are fast becoming a nation of bad news junkies, addicted to the steady and predictable drip-drip-drip of news—be it sensational, devastating, demoralizing, disastrous, or just titillating—that keeps us plastered to our screen devices for the next round of breaking news. Just consider a small sampling of headlines from two days’ worth of the news cycle: Senator Rand Paul suffers five fractured ribs after being tackled by a neighbor while mowing the grass at his Kentucky home. Donna Brazile rocks the political sphere with a claim that the Democratic National primary was fixed to favor a Hillary Clinton win over Bernie Sanders. Kevin Spacey joins the lineup of celebrity men to be accused of sexual assault. The Pentagon hints at the possibility of a ground invasion of North Korea. And then this latest mass shooting, supposedly over a domestic dispute, in Texas. No wonder America is breaking down. So much is happening on a daily basis that the average American understandably has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality. We are suffering from “the crisis of the now.” As investigative journalist Mike Adams points out: This psychological bombardment is waged primarily via the mainstream media which assaults the viewer by the hour with images of violence, war, emotions and conflict. Because the human nervous system is hard wired to focus on immediate threats accompanied by depictions of violence, mainstream media viewers have their attention and mental resources funneled into the never-ending ‘crisis of the NOW’ from which they can never have the mental breathing room to apply logic, reason or historical context. Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. All the while, the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry. When we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. As long as we’re tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles, we will remain tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms This is how the corporate elite controls a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, and advances their agenda without much opposition from the citizenry. Rod Serling, the creator of the Twilight Zone, imagined just such a world in which the powers-that-be carry out a social experiment to see how long it would take before the members of a small American neighborhood, frightened by a sudden loss of electric power and caught up in fears of the unknown, will transform into an irrational mob and turn on each other. It doesn’t take long at all. As Serling concludes in the Twilight Zone episode of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. Among the 26 people killed in that small church in Texas, at least half of them were children. One was a pregnant woman: both she and her unborn were killed. Devin Patrick Kelley may have pulled the trigger that resulted in the mayhem, but something else is driving the madness. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re caught in a vicious cycle right now between terror and fear and distraction and hate and partisan politics and an inescapable longing for a time when life was simpler and people were kinder and the government was less of a monster. Our prolonged exposure to the American police state is not helping. As always, the solution to most problems must start locally, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities. We’ve got to refrain from the toxic us vs. them rhetoric that is consuming the nation. We’ve got to work harder to build bridges, instead of burning them to the ground. We’ve got to learn to stop bottling up dissent and disagreeable ideas and learn how to agree to disagree. We’ve got to de-militarize our police and lower the levels of violence here and abroad, whether it’s violence we export to other countries, violence we glorify in entertainment, or violence we revel in when it’s leveled at our so-called enemies, politically or otherwise. Unless we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, we will perish as tools and prisoners of the American police state. http://clubof.info/

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Dreamin’ Sun v1

Now that I’ve finally read this [after having dealt with the nightmare of originally getting an incredibly damaged copy and needing to wait an extra two weeks for a replacement copy to arrive], I may as well write down my thoughts. This isn’t really going to be a review, at least not “officially”, though I’ll obviously talk about my opinion on different parts of it. It’ll be more ramble-y and over the place than a proper review. Like with Rakugo, I might just wait until the series is done before doing a proper review of the entire thing, to save on time.

This got really, really long, but it’s mostly because since this is the first volume there’s just a lot to talk about right off the bat to get my initial feelings out. And also because there’s stuff like my whole lengthy point about comparing the art in this version to the original release of the series, which I won’t need to bring up as much later on. Even if I have less to say overall about the later volumes, I’ll still probably try and make posts like this about them even if they’re way shorter.

TL;DR: Basically I REALLY enjoyed this, more than I thought I would. It reminds me a LOT of Fruits Basket, in a good way. But it definitely seems to be going for a different vibe from that series. I like both, though. This might not be anything mind-blowing, especially if you’ve read a lot of shoujo rom-coms, but it seems like it’s probably a good title for people like me who are a bit less ‘experienced’ with the genre.

I’m really excited to see what happens in v2 now. I guess one good aspect of how it took like a month since v1′s release date for it to arrive is that it means there’s now only about a month or so until the next one’s out.

Detailed thoughts under the cut

For a bit of background info, the biggest reason I even checked this out is because I really adored the anime adaptation of Orange when it aired a year or two ago. I plan on getting the English release of the manga eventually, since I liked it so much as an anime. I’d been curious about this series for a while, but then Seven Seas announced their license of it, and I decided to wait for it and hold off on reading the scans online. I’m so glad I chose to just wait for this release, which I’ll explain in a bit. Over the last 6+ months or so I’ve been checking out the covers of the new Japanese re-releases of the series as they got revealed. Which certainly got me hyped for this. Let it be known that I am a complete sucker for beautiful covers, and man are these covers wonderful. They fit all of my aesthetic tastes so perfectly. Even if the series somehow falls apart later on I’m gonna still collect it just because the volume covers are so beautiful. OK, I just needed to lay that out there because these covers deserve to be raved about.

I guess it’s not really related to this series, but I’d also been reading Fruits Basket over the last six or so months via Yen Press’ new omnibus versions. Mostly because I’ve been wanting to read some cute, fluffy shoujo rom-coms for a while, and FB is like the most universally praised manga within that genre. I might still make a separate review of that series later. I’m bringing it up here because, honestly, it’s really hard not to note the surface-level similarities. I keep finding myself comparing the two. But even then, the comparison just makes me like Dreamin’ Sun, thus far, even more. I won’t call one better than the other, but this series definitely has it’s strengths.

To get more into detail about the similarities, both FB and Dreamin’ Sun involve a teenage girl being either voluntarily or involuntarily forced out of her home because of drama and life circumstances stemming from the relatively recent deaths of their mothers. Both protagonists wind up living in an isolated house with two teenage boys who complete the central love triangle, and their kimono-wearing house-owner/landlord who’s in his 20′s. It feels a bit weird to even list this out, since I don’t mean anything negative by it. I’m not saying that Dreamin’ Sun is a rip-off or anything. It certainly didn’t impact my enjoyment of it. It just highlights how even strangely similar premises can be handled in different ways. And obviously those elements aren’t the entirety of the story of either manga. I mean, you can’t really ignore the way that FB is also about supernatural curses and people that turn into animals, and Dreamin’ Sun is very much not about those things at all :V

[Lengthy ramble about comparing the current style to the ‘original stye’ starts here. Scroll down a bit if you want to skip past this]

Before I talk about the actual premise/story, which will take a while, I want to talk about what I said before about being happy that I chose not to read the scanlated version. I didn’t realize it until the author states it at the end of the volume, but for the recent re-releases of the series [that the English version is based on], she actually re-did a fair bit of the art. I spent a while comparing chapter one page by page across the ‘original version’ and the version we got in English. To put it simply, judging from just this one chapter, it seems that about half of the art is redone to some degree or another. It’s a bit complicated. It’s not a complete re-draw, or anything like that. It’s mostly focused on changes to how the characters themselves are drawn, but I noticed a few instances of slightly refined backgrounds and added/edited visual effects, though I wasn’t paying as much attention to that stuff. I can tell that the artist was focusing on fixing inconsistent or anatomically incorrect art, while in general making the art-style feel more consistent. I could tell that a lot of the panels that were left alone were the ones most similar in style to her current art.

It didn’t bug me or anything, but I could tell that there were notable differences between the style of certain panels, especially when it comes to how eyes, and specifically irises, are drawn. Takano’s art style clearly hasn’t changed that much over the years [it’s just gotten more refined and consistent], but she’s obviously developed a specific way of drawing eyes/irises, as you can see from the cover of this volume, which is very consistent across how she draws all of her characters now. It definitely clashes a bit with how she used to draw irises in particular in a more . . . inconsistent way. This is especially notable with Shimana, who used to often be drawn with largely unshaded/uncoloured eyes, and with more shaky lines. But, just to be clear, the difference is so relatively minor that I genuinely thought it was just a matter of her putting more effort into certain panels compared to other ones, and was genuinely surprised to see that there was, what, a 9+ year gap between when these were drawn? Wow. So yeah, she’s notably improved, and there’s still a fair amount of untouched art in this, but it’s not very noticeable at all. It’s actually most noticeable, I feel, with the colour pages [I assume they were originally in colour. This release has absolutely zero colour pages, which is very disappointing since I thought that the official blurb for it said that we’d get at least one per volume]. Something about the way they’re done feels more immediately different to her current style.

But even though the difference isn’t too noticeable just in the context of this version we have now, after seeing the original version and all of it’s art, I’m VERY happy she re-did the parts she did. A lot of panels in the original felt very similar to what she does now, but a LOT of them were noticeably worse, and definitely needed to be updated to make things consistent. She pretty much just took the worst of her old art and re-did it, and left the best parts, which seems like a good way to prioritize this sort of partial re-draw if she didn’t have the time to re-do the entire thing. Her older style definitely has it’s own charm and personality, and is arguably more experimental and expressive than her current style, which could be called overly consistent and ‘safe’ if you wanted to be negative about it. I imagine that there’s probably lots of people who prefer the original art completely, even beyond just basic nostalgia, and that’s fine. But after having been exposed to this new version first, I’m very glad it exists. It might get ironed out quickly [I only read the first chapter in it’s original form], but from that chapter alone it definitely felt like Takano sometimes struggled with keeping facial structures and hair-styles perfectly consistent between panels. Her handling of it’s better than a lot of other artists, but there were obvious examples of faces seeming a bit too flat at the side, or eyes being oddly sized/spaced, or foreheads being too large. The characters also have more realistic and consistent hair-styles, which is nice. It was especially noticeable with how Zen’s hair felt more wild and fire-y originally [and his hairline seemed too high a lot of the time], but is more specific and rigid now while retaining the spiky look [I really don’t know how to phrase this], and how Taiga’s hair felt more messy originally, with lots of strands/tufts on the top part sticking out more wildly. His hair’s a bit more tidy and flat now, but not entirely so.

[Art comparison ramble ends here]

Also the fan translation used for the scanlation I found was TERRIBLE, holy shit, but that’s not a point against the story itself obviously.

In general I love the art-style of this manga. I’ve been a huge fan of Takano’s way of drawing her characters ever since I watched Orange. I’m never good at praising visual types of art, since I never know how to put my thoughts into words about it, but her style is just really nice. It all feels very soft and consistent. She has a way of drawing hair and eyes in a way that captures a nice middle-ground between looking ‘realistic’ and looking ‘manga-y’, if that makes sense. They have a nice sense of depth and visual complexity to them. She’s also really good at drawing outfits, but really I’m just envious of anyone who knows how to do fabric folds at all. It might annoy some people that her modern style is more soft and subdued and clean than how her art used to be, but it never bothered me.

I guess there’s not too much to say in terms of the “story” of this, if we ignore the romantic elements. But I do want to say that I actually think I prefer this variation of the “girl leaves her original home and moves in with a group of guys”  set-up to how it was handled in Fruits Basket. It’s a bit of a meaningless comparison though because I love them both for different reasons. FB was taking a way more comedic and silly angle for a lot of it, while Dreamin’ Sun handled it in a relatively more serious and reasonable way than I expected. Aside from the vague contrivance of Taiga immediately guessing that Shimana is looking for a new home, I really liked how everything else about it was handled. For one thing, Taiga’s an actual landlord who’s already renting out parts of his house to other teenagers, so it makes everything feel way less sudden and unprepared. It also explains why Taiga so readily presented her with the option. Which helped make it all feel way less creepy than it could have been. He also gave her every chance to back out of the choice if she wanted, while also being rather responsible in telling her what to do if she actually wants to commit to it. I greatly appreciated how he wanted to make sure that Shimana cleared things up with her parents and got permission from them, and it was nice seeing him go with her to more or less negotiate with them. It was cool seeing him back Shimana up and make a reasonable case about how she deserves to have some freedom of choice while she still can. And I really love that she didn’t cut herself off from her family entirely, or anything, and is going to stay in regular contact with them. They even gave her some money to help her get settled in. In general what I mean is that the story put WAY more effort into making the entire moving process more reasonable than it necessarily needed to be. I could have dealt with it being hand-waved more easily, with nobody caring that much about the gravity of the situation. So it’s nice that it went out of it’s way to do all that. [I just realized that the way Taiga stood up for Shimana and made a case for her choosing to stay at his house is probably reflective of his family’s connection to law. Huh. I never quite put two and two together on that]. It’s also worth noting that the updated art-style also made Taiga seem notably less creepy in chapter one. It actually surprised me how outright sinister and unnerving he looked at times in the original, whereas in this version he’s mostly just sorta snarky and deadpan. It’s especially notable how sinister he looked originally while commenting on Shimana’s bag at the end of the park scene, whereas in this version he just looked mildly curious about it. It’s stuff like this that also went a long way to making him and his living situation proposition feel more reasonable.

On the topic of things being reasonable and different to what I expected, this may just be because I don’t read much shoujo, and/or because I just recently finished FB in particular, but holy shit did I appreciate the openness Shimana displayed with her emotions. She actually talked about her feelings with people instead of just bottling them up! Obviously she hasn’t really confessed her feelings to Asahi yet, but honestly who can blame her. And even then, she still outright asked him during the test of courage if he has someone he likes, and then when she saw him with that other girl, she plainly asked him if she was his girlfriend. A fucking plus for characters talking to each other about stuff and not just making assumptions and sitting on them for chapters upon chapters that lead to misunderstandings and drama. And it’s just kinda refreshing to get a protagonist like Shimana who is relatively open in talking about romance-related topics, while still not being super confident and forward, and still having relatable insecurities. I also have to respect Asahi for being similarly open about things. I love that he was completely open about saying that even if they’re not dating, he has a crush on that girl. I would have been fine with him hiding it since that’s realistic, but it’s so refreshing to see him be clear and unambiguous about it. This should help minimize any future drama. It was also cute seeing him ask if Shimana wanted to eat lunch with the two of them. Even though I also get why she tried to back off due to not wanting to be some sort of third wheel. Also, I can’t QUITE remember since it’s been a day since I read this, but I remember there being a scene where she talks to Taiga and Zen about her crush on Asahi, and about her wanting to learn more about his preferences and so on. It’s just so nice seeing characters like this who can talk about such things without anyone getting weirdly shamed for their feelings. I also really hope that the story is going where I think it’s going, with the emerging topic of the value of appearance vs personality. Please let this send a message about how being a nice, loving person is more important and valuable than just being pretty. That’d be wonderful. Also, just to fit it in here, I really love Zen’s brand of tsundere, where it mostly comes across as him and Shimana just being close friends who can rib each other back and forth about stuff. He even apologized for one of the more shitty things he said to her as soon as he saw how much she’s going through. I prefer this brand of tsundere to the more rough and violent and edgy kind.The characters in general probably aren’t super unique or memorable for the genre or anything, but they really appeal to my tastes. I love that they’re all just really nice, reasonable people who know how to get along and have fun, while also having some wonderfully snarky back and forths. And obviously I like it when characters lean more toward talking to each other about stuff instead of being moody and quiet and holding onto misinformed assumptions and grudges and so on. I already kinda love Shimana as a protagonist. I get why some people might not like her, but she hits all the right notes for me. Especially since the awkwardness between her and her family, and her angst over all that, has basically been cleared up. I love that she has her own fun, vibrant personality, and can be as much of an active part of conversations as the guys. I like how her torn-up feelings over her mother’s death are portrayed, even though I expect it to never be explored quite as deeply as in something like Fruits Basket. And I already just love her dynamics with all the guys, which I guess I’ll get into when I talk about each one.I’m not even gonna lie, I ADORE Asahi already and I really hope that he’s the one that ends up with Shimana. I mean both ‘options’ are totally fine and I love them both, but I certainly have my preferences. To be blunt, my tastes in romances like this are SUPER vanilla. I know that a lot of people often dislike characters like Asahi who are near-perfect, kind, mellow, smart, etc, and the one that the protagonist already likes from the start with no ‘build-up’, but I’m a sucker for this. I just really like love interests like him. It’s kinda hard to deny that part of it’s because he’s genuinely my type and so I can totally get why Shimana likes him so much. I vividly remember seeing that one panel of him with glasses when the black hair goes away and my reaction was basically just “be still, my beating gay heart”. I will defend this precious boy with my life. But I do also like that we might start seeing a more frustrated, cold side of him as he interacts more with that other girl. There’s some nice contrast going on there. I also really like that he’s studying to be a lawyer, if only because it’s an interest/academic field that I’ve basically never seen a character like him have before, and I’m interested to see if it becomes more important later. [Also I really like his fashion sense. I have a *weakness* for guys wearing ties]Even though I love Asahi a lot already, Zen is just the most adorable thing in the universe. My sweet panda-loving child. I love him. I immediately fell in love with his character design as soon as I saw the cover of volume three. I love that he has a lot of traditionally masculine traits, like his punk aesthetic, his interest in martial arts, etc, but he has absolutely no shame about carrying a plush panda around even in school. The guy has a goddamn full-body panda bear pajama suit. It’s amazing. His plush panda itself is also wonderful in it’s own right. I love how in the new version of the art, there’s a few examples of Takano giving it cute little facial expressions to match Zen. It’s so fucking cute I wanna die. I can totally see why it’s sort of the mascot of the series. Anyway, as said above, I really click with his brand of tsundere. He knows how to treat Shimana like a good friend. I like that his ribbing isn’t just a one-sided thing that she meekly and silently endures, and that she can also poke him right back if she wants. I love that be immediately, profusely apologized for calling her useless once he learned about her family issues. I love that he didn’t even really poke much fun at her for her crush on Asahi. And obviously I love that he never does anything worse than verbal teasing, and I can’t see him doing anything much worse. In terms of his position as the secondary love interest, I’m down with it. He clearly has no chance of being the one she ends up dating, though, so I’m probably just gonna spend this whole thing feeling bad for him. Thankfully it won’t be quite as harsh as Suwa’s entire situation in Orange and how much that poor guy sacrificed for the sake of his friends. I hope that, if he can’t end up with Shimana, he at least finds someone else he can find happiness with.Most of my feelings on Taiga can be summed up with what I said above, about being really refreshed and surprised by how reasonable and non-creepy he is. He’s pretty wonderful thus far. There’s not a whole lot to say thus far, but I’m curious to see how things go as we explore his family situation and his history with Miku. It feels like there’s a lot left to discover with him. Just to get it out from the start, I REALLY hope the story never frames him as a love interest. It hasn’t thus far, at least. And obviously it could be totally fine if it’s executed well. But the power imbalance of their current situation, not to mention their age gap, bothers me a bit too much. Hopefully things just stay the way they are now. We’ll see. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.I don’t have much to say about Miku thus far since she only showed up near the end of the volume, but I can already tell that she’s going to be great. Hopefully she remains a part of the main cast, even if she doesn’t live in the same house [I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t, and that she was just visiting, but I forget]. It’d at least be nice to have a prominent female character for Shimana to befriend. I guess this is also on the note of characters, but it was . . . surprising, to say the least, when I got to the end of the volume where there’s an omake that literally introduces some of the other cast members who have yet to appear. It even specifies which volume they’ll first appear in. Which is really goddamn weird. I don’t dislike it, but it’s weird, and I could see it bothering some people. It’s at least fine by me since I’ve already seen these characters on the later volume covers. But in general I don’t care much about whether or not a character’s general existence is ‘spoiled’ for me. Though seeing Zen’s brother was a surprise since he doesn’t actually seem to appear on any of the covers. So that was new. There’s not really much to say about them all since it was such a short little bonus thing, but I feel like I might dislike Shuu, and I could see myself really enjoying Miura so long as he isn’t a complete asshole. [Also I might just feel silly about saying this if I get ‘proven wrong’ when he appears, but his comment about Taiga’s dad being a stud is making me REALLY hope, in the depths of my gay heart, that he might be bi. I’ve been burned before, though, so we’ll just wait and see].I don’t really have any predictions or anything for where I think things will go. There’s kinda not a lot to go on, which is how these things tend to be. There’s less of an over-arching story/mystery than there was in Fruits Basket, that’s for sure. We’ll just see what happens when it happens. All in all, I pretty much loved this from start to finish. It was pretty damn wonderful. It’s at least nice to read something light and fluffy. I’ve been really needing something like this lately.I’m certainly a bit afraid that, even with my almost entirely positive feelings toward this first volume, there might still be a chance of things crashing and burning later. I’ve definitely heard mixed/ambivalent things regarding this manga, but I’m hoping it’s just a matter of this being a typical shoujo rom-com that lacks the narrative hook and emotional depth of something like Orange, or Fruits Basket, or whatever. Because I’m totally down for ‘typical shoujo rom-com’. That’s what I’m here for. [[I also wouldn’t be surprised if the original art played a part in people preferring Orange. So that shouldn’t be an issue now]]Just to end this off, on the topic of my comparison between this and Fruits Basket, I feel like the best way to describe it is that I feel like Dreamin’ Sun is going to be more ‘consistently level’ than FB. It’s not going to have all of the really good parts of FB that made it such a core staple of the genre that stands the test of time, but it also definitely looks like it won’t have the same issues that I had with FB. So it might not have the same high peaks, but it should avoid some of the pitfalls that caused be to kinda sour on FB a bit by the end.P.S: This is a really subjective and personal point of mine, but at the very least, if there’s any one thing I want, it’s for this manga to avoid actively negative portrayals of queer themes/characters. I really don’t mind if nobody in this is queer, or even if the very concept is never discussed or shown at all, so long as it’s not negative about any of it if it DOES come up. Nothing negative along these lines has happened yet, at least. I’ll say so if anything bad happens later, though. I’d be fine with a base level of silent neutrality, or whatever, but I’d certainly appreciate something a bit more than that, and as I kinda said above, there’s at least one faint glimmer of potential representation, but I’m certainly not going to hold my breath, and if it doesn’t happen, then that’s fine.