#It is a recommend from me

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Reading An English Squire by Christabel R. Coleridge after reading Amelia E. Barr's The Squire of Sandal-Side was an experience.

Both writers have the sort of style that is engaging enough to make reading pleasant, but not so fresh or unique that it really hooks you. Both are writing pastoral period pieces of pre and peri-industrial nostalgia. Both are about English squire families deep in the North of England, and have their main plots spin around an inheritance problem. And yet their approach to the thing is so different!

Barr's story is morally blunt and very simplistic plot wise. Once the conflict of the story is set up, if you know your tropes, you know exactly what the twists are and how and when are they going to happen. The prodigal son metaphor is heavy-handed, in a way that makes it caricaturesque: mother and sister love the heir, but there are no good qualities of his ever presented that justify it. He's a lazy gambler and spendrift, but they will bend over backwards to help him out of trouble and justify him and such. Until he decides to actually settle down and marry and work a bit. Because he chooses an Italian woman. The horror! That's where the family draws the line. That's the unforgivable sin (he isn't even converting to Catholicism himself!). His "watching pigs and coveting their food" moment is his living in Italy with his consumptive wife and son. This stuff would make Charlotte Brontë say "have you considered that maybe you are being too harsh, too rude, exaggerating, even". Don't worry, though! He's not the real heir. The real heir is a good hardworking Anglican, the shades of Sandal-Side will not be polluted by nasty dirty Italian papist blood!

Now, An English Squire has a lot of simple things to it here and there, but it is making a genuine, earnest effort to understand its characters and portray them as realistically as it can. Sometimes these characters hurt each other, and collide, while both trying their best. They are flawed, capable of both generosity and pettiness. It's also unconventionally plotted, and the twists did caught me off-guard more than once. Many sad things happen through the book, and yet the general impression is that of kindness. It is a kind story, a "you catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a barrel of vinegar" story. And that was so nice?

The premise of the story is also quite unique and interesting:

Over 20 years ago, Gerald Lester, second son of the squire of Oakby, in an act of rebellion, went on an European tour, and while in Spain, fell in love and married a Spanish woman from a wealthy, respectable family, and had a son with her. But then soon enough, both his father and brother died, making him the squire of Oakby. His wife dies while he is away, and his son, Alvar (Álvaro) is taken in by her family. A few years later he remarries, an English woman this time, and has three sons and a daughter by her. All atempts of bringing Alvar to England in his youth, failed; but now that his second son, and favorite, Cheriton, has come of age, things have fallen into place that make it possible, and everyone wonders what will happen when the stranger heir arrives.

As you can imagine, prejudice is a central theme of the story, and for all the pitfalls you can easily guess by reading that summary, the treatment is surprisingly careful and respectful. There was very evident effort put on characterizing Alvar; I may laugh that a boy of his social station would not be just named "Alvar Guzman Lester de la Rosa" but something like "Álvaro Guzmán Luis Enrique José Leopoldo Gerardo Agustín Lester de la Rosa", but for the resources the author probably had at hand, he's plausible. She's even aware of the existence of Carlists!

The relationship between Alvar and Cheriton is the central one; they represent the "opposing" paradigms of the Spanish hidalgo and the English gentleman, but the author refuses the easy way of making them enemies and rivals. On the contrary, so much of the story and their mutual development and at times survival depends on the brotherly love they have for each other. Very often the text will highlight how one character's prejudice against something pertaining to Alvar's person or background is accompanied by blindness towards something very similar in the English culture and ways.

This doesn't mean that the authorial hand is devoid of biases. They are there and pop up notoriously a few times, but I can forgive them because I see awareness and effort in so much of the rest. And the contrast with The Squire of Sandal-Side brought this into even higher relief.

[bixels]

It's crazy how Dungeon Meshi's manga can feel more cinematic and emotional than the anime to me, even when they're practically the same. Compared to the anime, this moment is such a heartbreaking gut-drop. The way Kui uses negative space and flat compositions to create a sense of horrific stillness is so key.

The way the text (Senshi's monologue) is sequestered to an empty corner of a panel or huddled away from the edge of its text box is not only a great way of showing Senshi's headspace (fearful, isolated, dissociating), but creates a visual representation of pause, as if you hold your breathe after each line. The first panel puts us directly in Senshi's perspective too (compared to in the anime, which puts us as an outside observer over Senshi's shoulder). The detail of the door and bricks so effectively implies that he stared at it for so long, waiting and hoping, that its image is burned in his memory. The wood grain, the brick arch, the number of rivets. The lack of dialogue in the second panel shows a moment of realization too –– "he's dead" (also a great example of the Kuleshov effect). And it's that pause that creates a beat and sets a great rhythm to his headspace, like a music rest: "He never came back." (oh god.) "I'm all alone." Finally, the third panel's negative space, cropping Senshi, shows how truly alone he feels. Without his family, the world ceases to exists. Under shock, he traps himself in a 1-foot radius, too scared to even perceive a world outside its boundaries; a world that can hurt him, kill him, make him disappear with it. There is only his body, the stone beneath his feet and against his back, his thoughts, and that awful bowl of soup.

Even though they're a series of flat images, there's an implicit reading of silence in Senshi's realization and horror. Kui influences your experience to slow down and take your time.

Compare this to the anime, which fills every shot with dialogue. The pacing is fast; we never get to sit in silence like we do with the manga. The horizontal frame allowed the boarders to add Senshi, turning the composition into an over-the-shoulder shot, which takes us out of Senshi's POV. They also added a zoom-out in shot one, which adds unnecessary energy to a very somber scene. The tightening on Senshi as a close-up reaction shot also dulls the moment. In the original panel, Senshi stares ahead at the empty space to his left as a shadow surrounds his mind. It not only shows how Senshi's senses are dulling and his world is shrinking (setting up panel three), but shows how terrified Senshi is of what's in front of him, how the air itself becomes pitch black and opaque, how Senshi is surrendering himself to fear. The pacing is understandable and necessary; this episode packed a lot of story content together. It's just a shame because it really (imo) deflated one of the most nauseating moments in Dungeon Meshi.

[doctormori]

I love this book to death, so here's some things I noticed <3

[totally-here]

3 times Phantom's Guardian was Mentioned + 1 Time He Showed Up

One

Phantom’s introduction to Young Justice wasn’t as dramatic as Empress’ or Slobo’s, or even Arrowette’s first introduction to the cave. No, it wasn’t during the Olympics, or on a battlefield, and he didn’t come in injured and looking for help. 

Impulse just brought Phantom in one day and insisted that he should join because he’s their age, interested in justice, and now that Greta’s human again they need another ghost member. So Phantom stayed, popping in and out for missions but never really sticking around all that long. 

Today is one of the days that Phantom’s with them on a mission, that being looking around a lab of the Brain’s that had an energy surge recently, despite it being presumably abandoned. 

Kon got paired up with Phantom to check the rest out first, since they both have better hearing than Anita and Tim, who were both still in the main room working on checking the computers for previous activity. 

The room is dark except for the light green ball glowing slightly above Phantom’s hand. He waves it around enough for it to reflect off of glass, then throws it up to the ceiling. The light expands enough to illuminate the room. 

Phantom mumbles about not knowing he could do that. Kon ignores him and moves closer to inspect the glass tubes to the side of several monitors set up. 

“Looks like cloning equipment,” Phantom says, casually. He drags a finger through the dust gathering on one of the monitors. “Don’t think they’ve been activated recently, though, so that’s good.”

“What? You got a problem with clones or something?” It’s a quick and defensive answer, and Phantom puts his hands up in surrender. 

“Not in concept.” He shrugs and joins Kon near the tubes. “But not a lot of people ask before making clones.”

“So I don’t need to sic Superman on you?” Obviously Kon could chew Phantom out himself, but few can do a “not mad, just disappointed” face better than Clark. 

Phantom scrunches his face. “Why would you need to?” 

Kon stops pretending to inspect the tube and stares at Phantom. “You do know I’m a clone, right?” The blank look on Phantom’s face tells him that no, he did not. “Well I am. Clone of Superman, though we’re pretty much brothers now.”

“Cool,” Phantom says, not a bit less friendly. He hesitates for a second before continuing, “Could I maybe ask you how you got there? Me and my clone have landed on cousins, but that was also, like, given to us by her evil dad. So.”

Phantom trails off. Huh, that makes three members of the team that have been cloned. Not a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened three times. 

“You’re making sure she feels accepted, right?” 

“Yeah! Well, whenever she’s around. She,” Phantom waves his hand around, looking for the right word, “She’s a wanderer. Exploring the world and stuff. But Richard has a room for her at home, and I remind her of that whenever she does stop by.” 

“Well, first of all, don’t push it so hard,” Kon says. Phantom nods enthusiastically. “And second, who’s Richard?”

Kon doesn’t know a lot of Richards, and he doesn’t think that Phantom ever mentioned one before. Or even if he remembers his living life. 

“Oh, he’s my, uh, guardian? I guess that’s the best term. The guy I’m living with who forces me to go to school sometimes.” Phantom looks away and back to the tubes. 

Before Kon can ask for more details, Robin and Empress come in with a report of dead computers and wanting to know where they’re at with the cloning room.

They’re unimpressed with their lack of progress.

Two

Wally doesn’t really need to come by the Hamilton Lodge that often, not when that’s Young Justice’s territory and he doesn’t want to get involved in all of That.

But Red Tornado said that the team has a file on a planet that’s very quickly becoming a league problem, and he figured it might be a good time to try to check in with Bart, anyway. Make sure he hasn’t run any cars off cliffs again and all that. 

So he stops by Manchester to ask Bart about the file, then they both head East to actually find it. 

When they arrive at the hotel minutes later, Wally’s surprised to actually find it… clean? There’s no visible trash or overturned furniture or anything else he’d expect from an abandoned hotel filled with teenagers. Well, maybe not filled, lately. He doesn’t think anyone’s living here currently, with Greta at Elias’ for the school year and Slobo gone. 

Still, the room smells slightly of artificial pine scent, and Bart perks up before disappearing and reappearing rapidly, holding a teammate up by his armpits. Said teammate just accepts this, his legs folding into a wispy tail, and head rolling against his shoulders. 

“This is Phantom!” Bart holds him up higher. Phantom waves. Wally’s only heard of him through Max’s updates, the same way he would hear about Preston or Carol, but with more wariness about the supposed ghost. 

Actually looking at the pale face and glowing green eyes contrasting against the darker than dark jumpsuit, Wally’s a little more ready to accept his claim at being undead. 

“He stress cleans,” Bart explains, moving to carry Phantom under his arm. Wally bites down the urge to tell him to put him down, but only because Phantom doesn’t resist the hold, only moving to get into a more comfortable position. His hands are touching the floor. “So what happened?” 

Bart directs the question downwards, and Phantom heaves a very dramatic sigh. Definitely a teenager. It does raise the question of who exactly this kid’s mentor is. Hopefully he does have one. Maybe he’s the Spectre’s kid?

Phantom phases through the arm holding him only to lay on top of Bart’s hair. “I accidentally called Richard dad. And then fled.” 

Bart nods sagely. “Classic. One time I accidentally called Max dad, so I had to start a fire to distract him.”

Phantom sighs again, almost dreamily. “Genius.” 

Wally doesn’t have time to unpack all of that. Well he does, but he’s not going to, because there’s really only one Richard that comes to mind that might have the heart to take in a dead kid, even if he doesn’t go by his full name.

But surely Dick would have told him, or any other Titan, if he had adopted a kid. Right?

But there’s still a little shadow of doubt. Maybe Dick wanted it to be a secret, or it was really new or had a rocky start. Phantom doesn’t seem to hold himself like a Bat, but it’s not a guarantee Dick would have trained him. 

“The lodge looks nice,” Wally offers out loud, which Phantom shrugs at and wraps his tail around Bart’s head to keep secure. “Anyway, Impulse. The file on Myrg?” 

“Oh yeah!” Again, Bart disappears then reappears a few seconds later with a paper file. They really need to start digitizing more of these things. “That’s the planet where we played baseball so that they wouldn’t destroy Earth!” 

“You what.” 

The prospect of Dick following in his dad’s footsteps is forgotten in the face of what the hell Young Justice got up to on Myrg. 

Three

Tim may be in a…Predicament. 

It’s not his fault. Really. He knew what he was doing. He couldn’t let a civilian fall for the trap. But they were already so close, so he just, kinda, pushed himself into the rope instead. 

So there Robin is, tied upside down in a warehouse, with the Joker below next to an overly complicated control panel. The clown’s rambling about bombs hidden all over the city that Tim knows Batman is already tracking down with Batgirl. 

Tim’s not really paying attention to the rant because of that, more focused on wiggling enough to get the spare mini-birdarang out of his glove to cut the rope without notifying the Joker. 

“Yikes, bad time?” Asks Phantom’s voice beside him. Based on the source and accounting for the slight echo, he’s floating with his head near Tim’s, likely upside down. “Want some help?” 

Tim gets the birdarang out and starts sawing at the thick rope. They should be fine anyway, but stalling the Joker for extra time would be helpful. “Can you possess the Joker? Just hold him still.”

“The correct term is overshadow, but sure.” The voice disappears, and a few seconds later the Joker freezes. 

His body jerks forward, then backward, and a laugh chokes out of his throat. His hand claws over his mouth at the noise and he hunches over. All movement halts before he rights himself, shaking out his hands and rolling his shoulders. Phantom looks up at Tim and his eyes are glowing. 

Tim cuts through the rope, kicking and using the momentum to right himself and land on his feet. He brushes past Phantom in Joker’s body to handle the control panel. He turns off the radio broadcast and dismantles the bomb strapped to the panel.

Threat handled, he turns to Phantom and holds up some handcuffs. “Let me arrest you?”

Phantom obliges, turning the Joker’s body around and putting his hands behind his back. Tim lets him walk by himself out of the warehouse and moves the handcuffs around a lamppost. The Joker’s body jerks again, then slumps forward, just as Phantom reappears next to him, scowling down at the unconscious body. 

“That felt really slimy. Zero out of ten, would not do again,” Phantom grouches. 

“Why’re you in Gotham?” Tim asks. It’s not like Phantom makes a habit of visiting. The last time he came into the city, he complained about feeling the dead under the streets. Fortunately, that let Tim uncover a few tunnels that Talons travel through. Phantom, however, was unnerved by the Talons and left quickly. 

“Oh, Solomon Grundy’s back in our sewers. Richard said I should probably tell one of you Gotham heroes, since you keep track of those guys.” He shakes out his hands like they were cramped in the Joker. 

They hadn’t seen Grundy in a while. Tim assumed he was currently in a less violent personality. “What’s he doing?” 

Phantom shrugs. “Just chilling. Mostly underground. I tried to talk to him but he only grunted back at me. He also tried to pick me up, dunno what that was about.”

“Maybe because you’re both dead?” Tim guessed. That would be a surface level connection. Ivy and Woodrue have had more luck working with Grundy than anyone, and Phantom definitely doesn’t have the connection to the Green that’d help with that. 

Police lights turn around the corner, and Tim shoots a grapple to get to the roof above them. Phantom follows, but disappears as soon as they’re on the roof. Going back home, probably. 

Cass drops down from the roof she was listening on. “Richard?”

“Not the same one.”

They both stick around long enough to watch the Joker get put into the cop car. 

Plus one

A spaceship landed in the forests of New York, and Cassie’s team was the first to respond to it. Technically not respond, but check it out, since there wasn’t any alert or anything. 

Still, Wonder Girl has Empress, Robin, and Superboy on the other side of the ship, watching what looks like the back door, while she, Impulse, and Phantom watch the other door and main window. She has binoculars, but the windows are so tinted she can’t quite make anything out. 

No aliens have come out yet, and she hesitates to have anyone go in, in case whoever inside does turn hostile. 

Impulse has offered to run through a total of five times already, and it’s a testament to his restraint that he hasn’t, and a testament to Cassie’s that she hasn’t yelled at him yet. Phantom at least isn’t being annoying, but he’s not necessarily helpful, either. He’s not even watching the spaceship anymore. Now he’s trying to make a flower crown out of dandelions. 

“Door’s opening on our side,” Robin says from the comms. “But no one’s coming out.” 

“Alright, good enough to try to get in,” Cassie decides. She turns to Phantom, who’s closing off the circle of flowers. Beside him, Impulse has since pulled out a gameboy. “Phantom, go in invisibly through the open door and report back. Try to see what their plans are.” 

“Oh, sure. One second.” Phantom finishes the crown and tries to put it on Bart’s head. It doesn’t quite fit over his mane of hair, but Phantom shrugs and leaves it sitting there anyway before going invisible. 

“Maybe I should shave my head again,” Bart says as his game character dies. 

He gets a resounding no in response. 

Half an hour later they have a very annoyed Green Lantern lecturing them about league jurisdiction and knowing when to call someone else. 

Apparently, the alien ship was just stopping to complete some maintenance, and did not appreciate any spying on them, and especially did not appreciate who did it. Green Lantern was more than happy to explain that Wonder Girl’s team is not really a part of the Justice League and he can help with their maintenance. They denied his help and left to find a place with less people in it. 

“-and you!” Green Lantern rounds on Phantom next, but Cassie knows none of them are really listening. Sure, they messed up by freaking out the visiting aliens, and yeah maybe they should have contacted the league about it, but they’ve dealt with stuff worse than this! It’s not Cassie’s fault she thought that this would have stuck to the formula. 

“Who even are you?” Green Lantern runs a hand through his black hair, stupid green gauntlets shining in the sunlight. “Do I need to call your mentor?” He frowns. “Or do they know you mess up alien technology by just being around it?” 

Phantom scoffs and rolls his eyes. “How was I supposed to know their tech would go all fuzzy when I came in?” 

“You wouldn’t have to know if you just stayed out of the spaceship!” 

“Hey!” Cassie cuts in. “Technically that was my call. It’s not all on Phantom.”

“I still could've been more careful,” Phantom says to her, ignoring Green Lantern as they argue about blame. 

“Cut it out for a second, okay?” Green Lantern puts a hand between them and they stop to glare at him. He pulls the hand back. “Look, can I just talk to one of your adults about this?” 

Robin glares. “We don’t need an adult. We have this under control.”

“Only because I’m here now.” 

“I’ll call my mentor,” Phantom says. Kon opens his mouth, most likely to offer to call Superman instead in hopes of a lighter sentence, but Bart covers his mouth, smiling like he knows something Cassie doesn’t. Tim and Anita share a look, and don’t intervene as Phantom pulls out a phone from his chest. 

It rings once before it’s picked up. Cassie can’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Kon’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “Hey, do you think you can pick me up? Green Lantern wants to talk to you.” Phantom looks Green Lantern up and down then says, “No, this one doesn’t have a cape.”

Phantom says goodbye after rattling off their coordinates, hangs up, and stares at Green Lantern in silence for a few seconds. 

And then a swirling mass of black seeps into the space next to Phantom. The end of a cane steps out of it, followed by a leg, then the rest of the immaculately dressed man holding the handle of the cane that’s shaped like a bird’s head. 

“Phantom,” The man says. His voice drips with condescension in only a way a british accent can, yet Phantom smiles up at him. The shadowy portal behind him disappears. “What, exactly, happened?”

“That’s the fucking Shade,” Anita hisses to Robin, who shrugs noncommittedly at her. Green Lantern seems to recognise him too, taking a step back and clenching his hand that holds his ring. 

“Well, the team and I were staking out this spaceship–super cool, by the way–and I went inside to check it out, but my presence messed with their tech–which was an accident–and they freaked out, so I freaked out, and then we kinda got into a little fight until Green Lantern came to mediate.”

“Hm. Is that right?” The Shade asks Green Lantern, who nods slowly, still anticipating an attack. “It seems like the problem’s fixed, then.”

“Well, yes, but–”

“And it does seem about time for these kids to get home, doesn't it?” The Shade pulls out an actual pocket watch, chain and all, from his suit pocket and takes his time in checking it. “I’ll see them home.” 

Shadows grow from behind the team, swirling until they become a giant, gaping maw that swallows them up and spits them out in a different forest, or maybe just a different part of the same forest. 

Either way, Cassie has to take a moment to make sure she doesn’t throw up from the sudden vertigo the shadow portal caused. 

The Shade looks at Phantom, and raises an eyebrow. “You can’t expect me to always bail you out.” 

Phantom shrugs, looking guilty. “I know. Thanks, Richard.”

Oh, so that’s who Richard is. Annoyingly, neither Tim or Bart look surprised by this revelation.

[succo-al-limone]

DC doodles for funzies

[fauvester]

something something seeing things through different eyes

[keferon]

…..SO. AHAHAHAHAH. I finished reading Mistakes on mistakes until (technically I finished chapter 68 which is the last one currently~)

What a ride OH MY fuckINg god

[hinamie]

all i have left

[artsymeeshee]

Forlorn

[crispycreambacon]

Jesus came back and he brought trans people with him. Rejoyce.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[thatsitso]

So I finished orv

[uncanny-tranny]

I recently had to do a project in one of my psych classes, and man, I knew that CBT was used for every little thing, but seeing over and over, "do CBT! CBT is the best for every mental illness!" was so jarring. I'm absolutely biased because of my own experiences, but I just don't think it's as universal a treatment model as it's touted.

If you didn't benefit from CBT, it's not because you're lazy or didn't try hard enough or lacked intelligence or foresight into your own needs. Frankly, it's a therapy model that (I think) shouldn't be the only readily-accessible model and among the only therapy models covered by insurance. Some of us should not be treated in a CBT model and that's okay. It's not a sign of poor character or unreasonable demands, and if you don't think it's a model that works for you, then it's your right to express that!

[hedgehog-moss]

as a "beginner" dipping g his toes into nonfiction but as someone who otherwise enjoys pretty much any genre (and as such is open to anything, from educational to biographical), what would you recommend?

Oh, that's vast! You are forcing me to cast a wide net and give a thousand suggestions... I'm going to limit myself to 3 ideas per category so I don't go overboard.

Nature / environment: Carl Safina's Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel; Paul Kingsnorth's Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays; Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss

Science / medicine: Holly Tucker's Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, Paul Lockhart's A Mathematician's Lament (I mostly enjoyed the first part in which he rants about the current state of maths education and says maths deserves better) or Carl Sagan's Cosmos (if I write "or" between two book recs it only counts as one)

Language: I liked Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages so much that I won't even nominate anyone else in this category. ... But I'll make up for it by allowing myself additional titles in the next one:

Politics / society / culture: Jodi Kantor's She Said, Frederik & Bastian Obermayer's The Panama Papers, Caroline Criado-Pérez's Invisible Women, Patrick Keefe's Empire of Pain, Michael Meyer's The Last Days of Old Beijing, Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

History: I'm realising that everything that comes to mind is horribly bleak: Jack London's The People of the Abyss, Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time, Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl... I've read some fun historical nonfiction in French but right now the only thing I can think of in English that's not depressing is Matthew Goodman's The Sun and the Moon, the subtitle of which is: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York.

About literature: Wisława Szymborska's Nonrequired Reading, Alexandra Johnson's The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life, Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night.

(I was going to include a philosophy section but I realised I p much exclusively read philosophy in French or Spanish, and it's usually recent stuff that's not been translated... But if you've never read philosophy I recommend Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, it's a novel about the history of philosophy so it straddles the line between fiction and nonfiction)

Biographies / memoirs: that's the majority of the nonfiction I read so it could be a whole post, but some I've really enjoyed are: Beryl Markham's West with the Night; Gerald Durrell's My Family & Other Animals; Fatema Mernissi's Dreams of Trespass, Ryszard Kapuściński's Travels with Herodotus, Mary S. Lovell's The Sisters (about the six Mitford sisters; if you enjoy it I'd recommend reading their correspondence next—Charlotte Mosley's "The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters")

Miscellaneous: Emmanuel Carrère's The Adversary; Alexandra Horowitz's On Looking. Currently I'm reading Joan Druett's Island of the Lost because it's nice to relativise your own problems in life by reminding yourself that at least you're not stuck on a subantarctic island having to bludgeon sea lions and eat your own crewmates for survival.

[kugisakiss]

as promised, the spy x fam parody AU

I had some fun thinking about this like 2 years ago and only made a couple of sketches at the time.. but then I started cleaning them up last month and before I knew it, it spiraled out of control to become this monstrosity. I can't help it, as you can all tell by now, I love coming up with scenarios to get all my little guys interacting with each other

some details i didn't put in:

the Kudou parents are absent like in the show

whatever is happening on Haibara's end is probably super messed up but I haven't thought of any of the details

Akai gets fancy tech stuff, like the voice changer, from Agasa. Agasa comes to help babysit Conan sometimes and he gives him all his little gadgets. Akai hasn't said anything about it but figures he could use it considering the amount of crime he comes across

the facility shinichi was in is like in the original story, it exists to research esp to create super soldiers which is why he knows everything he knows

Conan regularly eavesdrops on Akai and Rei's top secret phone calls which is how he learns their real names. He can't help it, he has really good hearing

Conan and Subaru have different last names because Conan thinks "Okiya" is lame and wants to keep the one he made up on the spot. Their story is that when Subaru and Conan's mother (Edogawa Fumiyo) married, they both kept their own last names and Conan was given Edogawa when he was born. They've kept it this way to "remember Conan's dead mother"