#almosteverythingnerd

[almosteverythingnerd]

I'm still very early in gintama but I just finished episode 13 and I'm obsessed with how gintoki describes having important people in your life and loss.

It's inverse to the widespread way that it's generally described in both media and life- that being, loss as a heavy feeling that weighs on the soul, negative emotions in general are described as heavy, connoting burden; whilst the opposite of that is a feeling of lightness, usually referring to how significant (in a positive sense) people in our lives can lift us up and help us carry our burden, as well as the fun, genuine joy that can be experienced around the people we love.

This is a very valid and real description of it, in my own experiences I have felt heaviness, so I completely understand where this representation comes from and I recognise and appreciate it. But the difference is why gintamas depiction sticks out to me.

Gintoki describes the deep care he feels for his friends as 'heavy'.

He quotes Tokugawa Ieyasu, saying, "To live a full life means to carry a heavy burden throughout a long journey." Gintoki's words are as follows:

"It's not really a burden...Everyone's got both hands full of something that matters. You just don't realise it when you're carrying it. It's only after you drop it that you realise how heavy it was in the first place."

Later, when he's literally carrying kagura and shinpachi he says, "you guys are heavy, damnit."

And I'm just really in love with this flipping of the negative connotations of 'heaviness'! Because yeah, love and care is weight on the soul, not in a way that drags you down, but in a way that grounds you. Lightness in this context now connotes something like empty space, a feeling of nothingness or numbness. Love and care is weight as opposed to lightness because weight means it impacts you, matters to you. You're carrying around all this love and it's not a burden, it's fulfilment.

[traincat]

I’ve read Waid and Hickman’s FF runs and am currently reading Zdarsky’s 2 in One. I’m planning on eventually reading the Lee/Kirby run. Can I ask, what other runs would you recommend? Is Claremont’s good? Sorry for bothering.

I LOVE Waid and Hickman’s Fantastic Four runs, and Zdarsky’s Marvel Two-In-One was excellent to the point where one of my lingering disappointments is that Marvel brought the Fantastic Four back in a way that prematurely cut off Zdarksy’s 2n1. I know I said I wanted them back but wow did we all get monkey’s paw’d on that one. Zdarsky did really excellent stuff with both Ben and Johnny and the multiverse hopping was honestly fun and interesting. Lee/Kirby is also, in my opinion, just a really terrific run -- it lays the groundwork for not only the future of the Fantastic Four but a lot of big concepts for the Marvel Universe in general, and I think it holds up really well by modern day storytelling standards. Lee’s sense of humor works well with the retrofuturistic vibe and Kirby’s art is always wonderful. In particular I think it’s interesting to look back on The Galactus Trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50) as the granddaddy of all event comics, for better or worse. 

Claremont -- okay, I love Claremont’s run, let me start off by saying that. Claremont’s run follows on what is in my opinion one of the worst periods of Fantastic Four canon, and I mean bad to the point where the literal canon at that point was that to get things back on track the Fantastic Four had to be put in a bubble universe. Claremont’s run kicks in one or two issues after their return to the main Marvel universe and it’s so fun. I think Fantastic Four is one of those series that kind of flourishes in adversity and Claremont’s run starts off with the Fantastic Four trying to regain their footing in a world that had assumed them dead, their Baxter Building gone, living in a warehouse property. Claremont, in my opinion, also has one of the best if not the best handle on characterization for a lot of key Fantastic Four figures, including Johnny, Reed, and Sue. His Ben is also very good, but I think Ben in particular tends to be an easier sell for a lot of comic book writers -- the outcast, the gruff man, the comic relief. He’s easier to identify with than Reed, the Smartest Man on Earth, or Johnny, defined by his youth and beauty and queercoded since the ‘60s, or Sue, by sheer factor of being a woman. So I think a lot of writers identify with Ben first and foremost and put the most love and care into his depiction, whereas the others are a little easier for them to leave by the wayside. Which isn’t a bad thing -- I love that one of the most beloved comic book characters is also one of Marvel’s few canonically Jewish characters, but there is a wealth of truly excellent Ben canon in comparison to the other three. Especially with Johnny, there’s no one else who has written for Fantastic Four who has put nearly as much thought and detail into Johnny’s relationship with his powers, both the positive and the negative, as Claremont has, even reworking the origin story from Lee and Kirby’s joyous scene of Johnny flaming on for the first time into a deeply traumatizing incident -- being sixteen and traumatized and bursting into uncontrollable flames. 

(Fantastic Four v3 #11) There’s also a lot of women in Claremont’s run! A valid criticism of Fantastic Four canon is that by its initial core team makeup it tends to be lacking in female characters compared to some other big Marvel staples, but Claremont brings in a ton, from Reed’s college friend and fellow genius Alyssa Moy (who has been done dirty by pretty much every other writer who’s ever touched her, including Waid and Hickman) to multiversal bounty hunter Bounty to the most platonic of Johnny’s gal pals Caledonia to Valeria Von Doom, a “time dancing” teenage incarnation of the baby Sue lost back in Byrne’s run, who sets up baby Val’s eventual return. Claremont is also king of Reed vs Doom setups -- if you haven’t read his Fantastic Four vs X-Men miniseries, I highly recommend it, and he brings a lot of the two sides of the same coin energy from that into his Fantastic Four run. 

The downside of Claremont’s run is that the plot is always there and always running and I could not explain half of it if you paid me. Things certainly happen! Like all the time! For seemingly no apparent reason! Stuff gets set up and then it’s not resolved and now we are in Latveria! I don’t think this is necessarily all that detrimental -- the run is still massively fun and the characterization is always fresh and interesting. It’s just that sometimes you have no idea what’s going on and you have to roll with it. And then sometimes you do know what’s going on but in the way where you know Claremont was just writing it because it’s his kink. Which is like, whatever. As authorial ids go, you can pretty consistently do worse than Claremont’s, I’ll give him that. So I do recommend on it the whole, as long as you’re not going into expecting the kind of plots either Hickman or Waid brought the book. Claremont’s is kind of like “stuff happens and it’s either weird or fun so just don’t pay too much attention to it.” 

Aside from Claremont, I feel like I generally like far more Fantastic Four runs than I dislike -- but also I don’t hate Millar’s run, which is honestly bad, so it’s possible I’m just very forgiving with the Fantastic Four. I really like Robinson’s run, which is the last run before the Great Fantastic Four Drought of 2015-2018. It’s short, self-contained, and devoted entirely to one story, so it’s pretty tightly written, with good characterization and some very shiny art by Leonard Kirk. Straczynski’s run is decent enough for the fact that it intersects with Civil War -- I think he does his best to get into the heads of the characters re: their actions in Civil War -- and it leads directly into Dwayne McDuffie’s run, another brief one where Black Panther and Storm take over for Reed and Sue. Very fun. Marvel Knights 4 is also a fairly recent run that’s got some strong moments in it, although I feel it’s a little inconsistent in its handling of the characters. It’s still fun, though. For an older, longer run, I like Simsonson’s -- the art is very dynamic, even if the storyline kind of gets too involved with itself. 

(FF #337)

I recommend Byrne’s run with the caveat that there’s plenty to dislike about it and plenty of reasons to avoid it, not the least of it being Byrne himself as a creator and a person. It’s heavily sexist in how it deals with Sue, it retcons a huge age gap into Sue and Reed’s relationship, and Byrne’s early departure sets up my all time least favorite Fantastic Four story. (Though that one is Roger Stern and later Tom DeFalco’s fault.) It is historic as Fantastic Four runs go, though, and there’s a lot in later runs that’s built over it or references it or borrows from it. So it’s a rec with a lot of caveats and I also understand why people might give it a skip -- I think it’s more important for an understanding of the greater body of Fantastic Four canon and the impact it had than for the actual run itself. I do think Byrne has some very interesting subtext with Johnny, although it never come to fruition, and while his Sue falls victim to a lot of sexism, I really like what he does with the character of Frankie Raye, who like poor Alyssa Moy I don’t think has ever gotten really good treatment ever since.

I have mixed feelings on both Millar and Fraction’s runs, not in the least because I think they end very similarly -- and that Millar did it better, which doesn’t say great things. Millar’s run is kind of like a trashy popcorn flick version of Fantastic Four; it’s not actually good, but I can’t say I don’t like the terrible eldritch monster in Scotland Christmas arc (Fantastic Four #564-565) and I’m sort of into future Sue. Fraction, on the other hand, takes a space road trip and makes it boring, which is the greatest Fantastic Four sin of all. He’s one of the rare writers who I think actually writes a bad Ben Grimm -- not the least because his run goes out of its way to try and label it Ben’s own fault that he was transformed into a monster. I do really like his FF (just the initials) though. 

The only Fantastic Four runs I can say I really truly dislike are Tom DeFalco’s and Dan Slott’s, which sort of unfortunate because DeFalco’s is both long influential (I have no idea why because it’s honestly terrible like in terms of storytelling) and because Slott’s is happening right now. DeFalco comes onto the book on Fantastic Four #356 and stays on until Fantastic Four #416, at which point Marvel hit a literal retcon button to get out of the mess he’d made. (This leads into Fantastic Four v2, which is largely skippable -- it’s basically a mid-90s retelling of a bunch of early Fantastic Four stories that leads back into the FF heading back to the main universe.) DeFalco’s responsible for the Skrull retcon in the JohnnyAlicia marriage and for dragging that out for over 50 issues, the entirety of which feel like he was writing without a plan or outline or literally anything, and I have never felt like a comic book was attempting to gaslight me through its own incompetence or refusal to commit to things it set up itself as badly as I do with DeFalco’s run. (I like other non-Fantastic Four Tom DeFalco runs. I just hate this one.) Dan Slott’s run is just 25 issues and counting of badly written emotionless unfunny pages blandly stapled together and I so badly want Marvel to kick him off the book for its own good.

[galaxy-of-me]

♥️love train! Send this to all the blogs you love! Don’t forget to spread the love!♥️

tysm! <3

[almosteverythingnerd]

me hearing binks brew in the background of luffys shanks flashback scenes:

[traincat]

Ahh this is an extremely late thing but thank u so much for the recs :) now I know what im gonna do with my life

I have a lot of questions aha, also you’re a real cool blog to follow and give cool answers. Sorryyy tho. I am a curious person, but also I don’t know tumblr ‘ask me’ etiquette, am I allowed to ask u a whole bunch of thingies or is that annoying?

You’re allowed to ask a bunch of things! Depending on how quick the answers will be/what else is on my plate, it may or may not take me a bit to get back to you, just fyi. I get a lot of asks and sometimes things get buried. 

[almosteverythingnerd]

ok but ppl with fatal allergies to food (like me) could be assassinated so easily. i think about this perhaps a weird amount. i have such a glaring, not easily traceable weakness that could be exploited with ease should anyone who knows decide im worth killing. if staged correctly, it wouldn't even be questioned.

[imnothawkdevil]

who tf r u

Milk and grain

Ps. Moo from @almosteverythingnerd

[almosteverythingnerd]

some one piece fans are so interesting, like how do you read with your eyes closed

[almosteverythingnerd]

ik a lot of ppl didn't like the long ring long land arc (which makes especial sense for anime watchers) but honestly I rlly enjoyed it! I loved alabasta and skypiea but I was begging for some silly, fun pirate adventures after two back to back 100 chapter arcs and oda delivered. Genuinely amused me so much, the jokes landed hard imo.

Plus the hints of robin lore at the end were great.

[almosteverythingnerd]

sometimes i think about possible reasons for luffy calling things that are terrifying to everyone else an 'old man'

[almosteverythingnerd]

everytime I see someone compare one piece to homestuck I take D12 psychic damage

[imnothawkdevil]

Oh oops this is from months ago, sorry I only just saw it! Anyway my playlist has 711 songs on it so when it shuffles it really shuffles...

Tagging (if you want) @almosteverythingnerd @lilacfeatherss @tired-cryptid-called-mothman @ask-jemma-fitz-simmons @foundationsretail

I was tagged by: @dancingwiththefae 💖

Rules: Put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first ten songs then tag ten people. No skipping!

Tagging (you don't need to do this if you don't want it!): @the-better-rainbow-unikitty @help-help-i-need-an-adult @dancingwiththefae @imnothawkdevil @ijustcantfigureout @jaskiersfaetallute

[almosteverythingnerd]

Fabian and jammer are jocks in opposite directions

[almosteverythingnerd]

"one piece is just a silly little pirate manga" I say through tears as I read "don't ever attach a reason to the love you've received!"

[almosteverythingnerd]

[almosteverythingnerd]

frobin is poetic cinema