#Up Here Magazine

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I was given a name before I was given blood

[corviiids]

ok hear me out about this vaguely Your Name inspired lawlight au told via notes they leave each other while bodyswapped

[kvothes]

richard siken in poetry magazine—on perplexity and stroke recovery (part of hard feelings, a series of essays by poets writing about difficult emotions)

[kaythefloppa]

New Episodes of Wild Kratts

Three new episodes of Wild Kratts will be airing in November of 2024. Salamander Streaming, Bumblezzz, and Chimpanzee and Me.

The synopsis for Bumblezz is yet to come, however we have plots for Salamander Streaming and Chimpanzee and Me.

Salamander Streaming - Airing Monday November 4th, 2024.

Mysteriously, the Tortuga shorts and powers down while the gang is streaming a movie. Koki says it won't be back today. What are they going to do? Chris and Martin announce they can still do streaming - salamander streaming! The rest of the gang wonders, what in the world is salamander streaming? The bros explain that salamander streaming is getting miniaturized and floating down a stream in tiny little boats looking for salamanders, of course! It's a race to find as many salamanders as they can while Koki tries to fix the Tortuga.

Pre-Episode Thoughts:

This was one of the episodes that the brothers announced at their live shows. I think that they will be focusing on tiger salamanders. Either way, I think it's gonna be cool that we might have a Salamander Power Suit.

WK's pop-culture references in the modern seasons are really hit and miss, but this is actually some good fucken wordplay with streaming.

If the Tortuga really is powered down, then will we actually see Salamander Power? Or is it gonna be like Mystery of the Squirmy Wormy where the brothers don't use any Power Suits? Either way, I'm looking forward to it.

Chimpanzee and Me - Airing - Airing Wednesday, November 6th, 2024

The gang travels deep into Uganda's tropical forests to uncover the true nature of the chimpanzee, but Chris sprains his ankle at the most inopportune time and can't participate. He is sad and upset. It's the climbing adventure that he's always looked forward to most. He tries to hide his disappointment and gets support from his friends, but it is a young chimp who shows him how to truly make the best of a bad situation.

Pre-Episode Thoughts:

This was another episode that Martin had hinted at the live shows. What's funny is that 2D Martin also expressed the idea of heading into the African rainforests in Rattlesnake Crystal (an episode that IRL Martin wrote). Again, not sure why it took them almost a decade and a half to get to this, but I digress.

Goddamn we are getting a LOT of angst in S7. Between this, No Name Dream, and the most recent episode, A Fish Out of Water, we're getting more character-driven plots, (especially if you count Paisley's redemption in the special). And while this does seem to be similar to Flight of the Draco, this does seem to have an intereting twist. Chimpanzees have many abilities apart from climbing, such as intellect, empathy, craftiness, and communciation. Maybe Chris will discover that and eventually use those skills to rescue the chimpanzees and/or the gang from a bad situation later.

Also, baby chimps are really fucking cute. I so hope that Chris gets to name it in the episode.

I've debated with my friends on this, and I do hope that we see a Chimpanzee Suit.. but knowing how anatomically similar chimps are to humans, and given how uncanny the Power Suits in the modern seasons have been.... I very much wonder.

That being said, if there is gonna be a Chimp Suit, I wonder if Chris will be the one to invent it? Assuming that he's staying behind at the Tortuga throughout this episode and makes the observations, then it would make sense that he'd invent the suit. Martin invented the Ermine Power Disc back in Season 5, so maybe Chris could invent a Chimpanzee Suit. Part of me thinks it'll backfire just as horribly, but after the bullshit that was the Indri-Conda Suit, I'm willing to accept anything 😭😭

[kindahoping4forever]

This pic, obviously

[letters-to-rosie]

The Silco Essay

Long post ahead, TDLR included.

Let's do a little thought experiment. We're trying to institute socialism, worker control and ownership of the means of production. This is currently far from our reality, so we have a lot of work to do. We get together and talk and strategize, but it's difficult with all the surveillance we're under as we work. Not only would seizing the means of production be met with a harsh backlash but even unionization, which doesn't automatically lead to worker control or ownership, is suppressed even though that suppression is illegal in certain countries like the US.

How does that suppression happen? There are a lot more workers than owners. If we worked together, we could take them, right? Well, the owners have the law and access to call upon the state to enact violence on us. We can't exactly own the means of production if we get killed. Even if we overcome other hierarchies keeping us from solidarity, such as miners in West Virginia did by organizing across racial divisions, we can still be beaten. Those miner had bombs dropped on them.

Okay, thought experiment over. What does this have to do with Silco? It's taken me ages to think about how to explain it, but my beef with him is that he has what are essentially perfect conditions for creating a mass movement and does not use them. He is uniquely in a position to protect any burgeoning mass revolt until it would be too late for Piltover to stop it. This is why his comments to Sevika that they can buy another police chief ring hollow. They both know how good they had it.

This is not to say that I think Silco is poorly written or a "bad character." Silco being the way he is all comes down to the entire conceit of the show: two cities against each other, with a sister on each side. However, this does lead me to want to critique some things about the show's premise that lead to my critiques about Silco.

For the cities to be meaningfully opposed, Zaun can't just be oppressed. It has to be "bad" to counter Piltover's bad. This, I think, causes the majority of things that make me sad about the show overall. While I still enjoy it, much of what I enjoyed was a fantasy setting that dealt with real-world issues in its own way. However, for all the realism in the setting, there are some distinctly "not real" parts that seem to blunt discussions of the depth of the oppression Zaunites are suffering. There's only fleeting mentions of labor oppression, even though it must have been key to organizing their society. The way Piltovans like Heimerdinger and great house members like the Kirammans must've had an active hand in organizing and benefiting from this oppression is mostly skipped over. Much of Piltover's evil is shown to us in the form of police brutality, but under any system of police brutality is one of hierarchy that is actively maintained and serves more of a purpose than just violence for its own sake. Even so, the police brutality we're shown is more than enough to have us sympathize with Zaunite characters if they were to have a massive rebellion and change the shape of Piltover forever. But Piltover's shape can only change so much. That's the conceit of the show. We can't completely root for Zaun and have them be entirely sympathetic because it would break the world. This is why I think Silco has to be the face of Zaun instead of Ekko and the Firelights, why Ekko has to befriend Heimerdinger to soften that antagonism, and why the Firelights never gain enough power to challenge Piltover at a systemic level. Even when Ekko wants to, he's thwarted and unable to cross the bridge.

We have a lot more fantasy imagination than political imagination. Silco is very realistic. Authoritarians do tend to rise up and stop movements that are closer in practice to socialism. If there were a mass movement in Zaun, as there seems to be potential for around episode 3, Silco would want to redirect that energy so he can control it, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is, in some form or fashion, what he did while consolidating power in the wake of Vander's death. While I appreciate the realism, it does make me sad that many times we put so much more energy into imagining magic systems and mystical creatures than we do imagining ways people could live freely with each other. It's like we have to keep capitalist realism alive even if we have hoverboards (also, if it wasn't already clear, I think the greatest potential for socialism/other lefty schools of thought is seen in the Firelights; so we could totally have political imagination AND hoverboards if Riot weren't cowards).

Silco's strong individualism works well for his relationship with Jinx and allows him to serve and Vi's primary antagonist. Even as Vi goes on a path that leads her to become more and more morally questionable as the plot goes on (like her sister lol), the sheer horror of what Silco inflicted on her makes Vi's story easy to digest. For Silco and Jinx, Silco's individualist outlook allows him to see her separated from the conditions that he is exacerbating outside. There are probably at least a hundred kids who could be as smart if given the right conditions (which makes Jinx and Ekko foils, for instance), but Silco doesn't care because he doesn't have a personal connection with them. He sees Jinx not as a child among many but as the child. I think this is part of why it's so hard for him to even think of giving her up and why he really never would have. However, I think it would be wrong to suggest that we'd have to sacrifice a great storyline for Silco to be more class conscious. It's possible to hold the tension between seeing greatness in individuals you love and knowing there is similar greatness in every individual that is being stomped on by the various oppressions we face, including the ones we share.

Because of these factors (Piltover being written to be the oppressor but Zaun needing to be equally bad so the show can "both sides" the conflict; a general lack of political imagination, which is also hemmed in by the source material and keeps us from fun fictional socialism except in small doses; and the general individualism baked into Silco's character that leads him to not even consider that a mass movement is the best way to achieve his aim of independence), I find Silco's politics very boring, lol. If we're to think about what his revolution might bring about, I'd find it much easier to compare to a bourgeois revolution (such as the US one) than to a socialist revolution that devolved into state capitalism (such as the USSR). One thing that characterized the US revolution was its unwillingness to include all the potential actors who might've fought in the war, particularly enslaved people. More enslaved people actually fought on the British side, as they were promised independence (even though Britain had not abolished slavery, so this was probably a scam). By desiring to maintain the system of chattel slavery and the hierarchies it created, the US revolutionaries missed out on the possibility to create a mass movement and jeopardized the success of their movement in the process.

This all reminds me of the distinction Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) draws between the Black Revolutionary and the Black Militant:

Now, there are a number of groups functioning in the black liberation movement in this country. I will not give the philosophy of those groups. I will not speak for them because I wouldn’t want their representatives to speak for us. There are, of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress for Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Black Panther Party. Most of these groups have basically been fighting for a share of the American pie, at least until recently. That is to say, they were kept out of the American dream, and many of them thought that if they were to adopt the manners, the mode, the culture of the oppressor, they would be accepted and they too could enjoy the fruits of American imperialism. But today, among the young generation of blacks in this country, an ideology is developing that says we cannot, in fact, accept the system. This differentiates the black militant from the black revolutionary. The black militant is one who yells and screams about the evils of the American system, himself trying to become a part of that system. The black revolutionary’s cry is not that he is excluded, but that he wants to destroy, overturn, and completely demolish the American system and start with a new one that allows humanity to flow. I stand, then, on the side of the black revolutionary and not on the side of the black militant. (From Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism)

Silco's demands to Jayce, along with his exclusion of most of the people from Zaun in the process of transforming society and his exploitation of them via shimmer, place him firmly on the side of the militant in this equation. Silco wants access to the fruits of Piltover's progress while only upsetting the structure where it negatively affects him. Again, while there's a lot I can enjoy in his character, I get frustrated with his insistence at being counter-revolutionary at every turn. I have a long reading list for him, and since he's in the afterlife now, he'll have time to get to it.

TLDR: Silco says he doesn't have to beat Piltover, just scare them. You know what's really scary, Silco? The masses of the people standing up and demanding that their oppression end, for fuck's sake.

[ind1c0lite]

Woe pearly be upon yee

[emily-mooon]

To make up for the fact that I didn’t do anything for them for Christmas, here’s another fake shoujo magazine chapter cover :]

pose ref ↓

HAHA ITS FROM ITAKISS!!!! Naoki and kotoko are nothing like the blorbs but I thought this pose worked for that scene (it’s apart of a much large page split into two images, but I decided to crop it cause the rest of it doesn’t matter tbh)

[ginalover]

Covers For Pride

[ectonurites]

seeing ur hometown mentioned out in the wild on this website is truly soooo scary... like wdym people on my dash are familiar enough with the town to rb a jokey post about it...

[thestarsarecool]

“When Linda first came over from America I was on the front cover of the Observer, I think it was, and someone sent it round to me and I was quite chuffed to be on there. I had it pinned on the wall or somethin’, and she said, ‘GOD,’ and she couldn’t believe I’d actually noticed I was on the cover. She said ‘You don’t seriously get into all that, do you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry but I do. I’m not great like you thought I was. I’m just like…Christ, I’m so frigging ordinary, it’s terrifying.’”

— Paul McCartney, Melody Maker, April 1st, 1978

[erotetica]

Hiii Lewie

Special thanks to @transarmand for making these great GIFs, which were a godsend when drafting that plaid. My other refs r below the cut in case anyone finds them useful:)

[zincfingermotif]

i really loved the art on the left here, but i could never find any nice clear images of it. turns out it was from a trigun 25th anniversary exhibition clearfile which i happened to find while browsing merch, so i got it and scanned it. (full size images: front, back)

[xxcyberghostxx]

au where bill realizes he's losing in the weirdmageddon and uses his newfound control over time to place himself in the twin's lives wayyyyy before they get to gravity falls in order to manipulate them into trusting him

[hestzhyen]

Chapter 43 Glazing

Just. Wow. Where to begin, dear void? It's hard not to post full pages from this absolute gut punch of a chapter... what a perfect way to hit the climax of this arc. I guess it's appropriate to talk about Hakuri and Mr. Proceeder himself before anything else. A bit of irony first... Hakuri gets his dad, but Kyoura didn't get him until it was too late.

I know this is most likely trauma speaking for Shiba and the other war vet, but they're right. Kyoura's in his death throes right now, everything's gone to shit, but...

... they're underestimating him and his fanaticism to the clan's tradition. Everyone is, and I don't blame them- Magatsumi's freaky as fuck even sheathed. Except there's one person who knows just how strong Kyoura's will is...

... and is going to use it to make sure every last person is saved.

Hakuri really is his father's son. And I'm just in fucking awe that Chihiro's insanity is on their level. It takes one crazy person to perfectly harmonize with another after only knowing each other for a week, I guess. I wonder if we'll see that part of their dynamic explored at all... deprogramming Hakuri so he's not just replacing fanatic devotion to the Rakuzaichi/Sazanami Clan with Chihiro's cause or something? I'll keep the Hakuri agendaposting to a minimum (for me) but c'mon, wouldn't it be awesome to hear Chihiro echo his dad's words from Ch. 14 to encourage Hakuri to grow and find his own identity? 'Cause, y'know:

Ch. 1 vs 43

"Your best would have been believing in Hakuri" is recalled for the fourth time for a reason. If you haven't caught on by now, it's not too late: Kyoura was a shitty dad and Chihiro took that personally. And it was the one fatal flaw that doomed a man with a will of adamant. 'Cause holy shit man, even though I'm glad this dude is dead, I respect the fuck out of him. He overcame the influence of the scariest of all the WMDs Kunishige made and died as himself, regrets and ego fully intact. I applaud Hokazono-sensei for making me feel for this guy without redeeming him.

I cannot say this strongly enough: Kyoura was a victim who perpetuated his own abuse. He couldn't break the cycle even though his wife's bitter dying words left him yearning for the family he could have had. It's not clear if it's a true flashback or a vision of what could have been, but the dinner table scene being shattered by the memory of Kyoura's father telling him to lead the clan is art. Another mangaka might have reversed the order so we see him being indoctrinated first and wistful second. Just for those pity points and to twist the knife a little. But no, Kyoura is completely unrepentant to the last. The only thing he yields on is throwing Hakuri away. Not his conviction to put the Rakuzaichi above his family, nor ignoring his wife's final words. His dying regret wasn't even purely being the world's worst dad. It was mixed with the fact that he failed to secure the success of the goddamn auction by misjudging his "worthless" son. To the very end, Kyoura lived as the Sazanami patriarch.

His parting words to Chihiro have me going absolutely insane too. They're an indication that yeah, finally, he gets it. He was a bad father and he reaped the consequences. His other two sons are dead because of him, and the one he mistreated finally surpassed him after all.

Chapter 39 vs. 43

[screaming softly] aaaaaaaaahhhhh

The whole world disappears as Hakuri is finally the only worthy person in his view. His greatest shame looks down on him taking his last breaths and only now does he feel the magnitude of his mistakes. Because Hakuri never did anything wrong to begin with; Kyoura himself failed the family and the clan. He lays down the sword, choosing to die as himself rather than keep fighting the Magatsumi's wielder to the bitter end. It's time to admit he was wrong.

And thus the cycle is broken at last.

Smaller Observations

More food imagery yay!

We never see Mrs. Sazanami's face. I wonder if there's going to be a Lost Mother arc for Hakuri in addition to Chihiro's. We know she's dead, but I saw a theory floating around that maybe she was more affectionate to Hakuri than his siblings to compensate for the abuse he was enduring. Soya's obsession with him "staying lovable" would have started from this. I think Soya was just irredeemably broken and cruel, but it's interesting to think about!

She's not even close to eating at the table, looks like she might have just sat down after putting out all the dishes or something. A caretaker who didn't participate in the family's joy is my guess (based on her monologue in the hospital flashback).

Soya can't let Hakuri have nice things even in this happy vision of the family

Braidbro and Sazasis aren't here, so I think there's a "core" family that Hakuri et. al. were part of and branch families that still carried the Sazanami genes but weren't in contention for running the show. The nameless kids that greeted Kyoura upon his return to the estate in chapter 22 also called him "father" so is it a title thing, or maybe Kyoura just had a bunch of concubines and one main wife? Inquiring minds want to know.

Speaking of Chapter 22, actually...

The auction house is in Tokyo but the actual Sazanami estate is somewhere remote and secluded. The backgrounds in the table scene are more reminiscent of an apartment in an urban setting:

So I'm gonna lean on this particular scene being a "what if" rather than a true flashback. But it's still vague enough to be open to interpretation. Now I'm super curious about how Hakuri ended up in the city to meet his fated samurai though... another thing to headcanon a scenario for I suppose.

Arraigned marriage... to ensure that Isou was passed on? A business relations agreement with another family? A deal to let her avoid being sold as merchandise? Why are there so many dead/missing moms in Kagurabachi anyway?

I think I have a slightly different interpretation of events here than most will, but I'll try to explain. The subspace collapsed into nothingness as Chihiro reached for the last person, so no one could be yeeted out any more. They managed to pull everyone out in time yay! Chihiro's safe too, yay! But while Hakuri put all the other people outside of the auction house, Chihiro ended up on the stage. I believe this is by Hakuri's design rather than Chihiro being placed at random. This is a huge moment for all three characters involved and it's absolutely enhanced by the understatement of the art. Kyoura finally admitting Chihiro was right is immensely powerful catharsis for us and our samurai, and that's definitely the perspective we're meant to see it from first But my boy Hakuri put him there to hear it. He violated the sanctity of the auction instead of bringing Chihiro out closer to himself and Shiba for the getaway. Fuck this family and it's tradition. It's DONE. The Rakuzaichi and Sazanami legacy are tarnished for good; Hakuri made sure of it. Maximum feels for our boy finally eradicating this loathsome event at every level!

And finally, last but certainly not least:

Hiyuki continues to be best girl, as expected. She's put off by the insanity on display from Chihiro, Kyoura, and Hakuri but it it also grounds her a bit. She can't let innocents die, so she chooses to protect Hakuri. I love her so much and I hope she can give him shit about threatening to leave her in the storehouse forever one day.

As an aside, after learning that Hokazono-sensei is a fan of Arcane I can't help but think of Hiyuki as a Vi expy. If she is, I hope she's pan, bi, or a lesbian. I love strong, badass hot-headed women who love women. I don't mind her being endgame with Chihiro either but the idea of seeing her get flustered over Hinao in a swimsuit lives rent free in my head, y'know? Her personality archetype begs to be lightly teased by seeing a hot girl and instantly losing 70 IQ.

...Anyway.

What happens from here on out is anyone's guess. We knew about the Rakuzaichi auction as early as chapter 7 but there's nothing set up for the future as of now. Whether or not Team Goldfish manage to recover the Shinuchi (betting they won't), I think we will take a bit of a break after the next chapter. We definitely need a lull to let the characters heal and breathe before building up the next arc.

My best guess is that we'll have downtime for a chapter or so before a lead for another sword is found to set up the next mission. So far we've explored Death of the Author and Generational Trauma... what's going to be next? I can't wait! I never expected themes like this to be explored so thoughtfully and thoroughly in a WSJ series...! For the first time in a long time I'm not just reading an action manga with some mature themes. I'm reading some really insightful commentary on the nature of legacy, trauma, and family dynamics that happens to have the best fight choreography I've ever seen. Truly tenoi.

[hotwaterandmilk]

Series: Hachioji Meibutsu: Tengu no Koi Artist: Nanao Tomo Publication: ‘Tenkoi’ manga volume #1 (09/2022) Details: Bonus Illustration Card Source: Scanned from my personal collection