#My references keep duplicating themselves for no fucking reason

[newhappythoughts]

they should invent a mendeley that doesn't suck ass

[kalinara]

It’s Rip Hunter appreciation week!   

I admit, I thought about skipping it.  I’m not much of a fic writer (one a year has been my average) and there’s only so much meta you can write when you haven’t watched a show for three years or so.

But what the heck.  People do more with less.

So today’s prompt is “Time Wants to Happen.”

-

I know that Legends of Tomorrow is a time travel show, but I’ve always been disappointed at how disorganized they are in terms of portraying the effects of time travel and changes in the timeline.

Rip killing George Washington was a big deal.  But the team killing a Tokugawa Shogun ten years early (during the height of anti-Western exclusionism no less) had no effect at all!

A part of me assumes it’s just because the majority of the showrunners don’t give a shit about Japanese history.  But that’s the kind of thing that should change things.

Amaya’s village being saved brought Mallus forth (and wiped out the entirety of the Vixen tv show and I’m not completely okay with that), but apparently they killed of Spartacus recently and nothing happened?!

I’m not entirely certain about the latter part, because as mentioned, I haven’t been watching.

But it does remind me how one of my hopes for the Time Bureau, before it became a cardboard cut out obstacle for Sara and Ava’s grand romance, was that it might address some of these contradictions.

There are folks who STILL, to this day, refer to the Time Bureau as some kind of “betrayal” of the Legends.  This is infuriating for so many reasons, not the least of which being that the Legends were actually trapped at the end of Aruba/beginning of Aruba-con in a collapsed time anomaly, and only got out because Rip had created the Time Bureau and got them out.

The idea that Rip might have created an organization to handle the day to day management of time in a structured, orderly and most importantly ACCOUNTABLE fashion was a good one.  And if the show had thought about it, it would have been the perfect way to explain how the Legends can go around careening from event to event, fucking up history, without wiping themselves or civilization out entirely.

Tokugawa Iemitsu dies ten years early.  Oops.  But what if there’s someone who could recruit/hire a shapeshifter, or an android, or something like that to take the guy’s place so that history could stay on course for the next ten years.  Easy fix.

Heck, it could make the whole “I am Spartacus” idea darkly hilarious if they ended up replacing the prematurely dead guy with a duplicate.

There are so many ways that the show could have used the Time Bureau without interfering in the Legends’ unique mayhem.  

And there’s room for conflict, because sometimes bad shit happens.  And sometimes the Time Bureau will have to facilitate that because that’s how history is.  But sometimes there’s wiggle room.  This was something I thought the show did really well with Zari’s origin and the Helen of Troy episode.  I could imagine Rip, and other like minded individuals, working to find places where the timeline could bend or be nudged to allow more people to be saved, or more catastrophes to be avoided.  And perhaps sending in the Legends to bash it all into submission while keeping plausible deniability.

Missed opportunities, I guess.

But I suppose in the end, I think that’s what Rip’s probably doing now.  There’s no time bureau anymore, but Rip’s still out there.  (Comic Book Rule #1: no body, no death).  He had those pellets in Return of the Mack, so maybe he sets off the drive, freezes time with a pellet, slips out in Eobard Thawne’s old time sphere, and goes off to create a bunker in Arizona with a shit ton of chalkboards.

Every time the team does something like let Spartacus die much too early, I’m going to assume history doesn’t implode because Rip fixed it afterward.  It works for me.

[dabistits]

while reading your posts, i always feel that you’re really well rounded and good at character analysis and just articulating your feelings and opinions towards stories in general. it’s something that i’m trying to get better at, and something that i admire you for, so i was wondering if you had any pointers or tips regarding developing analysis skills? thank you!

first of all, thank you so much!!😭😭 i’m so glad you enjoy my stuff and it gives me a lot of joy to know that this, like, inspires people or w/e fkdkgkf

i’m putting everything below a cut bcs it’s long as fuck and kind of disorganized. i wrote some parts half-asleep, so they might be rambly or stating the obvious or whatever, but you know, pick and choose what’s helpful to you! this probably isn’t exhaustive (and i kinda focused in on the ‘character analysis’ part, bcs otherwise there’s… so much), and if anything’s unclear or if you want more elaboration on sth just let me know!

the basics:

write!! it doesn’t matter what you write, it can meta, fanfic, rp, whatever, but as long as you write about this character you’ll be forced to articulate your thoughts; by extension that means you’ll have to gather evidence and make a convincing case for your portrayal. even if you’re writing fic or rp i think you should have a strong reference of where your characterization is coming from - i used to rp at places that required applications, so that would force me to think about my character’s personality and put it into words. i think most people are helped by the actual process of writing itself also, so don’t let lack of confidence stop you if you’re someone who tends to do that: you might wind up happier with your ideas after having written something than before (and you can aaalways edit).

read!! read other people’s analyses, not necessarily just about the character you have in mind, but about other characters, other stories, other genres, etc. what kinds of things do they point out to support their argument? what patterns are they picking up on? do you agree/disagree? what’s a new thought they’ve introduced to you? what are things they do that you particularly like? can you replicate that idea/technique in your own reading? there are so many times when i’ve read another person’s analysis and made a note to be more aware of [a certain thing] in the future, so that’s what helps me change and build and incorporate new stuff into the way i think about stories.

try to keep an ongoing chronicle of your thoughts. this could 100% be a personal thing, but i actually started to think and absorb a lot more (especially about small things) after i started this blog. being here meant that not only was i keeping up with chapter releases bcs of other fans, but i was also regularly writing about my impressions. reading and discussing chapter by chapter forced me to read & process everything in smaller increments, which let me take in more details, and gave more time for my thoughts and feelings to develop. in contrast, when i binge-read, i actually miss a lot of details and a lot of finer points of the storyline because i’m just trying to get from one plot point to the next.

stick close to canon. this is definitely subjective, but since this is also partially about how i approach character interpretation, i’ll toss this in. i personally don’t stray too far from what’s shown to me in-text, and i revisit canon a lot to establish a “baseline” characterization rather than building off of my own headcanons. this has pros and cons: for example, i feel like i don’t overstate things compared to their canon importance, and i feel like i don’t get too carried away with embellishing character traits; however, it also holds me back from theorizing unless there’s a ton of evidence in front of me, and i can be overcautious when it comes to approaching narrative hints. sometimes i do talk about my headcanons, but even then i usually point out whether or not it’s substantiated, because i do think the line between headcanon and canon gets muddled a lot in fandom discussion.

think about a character’s role in the story. so, we know stories have plots, a start and an end, and messages and themes. all characters function within that framework, they advance us from point a to point b, the carry the moral of the story. i think these are aspects that are important to include in your character analysis; while sure, there’s already plenty to analyse about the LOV as self-contained characters, but they also seem more important, more interesting, and more complex when you take them into the context of the larger story (how and why their relationships are built, what they mean as a part of man vs society conflict, etc.). not only does it inform you about the character (what the author is trying to say through them, what direction the author might push them in), it can also tell you a lot about the overall structure and themes of the story itself.

authors include everything for a reason. when you’re creating something from scratch, you have to actively decide what you include. the way someone’s room looks doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but the author decided to design their room that way based off something—most likely a character’s interests, tastes, and preferences. while mina’s dorm room looking a certain way might not mean she has an old-fashioned personality, it can maybe tell you that she has a more retro taste and aesthetic. this can apply to “big” things too, like one of tomura’s severed hands still surviving the chaos. hori chose to have it survive rather than be decayed like everything else, so of course the question is why?

… but they are imperfect. creators also do make choices out of plot convenience, because of their own biases, or sometimes they just forget (as hori has done before, such as twice duplicating himiko in the overhaul arc and then saying he doesn’t know her measurements for the mla arc). so it can sometimes also be assumed that a detail was included/excluded because of something on the creator’s end, rather than because of it necessarily being symbolic or important to the characters (e.g. a character not being able to make it to a fight might be because their skills are too useful and could resolve the plot too easily, not because them getting sidetracked is important in itself; a female character losing a fight she should have won could be an issue of the creator’s misogyny). so these are aspects you can keep in mind as well when you’re evaluating characterization!

tendencies i see people fall into:

don’t take everything characters say at face value. characters can and do lie. they can be sarcastic. they can be manipulative. they can be deluding themselves. they can even be mistaken! there’s a reason why they’re expressing themselves that way, and sometimes you can gain more by actually investigating that contradiction rather than just assuming they mean what they say.

allow characters to change! they will change in canon, so don’t be too beholden to their early characterization if you’re trying to analyze or write them from a later point in the timeline. again, this seems intuitive, but i see a lot of people who still appear to draw on tomura’s early character portrayal by making him irritable towards the LOV, but he’s much more recently allowed himself to be physically pushed around by some of them without really reacting in any way.

embrace subtlety. a lot of people in their fanfic just see one aspect of a character and blow it up to make it their only characterization. like, tomura is irritable, himiko is obsessed with blood, any villain can be written as a sadistic killer hellbent on annihilation, etc. while having a couple personality traits come through strongly can help the character have a unique personality and voice, too much will make them appear one-note. it’s just as important to recognize moments when characters are being calm and focused and articulate, as much as their most dramatic moments. for example, a lot of writers don’t seem to notice that tomura doesn’t snap at his allies, tends to answer their questions evenly, and never lashes out at them; that’s because these moments are very understated in the manga. hori doesn’t point a huge arrow at them, and he shouldn’t have to! it’s one of those very subtle ways to show a character’s growth. so, pay attention to those moments, and pay attention to what’s not being done as much as what is.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 233: At Least He Has Some Spares

Previously on BnHA: Twice made a duplicate League of Villains to take on Re-Destro. Re-Destro took this in stride and very calmly inflated his left fucking arm and slapped the whole lot of them so hard that most of them literally died. But the clone Shigaraki survived somehow and scuffled with RD for a bit while RD told him the story of how his great-great-granddad was born with a quirk and his mom was like “please be kind to my baby” and society was like “nah” and then they killed her too just for good measure. Anyway so this was of course the original Destro’s Origin Story, and his mother later on became a kind of martyr figure once society began rethinking their whole outlook on the whole superpower thing, and they even borrowed the term “quirk” from her as a way of trying to honor her I guess. But Destro and his descendants weren’t happy with the fact that quirks are still regulated and ~suppressed~ and blah blah blah, so I guess in RD’s mind this gives him justification to be a massive dick and wantonly murder people left and right. It’s all very political and complicated. Anyway, so in the end the Actual Tomura came over to RD’s tower and used his quirk and the tower came crumbling down, and now Tomura and Re-Destro are gonna fight.

Today on BnHA: We jump around Deika City getting updates on the rest of the League. Twice is currently trying to save Toga while Skeptic sneaks up on them both. Spinner is duking it out with Hanabata and his squad of Dudes With Spikes All Over Them And Stuff. We learn that Spinner’s quirk really is just “Lizard Quirk. That’s It. That’s The Quirk”, which, fine, whatever then. Dabi and Blue Bunny and Compress are off somewhere, presumably. Slidin’ Go is directing traffic and about to be flattened by Gigantomachia (or so we can hope). Giran is running off with one of the clone Twices (“running off” as in to safety, as opposed to them getting married or something. although). And Tomura is having his hand ripped off by a Hulkified Re-Destro and his newly revealed Stress quirk! Just, plucked right the fuck off, like a flower petal. It’s pretty horrific! And meanwhile Horikoshi is dipping out to go take an honestly well-deserved vacation, so there won’t be a new chapter next week. So basically just good news all around. Anyhow, so Tomura seems to have his hands full here and it may be time for him to hand in the towel and hand things off to Machia before things get out of hand even more well anyways enjoy the chapter guys.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

so once again I got an Intriguing Anonymous Ask, but I only skimmed it because it seemed to delve into some of the details of the chapter, albeit in a very vague way that probably didn’t actually reveal anything. but one thing I did pick up on was that there may possibly be a break after this week’s chapter? if so I will cry but then I’ll get over it I GUESS

(ETA: well enjoy your hiatus then Horikoshi you knave.)

anyway so let’s get into it

quick observation before I actually start reading the chapter itself -- so apparently the title is “Bright Future”? correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we already had a chapter with that same title though. chapter 161, also known as the Nighteye Fucking Dies chapter. is the kanji slightly different or something, perhaps? if not that is odd

(ETA: so after reading the chapter, serious question: is this Horikoshi’s idea of a joke, or. ...

but yeah, the kanji is different. or rather, this chapter’s title isn’t written in kanji at all, but in katakana, whereas 161 was written in kanji like normal. as for the why of it, though, your guess is as good as mine. right now “mangaka has a fucked-up sense of humor” is basically at the top of my reasons list.)

anyways, clicking to the actual chapter now, and... oh wow

okay I think I mentioned the movie The Island a few recaps back, and my sincere apologies to everyone for making repeated references to a typically dumb and explosion-y Michael Bay movie where Ewan McGregor tries and fails to speak in an American accent and everything explodes for no reason and the protagonists cause so much collateral damage while being hunted down by the bad guys that you almost start to wonder if it wouldn’t actually be better for everyone if they did just die. but anyway, so I’m sorry to keep coming back to this movie, but -- and spoiler alert for a 14-year-old Michael Bay film you guys -- the plot is basically that scientists figured out how to clone people, and so Rich People immediately proceeded to make clones of themselves to keep for spare parts so that if they ever needed organ donors or the like, they’d have a perfect match available

and anyway, so you can see the connection here, right? basically this is a super-pragmatic application of Twice’s quirk, and I have to applaud the logic and ingenuity, but also bro that’s kind of a fucked-up thing to do though, sob. let’s just make a spare Toga so we can immediately harvest her blood, oh boy. though in fairness it is Toga, so maybe she won’t mind since Harvesting Blood is like her thing

also can we take a moment to appreciate how thoroughly wrecked this Skeptic!Puppet!Twice is, though. the one that’s just lying there dead. like, his leg’s all bent the wrong way and he no longer has a face and I fucking can’t stop staring at it though. I feel better knowing that it wasn’t actually a real person because that’s seriously all kinds of fucked up

anyway now the Twice clones are arguing over who gets to measure Toga. and Horikoshi has honestly built up a lot of goodwill with me over the course of this Mineta-less arc filled with hot Girans and LoV character development, but all the same he’d better watch himself though, because all of that could be gone just like that in an instant if he tries to get cute! so don’t push it dude

(ETA: and not to harp on this or anything, but Twice did clone Toga back during the My Basement Academia arc (in chapter 147), so there wasn’t really a need for this scene to begin with. but whatever, he didn’t really go overboard at least.)

okay good, actual!Twice (? is he the real one?? he’s the only one without a mask and he’s not using his arms so I think it’s him, at any rate) is shouting at the others to get their shit together

Twice Status: Still Hot. wow, and barely two seconds after I made that remark about Horikoshi needing to focus up. should I take my own advice perhaps. eh

oh my god

nooooo now I’m actually really upset that one of them’s gonna get sacrificed for the other! noooo Toga

and now we’re getting additional background information on Twice’s quirk, specifically about the fact that his clones’ appearances and personalities/memories are based on the last time the clone target was measured and the last time Twice saw said target, respectively. makes sense. so anyway because of that the clone Toga is also all beat up

friendly reminder that Toga is only seventeen and still just a kid, albeit a freaky sort of horror movie-type kid. but anyway, so I’m feeling really fucking protective of her though, and I need them to hurry up and save her already!

oh my god

yes, Dabi is the poster boy for great plastic surgery results. staples left in and everything. then again I don’t know how bad off he looked before, though. we still don’t actually know what the original injury was, aside from it obviously having something to do with the whole “his quirk fucking burns him from the inside out” thing we recently learned. you know what might help with that, Horikoshi? a flashback, omg

yuh oh

gonna go out on a limb here and guess that this is Skeptic coming to fix his screw-up before Re-Destro snaps his neck like so many Mitsubishis. or whatever that damn mouse’s name was. Miyashita?? actually I think that was it lol

anyways so let’s now turn the page and confirm if it actually is Skeptic

...confirmed

also, holy shit. just, holy shit to everything. that freaky close-up of the puppets’ faces; that blobby image of one of the puppets being formed; Skeptic’s crazy eyes in the bottom panel; him screaming I HAVEN’T FAILED!!! over and over again, etcetera. just, everything. good lord

and now we’re cutting somewhere else. looks like it’s Spinner and a bunch of the clone Twices dealing with Hanabata’s over-inspired lackeys

Spinner what is your quirk

okay so as he’s fighting he’s doing that shounen thing where he uses his keen observational skills to come up with a strategy on the fly

yes, please feel free to take him out! he’s annoying and he hasn’t done anything interesting, so really he’s just dead weight as far as this arc goes. feel free to use your quirk, too, buddy. if you even have one, holy shit. Horikoshi’s probably keeping it safe in the same place as Kacchan’s hero name

anyway so now he’s fighting his way through the waves of redshirts and trying to reach Hanabata’s van

he’s thinking that his job is to ��lighten Shigaraki’s burden, if only a little”

awww. League of Loyal Bastards. I can’t believe there was ever a question of you possibly betraying these guys, Spinner. I’m sorry for doubting you, guy

Hanabata seems worryingly unconcerned, though

who the hell wears their watch on their right hand? what time is it, Hanabata? it’s time for you to fucking die already that’s what

-- oh

so it’s some kind of Magic Quirk Watch then, eh. should have figured as much

also, “A MAN WITH A WEAK SUPERPOWER SUCH AS YOURSELF” oh? please do tell us more about this quirk! also how is it that you of all people know Spinner’s quirk. Giran’s intel, I guess? I’m suddenly really annoyed that the Liberation Army apparently knows more about the LoV than we do. bastards

anyway so now Hanabata’s own quirk is being revealed, so I guess let’s see what that’s all about

okay so this is exactly what we all thought it was based on what we’ve seen of him so far. so I guess this weird mask is basically just a big microphone thing. imagine if his and Mic’s quirks were combined

at any rate if it’s not clear, I really couldn’t give two farts about Hanabata or his quirk and I just want to see Spinner take him out, and then have Gigantomachia show up and save Toga and Twice, and see Tomura kick RD’s ass. oh and Dabi still needs to beat up Rita’s Italian Ice too, I guess

(ETA: okay but Horikoshi would it really be too much to ask for at least one of these things to actually happen oh my god. my poor villain children.)

-- OH MY GOD

EVERYONE SHUT UP SPINNER’S QUIRK IS FINALLY BEING REVEALED AHHHH

lmao was I too invested in this perhaps. all this time and all this mystery and it really does end up being some little lizard quirk that lets him cling to walls? and this is how it’s revealed of all ways? he doesn’t even get an official Quirk Reveal Box?

I mean, this can’t possibly be it. he’s gonna do something badass and unexpected, and then we’ll get his Quirk Box and we’ll all be like, “OH SHIT! SPINNER!” and so forth. right??

(ETA: I seriously can’t decide if this will actually be the case, or if this is another Sports Festival scenario where I’m firmly expecting the typical shounen thing and Horikoshi has something else planned entirely.)

wow

as opposed to you? your power is literally just “I can get stupid people all hyped up.” it’s probably given you an overinflated sense of your own importance, and I can’t wait for you to get one-upped by this lil lizard boy with his ninja turtles costume and the tactical knife he bought on Amazon

oh shit lol

so I guess that’s as good a way as any of syncing up all of this action to one timeline again

heh Hanabata’s panicking a bit

I’m enjoying this, ngl

oh shit!

this motherfucker really popped through a magic quirk hole in the wall and grabbed onto Spinner and suddenly got all spiny just like that oh shit

AHHH

SOMEONE HELP OUR BOY, HE’S BEING PORCUPINED BY FUCKING REDSHIRTS. WHAT IS THIS

now Hanabata’s directing all of the remaining cannon fodder to go and help Re-Destro. well at least that’ll get some of them off of Spinner’s back

YESSSSSSS

GET HIM SPINNER GO FOR THE JUGULAR!!

AHHH SPINNER FLASHBACKS YESSSSS, THE MY FLASHBACKS ACADEMIA ARC CONTINUES

I’ve suddenly been struck by the urgent need to go do my dishes from last night omg. Spinner would it kill you to take the fucking trash out at least

oh shit you guys he’s making a speech!

IT’S HAPPENNIIIIIIING. go, Spinner! speech! and then kick some ass! and then Quirk Reveal Box and “OH SHIT! SPINNER!” just like we planned!!

sob why am I empathizing with this guy who’s getting inspired by Stain and then by Tomura’s “let’s destroy everything! :)” rant of all things. what has this arc done to me. Spinner I can’t relate to you at all omg. but, just like every other member of the League of Villains, at your core you’re really just someone who was searching for a place to belong, and damned if that’s not the most quintessentially human struggle of all

so to sum, you sure picked some questionable role models there but I support you, kid

sure Horikoshi, go ahead and just fling Spinner’s super-weak and boring quirk in my fucking face then! lol okay I get it! it was never meant to be some big reveal to wow us all at a dramatic moment; the whole point is that he’s utterly unremarkable, and it doesn’t matter because despite what the MLA believes, quirks don’t define who a person is. all right, all right. that’s cool then

no you dingus he’s trying to say that even if he doesn’t have a big flashy quirk, y’all ain’t shit either and he’s still going to kick your ass

-- OH SHIT YOU GUYS!!

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM TO ADVISE YOU ALL THAT OUR HANDSOME BOY GIRAN SURVIVED THE TOWER FALL AND IS FINE AND DANDY! and still handsome! so we all can rest easy now on that account, thank god

omg omg omg

Tomura VS Re-Destro hype intensifies!!

also lmao because I genuinely think he’s asking him for real because he can’t quite sort out reality from his sleep-deprived hallucinations right now

or maybe that shouldn’t be “lmao” on my part, because that’s actually a legitimately concerning thing, there. but I can’t help it guys, he’s so tired and fully and entirely out of fucks, and RD is so fucking screwed and doesn’t even know it and it’s going to be so goddamn satisfying I can’t fucking wait

anyways, no, Tomura. he was not. but he’s apparently got some sort of Hulk quirk. so you just do your best and you sic your own Hulk on him then if need be

yessss he’s talking trash, yes, Tomura!! you’re doing great!!

IT PROBABLY FEELS BAD! I BET! HAHAHA. SUCK IT

LOOK AT THIS YOU GUYS OMG

ranged attacks and everything, now! I wonder if he’s always had this sort of capability and we’ve just never seen it before, or if this is another new development. probably the latter. those six weeks of training really leveled him up

wow even his fucking shoes are disintegrating now

so GiranTwice are getting the fuck out of Dodge, and Giran’s right arm just sort of ends in this big mess of bandages omg

don’t worry Giran, Twice is gonna get Dabi’s plastic surgeon on the job. you will be fine

holy shit you guys would you look at this fucking shounen bullshit

I’m starting to get an inkling that this will be the kind of fight that’s going to look amazing in anime form, but will basically just be a lot of flying rocks and smashing panels in manga form. and I’m prepared for that if that is indeed the case! I have not forgotten what genre this actually is, and that this is still a manga where the main character’s attacks all end in “SMASH!!!”, and every so often we get to a point where the characters who are at the center of the current conflict just have to punch it out. so I’m not going to complain

but I do hope that won’t be all there is to this, though. and ngl, I have higher expectations for BnHA’s fights than for any other manga’s fights, and I’m still expecting a few twists here

(ETA: oh lord I should just learn to keep my fucking mouth shut.)

oh shit

poor Spinner. fucking Re-Destro gets a Quirk Reveal Box before he does

also it does seem to be a Hulk quirk then, huh. so it’s safe to say that once Gigantomachia shows up and they hash things out, there won’t really be a town here afterwards. like, this entire city is about to be straight up wiped off the map. that’s lowkey terrifying to think about

-- HEY WHAT THE

(ETA: sob he looks so shocked. that’s right Tomura, it’s the hard knocks path to redemption for you too, buddy boy. probably when you go talk to Ujiko to get it patched up after the arc is over it’ll trigger some more character development somehow. just, my point is that you are an important character in a shounen manga, and so, unlike people in real life, you at least can be somewhat assured that your pain is probably happening for a reason.)

fuckING -- IS THAT REALLY -- DID THEY JUST

DID THIS MOTHERFUCKING INKBLOT HULK MAN REALLY JUST PINCH MY BOY’S HANDS BETWEEN HIS GIANT THUMB AND INDEX FINGER AND JUST FUCKING PLUCK HIS FUCKING FINGERS OFF HOLY GODDAMN FUCK

DID HE DO THAT TO GIRAN. IS THAT WHAT HE FUCKING DID TO GIRAN I’M ABOUT TO FUCKING -- I CAN’T --

IS THIS FUCKING ATTACK ON TITAN, GODDAMN!? WHAT THE WHY

THERE REALLY IS A HIATUS SOB I CAN’T. I HOPE HE HAS A GOOD TIME ON HIS VACATION OR WHATEVER, THEN!! BE THAT WAY! I KNOW YOU’RE A HUMAN BEING AND ENTITLED TO TAKE SOME TIME OFF AND GET SOME GODDAMN SLEEP AND GO TO CONVENTIONS OR WHATEVER, BUT I’M ALSO ONLY HUMAN, AND WHEN YOU TAKE MY WEEKLY FIX AWAY WITH NO PRIOR NOTICE, I’M GOING TO GET CRANKY ABOUT IT. I CAN’T HELP IT OKAY

GOD DAMN IT

fuck

sob. okay sorry guys, I’m done being dramatic now. so let’s go back and finish up those last four panels that I haven’t actually read yet orz

lol there already practically isn’t a town there anymore. Giganto you better hurry up and come finish it off. this asshole is out here playing the most vicious game of eenie meenie miney moe the world has ever seen with your boss’s hands and it’s very upsetting

who the fuck is this

lmao what. someone’s actually trying to visit the city? turn your van around, pal. we are closed for business for real here

and then our last two panels are Slidin’ Go being all punchable, and then getting shaken up by a sudden earthquake omg

I WONDER WHAT THAT COULD BE omg. :) :’D

well shit. so! 

a wild Gigantomachia approaches

Slidin’ Go is living on borrowed time presumably (good riddance)

Skeptic is trying to harass Twice again while he’s busy trying to save poor Toga’s life, like excuse you dude, no, please fuck off

Dabi is currently MIA and still fighting Dippin’ Dots while trying to keep his organs from getting any more roasted. maybe a flashback would help you there, Dabi. I don’t know how, but it couldn’t hurt, surely. I promise I have no ulterior motives in suggesting this

Spinner is trying to work out how to score a really satisfying victory to show us all that Quirks Aren’t Everything

Giran and his bandaged arm are running off to safety with Twice, which is the only thing that really matters in the end here

and Shigaraki Tomura has just had his own hand Luke Skywalkered in the manga’s latest and greatest instance of Cruelty Against Limbs. but at least this presumably means that he himself is about to get a hell of a lot hotter if Giran and Twice are anything to go by

so yeah. a lotta stuff going on. so really it’s the perfect time for a hiatus. lol

well, friends. I’ll see you all in two weeks I guess. hopefully someone will lend Tomura a hand. ba dum crash

[sinceileftyoublog]

Wild Pink Interview: 99% Literal

Photo by Hayden Sitomer

BY JORDAN MAINZER

One of the breakout indie rock albums of 2018 came from Wild Pink, the New York band led by John Ross that found success the same way The War on Drugs did: embracing the heartland. You wouldn’t necessarily think of rural America when you think of Brooklyn, let alone modern-day Philly. But Ross keeps both his music and his real stories broad enough to apply anywhere. At first a punk band who released two EPs in 2015, Wild Pink dropped their self-titled debut last year. Right then, Ross immediately started writing what would become Yolk in the Fur. At the same time, he was exploring ambient music with his solo project Eerie Gaits, something that added to the sonic expanse of Yolk. (EG released a split single with Dondadi in April.)

When I spoke to Ross a few months ago over the phone, he was at home in Brooklyn, having just played the record release show for Yolk in the Fur. (They played 7 of the 10 songs, still figuring out how to duplicate the remaining 3 due to their additional production.) Two nights ago, they started a tour with label mates Restorations; they play Empty Bottle Saturday night along with Cleveland’s Signals Midwest. If you’ve seen Wild Pink before, they may be a bit different this time around, and not just because of their new songs. They’ve added a keyboard player, and when playing in NYC, a pedal steel player.

Read my conversation with Ross below.

Since I Left You: Beyond what might be obvious to the listener, how is Yolk in the Fur unique as compared to the debut or anything else you’ve released?

John Ross: Man, I don’t know. I feel like in the past, I didn’t spend as much time on the songs. Each song on this record got its fair share of time.

SILY: What was the recording process like?

JR: We went with Justin [Pizzoferrato] of Sonelab in Western Mass. We did two days with him. There are a few songs I started recording at home, but then I brought it to Justin.

SILY: What influenced some of the sonic shifts from the debut--increased use of synthesizers, space, etc.?

JR: I think I just wanted it to sound bigger. After that first record came out, I started using synthesizers on my solo project Eerie Gaits. So I wanted to incorporate them into these songs.

SILY: Did doing Eerie Gaits, apart from having synthesizers at your disposal, have an influence on the aesthetic of Yolk in the Fur?

JR: Absolutely. I love ambient music. I think Yolk in the Fur has ambient music in its DNA. Everything that I do has some roots in that world for sure.

SILY: Lyrically, the new record has quite a bit of a sense of time and place. There are a lot of specific references to specific places and things. To what extent are they based on events or people, or are they based more on ideas or feelings?

JR: It’s all pretty literal. Like 99% literal. So every time there’s a time and place, it’s nonfiction. Or at least coming from an actual time and place. Maybe there’s some liberties taken here and there.

SILY: How do you decide what stories you want to tell?

JR: I don’t know. It becomes clearer when you spend time with an idea, whether or not it’s gonna make it or not. It kinds of becomes clearer, if that makes sense.

SILY: What about the title track made you want to name the album after it? Or did that come in reverse?

JR: The album title came after the title track. The lyrics around the title are a good representation of what I think the record is about.

SILY: A lot of lines are broad and sweeping and suggest a long period of time, and it fits with nostalgic, expansive music. Can you talk about the interplay between the music and the lyrics?

JR: It’s not anything I’m aware of doing. I gravitate towards and dig emotional music. Not emo, but emotional music. Sweeping, romantic stuff. It’s just what I enjoy listening to. That’s how the songs end up.

I like cinematic music. My music, to me, has a cinematic quality, and the lyrics are pretty narrative and lend themselves to a cinematic feeling.

SILY: Have you ever written a film score?

JR: Yeah. I’ve done the music for some short films and a feature film several years ago. I write a lot of commercial music. So putting music to video is something I enjoy doing.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

JR: We knew that we wanted to have the same format as the first record. It’s the same dimensions, just a variation in the color and image. It’s an image from NASA of the Kuwaiti oil fires of 1991. In the same way I don’t exactly know why “Yolk in the Fur” is about knowing when you need to stand up and be tough, that image is just kind of looking at a huge representation of how shitty humanity can be. The striking image, at first you might not even be able to tell what it is, then when you do know, you’re like, “Oh fuck. There’s something seriously wrong with people who would do that to the planet.”

SILY: The shape of it almost looks like the Grim Reaper.

JR: Oh, cool! My opinion, at first glance, it looks beautiful, but when you study it more, you see the horror in it, which is a cool dichotomy.

SILY: A lot has been written about the difference in tone between your first two records, this one a bit more optimistic. How would you say that the new record balances between a sense of acceptance about the way things are and will always be and a yearning to make things better?

JR: I think the record is definitely more optimistic. I think the first record is loosely about how shitty things are in the world today. This record is definitely about that as well, but also appreciating people in your life and still trying to see some optimism in the world. There are a few songs on there about seeing something mundane that has some beauty in it. 

SILY: What gives you optimism on a daily basis?

JR: I love working on music every day. That’s huge. Honestly, my dog.

SILY: Animals may be less intelligent than us, but you never question their innate goodness.

JR: They’re pure.

SILY: Do you still identify with the aesthetic of your early material that’s a bit more punk and raw?

JR: No, but as soon as something’s released, you kind of just move on. Actually, for some reason, I just listened to the Good Life songs for the first time in 2 or 3 years, and it sounded like a totally different band. But I’m glad it started there. I’m glad it’s where it is now, too. I don’t really listen to a ton of punk music.

SILY: What's next for you?

JR: I’m writing another record right now, so I hope to start recording it at the end of this year or early next year at the latest. I’m also working on another Eerie Gaits record.

SILY: Do you have any idea what shape either of those records are going to take?

JR: I have some ideas--I don’t want to say too much and paint myself into a corner--but I have some rough ideas. I am writing quite a bit.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

JR: Ken Burns’ Vietnam. I’m really enjoying the new Middle Kids record. I always like Bruce Springsteen. A lot of ambient music. I also just found this Ethiopian jazz guy I’ve been really liking, Mulatu Astatke.

Wild Pink & Restorations tour dates:

10/11 - Columbus, OH at Big Room Bar w/ Signals Midwest 10/12 - Cleveland, OH at Grog Shop (Signals Midwest's 10-Year Anniversary Party) 10/13 - Chicago, IL at The Empty Bottle w/ Signals Midwest 10/14 - Milwaukee, WI at Cactus Club 10/16 - Hamtramck, MI at The Sanctuary 10/17 - Toronto, ON at The Garrison 10/18 - Buffalo, NY at Rec Room 10/19 - Asbury Park, NJ at Asbury Park Brewery 10/20 - Brooklyn, NY at Rough Trade 10/21 - Philadelphia, PA at The First Unitarian Church

[mst3kproject]

K18: The Million Eyes of Su-Muru

I've never seen this one as an episode, mostly because I can't find the damn thing, even on YouTube.  The Wiki has a capture of the title card, but it looks terrible – I did my best to clean it up in photoshop, but the result was still so ugly that I didn't want it on my blog.  Instead of the MST3K version with the English title and the silhouettes, you guys get this one captured from a bootleg copy with the German title: Sumuru – die Tochter des Satans.

The dastardly Su-Muru has a plan!  I'm... not totally sure what that plan is.  It might involve having her agents marry the most powerful men in the world so they can run everything behind the scenes, or she might just plan to kill all the men and continue the human race by cloning.  I guess one could be a stop on the way to the other.  Her plan does not appear to involve freezing the world's oceans, so at least she's more practical than Fu Manchu.  However she gets there, the desired end result will be “a world of peace and beauty, ruled by women.”  Given that men have had thousands of years to rule the world and this place is still a fucking mess, she might actually have something there.

However, she has reckoned without smug jerk Nick West and his idiot friend Tommy Carter.  They are drawn into Su-Muru's web of deceit through a ridiculously convoluted series of events that end in West being taken to her private island near Hong Kong and blackmailed into facilitating the assassination of the lecherous Boong, President of Sino-Asia – I didn't write the movie, okay?  The assassin chickens out and escapes, leaving West to take the blame for her failure.  His only hope is that Carter can bring the military in for an all-out assault on Su-Muru's fortress of evil.  Or for one of the women to decide she'd rather fuck him before she kills him.  Or for a volcanic eruption.  How about all three? All three is good!

The tone of this movie is really weird.  Su-Muru and her followers seem to behave as if they're in a serious movie, even if some of what's going on – like their petrification guns – is ridiculous. West and Carter, on the other hand, apear to think they're in a comedy, even when they're finding a corpse in their hotel room.  Both men crack jokes that occasionally poke at the fourth wall, to the point where the Wiki claims Joel had to chastise the film for riffing itself.  It all feels like the guys aren't taking the threat to world security very seriously, and makes it very hard to be interested in their fates when they're so flippant about everything.  The Million Eyes of Su-Muru really needed to pick a genre, either spy thriller or self-aware comedy, and stick to it.

It also needed to pick a plot.  It was quite difficult to write that summary, because most of the time I had very little idea what was going on.  The movie was written by Sax Rohmer and produced by Harry Allen Towers, just like The Castle of Fu Manchu... was confusion just a feature of one or the other's work, or of both in concert?  The entire first half of the story seems completely irrelevant to what eventually turns out to be the main conflict, and a lot of it has nothing to do even with anything else in the first half.  Take the opening, for example, in which the heirs of the 'richest man in the world' are killed at their father's funeral.  What's that got to do with anything?  Nothing at all.

What about the bikini girl who gets drowned on the beach?  She must be the one Su-Muru was talking about in the previous scene, who has been blacklisted by the sisterhood for falling in love with a man. Is she the same person as Colonel Medika's murdered secretary? Neither he nor President Boong seem particularly upset about her death – Medika talks about it mostly in terms of the threat he believes it represents to Boong himself.  If either of them had been her lover, surely they'd show more grief.  Maybe she wasn't the same person... but in that case, why were we shown her murder if it's not related to what we see later?

Then we finally get something reasonably relevant, as West follows the ambulance that has kidnapped Colonel Medika.  Su-Muru's agents at the hospital try to drug and kidnap West as well, but he gets rescued off-screen and we learn almost nothing from the entire incident. There's no sense of this all figuring into somebody's master plan. It's more as if the movie has two or three false starts before it finally figures out that it's going to be about the assassination attempt on Boong.

But who, exactly, is President Boong?  Su-Muru wants him dead because he's a womanizer who goes through girls like he goes through cigarettes, never keeping a single one around long enough to let her influence him.  That actually makes more sense than most things in this movie, but we don't know anything much about Boong or his imaginary country, so his life or death don't mean anything to us.  You'd think we would at least find out what his policies are, since that's what would matter to Su-Muru, but we don’t.  I'm honestly not even sure if we're supposed to like him – I think he's supposed to be 'charmingly eccentric in a foreigny kind of way' but the way Klaus Kinski plays him teeters on the edge of 'camp gay'.

I'm also somewhat confused about whether Boong and Su-Maru are supposed to be East Asian.  Boong is played by a German actor in some kind of unflattering brown makeup, while Su-Muru is blue-eyed Shirley Eaton without even that.  I started to write something here about how 'Su-Muru' is probably not her real name anyway, but then I realized I was thinking about this way harder than the stupid movie deserves. As in Castle of Fu Manchu, the plot would have been racist regardless of the casting, so it's probably not worth the headache.

If we're gonna talk about actors and characters, we have to come eventually to our so-called hero, Nick West.  Apparently no matter what movie George Nader was in, he always played the same oily misogynist.  Roy in Robot Monster?  “You're so bossy you ought to be milked before you go home at night!”  Glenn in The Human Duplicators? “Here's one I wouldn't mind having under surveillance!”  And now here he is in The Million Eyes of Su-Muru. “I'll take twelve of each!”  Was he just typecast that way, or was he actually a smarmy asshole in real life?

While Boong is played kind of gay, George Nader actually was gay, which you'd think would be an advantage when trying to take down a female supervillain who works by seduction.  Too bad The Million Eyes of Su-Muru portrays a world in which heterosexuality is the only option.  In a movie so steeped in the male gaze you might expect there to be a few hints of lesbianism even if only for eye candy, but there's nothing.  Su-Muru monologues about how woman's only weakness is her susceptibility to falling in love with men.  Another woman claims she cannot resist 'the physical presence of a man' and apparently she means it, because despite the fact that she caught West sneaking into Su-Muru's compound, she makes out with him rather than shooting him or turning him in.  I think that's supposed to be a joke, but I'm not so certain about the bit where Su-Muru also has sex with West, and claims that as a woman she needs to be dominated.

All this implies that a woman's instinct is to bow to male authority, at least sexually, and that they are incapable of resisting the temptation to do so when it is offered.  On more than one occasion West or Carter's life is saved when a woman who hasn't seen a man in months just can't keep herself from jumping his bones before killing him.  Imagine the trouble Su-Muru could have saved herself if she'd just issued vibrators to her all-woman army! This also, of course, makes the women out to be indiscriminate, willing to sleep with any man they come across – but I'm gonna give the movie a pass on that because all the men are the same way. West, Carter, and Boong each have multiple partners over the course of the story, and all are willing to sleep with women they know are their enemies, because boobies.

I have to say, for living on an island where there are no men, Su-Muru's agents sure wear a lot of sexy miniskirts and midriff-baring blouses, and devote an awful lot of time to sultry smoking and lounging around.  Their initiation ritual requires the new recruit to be topless, and the traits that make one eligible to join include youth, beauty, and health, which are all listed before a vague reference to 'giftedness'.  Some of the women must be brilliant scientists, to create things like those petrification darts, but even they appear to have had their looks taken into consideration.  That's why I described this movie as 'steeped in the male gaze'.  Sax Rohmer did not bother to think about how women would conduct themselves as they plotted to take over the world in an environment with no men (I'm guessing there would be way more pajama pants and way less shaving), only how they could look totally hot while doing it.

I guess this movie isn't quite as bad as The Castle of Fu Manchu.  I still don't know what the characters want or what's going on, really, but I'm not actually angry at it for wasting my time... maybe that's just because my standards are getting lower. The Castle of Fu Manchu kind of felt like somebody wrote an outline and they just made the details up as they went along.  The Million Eyes of Su-Muru comes across as slightly more polished, as if it got to the 'first draft' stage but nobody ever went back and made sure the beginning fit in with the rest; it still sucks, but at least it did more preparation.  I guess that's gotta count for something.

[toomanyxfandoms-blog]

Cheat Unturned

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