#THE TONAL SHIFT GOES CRAZY!!!!

[st1ckerhappy]

PUTTING THIS EVENT RIGHT AFTER 4TH ANNIVERSARY IS DEVIOUS WORK 😭😭😭

edit: THESE ARE LITERALLY A WEEK APART?!?!

[burakkuhardt-wrsf]

((Character Interaction, For Personal Notes))

He found Skylar just inside the woody grove, sat on an old dilapidated swing set. It was sunk so low into the ground that the boys legs were stretched out infront of him on the mossy ground, vines and thistles cutting from all angles.

Gianni hadn't realized the island even had any playgrounds- functional or otherwise. No, it was pure chance that he even found Skylar- at least, that's what he thought. Really he had no idea what made him come here, or how he knew where to look. It had just felt right, that the boy would come here of all places.

"Your counselor is worried about you." Gianni stopped just a few feet away from the swing set, crouching down to meet Skylar's level. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know why she called him of all people- his track record for taking care of kids was 'o for two' so far, and it didn't seem to be getting any better.

He still wore his funeral suit, stained and ripped.

Skylar hadn't yet looked up to see him, messy blonde bangs covering his face from view and shoulders hunched up, clasping onto the rusty chains of the swing in a death's grip. It looked like something out of a horror movie- the moment where the protagonist gets lured in by their kind heart, only to get eaten up by the monster-possessed kid.

Gianni didn't fool himself into thinking he was anything kind, though- if he got got, it would be poetic justice being served.

"She doesn't care about me, if that's what you think" Came Skylar's quiet voice, wobbly undertones hidden by a sharp harshness that sounded a bit too forced.

The man goes to respond but is stopped dead in his tracks, mouth still hanging open slightly, as Skylar finally looks at him.

The boy peers through tangled bangs, eyes so intense it actually sets cold shivers down Gianni's spine. He knew the kid could be scary, perhaps unintentionally, from time to time...but he had never seen him like this.

If you asked the man what Death Itself looked like- he'd have a pretty good answer now.

"She's afraid of me. They all are."

Gianni swallows down the unease, knowing full well it's misplaced. The kid could be a bit odd sometimes, but he wasn't anymore dangerous than anyone else on the island- he was just a kid.

Gianni shakes his head slowly, brows furrowed. "Maybe she's afraid, but that don't mean she don't care." He gets up, slowly making his way to the other swing seat. "She called me, after all." He sits on the seat, wood green and warped from becoming part of the earth. Gianni leans to his side against the chain, looking over to the boy. "How'd she know to do that if she don't care?"

Skylar blinks a couple times in some kind of consideration, before suddenly whipping his head around to face Gianni, eyes set in a harsh glare. "That's Corey's seat."

Gianni, caught completely off guard by the sudden tonal shift, can only stammer in response. "I'm sorry- I...I didn't-" he goes to get up, but Skylar stops him, small hand grasping at his suit sleeve.

"Where is Corey?" The boys tone was a lot darker now- eeriness replaced by a murderous stare.

Gianni slowly realizes he may have made a big mistake here- he should have known that, even if the boys weren't talking to each other at the moment, Skylar would still be fiercely protective over Corey.

He really thought leaving Corey at home was for the best, but...

"Did you seriously leave your grieving son home all alone, to- to what? Stop me from blowing up the school?? Is that what they think is gonna happen? You think I'm crazy and out of control or something? You think I'm gonna snap, huh???" Skylar throws his hands in the air as he stands up from the swing, vines ripping his cuts into small gashes. "Better send Father of the Year Gallo! He'll fix it! Sure, he couldn't keep his wife from snapping, or his oldest from defecting- and yeah he left his suicidal son all by himself after the worst fucking day of his life, probably- but he's such a good. Fucking. Dad."

Gianni stares at the boy, dumbfounded. All he can do is shrink in on himself, deflate into the swing and collapse over his knees as the words set in- he left Corey alone. On the worst day of his life. There was no fighting back, no way he could ever refute the claims. It was true.

Skylar breathes unsteadily, hands shaking as his emotional high crashes down. His eyes water and he looks away from the man crumpled on the forest floor.

"I'm not the one who needs you." Skylar half-whispers, keeping the tears from running. "Go home."

Gianni combs shaking hands through his hair, nails scrapping painfully against his scalp. He focused on the burn of it, and on the sharp bits of pain that came with every dried gel snag. "I'm not what he needs" He says faintly, mostly to himself.

He hears feet shuffling to his left, and knows Skylar must have heard him.

"Tough luck. You're all he's got now." Skylar kicks Gianni in the leg, not hard enough to hurt (that much) but enough to get his attention. He looks up at the kid, defeated. "I'm not babying a grown man. If you're not what he needs, then become it. Or get lost already." Skylar furrows his brows, but his gaze no longer looks deadly. He looked like a kid again, annoyed but not dangerous. A bit of light had returned, and Gianni couldn't help but feel it was because the kid already knew what choice he would make. "You gonna leave him an orphan, or what?"

He looked at the boy for a moment, feeling a weird sense of pride in the way he was taking charge, even if it was against him. "I never knew how to be a father."

Skylar just shrugs back at him, uncaring. "You'll learn."

"It's too late for that- I already ruined it"

"Only ruined if you give up, bozo"

Gianni scrunches his brow, considering. He stands, body feeling overly heavy, but he doesn't give into the pull of it. He straightens, latching onto whatever determination he can find. "Okay. I'll try" He sighs out despair, hoping to get rid of it altogether "For Corey."

The man goes to leave, starting to walk out of the forest before quickly realizing the boy isn't following. He turns, looking back. "Aren't you coming too?"

Skylar doesn't look at him, eyes cast towards the sunken swing set. "Nah. I'm gonna stay here awhile"

Gianni frowns. He had failed what he came here to do as well, it seemed. No big surprise there. "You could come back to the house with me- I know Corey would love to see you."

Skylar scrunches his nose at that, but doesn't take his eyes away from where he last sat. "He needs his dad right now, I'd only get in the way."

"You wouldn't-"

"You abandoned him to come to my 'rescue'. Don't tell me I wouldn't."

"I didn't mean to leave him behind, I just thought...." Gianni sighs, defeatedly. He knew better than to argue- some kids needed more attention than others, that's just how things go sometimes. And Skylar was one of those kids. Troubled.

"Are you going to be ok?" He asks instead.

"I'm always ok." Skylar finally looks at him, smirking dangerously. "Wether or not they will is a better question." Skylar laughs at Gianni's worried expression, kicking a rock at a tree for fun. It hits the trunk with enough force to break away a piece of bark- and Skylar seems satisfied with that. "Relax. I'm kidding." His smile falls a bit, becoming more sad than amused, but his eyes still sparkle with the same energetic danger. "Takes more than some guy dying to knock me off my rocker."

'Some guy' Gianni frowns, but doesn't question the choice of words. He knew better than to pick apart the way someone grieved. "Call me when you can, kid. I'll answer. Promise."

He doesn't start to walk off again until he gets the nod from Skylar, somewhat confident the kid will be ok.

Still, it took everything Gianni had in him not to look back.

[monstersinthecosmos]

May I ask you at what point it's clear Anne wrote/decided that Armand was physically a teenager? He doesn't seem to be written specifically as one during IWTV (especially) or even QOTD -- possibly why he's portrayed as a grown man in the early comic books and in the 1994 film?

Okay hahah full disclosure I’m writing this at work instead of working and I don’t have books with me to pull quotes so use your imagination or if anyone wants to jump in with some quotes please feel free!

So in IWTV he’s just described as a young man, and Louis doesn’t go crazy telling us too much about what he looks like. I have a few thoughts about this, and about how it influenced the movie and other incarnations of Armand:

Louis has spent most of his vampire life with a grown woman who looks like a 5 year old, so BIG FUCKIN DEAL LOL, wow ur 17? Get in line.

The movie specifically made him older & more spooky old world looking for the visual contrast, also to sidestep Louis’s rebound love interests both being children/young.

I don’t think we should get too nitpicky about the comic books like let’s, just. Lmao. Let’s leave that one.

By the time he shows up in TVL is when he goes from being described as “young man” to “young boy”.

I lied I do have this one quote:

This was a boy, as I had said, and he had a head of long curly hair, and he walked very straight and very simply through the silvery light and into the church. He hesitated for a moment. And by the tilt of the head, it seemed he was looking up. And then he came on through the nave and towards us, his feet making not the faintest sound on the stones. He moved into the glow of the candles on the side altar. His clothes were black velvet, once beautiful, and now eaten away by time, and crusted with dirt. But his face was shining white, and perfect, the countenance of a god it seemed, a Cupid out of Caravaggio, seductive yet ethereal, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes.

So there’s like, 12 years or whatever that she took between books and that gives her a lot of time to let her mental image and idea of the character to evolve, but also just her writing style is so different. I remember Anne saying that she also had Stella from The Tales of Hoffmann in mind when she wrote Armand, so he evolved from “ageless & androgynous” to “gleaming manikin of a young boy” !

For a visual reference, this is Moira Shearer as Stella, which Anne said was Armand in her mind:

And this is the painting Lestat mentioned:

But I think we are all aware of the tonal shift phenomenon between IWTV & TVL where IWTV is this like, heavy melancholy Gothic tome and then Lestat just shows up and fucking wrecks the place.  I don’t recall ever hearing her talk about this aspect of Armand and I don’t know if she had it in her mind the whole time, even if Louis didn’t take the time to describe it in detail the way Lestat does. I’d love to know how much of this was in her mind the whole time and if anyone has clues please let us know!!!!!!!

TLDR to answer your question, it’s ambiguous in IWTV and obvious in TVL.

HOWEVER.

I have this crack theory lmfao. !!!!!!!!!! About how Prince Alexi in The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty is also an auburn haired teenager, and how it was written in between the two VC books.

I mean like. Anne can say anyone has auburn hair but it’s just such a staple for Armand 2 ICONIC so how are you NOT gonna wonder about it when she’s writing BDSM porn? Idk.

There’s really no evidence for this except me with my Charlie Day board but sometimes I wonder if that break between books influenced her idea of him at all, and what impact it had on her prose for when she returned to Lestat, and I always wonder if they’re connected at all. IT JUST SEEMS SUSPICIOUS TO ME.

Like I mean. I think, there’s lots of teenagers in her books, so maybe this isn’t really much of a coincidence. But. I must wonder!

[lesbienbys]

tacit chapter 66 discussion, spoilers obviously! Also I don't know if this needs a warning or not but just in case, I am gay so I will read certain characters as lgbt and if you don't like that then maybe this isn't the blog for you <3

So here are my thoughts about this scene because these two make me go insane. I think it's pretty fair to assume that we know bevrian is lying to rovan here, because it doesn't make sense to bev's character (who we know wants to protect the kids). And I'm just so confused as to why he lies and keeps lying to him. Like wtf is rovan going to do if he says no?? Explode??? Bestie he can handle it he's a grown ass man! And I think rovan's reaction to bev saying this is him realizing he's lying. I don't know if this is the first time he's realized or if he's known since the beginning, since this webtoon relies more on expressions/body language than dialogue to tell its story (which I love 99% of the time but UGH I want to know).

There's just been this undertone to these two (not the gay one) where it feels like rovan doesn't communicate his plans which makes him seem distrustful, and bevrian who seems to be lying to him for some reason. My theory is that he doesn't want him to leave because he wants ruby and arvan to survive, and maybe also because he feels bad about abandoning him back when he was ousted from amina. Which is like come on man I've been waiting for bev to pop off for so long now because rovan treats arvan so cruelly, and then he says this shit and I'm like BRO seriously 😭 communicate your actual feelings I am begging! If something happens to arvan because of them treating him like shit I'm blaming the both of them. He's already fucked up mentally from all this so if he dies,,,,,,,,,,,

Total tonal shift because I'm like that, but was I the only one who felt so weirded out that these two were so close to each other during this entire conversation lmao?? If you took the entire dialogue away it feels like they're going to kiss. But the topic of the conversation is so morbid so I'm just like... this feels so inappropriate babes!! Why are your sides touching and your faces two inches apart from each other!!! Like I love you two but this is not the time maybe 😭 Plus the way the author draws their expressions doesn't help because they constantly look at each other Like That which is why I've been shipping them since chapter 28.

(I need someone to validate me because I can't be the only one who thought about this parallel and went crazy.)

Anyways can't wait for the next chapter where everything goes to shit once again! Love this series for always making me anxious about who's going to die haha <3

[mliter]

Fire Emblem Engage.

This was unfortunately leaked halfway through 2022. I know somebody got whipped for that. Everyone thought Alear's design was WILD. Even for fire emblem. Most people (including me) shrugged it off and kept it moving. But, later, during the 2022 direct, Alear appeared. It was real.

First off, everyone in this game was designed by Mika Pikazo. She's a popular light novel illustrator. You may of seen her work relating to animated works and merch you've seen around. Some of her most popular recent work was the design of a mouse vtuber. Here's an interview with her that comes to mind.

Her art is definitely the most "anime" looking art in all of FE. Intelligent Systems clearly wanted to go the extravagant route with the look of this game, so they chose her.

She was given an assignment, and she understood it. Many shapes, colors and themes are present in everyone's designs. Even compared to the rest of the cast, these are the most "out there" designs. And they're great. I would love to see the art made for the other characters. If they exist.

Both the plot and gameplay revolve around emblem rings. Rings that can summon past lords of fire emblem games. Their abilities are fantastic references to their character, story, and game. All original voice actors also returned. Hearing Greg Chun behind the mic again was a treat. A good chunk of the story is spent chasing after these things.

Speaking of story, just like the character designs, it's incredibly campy. It doesnt take itself seriously, forming an insane tonal shift from the mood three houses went for. It's not at all bad though, I enjoyed it. The roster is quite amusing. They're not that deep though. Then again, there's lots of characters in this franchise that are that deep. Not a bad thing though.

My favorites turned out to be Zelkov, a mysterious man who speaks in a *particular* way, and Saphir, a woman who started with nothing, becoming one of brodia's greatest knights.

The presentation has been upped too. Character specific animated portraits take up the screen when selecting on a unit, and the combat animations are far more exaggerated and stylized. A blue trail followers Alear's sword as she unsheathes it, characters move at insane speeds, swordmasters are straight doing the judgement cut, and the camera goes crazy as all of this happens.

I said it before, but Engage feels like a game that somehow escaped the GBA containment. So many of the things in this game remind me of something i'd see on the gameboy advance, or the 3DS even.

In a good way of course.

[zacharybuilds]

jamming to my procedurally selected tunes in the shower, the tonal shift going from "my R" to "drop pop candy" goes crazy

[evelynquack]

BTW: you probably shouldn’t just casually scroll through my blog lol

Tonal shift goes CRAZY here.

One second it’s hornyposts, next it’s assorted fandom stuff, there’s also politics galore… like holy shit some of the stuff I reblog one after the other is such a tonal shift you’d be bewildered at how I can seemingly just move onto the next thing so quickly.

(I’m not moving on at all btw. Multitasking goes hard when it’s about juggling the fucked up shit, the horny, and the funny. It’s actually kinda twisted how hard multitasking goes for this shit…)

[f4nd0m-fun]

I love ALL of this. 🤩

Maybe that's why Bruce is so good at getting the JLs attention during meetings, also why his kids are good with their teams. Like, yeah they've learned how to lead and such, the siren-esque just makes things easier outside of Gotham. Altho they've also learned to control their voices some, Bruce forgoes speaking in part because he doesn't like talking and in part because his voice is stronger so he has to work harder to make it easier on others.

Oh gods I love those. Just, Hood getting kidnapped by the league (oh no) and Bruce storming in. The league did notice he has his hair braided like a lot of gothamites with long hair, but of course they aren't privy to what the different shells and other items mean. Speaking of which, he certainly prides himself on the items from his family, but he's got a few smaller ones that the various crime alley kids have given him.

Bruce storms in, ignores as many protocols as he can (even if that means making his voice stronger to avoid questioning until later), and then he's just gone. Doesn't show up at the station for a week maybe after that and his team is trying to contact him. Nightwing and RR are also 'missing' for a week after they find out.

Okay that's cool, in that murky water sensing heat could be really important for avoiding collisions but also catching prey (or at least enemies) an it'd look cool.

Oh my gods yes to all of that paragraph. Tim is at least a year or two younger than he was when he originally joined, and now I'm imagining the Drakes show up to collect him for a while, and Bruce is just death grip asleep while the kids he was able to fit in his hold either try to struggle free or nap with him. Imagining Timmy got his photography from his mom, she almost definitely gets a pic.

Yeah, everyone he's close enough to gets a pearl, especially the kids and Alfie, and it's Jason's most precious decoration for his hair when he comes back to life. Takes great pride in it and all that.

I'm just over here imagining that Selina is following the normal doc advice of swimming to relieve pregnancy pain when, oop, out comes a guppy, whoops (obviously not as smoothe but imagining her born in guppy form instead of baby).

Bruce is mildly stressed because there was little warning, Selina was literally only going to swim for a little while before coming back to the cave, now he's got to swim out to her when he hears her keen (imagining they can make sounds that are similar to normal marine animals but Off somehow, plus each one has a slightly unique tonal underlay or something). Thankfully, Hel is as healthy as one can be when their first 'breath' is nasty water, and they quickly take her to land. She may or may not struggle shifting to land form on her own, but her parents can help for now.

Yesss. If Bruce is 'predator who is a cinnamon roll' Talia is 'predator who will actually kill you'. And looking like the pits? That's awesome. In fact, what if Jason and Damien have vague pit vibes because of their dips?

I kind Ras when he's not painted at uber crazy. I mean he's still crazy but not asylum level. He's constantly bringing the grandkids gifts, doing the most unhinged activities with them, and he definitely set up a party for Bruce and Talia (no one is really sure if it was originally going to be a wedding and he decided not to force them or if he just did an over the top get together event because he can).

Yeah, only the best care for the kids (Bruce quietly ignores that Alfie got him one as well until he forced into bed rest).

Now I'm just imagining that Supes is in Gotham because of Lex or something else and he goes from hearing Bruce's heart out by the bay to just... not. Like, there's something almost similar there, but it's not Bruce's beat. Obviously he rushes to see what happened to his friend, and Bruce is now in 'oh fuck' mode because now he's gonna have to swim to the cave to get out of the water and hope Superman doesn't follow. (He doesn't but as soon as he hears Bruce's heart again he's rushing to check on him and may or may not find him mid shift).

Yesss. Let the kids play, and let Gotham just be horrible Lovecraft cryptid fae. They almost feel that way to regular outsiders, but it's Even Worse for atlanteans, especially when they're shifted. Adding mimicry and siren style voices just makes it even worse.

1, they still have gills as humans (on their sides) so if they swim untransformed in other water they're fine, 2, if they're still underwater they don't shift back even if they leave Gotham waters, they just might struggle a bit to swim but transform back upon surfacing, or 3, both of the above.

Guppy Damien 🤩 (they're probably considered guppies until they're like 10 tbh). And yeah, Jason loves Damien even if he can't remember his interactions with him when he was still not quite there.

Also, Jason loves his dad but he's a drama nerd so he returns first, takes Joker's old name as minor revenge on the bastard, and then has a grand old time pranking his dad among other things. When Damien and Talia show up, that's when he reveals himself by going all brotherly. Also, he wears the hood partially because of the name and also to hide his hair initially because he's still got his burial items, ah he just shows up sans Red Hood outfit, hair on display, with a few new items from Talia and Damien, and everyone but those three freak out 😂

And yeah, Ra's LOVES Gotham, despite the environmental hazards (which are basically becoming an entirely new kind of unnaturally natural habitat) he pretty much makes it just favorite vacay spot (his family being there is a big bonus).

I think it'd be hilarious if the Talons were unaffected because the curse only effects the actual like living, any talons created after the fact can transform but those created before are land locked. The court as long as they're living is fine tho. Although maybe the first ones get gills at least? Be kinda funny if that's all they got.

Mermay Special Prompt 3

“Are you kidding? No one goes to Gotham, that place is like,” Aquaman made a motion with his hand, a not-quite grimace on his face. “Like things should not be living in the water, like it should be impossible, and things should be dead, but they aren’t and it’s like, like the equivalent of an undead apocalypse over there!” 

Bruce rolled his eyes behind his cowl, taking a sip of his coffee as the others continued drinking. Socialize, they said, it’ll be fine they said. Well excuse him, but the waters weren’t that bad. Sure there were always dumped bodies, and chemicals from the rogue attacks, but it was far worse at one point.

One thing he’ll always be relieved for is how the… curse (thank you broken statuette back in the beginning of his vigilante career that fused with the other many curses of Gotham) made the people of Gotham actually care about the waters around them. 

Though also, he couldn’t help but thank anything that might be listening for the fact that the curse only interacted with Gotham waters, because losing legs with any risk of a drop of water would be downright annoying. 

“No dude, you don’t understand, no one goes there for a reason! That shit is horrific- someone saw a big thing with bits of rebar stabbed straight through it and still chased after a big alligator-thing!” Oh. Oh that had been him. Oops. Hopefully his kids didn’t find out about this, but they were probably already on the cameras. Dammnit. 

[bicth-and-in-that-order]

Genuine review of high guardian spice

Unfortunately due to the admittedly poor marketing, most of the reviews for HGS are gonna be in bad faith, just the typical “woke bad” nonsense arguments, but this one will be my attempt at a mostly balanced review. Might be a bit all over the place but I’ll try and cover everything.

Characters

One thing about HGS is that it’s very by the numbers. If you’ve watched little witch academia you’ve already watched this. HGS didn’t do anything new frl, at least with the main characters, which is fine as long as the writing is strong but the writing was pretty so-so. The mc is Rosemary, or Rose and she’s the typical happy go lucky protagonist, the most interesting thing about her was that her mom was a famous magical girl warrior named lavender who disappeared years before the story begins. Her mom also has supreme character design, she looks like a cross between spop she ra and utena

Anyways there’s not much to say about Rose or any of her friends. They all fulfill a pretty standard role, Sage is the insecure childhood bsf, Parsley is the brash, forward one, and Thyme is the stoic, quiet one, she’s also best girl. Your enjoyment of these characters will largely depend on if you enjoy the character writing and their interactions bc you’ve probably seen these archetypes before and they go through the same character arc.

So yeah the mcs were run of the mill, but the side characters were honestly really fun. Some of them were archetypical, you got the snobbish bully girl but she ends up calling her mom a thot and that was hilarious, but you also got underused archetypes. There’s a character who’s trans and one who’s in the closet and you don’t ever see those types of characters in these types of shows so it was nice seeing a positive storyline develop about gender identity that kept me far more intrigued than whatever parsley was going through.

Story

HGS is a magical school story not a magical girl story despite what the name suggests. The girls learn more about themselves through a setting of a school rather than have a monster of the week to fight. There’s an overarching plot about the mysterious disappearance of lavender, the rot, and some evil Organization that’s in the background but it’s mostly about the interpersonal relationship and drama between the characters. Which is fair game, it’s the first season so they’re establishing all the characters and their arcs. The plot doesn’t really start until a little more than halfway through the season and it’s not bad. The tonal shift, which I will get into later, is kind of jarring bc it goes from 0 to 100 very suddenly and a more even tone would’ve helped the shift from lighthearted to serious but a lot of western cartoons do the exact same thing these days. It’s hard not to compare this to little witch academia but it takes so many cues and plot points from that show it’s kind of crazy. It’s not a bad thing ig I just wish I didn’t have to see almost the exact same story play out when there’s so much more you can do with the magical school story.

Tone

Aside what I mentioned prior , I think one of the biggest things holding the show back is its tonal inconsistency and I honestly think if it was upfront about the type of show it was from the jump it would’ve been much better for it. I wouldn’t say the show is dark but it’s also not for kids bc of the occasional swearing and light gore moments. The show tries very hard to appeal to children and then a character will randomly say shit or asshole and it’s like huh? If this show is supposed to be for teenagers then a more evenly dark/edgy tone would’ve suited it far better. Be up front that this is the type of show where the characters will swear and bleed from episode one bc it felt super jarring and out of place to hear them swear, even if it was occasionally.

Aesthetics

Not really equipped to talk about the animation so correct me if I’m wrong but from a viewers stand point it was alright. You can obviously tell where they took short cuts, especially in certain action scenes but other action scenes looked pretty good. Ig that’s typical anime budget. The ost was actually really good, I loved the background theme they used, I thought it was super charming and fit with the theme of the show. The opening and ending themes were awful tho and I skipped them everytime 😅 The art style was also decent, some of the characters looked good like lavender, Thyme, the demon teacher, and that trans masc teacher I forgot the name of. Some of them looked like extras from spop, and others looked like they were from how to draw anime books. It was kind of generic looking save for a few stand out characters. Forgot to mention the voice acting and dialogue so I’ll just put it here, it’s the definition of hit or miss. Sometimes the dialogue is good but the VA sucks, sometimes the dialogue is awful but the VAs carry it, usually it’s just okay so I’d say it’s like early RWBY quality. It doesn’t touch the funi dubs in any capacity.

Diversity

HGS has a so-so diverse cast of characters but the actual quality of representation was lacking. Way too many white characters and way too little lgbt+ characters for what is supposed to be “diverse”. Give me more than ONE black mc and lgbt+ characters that aren’t in the supporting cast, kipo and the owl house have set the bar high, anything below that isn’t good enough if you want to claim diversity brownie points. Trans rep was amazing tho I’ll give them that.

Overall

Most of the hate surrounding HGS is an overreaction from maladjusted weebs. It was not a dumpster fire nor was it the next madoka magica it was just average. Worst sin it committed was being boring and dialogue heavy. Otherwise an even tone and less generic characters would’ve worked wonders and probably could’ve reached a decent fanbase if it were marketed probably. If you plan to watch it, go in expecting something average and you might be surprised here or there.

Score: 6/10

[kingflups]

Fresh out of my watch of Earthspark, here’s some of my initial thoughts: Spoilers Incoming!

Right off the bat I fucking loved Megatron. His introduction was wonderful, I loved his interactions with the con’s and with the baby Terrans. The scene where Soundwave called him a traitor, and you could see how it fucking cut Megatron to his core? Devastating! I loved it. And then earlier in the same episode when Megs was fighting with Optimus about GHOST’s treatment of the imprisoned Decepticons, I liked how it set up the potential for an arc where Optimus is in the wrong. I’m not sure if this is the direction the show is going, but it seems to me they’re laying the groundwork for GHOST going full shady government and for Optimus to continue to side with them for the sake of an uneasy peace. It might be a stretch with the demographic Earthspark is aimed for, but with Megatron being a protagonist and having precedence for being the conscious of the duo (when he convinced Optimus to let the cassettes go free), they might have the balls to do it, and I’m fucking excited!! I’d love to see vigilante Megatron, and with the amount of new characters and returning con’s running around, I think there’s wonderful potential for team ups.

Tonally, I’m expecting a shift for episodes coming forward. Not a crazy one, but it seems this first round was setting up expectations for the show. It’s very cute, they had wonderful family dynamics, and I loved the Malto’s mixed family paralleling how the Terran’s were split between Cybertronian and earth culture. Speaking of which, the Malto’s have my whole heart. Mo and Dorothy are my favorite of the four, I’m very excited we can add Mo to the growing collection of weird transformers girls alongside Miko and Sari. Dot’s a fucking badass, her friendship with Megatron was a highlight of the show. When the focus changed to her, the tone became more serious and I wish we spent more time with her and Megs, but I’m sure we will going forward.

As we get more episodes, I’m sure Earthspark is going to be more story driven, but not to a crazy degree. Well, maybe they will go ham with story. Did you see the amount of story thread’s they’ve laid down?

Dr. Meridian (might be able to do mind control based episode 1? Also wonderful body horror potential?)

Soundwave breaking into prison/Starscream’s reveal

The Terran’s origin

The new, new babies

Swindle running around

GHOST being shady

Megatron’s uneasiness regarding the alliance

Bumblebee’s supposed “death”

I’m sure I’m missing a few, but even with this list we have some awesome potential… I’m just so excited for what Earthspark is bringing to the table! I’m hoping they lean into more action going forward, as they do fucking great things in motion, and I hope we see more interactions with Cybertronians from now on. I love Twitch and Thrash, but I feel like the show is at it’s weakest when Bumblebee is on alone on screen with them. It lacks some of the depth the other characters have, and I know Bee cares about them a lot, but Twitch especially excels when she’s with other Cybertronians, like Megatron or Wheeljack. I’m hoping we see a lot more of the cast interacting as the show goes on! They have some exciting potential and a lot of fun dynamics to explore!!

[mylifetherant]

So, Disney put out that "We Dont Talk About Bruno, 21 Languages" version, and it made me really want to hear all of them. So i did, and catalogged it for tumblr. Tried to keep it down to two points each, so this wouldnt be any longer then its already going to be.

Theres two missing because i couldnt find the full versions online, so if anyone else has them please send them to me so i can complete the list!

Russian:

One of the lines in camillos verse is changed to, in russian, "A midnight howl, your nightmare" which fuckin slaps honestly. Also the pastor in this one sounds extra pathetic and i kinda love it.

Really just love the pronunciations of a lot of the russian language. This ones just fun for the ears honestly.

German:

Instead of saying THUNDER he just shouts EIN STORM and thats fucking hilarious.

Holy shit the camillo part in this one is. Like look ok i know the best part of the song is going to slap in any language but holy shit i did not expect to feel some type of way from the line "ein ratten" ok? Fuckin. Whoever they got to sing that part is fuckin wild and can have my babies holy fuck

Dutch:

DUN-DER

Does a really good job of capturing the inflection of the english VA's. Delores and camillo especially.

While it doesn't have any super defining features like some others, its a really smooth one to one recreation, the line changes don't interrupt the flow at all like it does in others, and honestly you could probly swap it with the english one and id never notice.

Polish:

Camilo really Spits out his verses in this one, really driving home that dark and terrifying vibe. Theres a serious force to some of his words that make them feel like theyre being hurled at you.

They actually pronounce Bruno's name differently, as a brun-yey or brun-ya, depending on the line, which i find really interesting.

Italian:

Not too crazy about this one overall

But

The FUNNIEST version of "isabella your boyfriends here" i've heard so far. You just have to hear it for yourself, i cant do it justice.

Thai:

A bit like the italian one, doesn't mesh quite as well as some others, that said

Thai-Delores verse fuckin sweeps this whole song. Its a little bit grittier and i fucking love it, really drives home the "dark secret" vibe.

Danish:

Danish-Felix puts a little flair at the end of his lines that i love. Its his own little personal oomph, that just feels like he was having fun with it.

Solid overall, though not too much that stands out.

French:

God DAMN does the french version go hard. These VAs just fuckin went OFF.

While there wasn't a lot of variance in inflection like some of the others, they really just fuckin sang their hearts out at the top of their lungs and its fuckin great.

Japanese:

Alright this was inevitable but camillo sounds like an anime villain especially during the "your boyfriends here" bit. Tell me that laugh aint straight outta your favorite shounen

I actually love the villagers verse! They have so much distinct character! Also as a sidebar, this is the best mirabel verse i've heard so far. The way she holds the "bruno" at the begining is just *chefs kiss*

Greek:

Sadly the only version i could find sounded like someone recorded it from their closet, so there might be some finer details i miss.

That said, still a solid rendition all around. Loved the voice for isabella in this one, just very pretty, idk how else to put it. Definitely on the higher end, but still mostly a one to one copy of the original. Which is not a bad thing, to clarify.

Korean:

Korean-Pepa&Felix are so much fun. Idk what it is but i love the vibes they put out.

Also, the dead fish girl just straight goes "the next day BLEG" and i fuckin wish they did that in the original because it so much funnier than saying it died.

Bulgarian

N/A for now?

Hungarian:

Sadly another low quality recording, but i don't think it suffered too much from it?

Its definitely the most unique rendition so far. Theres a weird tonal shift when camillos part comes in, and i think the beat is actually a bit slower from that point on. Whether thats good or bad ill leave up to you, im not 100% sure where i stand on it myself.

Norwegian:

Norwegian-Felix sounds like an absolute bear of a man and im kinda hear for it. Also point to Norwegian-Camillo for being the first one to actually sound like a fuckin teenager.

Also, this is more an overall but its at this point in my journey that im realizing…

Every nonenglish-version of Abuela's one line sounds almost identical, and they all sound like theyre sung by a dude. Idk what it is. Maybe my brain is suffering BrunoBrainRot.

Bahasa Malaysia:

Another A Tier dolores. As someone who preferred Camillo in the english version, in a lot of these its surprisngly Dolores who steals the show.

Also, just to make my last one look stupid, abuela is once again a woman. Actually, a lot of the VA's in this one sounded really close to the English VA's, Camillo especially.

Vietnamese

N/A for now

Euro Portugese:

Now THAT is a good Camillo. Not quite the level of some of my earlier faves, but still very good. Close to Russian Camillo.

I really enjoyed the inflection on Isebella's verse. Gave it a bit of extra oomph during a part i usually kind of glaze over. Her verse is pretty, but the slowest bit of the whole song, so i like when they do something that makes it Pop a bit more.

Brazilian Portugese:

Brazilian-Felix and the villagers both sound like theyre just having a blast. I really like the ones where it feels like they were just having fun recording.

Mirael and Camillo sound like they swapped ages, especially at the end. I cant stop picturing a 28 year old Camillo leaning on a tiny angry Mirabel's head.

Taiwanese Mandarin:

Taiwanese-Pepa is fucking beautiful. She should've gotten Isabellas verse, its so good. That said, its nice to hear an approach to Pepa that isn't so harsh.

Taiwanese-Camillo is haunting, a very ghostly quality to it. Its a different kind of spooky that i enjoy. Puts a fun spin on it.

Spanish:

Man i really saved the best for last. This is like the New Game+ of We Don't Talk About Bruno. Its the original, but better.

While there isn't anything that makes it necessarily unique, it takes every good quality from the english version and just cranks it up to 12. Def top tier material.

To close, this is a fantastic song in any language, that i'll be listening to for a very long time.

If anyone wants to hear these for themselves, i compiled a playlist for you, in order as they appear in this list: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR5WNVkVKWQh0bSmkSLLFxxedR-28YNHr

[szollibisz]

Yeah i get it, there's certainly a big tonal shift. Like up to that point all the casual cruelty was played for laughs (crippling Oleg for life and leaving him in a soon to be exploded building, or DMA stabbing his henchman etc) it was never super serious until Curt kills Owen.

I think saf has a healthy dose of both adhering to and subverting spy movie tropes, and I'm gonna be honest, I've never seen Goldeneye, so I'm just judging it as a standalone musical with no other plot structure to compare it to.

Curt is set up as a character who doesn't care much for technical details. Baron von nazi and the DMA tell him about the surveillance system way before the Owen reveal, and he just shuts it down. Even during the staircase scene Owen constantly tries to make it about Chimera and their ideologies while Curt is clearly talking in very personal terms. Owen is trying to keep it detached, both because he genuinely believes in Chimera and because he doesn't want to let himself too close to Curt again.

If Curt discovered Chimera from some random guy, he probably wouldn't have cared half as much, let alone go off on a revenge quest alone at the end of the show. We know Curt is extremely brainwashed by the US government, and he thinks in very black and white terms regarding morality. We're the good guys, they're the bad guys etc. And yet he still tries to get through to Owen, but Owen shuts him down.

Even in the safehouse scene when Curt finally opens up, he still can't admit to Tatiana that Owen's death was his fault. He drinks again in one more shot, and seems more and more like himself at the beginning of the show.

What makes me crazy is that his character arc is basically learning to live and spy again after Owen, and like. He does it. He gains back his old confidence and theoretically his skills, but it's still about Owen. He wants to take down Chimera because of Owen. He didn't take him hostage, he didn't torture him, he didn't want information. He realized the only ways to move on were either reconciliation or putting him down. And the first one wasn't working.

He is ultimately addicted to Owen, dead or alive. To me a big part of the tragedy is that, now he knows there's no Owen. He ended him consciously. And yet he still can't/won't move on.

His character is careless and more cruel than people give him credit for I think. Like compared to Owen who goes off and becomes a torture loving serial killer for 4 years he seems alright, but he's really not. He's just really good at self-sabotaging and being a bad person while looking like a regular guy who's just kind of dick.

So yeah, idk this was very rambley but yeah. Ultimately i think what he did during the staircase scene made sense.

this screenshot lives in my bones I swear. Like... Owen looks so devastated and uncertain, and Curt looks so determined, and I just want to stop that bullet Max Jagerman style and send them both to therapy

[forasecondtherewedwon]

For the TG:M fic prompts - 9 + 100, rooster/phoenix (I know you've written a lot on them already but I'll take all I can get!)

Thank you so much for the prompts :)

9. “Don’t smile at me like that. You know it drives me crazy.”

100. Make up sex

prompt list

The Night A-Chording to Rooster

Fandom: Top Gun: Maverick Rating: M Word Count: 900

Phoenix is in tears. Fanboy keeps fucking up the flow of the raunchy joke he’s trying to tell and the joke doesn’t even matter anymore; she and Payback are propping each other up, howling. They’re buzzed and Bob’s smiling along despite looking slightly bewildered and someone who isn’t them is shouting out a request for “Mr. Blue Sky.”

Rooster starts off so quietly that the beginning is lost. The Hard Deck is full of the sounds of TOPGUN grads reconnecting, Penny plonking glasses on the bar, cues smacking billiard balls, and a hundred different conversations happening at once, but Phoenix’s laughter trails off as a few bars break through the noise. She wipes the wetness from the corner of her eye and straightens, looking towards the piano.

It’s the sound of a slow day at her grandfather’s antique shop, Phoenix home on leave with a new Navy friend in tow. It’s the sound of her fingers flipping through records, the soft shuffle of their worn paper sleeves, and Rooster sitting down on a creaky old piano stool before she can drop the needle on the record player. It’s the sound of the tarnished pedals bounced experimentally under the ball of his foot as his flexed fingers hover above the keys, amusement in her voice when she asks, You play? It’s the sound—here, now—of an apology.

Giving Payback an absentminded pat on the shoulder, she weaves away from her friends. Rooster does Jerry Lee Lewis, he does Queen, yes, he even does Electric Light Orchestra (but only when he’s totally shitfaced, slamming his rigid fingers down on those peppy opening chords). Phoenix has only heard him do Cole Porter that one time. The back of the antique shop. Falling slow and light for him like the dust in the air that was stirred up by his sure fingers working the keys. In bars, he tends to shout-sing, but his rough voice wrapping around “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” in the languid style of Helen Merrill gave her chills on that quiet afternoon.

He doesn’t sing now; he saves his mouth for the knowing little smile he gives her when she plants her elbow on the top of the piano.

“Don’t smile at me like that,” she warns. “You know it drives me crazy.”

“I’m playing our song.” The smile doesn’t dim.

Phoenix rolls her eyes.

“We don’t have a song.”

Untrue. To her, this has always been their song. That’s just not something she would ever tell anyone—least of all Rooster. Rooster with his I don’t give a shit aesthetic and his texting-back allergy. It’d just be a joke to him. A fumbled joke that gets lost on its way to the punchline. The bar’s got one of those tonight already.

“Sure we do,” he says. If the way he continues to play without ever glancing at the keyboard is supposed to impress her… yeah, it does. Another thing she’ll keep to herself. “I got your request.”

Phoenix smiles tightly.

“I didn’t make a request.”

“Then what was that stick you rammed into my gut?”

“The greeting that felt most appropriate.”

Rooster’s left hand lifts off the keys for a few moments while his right hand carries on. He pushes his sunglasses down at the bridge, fixing his terrible, gentle brown eyes on her.

“Forgive me,” he says. You’d be so nice by the fire, the unaccompanied melody goes.

“You know, you generally need to apologize before you ask for forgiveness.”

“I should’ve called you. I’m sorry. Seeing you…” Rooster swallows as his fingers move with graceful sureness. She wonders how many times he’s practiced this song; it’s smoother than she remembers. “It’s the first time I’ve really felt like I’m home.”

She can’t speak. Their eyes stay locked as he closes out the song on a soft tonal shift from yearning to promise. And then he sits there with his hands on his knees, looking up at her.

Phoenix smiles slowly and plucks the sunglasses off his face, twirling them by one arm as she steps away.

“Come get ’em,” she challenges.

—

To their tipsy minds, darting away from the bar before circling back like two spies confusing a tail is a genius maneuver. Rooster presses her up against the side of the Hard Deck and that’s not the only thing that’s hard. Any instinct responsible for preventing them from taking this further has not reported for duty. Highly confident in their stealth and speed, they make out with rough desperation. Their fingers struggle with their respective flies, so they switch, Rooster effortlessly unfastening her khaki uniform trousers while Phoenix gets his jeans down with no trouble at all.

It's dark in this corridor between the Hard Deck and the closed restaurant next door. At either end, there’s the glow of the sign and the swooping patio lights. The rise and fall of voices from inside is as constant and muted as waves on a shore, but Phoenix tips her head back against the weathered siding and listens to Rooster pant against her throat, her bare thigh clasped greedily in his hand as his hips drive forward again, again, again in a metronomic rhythm that makes her eyelids flutter in pleasure.

“Am I forgiven?” he asks breathlessly.

“Before the song was even over,” she swears, arching against him for more. “Way before the end.”

[rairun]

First Impressions: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

Yesterday I received my Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You pre-order, and I sat down with the booklet to read the lyrics as I listened. At first I found it hard not to think of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness — the Pumpkins were my favourite band then; Big Thief are my favourite band now; and both double albums have been described as 'kaleidoscopic' and praised for their breadth. The reason I want to lean on the MCIS comparison right now is that it speaks to something DNWMIBIY is not. MCIS is about child abuse, trauma, and how such trauma colours your experiences and relationships. It is about being voiceless, and it's about finding your voice because in your hearts of hearts you know you are "meant for this world". But most importantly, MCIS is an album written by a person in his late 20s which is largely about his upbringing — this doesn't mean it is cold or distant (you can accuse the Pumpkins of anything but not wearing their hearts in their sleeves), but it does mean each song seems to reach for a deep emotional truth; each song sounds like the effort of someone who is making narrative sense of his tumultuous history. I reckon Adrianne Lenker's approach to songwriting on her latest solo album, Songs, resembles this type of focus. Though the end of a relationship is at its centre, I don't like calling it a breakup album because it goes far beyond it. The breakup is the driving force that leads her to explore her history, going back to her childhood and her relationship with her mother, pulling at the threads of her past in an attempt to make sense of this loss. All paths return to this. The title Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is a direct reference to a line from Songs, and I take it first as an indication that it is meant as a direct sequel (more on this later). But DNWMIBIY does not — or better yet, does not always — ask such questions. It seems to me like an album primarily concerned with the present, when you realise you can't always sing your way into meaning, when no amount of coming to terms with your past will carry you into the future. Nowhere is this clearer than in "Spud Infinity", which is such a tonal shift compared to Adrianne's previous output: its humorous existential ponderings don't come across as a meditation on existence at all. It is not a song that makes you think, "This is it, these words and sounds peel away all the layers to express a truth that I once thought ineffable." It will never be a song that I could call a favourite by those standards, but the thing is that it is not meant to be: it is a song that feels like shooting shit with your friends, both lyrically and musically. Adrianne makes no attempt to be precise or profound as she's proven time and again that she can be; the band does not create a soundscape that hints at the mysteries of the universe. It is the equivalent of sitting around a fire playing country music for fun, laughing at the fact that we don't really know where we are or where to go, saying, "This shit is crazy, uh?" Elsewhere, there is so much meandering into the more quotidian aspects of life. In "Dried Roses", Adrianne sings "Leave the bed unmade / Draw the light green shade / Start the microwave" and "Steep the black coffee / Set the plates, pour the tea / Three for her, three for me" before asking, "Half-dead, half-awake / Make a pie, bake a cake / Which road will you take?" In Songs, Adrianne very much knew which roads had been taken, and which road she was on; here she doesn't, not really, and the everyday stuff of life, the things we don't necessarily ascribe narrative meaning to, grow as big as the sky. Meanwhile, in "Red Moon", she says:

Bedroom rising from an old growth tree Bringing out the sawmill, cutting the twelve-inch beams Building a pattern, the reservoir to fill with dreams Rings like Saturn telling their old story Windmills turn and turn eternally What do you yearn for? Where do you long to be? I've been here before, looking at the wild country Open the screen door, talking with Diane Lee (That's my grandma!)

  Which you really need to listen to if you want to understand just how funny it is to hear Adrianne yelling "THAT'S MY GRANMAW!!!" It's such a great juxtaposition: you can trace the history of the place where you stand, and you are but a tiny person in this big old home of ours; you can wonder, without really knowing the answer, what you yearn for; but then you open the screen door and talk to grandma! Not exactly the narrative grandma who raised your mother, who then raised you, in a tale of care and generational trauma; not the grandma who is like an old growth tree. It's the grandma you're going to make a pie and bake a cake with — the person whose sheer presence rises above mythologising. Now, you might be starting to get the impression this is an album about making meaning out of the quotidian, almost a celebration and embrace of our lack of direction, but I don't think that's quite true. No, I wouldn't go as far as saying that everyday life here is just fold for its counterpart; its rediscovery, its insistence on making itself large and known, is itself a part of the puzzle we eternally attempt to solve. But alone it fails again and again at answering the question,  "What do you yearn for? Where do you long to be?" It still leave us asking, "Which road will you take?" Throughout the album, alongside this embracing of life as it presents itself to us, lies a real sense of restlessness. In "Wake Me Up to Drive", Adrianne sings searchingly:

We never plan ahead We take the gamble on instead And if they turn us down Find a warm bed in the next town If they turn us down Wake me up to drive, wake me up to drive Even if I'm tired, I don't wanna miss a ride

In "Certainty", she talks about trying to love someone whom she is unsure she loves. It sounds like a contrived attempt to turn this relationship into something bigger than it really is, to steer her mundane life onto a familiar story of "romance, action, mystery". There is no malice to this, and sometimes you never know until you try it, but she notices her certainty is weaving and does ask herself, "Why do I string you along?" So much wishful thinking. In "Little Things", the roles are inverted somewhat. Adrianne talks about a missed connection in New York, which she describes as a crowded place where she "still [loses] sight of every other face". She talks about the little things she likes about someone who she is maybe "a little obsessed" with, someone who, she concludes, maybe uses her. The music dances around unpredictably,  and it feels like her voice is trying and failing to catch up with it. Though she has not yet stopped to ask why she is pursuing this, deep down she does know the answer: because "I was inside of you / kissing your mouth / you were inside of me / kissing my mouth", and that brief sense of connection is difficult to let go of when your foundations are gone. At times there are real glimpses of desperation, like in "Love Love Love":

You are so hard to resist I can't help but breathe your love When I'm scared to die alone That's when I call you on the phone I tell you that I need your love

Or in "Blurred View":

I am the water rise The waterfall Filling up your eyes and when you give the call I run for you, run for you Run for you, run for you

Or even in "Flower of Blood" (which really reminds me of Bloodflowers-era The Cure):

Give me some time on Earth to know you Help me unearth the map and show you Thinking of her, thinking of him, want to? When you touch me

These are all so different stylistically from the everyday minutia of the country songs in the album. The music is moodier, almost shoegazey, and the lyrics convey an almost unfiltered sense of need, desire and hunger — feelings that you'd first need to parse if you were to create meaning out of them. They are like the night time songs you hear when the world has gone to sleep and you're left alone with your feelings. And then there are the songs that are neither country nor shoegaze, the ones that are most quintessentially Big Thief: the introspective ones where Adrianne tries to contextualise her place in this big wild world. It is no coincidence that the opener, "Change", serenely speaks of the change of seasons, of the natural cycle of life and death, and then asks:

Still, like a stone, like a hill, like home Still, what I find is you are always on my mind Could I feel happy for you When I hear you talk with her like we used to? Could I set everything free When I watch you holding her the way you once held me?

This really sets the tone for the entire album. There is a very human struggle to see our present as a bridge between our past and future, even when the significant characters of the past recede to the background. Indigo — and I am going to name her here because she is named in "anything", which in turn gives name to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You — is the one figure always looming over these songs. In "anything", Adrianne tells her "I don't wanna be the owner of your fantasy / I just wanna be a part of your family", and now this sentiment permeates everything. I resist reading this through the heteronormative impulse to either irrevocably let go or to see everything as a path to reconciliation and "true love". I think Adrianne does too, and she expresses as much in the title track:

I believe in you Even when you need to Recoil

I believe in you even when you need to recoil — this is the emotional truth that underpins the entire record. All the searching, all the aimless driving, all the humour and all the pain, it's not so much about trying to forget as it is about doing what you must do when you love someone, when that person has a place in your history that will not — cannot — be erased. It is about respecting and trusting them as their own person, and it's about coming to terms with the fact that sometimes your story will not be a love story, not in a traditional sense, and that you have no choice but to open your heart to this truth. And perhaps at her most open-hearted moment, she whispers:

I've been listening to the memory, the way that it was Listening to the echo of whys and because Listening to the echo telling me to let go I could never tell you now what I had often said before Because promise is a pendulum just hanging at the door And I'm not saying I'm not jealous or scared anymore I'm just saying

You need to find a way to make sense of your life as a place where they can be simultaneously present and absent; you need to find your own path into the future, but you also know that when you are old and dying, this is what you will remember. I keep thinking of Matt Berninger’s lyrics: "You know you have a permanent piece of my medium-sized American heart". Meanwhile, the present is here, and it is just so concrete and real, so big and unperturbed; so full and so empty at the same time. I think a lot of us are a bit touch-starved and searching right now. This would probably have been a good place to end this post, but it'd feel strange to leave "Simulation Swarm" unmentioned. It is probably my favourite song on DNWMIBIY,  and it is the one to which the absence of Indigo isn't the main backdrop. Don't get me wrong, she is very much there, but it feels like it is about everything at the same time — the ones we've lost, the ones we've never had, and life as almost a hallucination where everything comes together in ways we don't always understand. Anyway, these are my first impressions. Thanks for reading, lol.

[rallamajoop]

...and the unironic joys of better living through chemistry

How do I love Venom: The Hunger, let me count the ways…

It’s by far the shippiest Venom/Eddie story to come out of the character’s heyday. It’s the only story of the era to treat Venom’s violent wild-animal instincts not as an immutable fact, but as something that can be managed. It pulls off an aesthetic like nothing else that was being done at the time.

And then there’s the way it says, Does the world around you seem sinister and foreboding? Do you lie awake at night contemplating metaphorical oceans of despair? Well shit, son – have you considered you may be suffering from a mundane neurochemical imbalance, and a round of the right meds could clear that right up for you?

It does all this without breaking the atmosphere, without a whiff that our story has been interrupted for a Very Special Message about mental health.

In the near-decade since I was first prescribed anti-depressants, I don’t think I’ve read another story that lands the message “Sometimes, it’s not you, it’s just your brain chemistry,” so well.

Fair warning: if you have not read The Hunger, I am about to spoil every major plot point. If you have, well, maybe I can still give you a new appreciation for a few details you might have missed.

It’s a strange book, whatever else you take from it. It’s almost the only thing either author or artist contributed to the Venom canon, and it’s so different stylistically and tonally from the 90′s Venom norm that it feels like a tale from some noir-elseworlds setting instead of 616 canon. When you take risks that big with a property, you leave yourself precious little landing space between 'unmitigated triumph’ and ‘abject failure’: if this book hadn’t absolutely nailed it, I’d be dismissing it as edgy, OOC dreck. Fortunately, if The Hunger is nothing else, it is a story that $&#@ing commits – to basically everything it does.

Now, I'm not going to tell you Venom: The Hunger is a story about overcoming depression, because I don't know whether author Len Kaminski even thought about it that way while working on it. There's always space for other readings, and this one take is not gospel. That said: holy shit is this thing unsubtle with its metaphors. And with that in mind, let’s start by talking a little about Kaminski’s take on Eddie himself.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to divide 90′s Eddie into two broad personas: the Meathead, and the Hobo.

Kaminski’s Eddie nominally belongs in the angsty, long-haired Hobo incarnation, but that’s a bit of a simplification: this version certainly has plenty of angst and plenty of hair to his name – but nowhere, not even at his lowest ebb, does he doubt that he and his Other are meant for each other, which is usually Hobo!Eddie’s primary existential quandary.

He’s also taken up narrating his own life like a hardboiled PI.

So that’s... novel.

The only other time Eddie’s sounded like this is, er, in that one other Venom one-shot Kaminski penned (Seed of Darkness, a prequel that sadly isn’t in The Hunger’s league), so I think we can safely file it under authorial ticks.

Then again, Hobo!Eddie’s always been one melodramatic SOB, so maybe this is just how he’d sound after learning to channel his angst into his poetry. You can’t argue it fits the aesthetic, anyway.

We’d also be remiss not to mention Ed Halsted’s art, which I can only describe as gothic-meets-noir-meets-H.R.-Giger. Never before or since has the alien symbiote looked this alien: twisted with Xenompoph-like ridges and veins.

But Halsted doesn’t treat Venom to all that extra detail in every panel. Instead, the distortion tends to appear when the symbiote is separated from Eddie or out of control – and I doubt you need me to walk you through the symbolic importance of that creative decision. More importantly, Halsted’s art provides exactly the class of visuals that Kaminski’s story needs.

Did I mention this is a horror story? You might be surprised how few Venom stories really fit that genre, but if all those adjectives about Halsted’s style above didn’t clue you in, this is one of them.

Anyway, with that much context covered, let’s get into the main narrative of this thing.

As our first issue opens, Eddie’s world has become a dark and foreboding place. He’s not sleeping, though he mostly brushes this off. (Fun fact: trouble sleeping is one of those under-appreciated symptoms of depression. Additional fun fact: the first doctor ever to suggest I might be suffering from depression was actually a sleep specialist. You can guess how that appointment was going.)

Just to set our scene, here’s all of page 1.

Eddie’s narration has plenty of (ha) venom for his surroundings, but the visuals are here to back him up: panels from Eddie’s POV are edged in twisted, fleshy borders and drained of colour, the people rendered as creepy, goblin-like creatures. A couple of later scenes go even further to contrast Eddie-vision with what everyone else is seeing:

As depictions of depression go this is a little on the nose, but then, you don’t read a comic about a brain-eating alien parasite looking for subtlety, do you?

Eddie  doesn’t see himself as depressed, of course. As far as he’s concerned, he’s seeing the world’s true face: it’s everyone else who’s deluding themselves. He’s still got his symbiote, so he’s happy. He’s yet to hit that all-important breaking point where something he can’t brush off goes irrevocably wrong.

But he’s also starting to experience these weird... cravings.

He just can’t put a name to exactly what he’s craving until a routine bar fight with a couple of thugs takes a turn for the horrific.

(I include this panel partly to point out even in The Hunger, the goriest of all 90′s Venom titles, you’re still not going to see brains getting eaten in any graphic detail. We don’t need to to get the horror of the moment across. The 90′s were a more innocent time.)

Eddie himself is horrified when he comes back to himself and realises what he’s done.

Or rather, what his symbiote’s just made him do.

Kaminski doesn’t keep us in suspense about why, though. Eddie may have just done something horrific, but there’s a reason, and it’s as mundane as a vitamin deficiency. He’s bonded to an alien creature, after all, and his symbiote is craving a nutrient which just happens to be found in human brains. And if Eddie can’t or won’t help it meet that need, it’ll do so alone. 

Now, giving us that explanation so quickly is an interesting creative decision: this is a horror story, and horror lives in what we don’t know. Wouldn’t it be all the more horrifying had the symbiote been unable to explain what’s going on, leaving Eddie without the first real clue as to where this monstrous new hunger had come from?

The Hunger doesn’t take that route though, and I love it. Eddie isn’t a monster, this isn’t his fault: he has a fucking condition, and wallowing in his own moral failings is going to get him nowhere. You might as well try to cure scurvy or rickets with positive thinking. Just like depression can make you feel like an utter failure at the most basic parts of being human, and all the affirmations in the world won’t fix it when it’s fundamentally your brain chemistry that’s the problem. Or like addicts aren’t weak-willed for struggling not to relapse, they’re dealing with genuine chemical dependency – or even like how someone who’s trans isn’t at fault for being unable to reconcile themselves to the bodies and the hormones they were born with by pure force of trying. Free will is more than an illusion, but we’re all messy, biological organisms underneath, and your own brain and biochemistry can and will fuck you over in a hundred wildly different ways for as many wildly different reasons and it’s not your fault.

We aren’t monsters. But if we do, sometimes, find ourselves identifying with the monster, there might be a reason for that.

(Ahem)

I’m just saying, that’s fucking powerful, and we need more stories that say it.

Anyway, in case you missed it during that tangent, issue #1 closes with the symbiote having torn Eddie’s heart in two itself free to go hunting brains without him.

I’m trying not to get too sidetracked at this point talking about Kaminski’s take on the symbiote itself. Suffice to say there are broadly two schools of thought on how it ought to function while separated from its host: the traditional ambulatory-slime-puddle version, and the more recently popular alternative where anything-you-can-do-with-a-host-you-can-also-do-without-one. I’m not much of a fan of the latter, personally: if your symbiote doesn’t actually need a host, I feel you’ve sort of missed the point. (The movie takes the route of saying symbiotes can’t even process Earth’s atmosphere without a host, which is a great new idea that appears nowhere in the comics, and I love it. Hosts or GTFO, baby!)

Kaminski has his own take, and I can only wish it had caught on. Without Eddie, the symbiote becomes an ever-shifting insectoid-tentacle-snake-monstrosity, driven by an animalistic hunger. It’s many things, but it’s never humanoid.

If you absolutely must have your symbiote operating minus a host, I feel this is the way to do it: semi-feral, shapeless and completely alien (uncontrollable violence and cravings for brains to be added to taste).

Issue #2 comes to us primarily through the perspective of the mild-mannered Dr. Thaddeus Paine of the Innsmouth Hills Sanitarium (yes, really).

Yeah, he’s not fooling anyone. Meet our official villain! He joins our story after Eddie is picked up by the police and handed off to the nearest available institution, on account of how completely sane and rational he’s been acting.

Naturally, Dr. Paine soon has copious notes on Eddie’s ‘crazy’ story about his psychic link to a brain-eating alien monster. Fortunately for Eddie, Paine also runs some tests and makes an interesting discovery. 

Congratulations, Venom: the ‘vitamin’ you were missing officially has a name!

Finding the right meds isn’t always this easy. I got lucky – the first ones my psych put me on worked pretty well – but I have plenty of friends who weren't so lucky. In fact, the treatment for Eddie's problems is so straightforward it arguably has more in common with, say, endocrine disorders like thyroid conditions or Addison’s disease, which differ from clinical depression but present many similar symptoms (but can sadly be just as much of a bitch to get correctly diagnosed – please do read author Maggie Stiefvater’s account of the latter when you get the chance, because forget Venom, that is a horror story).

‘True’ depression remains much less well understood by medicine, either in its causes or how to effectively treat it. But simply having a name for what was wrong with me made so much difference, and that’s an experience I imagine anyone who’s dealt with any long undiagnosed medical condition could relate to. It put my life in context in a way nothing else had in years.

(I can’t speak to the accuracy of the way phenethylamine is portrayed in this comic – a quick google suggests there may be some real debate that phenethylamine deficiencies have been overlooked as a contributor to clinical depression, but having no medical background, that one’s well beyond me. Either way, scientific accuracy really doesn’t matter in this context – it’s how it works in-universe for story purposes that we should pay attention to.)

Since this issue is mostly from Paine’s POV, we don’t get Eddie’s reaction to having a healthy amount of phenethylamine sloshing around in his brain again, just the assurance that treatment appears to be ‘completely successful’.

He’s still a paranoid, hostile bastard though. Meds can turn your life around, but they won’t make you not you.

But even if Eddie’s feeling better, he’s still psychically linked to someone who isn’t. Symbiote-vision still comes through drained of colour and edged in viscera.

That’s the thing about meds: they won’t solve all your problems overnight. If you’ve been depressed for a while, there are good odds you have problems stacking up. But working meds can be a godsend when it comes to getting you into a space where you can deal with your problems again, whether said problems are doing-your-laundry or all the way into not-giving-up-completely-and-just-accepting-you’ll-die-alone-on-the-street.

For Eddie, ‘dealing with his problems’ begins with stealing a keycard and busting out of the asylum.

Of course, that’s the easy part. How do you solve a problem like a feral symbiote? Like any good 90′s comic book protagonist, Eddie tackles it by putting on his big-boy camouflage pants and kitting himself out with weapons and pouches while quoting “If you live something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down.”

We can add this to the list of things I love about this comic. Even if The Hunger is a weirdly-stylistic tract about depression at heart, it’s also still a goddamn 90′s Venom comic, and not ashamed to be.

We’re into issue #3 now, and back to hearing the story from Eddie’s POV.

Eddie is very much aware that his symbiote has murdered innocent people while they’ve been separated. Even if this is the result of extreme circumstances, there’s a good case to be made that the symbiote is too dangerous to be allowed to live. Plenty of heroes would treat it like a rabid dog at this point.

But Eddie isn’t a hero, he’s a mess of a character and an anti-hero at best, so we don’t have to hold him to the same standard. He’s well aware his symbiote may be too far gone to save, that he may have to put it down – but that’s only his backup plan. He wants to help it. He wants it back. He’s down in that sewer with screamers and a flamethrower because he knows all his symbiote’s weaknesses, but he’s also carrying a large jar of black-market synthesised phenethylamine, because if he can just get close enough...

Depression can’t make you a literal monster, but it can make you an asshole. Miserable to be around, lacking even the energy to care who else you’re hurting. The depression doesn’t excuse that, but it makes everything harder, and it’s that much easier to sink back into your spiral when everyone around you has given up. It can make you think everyone around has given up even if that isn’t true.

So to have Eddie here say, in effect, I don’t care how many people you’ve eaten, I know it wasn’t your fault. I still love you. You’re still worth fighting for – god, does that get me right in the id.

There’s still a whole issue left at this point – we’ve still got to deal with our real villain, Dr. Paine, who we’ve just learned is into eating brains himself and torturing his patients recreationally, and who wants to capture the symbiote for his own purposes. There’s the scene where Eddie and his symbiote finally bond again, and Venom beats up all Paine’s goons while singing David Bowie because like I said, this is still a 90′s superhero comic and this is what Venom does.

But for our purposes, I'm going to skip to the penultimate page of the story, because the way it mirrors our opening page is really lovely.

Remember that shot of Eddie dealing with a beggar back at the beginning of the story, thinking about how these people would 'get their despair all over you'? Here he is again, cheerfully forking over the last dollar in his pocket to the next man to ask him for change. For all the gothic atmosphere and gore, it’s moments like this that make The Hunger easily one of the most positive, uplifting Venom stories ever written. Funny, that. (I could probably write a whole other essay on sympathy for the homeless as a recurring motif in Venom stories, but that... well, whole other essay and all that.)

What’s Eddie learned from this experience? Don’t take your symbiote for granted. Is ‘symbiote’ a metaphor for mental health here, is paying attention to its needs an allegory for paying attention to your own? I still don’t know how literally Kaminski meant us to take this, but it’s a lovely note to end on no matter how you parse it.

At the end of the day, The Hunger isn’t flawless. The conflict with Paine ends on a thematic but slightly unsatisfying note. Eddie makes much of his symbiote's loneliness and desire for union, but when the two of them are finally reunited, the only reaction comes from Eddie's side. In fact, the symbiote seems to have no response to being able to return to Eddie at all, and that’s an omission that bugs me.

But Kaminski is more interested than any other writer of the era in the truly alien nature of the symbiote, in its relationship with Eddie from Eddie’s side, and though plenty of others talk about the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Spider-man, no-one else had the guts to portray their relationship this much like a romance.

And Venom: The Hunger is no less interesting in the context of Len Kaminski’s other work. You don't have to look far into his Marvel and DC credits to pick up that the guy has a real thing for monsters. (“All of my favourite characters are outlaws, misfits, anti-heroes,” he says, in one of the very few interviews I could find with him, “I wouldn't know what to do with Superman.”) He's written for vampires, werewolves, victims of mad science, and all of three at once, littering his work with biochemistry-themed technobabble, melodramatic monologues, gratuitous pop-culture references, and protagonists who must learn to embrace their inner demons. So The Hunger represents more than a few of his favourite running themes.

For our context, his more notable other work includes Children of the Beast, in which a werewolf must make peace between his human and animalistic sides, and The Creeper, in which a journalist must make peace with the crazy super-powered alter-ego sharing his body. In fact, The Creeper and The Hunger share so much DNA (including an evil doctor posing as a respected psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on our hero while he's trapped in a mental institution) that it’s quite the achievement that they still feel like such very distinct entities beyond that point.

The human alter-egos of both werewolf and Creeper even use prescription meds while wrestling with their respective dark sides. The difference, in both cases, is that these are stories where meds play their traditional fictional role – and that's a role that could be as easily filled by illegal drugs or alcohol without making any substantive difference. You see, if a protagonist is using them, it's a sign of unwillingness to tackle their 'real' problems. Even among work by the same author in the same genre, The Hunger represents an outlier. And that's just a little disappointing – at least to me.

In real life, of course, prescription meds are no magical cure-all elixir. Depression meds that work for one person may not work for another, or may not keep working in the longer term. Everyone has heard stories about quack doctors who prescribe them to the wrong patients for the wrong reasons, about lives ruined by addictions to prescription painkillers, or the supposedly-damning statistics about how poorly SSRI's perform in rigorous clinical trials. The proper way to treat depression is obviously with lifestyle and therapy. People will still airily dismiss medications that we all know previous generations got along just fine without, or suggest that figures like Van Gogh would never have created great art if they hadn't been mad enough to slice off an ear. I mean, the fact you think you need those bogus mediations is probably the best possible sign of just how broken you are, right? Who do you think you’re kidding?

Our popular fiction loves stories about manly men who bury their trauma under a gruff, anti-social exterior and come back swinging at the world that broke them, bravely refusing even painkillers that might dull their manly reflexes. Other genres make space for broken people confronting their demons in grand moments of catharsis, finally breaking down into tears when someone gets through to make them face their problems. "I could barely make it out of bed in the mornings until I found a doctor who started me on this new prescription" is not only wildly counter to the accepted social narrative, it's a hard thing to know how to dramatise.

 Even other Venom comics have been guilty of this.

Believe me, I recognise all of this, and just how much progress we've made in the last few decades. But I haven't the slightest doubt that for so many vulnerable people, the stigma against prescription medications does infinitely more harm than those same meds could ever do. And just having the right to externalise my problems into it's not you, it's your brain chemistry, may have helped me more than the meds themselves.

(And again, no, being prescribed SSRI's didn't fix me overnight, but I honestly don't know if all the talk therapy and tearful conversations with family members in the world could've got me as far as I've come without them.)

I love Venom: The Hunger. It's no-one's idea of high art, but it doesn’t need to be. There is a whole other post’s worth of things I love about it that I’ve already cut out this one as pointless tangents, and that may actually be it’s biggest drawback as a go-to example: I fully recognise that I would not be making this post if The Hunger hadn't also also grabbed me as a great bit of Venom canon, being the massive fan and shipper that I am. Other people who are just as desperate as me for more stories with the same core theme, but not into weird 90's comics about needy goo aliens, probably won't get nearly as much out of it as I have.

But if it sounds anything like your jam, maybe you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

If nothing else, it proves that you can make a viscerally satisfying story out of a message that shockingly unconventional. And you may even have people still discovering it and falling in love with it 25 years after the fact.

[spammreviews]

C-:

83. Ryokan-

The first half of the story sees a guy who goes crazy and tries to turn his house into an inn/ bathhouse, much to the chagrin of his wife and daughter.

The portrayal of a marriage in crisis is not unrealistic, but the cause of the drama is so absurd, it’s difficult to get emotionally invested in the drama.

The second half takes place ten years later and follows the daughter as she goes to the inn/ bathhouse that was once her house…well, that’s what I would say if this story was good. Instead, we follow a friend of the daughter who hears the story of the inn/bathhouse and decides to visit it. So, yeah, our new protagonist has no emotional connection to the story.

This new protagonist acts like no human being would ever act, acting very chill when he’s told he’s in a bath of blood.

However, this half does have some horrific looking creatures, even if it also feels the tonal opposite of the first half.

My biggest gripe with this story is that it has no real central conflict to it, mostly due to the sudden shift in perspective.

82. Unbearable Labyrinth

This is the creepy buddhism story.

Our main character is someone who stopped going to school after having a nervous breakdown. She has issues with worrying about how others perceive her. Our ending seems like a perfect opportunity to overcome this. However, it quickly ends before our character can do anything.

Also, the reveal is kind of underwhelming. There are mummies, just as the characters theorized there would be. It’s not even a twist.

This story is a bit odd stylistically, as the character designs are a bit different than Ito’s usual, looking a lot more classically manga. I actually don’t mind. There’s a bit of charm to the way they look.

81. Venus in The Blind Spot-

(Spoilers)

This is the story about the girl who becomes invisible when people see her from up close.

It’s not exactly scary so much as it is interesting. The plot twist about the girl’s father is a pretty well executed plot twist, as there is a lot of set up put towards it.

However, after it, I feel like Mr. Ito didn’t really know what else to do, so the story just wraps up really quickly.

Also, the ideas within this story, desire turning to obsession, have been explored by Ito a million times before in Remina, Tomie, and Lovesickness, and all three of those stories do it with a lot more intrigue and dimensions. 

I guess there’s something to the character of the father, who is messing with people’s bodies without their consent. However, the story never really goes anywhere with that.

80. Gathering (The Tomie Chapter)-

This is the chapter where there’s the one dude who doesn’t love Tomie.

The only compliment I can give this story is that it shows how there are men immune to Tomie’s charms, and that desire is something that can be resisted.

The problem with this story is that 80% of it is just Tomie trying to seduce a man who is grieving and doesn’t want to be seduced. I have zero interest in seeing that.

In fact, I’d argue that it is quite boring.

This story is better than previous Tomie stories because it doesn’t contradict the idea of Tomie as a character or be overly cruel. It also does offer a fairly new perspective on the Tomie situation. However, it’s a lot lower than many other Tomie stories because it lacks any interesting imagery, horrifying ideas, or creative use of the character. It really only uses half of the idea of Tomie, the getting killed by men half, and not the resurrection half.

79. Dead Man Calling- 

The set up for this story is a woman getting harassed by phone calls from a man on death row.

This story feels kind of pro-death penalty, as the man being killed is seen as a good thing.

It also seems like it’s trying to make a metaphor about grief, but it doesn’t comment on grief. Our main character starts out grieving and ends up in that same place.

The main character’s haunting problem isn’t solved because she has some grand realization. The dude is just executed, and the story ends. In fact, she doesn’t do anything to resolve her problem, which isn’t how stories are usually supposed to go.

Also, the guy who is being executed looks absolutely ridiculous.

I can’t take this seriously:

78. Red Turtleneck-

This is the story about the dude who cheats on his girlfriend with a fortune teller, and the fortune teller makes him have to hold his head to keep it from falling off.

I feel like this story kind of over-complicates itself. 

It seems to want to be a simple morality story where a man does a bad thing and then gets punished for it.

There’s a part in this story where it seems like that’s all it's going to be.

However, the girlfriend who got cheated on saves her cheating boyfriend. Now, sure, people don’t deserve to be killed for cheating, but it feels dumb in the context of the story. The main character didn’t do anything to redeem himself. We get no sign that he improves himself in some way. The girlfriend just saves him out of a sense of not wanting to see someone die.

Also, defeating a witch by stabbing her with scissors is really underwhelming.

Also, at the very end, the boy is saved because…well, we don’t know why. His head gets knocked off, and then it is revealed that the weird baby creatures that knocked it off actually didn’t exist. So, what was the point of having the weird baby creatures?

Basically, our main character, the cheating guy, basically just becomes a spectator in this plot after cheating.

Also, the drama between the dude and his girlfriend is never really resolved. I’m assuming they broke up, but it never says.

The end sees our main character still being punished, as the paranoia haunts him for the rest of his life. So, in the end, it does kind of circle back to just being a morality tale, but it adds so much that is not needed for the message.

However, the idea of having to hold your head so it doesn’t fall off is absolutely horrifying, and the design and character of the witch is very fun. 

77. A Deserter in the House-

This is the story about the deserter…in the house.

This deserter is a war deserter who is hiding in the family’s house.

Despite the character’s being the usual blocks of wood, they’re still likable (for the first part of the story) because what they’re doing is nice. The deserter is also likable because he’s such a  polite guy. Sometimes, that’s all you need.

However, it quickly becomes clear that this family actually sucks, and it’s at that point when the story starts to become rather interesting. I do like the way the reveal is done. The story doesn’t explicitly tell you at first, but instead slowly reveals it to you.

I appreciate that. This is a story that actually trusts its audience, and that’s nice.

The problem is, it is at this point when I’ve stopped caring about the characters. It’s also here where a very tedious love drama is added.

It’s hard to care about a love story when you don’t care about the characters being in love, and there’s also so many characters in this story, I’m not one hundred percent sure who is in love with who.

Also, the reason why the beginning of this story works is because the story doesn’t rely on exposition. Then, in the middle, the story begins to lay exposition on us.

It also doesn’t help that this story has one of the most confusing flashbacks I’ve ever seen. I had to re-read that part four or so times because I wasn’t sure what was happening or that it was a flashback.

However, the plot twist at the very end is fun in the way it kind of reverses what is happening to the family, I guess.

I suppose this is a story about the dangers of not moving on, with the family doing this whole revenge plot because they can’t get over a tragedy. 

I’m sure you can also apply that to some politics in Japan.

So, yeah, this isn’t exactly a good story, but the premise is interesting.

76. The Conversation Room-

This is the story about the women in the hospital with stuff growing out of their mouths. Wait, you’ve never read it? Oh. Well…

I have read this story, and it’s decent.

Firstly, Hospitals are always fun locations for horror, obviously.

Secondly, the story doesn’t do a half bad job at building suspense by slowly showing you stranger and stranger events, something Mr. Ito loves doing.

However, it does toe the line between “weird in an eerie surreal way” and “weird in a confusing way”. 

The problem is that everything about this situation is weird in a different way. The hospital staff are acting weird, and so are the four women, and the main character is also confused as to what caused the accident that got him into the hospital. A weird old man crawls through a hole in the wall at some point. He appears again, but he really doesn’t serve any purpose within the story. All throughout it, we get these scenes with very strange dialogue, even though that may just be a result of bad translations.

You can contrast this with the hospital chapters in Uzumaki, where the surreality is coming from either one or two places, and there are patterns to the weirdness.

With this story, there are no patterns. It feels like Ito was randomly throwing shit around.

Another weird thing about this story is the way it constantly switches perspective, going from a man, to one of the women, to the doctors. 

This story also has an odd way of revealing information. The first time we see the stuff coming out of the girl’s mouths, it’s in a flashback.

Another weird detail of this story is that, out of the five weird girls, there’s one we get to know more. What’s weird about her is that she goes from being on the side of the other girls to randomly being afraid of them to suddenly being on their side again without explanation. Also, the group of girls starts out numbering four, only to randomly change to five. That’s not a plot hole, as I’m sure there are other girls in the hospital,  but it just adds to how needlessly confusing this situation is.

Despite all of this, my biggest complaint with this story overall is that it doesn’t seem to know what it’s about. The central conflict of the first few pages is between the main character and one of the women. Then, it’s about the women being mistreated by the hospital staff, then it’s about one of the women not wanting to be with the other women, then it’s about the man running away from the women. The best Junji Ito stories have a consistent theme throughout whether that be spirals, lust, fear of others judgment, et cetera. 

This story has ideas, but none of them are explored. The end of this story has a reveal involving hive minds, but that is never elaborated upon, and none of this story previously had any ideas relating to hive minds like the division between 

Another thing about the best Junji Ito stories is that the supernatural is either born out of the character’s drama or internal conflict or somehow works alongside it: Remina doesn’t like being famous and now everyone hates her, a girl who doesn’t like her appearance turns into Tomie, a boy afraid of social connection has to deal with an apocalyptic force dedicated to sewing people together. Sometimes it’s as simple as a girl not liking slugs having her tongue turning into a slug.

However, with this story, the supernatural aspect has nothing to do with any of the human conflicts in this story. It’s a random interruption that seems to derail the story, rather than move it forward. It doesn’t help that, once the story is derailed, it does not go back on track. The conflicts about the hospital staff being skeptical of the woman’s illnesses and the man being mad about the accident just go away.

Despite my many complaints, this story does have some great imagery with the weird tendrils coming out of the girl’s mouths. 

73., 74., 75. The Tales of Oshikiri (Intruder, Further Tales of Oshikiri, and Further Tales of Oshikiri-Walls)-

(Spoilers)

There are a few Ito stories which span multiple chapters, and this tale of alternate dimensions may be the most obscure, and I think that’s for good reason.

Simply put, these three short stories make no sense. Now, that is par for the course with Junji Ito, but these make no sense in a new and intriguing way.

Let me start off by talking about the first story, Intruder.

This story follows three characters investigating parallel dimensions.

We are introduced to this kid who definitely seems to be a kid from a parallel universe.

He’s this weird and shy kid who is new in town, he gets really nervous when the group mentions other dimensions existing, and he lives without his parents in a big house that apparently has connections to other universes, according to one of our characters.

However, the twist is pretty crazy. He’s not from a parallel universe. 

However, there is a version of him from another universe that is out and about.

That is kind of weird.

Anywhoo, the beginning of the story is kind of  fun, as we’re anxiously waiting for our main characters to find out what we, the audience, think the truth is.

It is nice how we watch our main characters slowly move towards the truth as the evidence slowly builds up.

The problem is, there’s nothing about being from an alternate dimension that is inherently scary. Just because a kid is from another dimension doesn’t mean he’s evil or that he poses a serious threat.

However, the biggest problem with this story is the main characters, who are a new level of boring that I didn’t know was possible. It is impressive, because these are three people who are obsessed with the supernatural. However, they somehow manage to not just have no personality, but somehow have negative personalities. With some boring characters, you can at least make the excuse that there are some people in real life who are boring. However, these characters are kind of boring which is simply impossible for a person to be. Despite being friends, they don’t act like friends, or like people. These characters experience emotion, but they experience them in the way characters from a drug PSA from the 1950s experience emotion,  in a robotic way that people don’t act.

The exception to this is the one Weirdo Kid who is not from an alternate dimension, as he’s this shy little guy.

The boring characters act especially inhuman at the end, where they are witnessing a guy they know burying bodies and their reactions are to tell each other exposition that doesn’t even need to be said.

Imagine you were out with a friend and saw someone being murdered, so you turned to your friend and said “That man is being murdered with a bullet from a gun.”

Moving on,

The next short story, Further Tales of Oshikiri, picks up where the first story left off.

One of the members of the boring mystery gang, her name is Fujimio, runs through the halls of the weirdo kid’s mansion.

However, then the weirdo kid shows up. However, is it him or his evil doppelganger?

I do quiet like that trope, so that made me happy.

However, the member of the boring mystery gang then disappears, and our perspective has suddenly shifted to Weirdo Kid.

We then see weirdo kid, in class, wondering why she was in his house and why she disappeared.

Now, weirdo kid knew why she was in his house…because he took her there in the last issue.

Also, he sees Fujimio again in class, but she acts like nothing happened. So, the weirdo kid assumes that the version he saw was from an alternate dimension.

Then, we get a scene that lasts way too long with this dipshit bully kid picking on Weirdo Kid. Weirdo Kid snaps and beats the bully up, despite that kind of being out of care.

The bully shows up at Weirdo Kid’s house, but he’s a weird slime monster who melts.

The next day at school, Weirdo Kid has a conversation with Fujimio that serves no purpose. It’s exposition of stuff we already know that does not help.

Then, the weirdo kid is back at his house, and Fujimio shows up, only now she’s a weird gross flesh monster that also melts.

I actually really like the design of the flesh monster.

Then, if you thought this couldn’t make less sense, Weirdo Kid bumps into his evil doppelganger doing scientific experiments on Fujimio. He attacks his evil doppelganger and injects him with a serum that makes his evil doppelganger all messed up and turns him to slime.

I’ve read this story, like, eight times, and it still doesn’t make any sense. This might be the fault of the translation. It’s also because it’s mostly just a series of strange events occurring, with no real explanation. 

Now, I like when stories don’t make sense. However, what’s the point? The best stories which don’t make sense have some purpose.

On the other hand, the imagery ain’t half bad.

The story after this is Further Tales of Oshikiri-Walls, and at that point I had just straight up stopped caring. Weirdo Kid’s parents show up. There are people getting trapped in the walls. The second tale was so nonsensical, it makes the third story bland in comparison.

However, there is a definite charm to how bizarre the middle installment is. I like it when stories are bizarre, even if the story is just doing it for fun.

This story doesn’t seem to even understand its own reality, contradicting itself on even the simplest of facts. It’s legitimately impressive. There’s no sense of build-up either, as the second story feels so much more intense and over the top than the third.

This collection of stories isn’t good, but I definitely won’t forget them in a very long time.

One last final note. Alternate universes are a big thing now, and it is interesting to see a story from the 90s tackle this theme. I do like how little this story adds to the conversation. Its ideas about alternate universes don’t go much beyond “What if there were other universes just like this one?” In the first two stories, alternate universes are only used to tell a doppelganger story, something which doesn’t even require alternate universes

I think that’s kind of funny.

72. Rustling in the Grass-

This is the Mimi ghost story where Mimi and her boyfriend see a corpse hanging from a noose on a tree. Oh no! Then, the corpse rotates towards them and something falls from the corpse. Oh no! That’s it. It ends right there. This story does everything that a Halloween decoration can not also do.  Calling it a story is a bit of an overstatement. 

The Junji Ito Story Ranking, Worst to Best

Trigger warning:

Suicide, self harm, mentions of body horror, death, animal death, rape, marital abuse, transphobia, and sexism.

This will not include Junji Ito’s adaptations of others' works. There are also some works which couldn’t be put in this story because they simply aren’t available in English.

Also, there are two kinds of Junji Ito stories: one shots and longer stories.

One shots are stories such as Slug Girl and the Enigma of Amigara Fault.

Longer stories include Gyo and Remina.

There are some stories which are kind of on the fence between the two such as Tomie, Souchi, Uzumaki, and the Dissolving Classroom. These are collections of multiple different stories which can work together as one cohesive story. I ranked all of the Tomie chapters as separate stories as I felt like their quality varied, but Uzumaki, Souchi and Dissolving Classroom had more consistent quality (for better or for worse), so they were ranked as one whole work.

Penultimately, some of these stories have multiple titles. I have tried to show both titles when that happens, but there are most likely some times when I have made a mistake.

Lastly, some of my reviews will contain spoilers while others will not. Those with spoilers will contain a (Spoilers) tag.

Worst to best

F:

133. The Bizarre Hikizuri Siblings:

The Seance-

I hate every character in this story.

This story is about a family and they’re all spooky weirdos, like the Addams family if they were all annoying.

There’s the fat guy.

His design is obnoxious, and his entire existence is a never ending stream of stupid, overdone fat jokes. Wait, actually, that’s not fair, there is also a bunch of gross out humor.

There’s the little girl. She’s the “evil little girl” trope. She’s obnoxious and I hate her design.

There’s the little boy. He’s the “evil little boy” trope. He’s obnoxious and I hate his design.

There’s the eldest girl. She’s…she’s there.

There’s the eldest boy. He’s pretending to be mature and he speaks in a weird false-eloquent manner. He is not extremely obnoxious.

There’s Narumi. She’s “normal”, which means she’s boring.

The first half of the story sees us being introduced to our main characters. The eldest boy invites a girl to dinner. At the dinner, ee see the fat guy drooling and eating lots of food in a gross way. 

The family has a fight and I don’t know what emotion I should be feeling in that scene. Is it funny? If so, it fails, because there aren't any actual jokes. Is it supposed to be dramatic? If so, it fails because I don’t care about any of these characters. It’s clear that the family is grieving, but they’re all grieving in these extremely inhuman ways- so I can’t relate to them.

The family decides to have a seance for their dead parents, and that takes up the rest of the story. It’s filled with gross-out humor, inane banter, and extremely repetitive character beats. I think the little girl cries like ten or so times.

The family is also just arguing all of the time. Every page is another argument. I know that families argue with each other, but this is ridiculous. I don’t think this family likes each other.

All of this arguing means that the plot has the pacing of molasses, as none of this arguing moves the plot forward.

Also, family drama isn’t interesting when the family are just annoying caricatures of tired archetypes. 

This story sucks in every way. It’s not even nice to look at because the designs of the family make me want to vomit.

God, I hate this story so much.

132. All of the Souichi Stories-

The Souichi stories are too silly to be scary, too dark to be funny, too down-to-earth to be campy, and too annoying to be likable. 

Souichi is a child who never poses a threat to our main characters, so he’s never scary. 

However, his hijinks are also not fun to watch because they usually involve hurting people.

Fictional characters getting seriously hurt can be funny in a fucked up way, but only if something is added to make it funny. These stories just have someone getting their hand hit with a hammer. People getting hurt can also be fun if they are being injured in an extraordinarily cartoony manner, like in Evil Dead 2, but the injuries characters receive here are stuff like stepping on a nail, which is a very simple and realistic way to injure oneself, meaning that it’s not fun.

Despite being about a child who’s evil, these stories never have much fun with that premise or do anything creative. The only way Souichi being a child barely affects his career as an asshole is that he doesn’t face consequences.

Also, the others characters in this story are blacks of wood with no personalities and no dimensions. As such, the story is extraordinarily boring whenever Souichi isn’t on screen.

Watching a child be annoying to a bunch of boring people gets extremely old extremely quickly, especially with how repetitive these stories are. There are about fourteen of them, and they all have the same plot.

Lastly, Souichi is just annoying. He has all of the most annoying character traits of children: he always repeats things, he screams way too much, he eats really messily, he’s a gleeful asshole, and he never faces any consequences for his actions. 

This kind of character can work, like that prince kid from the Tintin comics, Abdullah or whatever. However, that kid appears in like fifteen pages over the course of two different books. 

However, Souchi is the main focus of these many stories.

Even when Souchi gets what is coming to him, it’s never cathartic because it’s always way too much, like him getting nails through his cheeks. That’s disturbing. 

Essentially, the problem with these stories is that they have no sense of tone. The mix of morbidity and wackiness leads to the stories just being really annoying.

They’re also really repetitive, both in the sense that almost all of these stories follow the same formula with the same beats, but this formula is one where the plot is one continuous cycle of Souchi being a little shit, getting away with it, and then getting angry for some reason. 

131. Fashion Model-

(Spoilers)

Haha it’s funny because the woman is ugly and aaah! it’s also scary because the woman is ugly and haha it’s funny because the ugly woman is going to rape the man as punishment for being slightly paranoid. 

This story is stupid. It’s cruel to every character involved, it’s not funny, the tone is all over the place, the pacing is extremely slow, and its attempts at suspense are laughably pathetic because they’re based on us being scared by a woman for no other reason than her being ugly.

It also has two really annoying tropes being taken to their extreme:

A woman pursuing a man who is clearly not interested in her and

Ugly people are evil/gross/funny.

When this story isn’t being absolutely awful, it’s just boring because every character ranges from bland to just kind of unlikable, like our main character. 

Despite him being kind of a jerk, seeing bad things happen to him isn’t gratifying because they are far worse than what he deserves. 

130. The Bizarre Hikizuri Siblings: 

Narumi’s Boyfriend-

(Spoilers)

This first two pages of this story see a teenage girl, Narumi Hikizuri, about to commit suicide, only to be saved by her boyfriend. You would assume that the rest of the story explores depression. You would not be wrong.

We then meet the other Hikizuri siblings, who, as I mentioned previously, suck, and there are five of them!

Then, we cut back to the teenage girl, Narumi obviously, and her boyfriend. Narumi is depressed and threatening to commit suicide again. Her boyfriend is kind of being an asshole about it, complaining about how hard it is to care for her. 

It’s pretty fucked up that there is really no good support network for Narumi.

Then, Narumi’s family finds her and kidnaps her, and it’s at this point where I can’t help but wonder if Narumi’s siblings are supposed to be scary or funny in this story. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to be scary, as their designs are weird and they talk weirdly, and they’re stupid and silly and wacky and dumb. However, them being funny makes no sense considering the fact that this is a story wich starts with a suicide attempt. Also, it’s hard to laugh because the siblings are so fucking stupid looking. They make me nauseous. Not only that, but the family members are being abusive to Narumi, and that’s not funny, even if their abuse is silly.

Anywhoo, the story randomly swerves in tone when Narumi says she’s going to kill herself, douses herself with gasoline, and flicks a cigarette lighter. You assume she’s on fire and is dying. You would be…uhh…wrong?

After that happens, the family gets Narumi’s boyfriend, takes him to their house, and tortures him by forcing him to lay in a bag with what appears to be the burnt body of Narumi.

It’s kind of disturbing, but it’s also very silly. So, what emotion am I supposed to be feeling?

Then, Narumi shows up, and the boyfriend dies of a heart attack.

As it turns out, the thing that burned was a mannequin, and the family were just messing with the boyfriend.

Narumi only seems a bit angry about her boyfriend dying, and the last panel sees her saying she “Had no intention of actually doing it” meaning she had no intention of setting herself on fire.

Now, I’m going to give the story the benefit of the doubt and say that Narumi was actually going to kill herself. I sure hope that when the family told Narumi she was just doing this for attention, they weren’t right. I sure hope that when Narumi threatened to kill herself in front of her boyfriend, she wasn’t manipulating him.

If that was true, this story would be awful.

I’m going to assume that Narumi is just lying. The story still sucks because we have a depressed character trapped with her abusive family and the story doesn’t seem to care. However, it sucks a little bit less because it’s not insinuating that depressed people are “looking for attention”.

In conclusion, this story is one of the most tonally bizarre things I’ve ever seen. It goes back and forth between silly hijinks and serious drama. 

It also doesn’t help that the silly hijinks aren’t funny, and I don’t even know much about Narumi and her boyfriend, so I don’t care about the drama of their story!

129. Groaning Pipes-

(Spoilers)

This is the story about the people getting stuck in pipes.

To truly understand this story, we need to go in deep.

The story starts off with black haired girl being stalked by, gasp!, a guy who is overweight and ugly. Now, I’d argue that the comic seems to want us to find him gross through the way the panels frame him.

So, we’re not off to a great start.

The pudgy kid asks black haired girl out and black haired girl rebukes him, something we are told has happened many times before. So, this guy sucks. 

However, black haired girl then insults this guy by calling him a “swollen and ugly".

Now, obviously, black haired girl has every right to insult someone who is being a creep. However, she is not insulting him on the grounds of being a creep, but instead focusing on his appearance, something he can’t control. In fact, all of the insults the black haired girl levels against the pudgy kid, and there are many, revolve around his appearance. The pudgy kid isn’t bad because he’s pudgy, he’s bad because he’s being a creep.

A result of this is that I kind of dislike both characters in this situation. Maybe that’s the point. If so, then I can congratulate this story on being rather complex in making the point that the girl had the right to not want to have sex with a guy she doesn’t like. Meanwhile, the guy, however much of a piece of shit he is, has the right to not be belittled for his appearance.

Of course, I’m assuming that’s the point. It’s probably not, because the rest of the story is very stupid. Also, the way both characters act is so extreme, it makes them seem like complete caricatures. The pudgy guy is a gross creepy incel and the black haired girl is a vapid valley girl.

Anywhoo, once that scene happens, black haired girl and her sister go to their house, where they bathe for way too long. At first, I was a bit unsure if these siblings were actually siblings because they look to be the same age and act less like siblings and more like casual work friends.

Then, we learn there is something wrong with the pipes in this house. We also see that the mom of this character is a total neat freak. The story feels the need to tell us this fifty or so times in these ten or so pages, and it quickly gets very annoying. There’s also an agonizingly pointless scene  where the mom yells at a plumber. 

It is also in this part where the two girls hatch a plan to let the pudgy guy go to their house so the neat freak mother can scare him off.

To finish our set up, we also meet the Dad of the family, who is divorced from the Mom and hasn’t seen his kids in a while. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t have the time to explore what it’s like to be a child of divorce in any meaningful way. 

So, the story has just been set up. There isn’t even the suggestion of something scary.

The plan of the two sisters goes perfectly, and the mom throws eggs at the pudgy kid.

Anywhoo, then the plot actually kicks off when the mom accidentally kills the Dad because she thinks he’s the fat kid when he sneaks into the house at night. I guess the Dad just really wanted to see his kids again, and IDK, maybe he was drunk or something. None of the members of the family seem concerned about the death of this man.

The mom tells the cops that the husband had a knife, so her killing of him was in self defense. I suppose that makes sense. However, what doesn’t make sense is that the family is just allowed to stay in this house that has become a crime scene. I suppose I’m nitpicking. Whatever.

We then see the Mom obsessing over her husband’s blood being cleaned from the floor, and the harassment causes the maid to quit. Why does the maid even exist in the story? I don’t know.

After these excruciatingly long sequences of nothing, we finally get some suspense when mysterious sounds start coming from the pipes.

This, among many other things, causes the Mom to freaking lose it. This is not the only Junji Ito story where a stressed out mom with a dead husband goes crazy. Another one will be near the top. However, this one doesn’t work because the mom is an annoying caricature of a mom, and her neurosciences are so extreme she becomes unbelievable.

Anywhoo, it turns out that the pudgy kid is in the pipes, which is where the sound is coming from.

The black haired girl suddenly starts acting like an asshole for no reason, and the story ends with the sister getting pulled into the pipes- presumably by the pudgy kid. I should mention that she is wearing a towel, so there is an unsettling subtext to this.

That’s fucked up. What is this story saying? Fat people are rapists?

Also, the mom just disappears from the story.

One kind of wonders why the husband and his death was even included, as he’s absolutely inessential to the actual main plot, which is the incel in the pipes. The mom is also pretty pointless, with her only important action being throwing eggs at the pudgy kid.

This whole story is convoluted, contrived, and nonsensical. Every character in it is a caricature, whether it be of women or of fat people. It also seems uninterested in actually creating an atmosphere of dread and suspense.

Unfortunately, a common theme throughout Ito’s stories (specifically his earlier work) is unattractive people being cast as villains and women going through extremely traumatic events in a way which feels indulgent. This story has these two being taken to the extreme.

128. Nanakuse Kyokumi-

This is the transphobic story.

It follows a woman , Koroketsu, who is obsessed with a writer. She goes to see that writer, Nanakuse, only for Nanakuse to turn out to be evil…and also a trans woman. 

Anywhoo, the main character, Koroketsu, of this story is one of the more colorful main characters because she’s really weird.

This means that the beginning of this story is…interesting with how strange it is.

Then, we meet Nanakuse, the author. She is drawn with a very pronounced chin and nose, and our main character literally thinks “A male!” when she first sees her.

It’s at this point when I stopped wanting to read the story, but I had to because of this fucking list.

After this, the author throws the main character into a dungeon, our main character suffers some body horror, and then the story ends.

If it wasn’t for the transphobia, this story would probably be in C. It is very quickly paced. In fact, it’s too quickly paced, as there’s no time given to creating suspense and atmosphere. We don’t see the author seeming more and more off putting as we get more hints that she is evil. The second the main character shows up, the author acts like an absolute asshole. Then, we get a scene of the two of them drinking which does nothing to build suspense. At the end of that scene, the author randomly reveals themself as evil when they toss the main character in a dungeon. It’s kind of sudden. There’s no buildup with this story.

You know Dracula? That’s a story about a person visiting the house of someone mysterious (Dracula), and we get more and more red flags about Dracula throughout the beginning of the story. It’s fun and suspenseful. If Dracula hypnotized Renfield after one conversation, the story would be very boring.

Moving on, the quick pacing means that the stuff about people having “quirks” doesn’t have time to be fleshed out. It seems interesting, but we barely get to see any of it, or the consequences of it, or why all of these people are obsessed with it.

A bunch of exposition is given, but it's all surface level stuff that doesn’t even help us to genuinely understand what’s going on. We learn how the author bought the house and why she keeps people in the prison, but none of this explores the idea of having quirks. Obviously, horror stories thrive when the horror isn’t explained, but it’s helpful if we at least understand what the horrifying thing even is. Imagine Jaws, but we never learn that it’s a shark.

Not only that, the body horror is a little more silly than scary. It’s also very sudden, much like the rest of this story.

Overall, even without the extreme transphobia, this story is just half-baked, with a half-baked idea that never makes any sense or seems all that scary. 

Also, what was the deal with the old servant lady?