#also its a pretty loose adaptation

[dreamsy990]

ur into epic the musical right . should i like. listen to/watch(???) that..........

i know like one singular song bc someone used it for a corrupt purevani animatic and im lowkey insane abt it so like....... Are There More Banger Songs

YES YES OH MY GOD YES I AM SO SERIOUS YES. BECOME BRAINROTTED WITH ME. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SONG IN EPIC I WOULD EVEN CONSIDER BELOW AVERAGE IT ALL GOES INSANELY HARD YOULL LOVE IT HERE

giving you a ✨beginners guide to epic✨ for your initiation! assuming you know absolutely nothing for this bgfrbgf

so epic is a concept album for a musical adaptation of the odyssey. the only "official" material is the music itself, some stage directions from the livestreams, and official animatics (which i dont reccomend for your first experience with epic). its also fully sung through (think hamilton), so theres no dialogue between scenes. so dont worry about missing anything! the whole thing is broken into 9 albums called sagas. in order, these are called troy, cyclops, ocean, circe, underworld, thunder, wisdom, vengeance, and ithaca. dont worry about them really, since theyre all released at this point its only relevant for discussion, and youll pick it up pretty quickly if you go insane about them <3

as for a first experience of epic, id suggest watching animatics, because sometimes it can be very hard to follow the story without visuals. i have a personal playlist i reccomend to people of my favorite animatics, which you can find here. its like 2 hours long, but if you want to break it up, act 1 ends at the song monster and has a nebulous time skip afterwards, so thats a pretty nice point to take a break. or you can listen to one saga at a time if youre a freak like that, theyre all about 15 minutes long id say

after you do that, if youre a fan and wanna get involved, id personally reccomend skimming through some of jorge's tiktoks/shorts going over details about epic first. theres a lot of fun trivia there and a lot of the popular jokes in the fandom come straight from him.

if you need any elaboration on anything lmk! i will explain basically anything :>

[lesbianraskolnikov]

Rodya would not be getting into all of this

[gentlemanjuniper]

If I could inject just a little positivity to the news...

Season 2 has a lot of filler and stretches out a pretty simple mystery to six episodes. That's the appeal to some, I get it. But tightness and focus was not its strong suit. I remember feeling like it wasted a ton of time on side characters and it's possible shaving the story down to 90 minutes will skim things down to its most essential beats and be stronger for it. Basically, S2 got a lot of time given to it, and this is obviously my personal opinion but I don't think it used all of it well. I think S2 itself could have been half the length simply by employing more efficient storytelling and we'd not mourn too much.

A lot of S2's weaker plotlines feel built around people that Neil wanted to work with again, with so many recurring actors (I'm thinking of the zombies specifically, when that minisode could have easily been tighter without them). A lot of s2 to me feels like Neil just making work for the people he likes and wants to work with and a movie has to be more accountable to things like that.

Lots of entire fandoms exist around single movies. 90 minutes is not nothing. It's enough for many, many films to tell a complete story with cute character interactions and satisfying emotional arcs, especially when A&C are the only real significant connecting threads between both seasons thus far.

I don't think there are as many loose threads that absolutely need resolving as people may be thinking. Would I like to know why Aziraphale did the '40s apology dance? Would I like to see his bookshop gun? Sure. Are either of those necessarily essential to closing out the story? I don't think so. Really, what needs resolving is the second coming and, directly connected to that, Aziraphale and Crowley's rift. To me, not knowing the story obviously, that seems super reasonable to do in 90 minutes?

I don't think anyone involved in the final season can possibly be blind to the appeal of the show being Aziraphale and Crowley over anything else. That's certainly the reason why their roles were expanded to begin with from the book and why the second season was, nominally, all about them. They also now have to pay MS and DT for appearing in a movie rather than an ensemble show, there's no way they won't be front and center. Amazon wants a show that will make money and market itself; there's a reason why all the promo material for S2 was of Crowley and Aziraphale, because people engage with that stuff, reblog it, make art that promotes the show, etc. It makes no artistic or financial sense to make a movie that sidelines them.

GO is at its best when it has Terry's voice most strongly in it. That's why to me, S2 was a weaker, more meandering season overall (that, and I think the minisodes, while fun, just make the season feel comprised of different voices not always working in tandem towards a common goal). If I was a writer hired to condense a season into a film, and one of the authors had been rightfully disgraced, I would go out of my way to ensure the clearly Terry stuff is most significantly emphasized. It's telling to me that the Pratchett estate is producing and it's possible that the end result will result in more Terry, less Neil.

Think of it this way: everything we've gotten after S1 has always been extra. Imagine telling a fan of the book in the 90s that not only will you get a six episode adaptation, you also get a totally new second season, AND a movie?

Basically: I know this is disappointing but I think a lot of the pleasure of the Good Omens fandom was ALWAYS people picking up on and expanding on details, and y'all managed to do that just fine when A&C were only ensemble members in S1. You can and will do that with a movie too. And this solution both a) ensures first and foremost that Neil won't be involved or the allegations swept under the rug, and b) gives an opportunity for the heart of the story to be emphasized with greater focus, clarity and less filler.

Will we lose good stuff? Probably. But it's also possible we will get a tighter, more condensed, focused version of the best bits, the Terry Pratchett-est bits. I can easily see a 90 minute movie that, knowing they HAVE to focus on the important stuff now, is more Crowley and Aziraphale centric than ever.

[lurkingshan]

Japanese BL Starter Pack

It’s been awhile since I dropped a rec list, so I am here today to share one that is very near and dear to my heart—a Japanese bl primer for those who are new to the jbl game. I created this for @neuroticbookworm to help her on her journey when she decided she wanted to start getting into Japanese works. The fandom (on Tumblr and generally) tends to focus primarily on Thai shows because they are the easiest to access for international fans, since Thailand is working its way toward world domination via ql media and wants us all to be able to watch. But there is a lot of great stuff to watch beyond the easy access Thai channels, and Japan is the country where this genre originated, so its shows are important for anyone who considers themselves a bl fan. Japan doesn’t cater nearly as much to the international audience so tracking down the shows sometimes takes some ingenuity and can-do spirit, but that’s part of the fun!

And so, the list! Bookworm is about halfway through it and having a ball, so I figured it was time to stop hoarding it and share it with anyone else who would like to dip their toes into jbl and isn’t quite sure where to start. A few notes: 

I am not here to teach you about the deep roots of the jbl genre or give you a primer on yaoi manga. I am by no means an expert and there are other places to find that information. Start here with this great post by @nieves-de-sugui and then maybe wander over to @absolutebl to read up more on the evolution of the genre.

This list is by no means an exhaustive accounting of every important Japanese bl ever made; it is simply a nice sampler platter of the cream of the crop among various styles you will find in jbl. Watching through this whole list will not only expose you to some fantastic shows, but also give you a sense of what makes jbl unique and how the country’s style differs from others, and point you toward the types of jbl you’ll like most (they tend to put shows in pretty specific style and tone lanes and once you find the ones you like there are lots more where that came from). 

If you’re coming to this post as a jbl lover and you don’t see your favorite here, I promise it’s not because I don’t love it very much; I simply had to make some choices to get this down to a reasonable shortlist. Feel free to leave extra recs for others to find! 

I’m putting these in a loose suggested watch order that will take you through the various jbl lanes in a kind of popcorn style, because I always think it’s good to change it up so you don’t get too stuck in one mode, and it works its way up to most of the extremely Japanese stuff (you will know what that means by the time you finish). But do what’s in your heart and change up the order if you want, friends, I am not the boss of you! 

Cherry Magic (Crunchyroll or grey)

gif by @liyazaki

I believe everyone on Tumblr is pretty familiar with this one, which is not a coincidence—this is one of the most accessible jbls. Not in terms of actual access to watch it, mind you (we’ve all jumped through shady internet hoops to watch it) but in terms of its content and style. Cherry Magic is a classic workplace romcom with a magical twist, and it is charming af. It’s a great exemplar of Japan’s light and zippy comedy lane for bl—a lane in which, importantly, the romances stay chaste even when the actual plot is about sex, or lack thereof. My friend @waitmyturtles would kill me if I didn’t make sure you know that Cherry Magic also has a lovely follow up film. And bonus: there is now a Thai remake airing so if you watch the original you can get in on the discussion about the different adaptations between countries. This is pretty easy to find these days in all the usual places, but I strongly recommend watching it here.

Old Fashion Cupcake (Viki)

gif by @liyazaki

Moving on to a slightly more mature workplace romcom. Old Fashion Cupcake, another Tumblr favorite, is an age gap boss-subordinate romance, and it’s both very adult and somehow wholesome af at the same time. Sure, there is a lot of carnal desire going on here, but there is also a lot of wooing via fluffy pancakes. It’s a tight five episodes and a fantastic example of what Japan, with its extreme technical precision in writing, directing, editing, pacing, and acting firing on all cylinders, can do in two hours. There’s not an ounce of flab on this thing and you’ll want to watch it over and over again.

Utsukushii Kare (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Time to get a little weird! Weird is a key feature of Japanese media, and lots of jbls explore unusual relationship dynamics rooted in complex psychology. This is the first show on the list that will likely feel very Japanese if you’re new around here—my advice is to lean into it and finish the show, even if you get uncomfortable along the way. In Japanese media, discomfort always serves a purpose. This is a high school story with a twisted relationship at its center, and I’m not saying any more than that. Don’t spoil yourself and go watch it! This one also comes with two sequels—one short second season and one movie—that continue from the original story. They are less essential but still excellent.

I Cannot Reach You (Netflix)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Next up, another high school tale, but with a totally different vibe. This show is kind of a revelation in its willingness to tell a story about overwhelming desire—including sexual desire—with young protagonists. It’s rooted in a classic but often misunderstood trope, friends to lovers, and takes the angst of it seriously, giving us a low stakes story that feels extremely high stakes to our leads. It’s also gorgeous and uses a classic Japanese visual style (bokeh) that you’ll be dying to learn more about. 

His (Viki)

gif by @gabrielokun

Time for a break from high school, and we’ll sprinkle in a movie for some added flavor. His is a jbl film featuring a second chance romance between a stoic, introverted man who moves to a remote town to start over, and his ex-boyfriend who follows him there unexpectedly, adorable child in tow. Importantly, this movie does not take place in what we often refer to as the “bl bubble” where homophobia doesn’t exist; the leads’ experiences of being gay men in a homophobic society are hugely important to the plot and themes of the story. It’s a beautiful film and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. @bengiyo would surely also like me to tell you that this film follows a brief prequel show called His: I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love about the characters originally meeting in high school; I do not think it’s really necessary to watch it but completists can start there.

The Pornographer series (Gaga)

By now you should be ready to get into some classic Japanese fucked up psychosexual material, right? Right! The Pornographer series is told in five installments in this order:

The Novelist, a six episode miniseries

Mood Indigo, a six episode prequel series

Spring Life, a 15 minute short

Pornographer: Playback, a two hour film

Spring Life Continued, a 15 minute short

Confused by that distribution model? So say we all; sometimes Japan likes to make us work for it to make sure we really appreciate its many gifts to us. The story across these installments is about a very difficult to love protagonist, what makes him the way he is, and the also-unhinged-but-in-a-different-way man who finally gets through to him. It’s an extremely satisfying love story and one of the best character arcs I have ever seen, full stop. For this one, you’ll want to just pull the word problematic out of your pocket and store it in a drawer; nearly everything that happens in this story is problematic and that’s the point. Lean in! All of these installments except for the film are on Gaga, if you get that far hmu and I will supply you with the final puzzle piece.

Our Dining Table (Gaga)

You could probably use a break after those last two, so it’s time to shift over to a heart-tugging twofer: family trauma mixed with the cutest shit you’ve ever seen. ODT is an example of another classic type of Japanese show: the food drama (you will see the GOAT in this category at the end of this list). In Japanese culture, food is love, and the act of preparing food for your loved ones is a common path to romance. You’ll love this story about an isolated office worker who meets a pair of brothers, learns to cook as a way of connecting with them, and begins to heal from his own trauma as a result. The image above is a scan from the manga, which @troubled-mind curates to make extremely cool comparison sets like this one. Many jbls are faithful adaptations of yaoi manga source material, so it’s good to have a bit of familiarity with them.

Minato’s Laundromat (Gaga)

gif by @liyazaki

Japanese media loves to explore taboo, and often manages to do it in a way that is surprisingly light and chaste. This is an age gap romance between a teenager and his adult neighbor that explores internalized homophobia, emotional repression, and falling in love across seemingly impossible social chasms. It’s also a great example of old school yaoi seme-uke dynamics that still show up across the bl genre. Also, take my advice: end your journey with this one with the first season and just pretend season 2 doesn’t exist.

Eternal Yesterday (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Remember what I said about weird? Time to do that again, but with a heaping dose of grief and pain on top. It’s not a spoiler to tell you this show involves a major character death; a major character death is, in fact, the root of the entire story. This is a magic realist tale of first love turned tragic, and it will hurt and heal you. It is one of my favorite dramas of all time.

Restart After Come Back Home (Gaga)

And now for a break for your poor exhausted brain. This film is basically the jbl version of a Hallmark original movie, about a city boy who goes back home to the country and falls in love with a total sweetheart while working together on a farm. Enjoy it, bestie, you’ve earned it! 

Tokyo in April Is… (Gaga)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

You’ve probably noticed by now that emotional repression and failed communication are big themes in Japanese works. This second chance romance has plenty of both, and it’s a great example of a kind of muted emotional style that Japan does so well, where the surface of the story seems almost placid and calm even as deep emotion roils underneath. This one (and Eternal Yesterday above) are part of a special line up of jbls on Japanese channel MBS called Tonku (Drama) Shower. The shows air one after another in the same time slot on Fridays (in Japan, perhaps Thursdays for you depending on where you live) and you truly never know what you’re gonna get, but they’re all interesting. Warnings on this one for sexual assault and trauma. 

The End of the World With You (Viki)

Time for sexy and weird again, but even more so! This has to be one of the most unique bls ever made; it goes to some truly divine and strange places, and it feels incredibly queer while doing it. Made by the same screenwriter/director of the Pornographer series with a lot of the same sensibilities, but in a more heightened apocalyptic setting. This one has existential angst, a road trip, a redemption tale, and a variety of interesting side characters in the mix.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Gaga)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of the list and your reward is watching one of the best bls of all time, and a perfect slice of life food drama to boot. WDYEY now has two seasons (along with a couple specials and a movie that fall in between) because the universe clearly loves us. You can now get it on Gaga for easy access but I’m partial to the versions over at @kinounaniresource for better subs. Wherever you watch, settle in to get cozy with Shiro and Kenji and make sure to always eat before you hit play.

[kanna-ophelia]

Please enjoy the Good Omens Script

It's a pretty open secret that I hand out The Good Omens Movie Script (of the never to be made 1990s movie) to anyone who asks nicely or checks my current Dreamwidth. It was published in a small edition, and a pdf of it was very widely circulated in book fandom back in the day.

Someone broke all fan etiquette, and common sense, and the fourth wall and brought it to Neil Gaiman's attention, forcing a situation where people who had already read it would refuse to share it saying it was to respect Neil Gaiman. Me, I never really was very cool with this "I've got mine!" attitude. Incredibly irritatingly, people did circulate out-of-context quotes and used them to portray it as terrible, script!Crowley as abusive, and script!Aziraphale as a doormat. None of these are true: it is an extremely, extremely loose and weirdly Americanised adaptation, but it's fricking adorable, and so are its versions of Crowley and Aziraphale. (The characters who get done badly by are Madam Tracey and Brian, IMO - best to think of them as entirely different characters.) It lacks Terry Pratchett's grace, complex humanity and way with words (see also: GO S2), but it's laugh at loud funny at times and this version of the Ineffable Husbands is a seriously cute grumpy/sunshine couple. Also, it has Business Exec Satan.

All this led to the ridiculous and annoying situation of people who had never read it being derogatory of it, while, despite being published, it was in danger of becoming lost media and a lost opart of GO history. (See also: Revenge of the Old Queen and Rocky Horror.) So I'm sharing the link here. If you want to yell at me, I ask you to first consider why you want to respect Neil Gaiman's wishes on anything and reconsider your priorities. It's a damn pdf of something only eleven people own in hard copy.

Feel free to share, or to archive it yourself. If it gets taken down, let me know and I'll find a new home for it. Just be aware that I'm rarely on Tumblr so it takes me a while.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

‘It’s different from the books’ sure it’s different but are you judging elements based on how they fit within the new transformative narrative that the show adaptation is presenting? Or are you purely judging each element based on how different it is from the books?

Does the new narrative that the show is telling have cohesive arcs and structure that work within its specific logic? Do the elements present, intentionally different or inspired or lifted directly from the books, work together to tell a story that shares most of the same overall themes and important story beats as the entire book series? Are they setting up the long term development of character arcs well?

Or are you just mad your favorite character isn’t just saying all their lines from the book directly and we need to have the ‘characters aren’t people regardless of our parasocial attachment to them, they’re storytelling tools that fill roles within a narrative conflict’ conversation again? Like, neither the author(s) nor the book characters themselves are gonna fuck you, just so we’re clear.

Mat having a weakness for helping and protecting children, Perrin being traumatized about using the axe as a weapon and worried about harming people he loves, Rand wanting to help men who can channel, everything about Egwene’s late stage character arc, Nynaeve’s innate potential and her constant early struggle with her unconsciously blocking that immense power away from herself have all been set up extremely well in the show, and all by making some pretty distinct changes from the books.

And every wot fan agrees that the books are not perfect in various ways, rearranging and tightening of the plot was always going to be necessary in an adaptation, let alone in one that is only allowed to span 8 seasons. But the main beats of the story are all there, and individual changes to characterization and the specific roles that characters play for certain bits of the narrative are not bad just because they’re different and I simply can’t take any criticism of the show that doesn’t account for that seriously.

Also like. Can we stop blaming the writers for stuff that is fully the producers’ fault. Season 1 episode 1 and episode 8 both got fucked over on rewrites and/or covid restrictions during filming, so the pacing and execution is kinda fucky there, but that’s not on the writing team. The rest of season one the pacing is better and better yet in season two, which honestly was kind of a banger start to finish.

The development in s2 of all the themes around channelers losing access to the power or autonomy over their channeling and the griefs of outliving your loved ones were explored so well, and all those ideas are very important for the rest of the plot from later in the books. And the choice to introduce all the forsaken sooner and develop them more than is present in the early books was brilliant, they’re incredibly effective and engaging villains and the show is utilizing them to full effect. Shit rules. I’m stoked for s3 for a lot of reasons but especially for more forsaken shenanigans.

When I want to reread the books I’ll reread the books. I’m doing that right now and having a great time. But I’m glad the show is different in a lot of ways and I like the way they’re reading the original text, including by changing the stuff that makes wot one of those book series you can’t really recommend without an asterisk because RJ’s grasp on feminism and queerness and gender theory was. Loose at best.

Idk man, just treat adaptations of books you love as really high budget fanfiction produced by a team of people who all care about the original text but are also of course gonna put their spin on it, and you might have a more enjoyable time watching them.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Miyazaki? Fanfiction.

NBC Hannibal? Gay Fanfiction.

The Wheel of Time on Prime? That’s right, it’s increasingly higher budget fantasy fanfiction with less gender essentialism, extra emphasis on all the milfy magical politics, and queer subtext made text, hell yeah.

[kaijutegu]

Is It Ok For An Alligator To Have Tape On Their Mouth?

Alligators make pretty amazing animal ambassadors when handled safely and ethically. And it is actually pretty safe to take them out to interact with the zoo-going public (or general public in some settings), when done correctly. Many zoos and outreach organizations do an amazing job of this! Every state has different rules, but even if a state doesn't mandate that alligators be banded... well, if you're a responsible crocodilian handler, you'll band anyways. It's a huge public safety issue! Even an accidental graze against their front teeth can cause injury. See, the alligators that are used as handle-able ambassadors are pretty small, and their teeth are razor sharp. An adult gator has sharp teeth, too, as well as blunt teeth for crushing, and they also have the additional force of their jaw muscles.

Here's what it sounds like when an adult alligator pops his jaw. (Don't worry about the hissing/gaping; this is a trained and queued behavior. The stick towards the top of the inside of the mouth is triggering the bite reflex. Chester probably got lots of chicken and fish as he learned to do this.)

Skip ahead to 0:32 if you wanna skip the guest commentary.

What's more, biting is an important reflex for crocodilians. The lower jaws of crocodilians are some of the most innervated tissues in the animal kingdom; they are more sensitive than human fingertips! Even the slightest touch triggers their bite reflex, which likely is an adaptation that lets them detect changes in water pressure that signal a snack heading their way.

Here's a pretty good video about the biomechanics of crocodilian jaws:

So yeah. They need to not be able to bite for public safety. There's just too much risk involved with an unbanded alligator (or other crocodilian). Fortunately, it's easy to get a crocodilian to not bite- you just need to band its mouth!

(This fella is Frodo the dwarf caiman, but the principle is the same.)

This works because while crocodilians have an extremely strong bite force (claims range from 2,000 PSI to 5,000+ PSI, but I don't have time to get into that now but someday I will probably), but not particularly strong muscles to open their mouths. Selective pressure for quickly nabbing prey in murky water where there's not a lot of visibility lead to pterygoid and adductor muscles so big, they extend into the animal's neck. But those muscles only pull the jaw closed- they don't work to open it! That's why you see people holding an alligator's mouth closed with their hands.

Safe bands include:

Silicone tape- this is the best. It sticks to itself and not the gator's snout

Electrical tape

Medical tape

Rubber or elastic bands

There are other options, but these are the most popular- they're cheap, easily available, and safe. So if you see an alligator (or other crocodilian) out in public and it's got tape on its mouth, don't worry too much- it's safe for the gator (most of the time) and it's safe for you!

Here's a couple of safe tape options, modeled by a juvenile American alligator in pink electrical tape (I forget her name, these are from an outreach event a couple of years ago) and Pagasa, a juvenile Philippine crocodile wearing the white medical tape.

So when is tape not safe? When it's the wrong kind of tape. One of the worst offenders is duct tape.

When you're banding an alligator, you need to think about how sensitive their jaws are. A band that's too tight or too sticky can hurt them badly when it's removed- and you want that removal process to be fast, so that it doesn't stress them out too much.

What inspired this post was this picture I saw on Facebook:

That's so much duct tape! Now, this little guy is quite unhealthy; he's been loose in the Pittsburgh area all winter, and he's been struggling. What you see here is a very quick tape job done as he's getting ready for transport. The article didn't say who taped him, but given that he's in a dog crate and was found by bicyclists, I would wager that it was some harried animal control officer who was doing the best they could. And that's fine because this was truly an emergency situation. In an emergency situation, uncomfortable is always, always better than unsafe.

But if you see a tourist attraction and they've put duct tape on their alligator's mouth? That's a red flag! Banding an alligator in public is the safe, correct thing to do- you just want to make sure that it's done right.

If you want more information about alligator jaws, here's some interesting papers to read:

Erickson, Gregory et al. Insights into the Ecology and Evolutionary Success of Crocodilians Revealed through Bite-Force and Tooth-Pressure Experimentation. PLoS ONE 7(3): e31781.

Knight, Kathryn. Croc Jaws More Sensitive Than Human Fingertips. Journal of Experimental Biology (2012) 215.

Sellers et al. Ontogeny of bite force in a validated biomechanical model of the American alligator. Journal of Experimental Biology (2017), 220.

[sombredancer]

Recent visually beautiful and generally watchable Russian fantasy movies

(because I start forgetting they exist at all) Ironically, all of them are adaptations of books/comics.

I Am Dragon / Он — дракон (2015) This movie is a very free adaptation of the novel "The Rite" / "Ритуал" by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko (Марина и Сергей Дяченко). It's a reinterpreting of an ancient tale about a maiden, a hero and a dragon. I don`t like the novel because it's very postmodern, wracks the typical fairytale plot and hurts my escapist feelings by ugly reality, but the movie is pretty fairytale-ish and nice. Firstly, it is visually beautiful and represent Slavic pseudo-medieval lore the way it should have always been in Slavic fantasy.

Secondly, as a love story between a monster and a maiden, it has got A PLENTY of tropes I'm usually looking for in Chinese dramas, so I understand very well why it was pretty popular in Asia.

Thirdly, when I said it's visually beautiful I wasn't joking. The main hero is played not by an actor, but by a male model, who is shirtless all the time (and sometimes pantless) and has a very fit and good-looking body. It's something unbelievable that someone in Russia made a movie to please women's eyes! Really, it's insane!

The folk-rock band Мельница wrote an insanely beautiful song "Обряд" (The Rite) for this movie (more matched to the book plot, though), but it was never used as OST, which is a shame. The song is about a black sheep girl, who is denied by society and asks a dragon to come for her and to take her away, because the dragon is denied by this world just like her. You can listen to it here. The band also has a song "Змей" (The Wyrm) (based on Lev Gumilev's poem), which is more accurate to the plot of the movie: the wyrm kidnaps maidens to make them its wives, but they are all dying during the flight; at the end of the song a hero-knight is ready to shoot it in order to stop it. Listen to it here.

It ends with HE, which is better than the book's obscure ending, so it is pleasure for me to rewatch it till these days.

Major Grom: Plague Doctor / Майор Гром: Чумной Доктор (2021)

It is an adaptation of Russian comic series "Major Grom" by Bubble comics. I am traditionally not very happy with the source material, but it is very good reworked to be the screen play of this movie.

It's very beautifully made in terms of director's, cameraman's and screenwriter's work, which is a rare thing for Russian movies. Also, the actors are young and handsome, especially the villain, which is a rare thing not only for Russian movies, but for the current Western movies, too. It has got a lot of allusions to Russian reality and a lot of beautiful views of Saint Petersburg, the second capital of Russia and one of the most beautiful Russian cities. And it has got some unusual visual solutions that turn it into a comic it should be.

The plot revolves around a mysterious serial killer (kinda bad Batman), a black sheep police officer and Russian Mark Zuckerberg (kind of). Mark Zuckerberg is the best guy of this movie and I like him a lot! Серёёёёжа! 🧡🧡🧡

This movie wasn't popular in Russia because of political situation in the country by the moment of its release (the both sides found out in there something insulting for them and banned it), but even if it has something like that, I honestly didn't pay attention to it. It's just a nice blockbuster with a tragic and handsome villain. The villain also has got his own BL-drama (in the comics they are really lovers, it`s as obvious as it could be shown in a Russian comic).

By the way, the villain is hot, insane, ruthless, sensitive and suffering. How does he contain all of this character treats in one personality? you may ask. He doesn`t. He has dissociative identity disorder, I would answer.

I don`t know if it works by now, but some time ago you could watch this lovely movie on Netflix.

The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита (2024) This is a loose adaptation of Russian classical novel "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. I genuinely hate this book, but the adaptation reinterprets it, divides it into very interesting layers and makes it understandable and beautiful.

It`s layered, so it will probably be hard to understand what layer are we currently on if you are not familiar with the original story. The first layer is an ugly Soviet reality, the second layer is a plot of the novel that the main hero is writing, a story within a story. The third layer is the insane intertwining of the first two layers. On the reality layer the Master loses his job and freedom because of friend's denunciation and becomes star-crossed lovers with a married woman. On the novel level he meets devil, who visits Moscow by chance, and the devil gives him and his woman opportunity to live their lives being free from everything that usually tortures people IRL. Somewhere among those layers is a little plot about Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

The movie is visually beautiful. Although it feels pretty anti-Soviet, Soviet visuals of the movie are gorgeous. There were used the Stalin-times concepts of Moscow of the Future, the CGI buildings in frame came from the real architecture projects of those times. The Stalin Empire architecture style and views are typical for Moscow (but as I know, ironically, this all was shot in Saint Petersburg). It seems to me that this movie is heavily stuffed with visual allusions to the Western works: devil's escort looks like bunch of Pennywises, Margarita is Enchantress from Suicide Squad I, the scene of blood dripping is from Blade I etc. Usually, when I see it in Russian movies, it feels like plagiarism because I can recognize the reference but there is nothing except for these references . But here we have got the plot, so the allusions work as allusions and don`t irritate me.

The movie is dark, disturbing, uncomfortable. It really makes you feel as if you watch devil and his escort marching around you; they ravage, kill and destroy everything and you can only breathlessly, helplessly and in fear watch them. The German actor playing devil is insanely good. He stole the movie and I understand why it should have been named Woland (the devil's name) instead of the current movie's name. You may want to watch it, because it's very unusual in terms of plot and visuals experience, especially when you are not familiar with the book.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

So, here are my long thoughts on The Last Voyage of the Demeter because I'm jetlagged and trying to keep myself awake.

I'm going to organize it from my biggest issues to my smallest nitpicks. Because I am aware that some of the things that bother me are nitpicks. Also this movie is old enough that I don't think spoilers are out of line.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:

I don't think I can fairly judge the movie as an adaptation of Dracula. This would be a short review if that was my standard, because it is a bad adaptation. There's a laundry list of reasons why, and I'll get back to one of them because I think it is indicative of how this movie fumbled the story. It takes a very loose approach to the book, and that wouldn't be entirely fair to fixate on. But I will point out where I think the book executed a theme or tone element more effectively.

I fully went into the movie ready to judge it on its own merits as a self-contained horror story. That's why I was surprised that I disliked it so much, because it doesn't hold up as a piece of horror media. I think the core issue is that the screenplay fundamentally was thinking of itself as a movie about people fighting a monster.

In that respect, it does away with something that makes the Captain's log such an effective part of the original book: The mystery.

The original section is an exercise in dramatic irony. You, as the reader, have already seen the thing making the crew vanish, because you read Jonathan's diary and know what is in the boxes (even if you were reading it for the first time and didn't have the cultural osmosis of knowing who Dracula). You know why they are in danger. The captain doesn't. He spends most of the log trying to figure out what is going on and if it is misfortune or something really on board with them. He only sees Dracula at the very end of the log, when there is little he can do except tie himself to the wheel.

The book answers the question of "why don't they make port or throw the boxes overboard?" with saying that the captain doesn't know for sure if it is actually something malicious related to the cargo. The Romanian first mate has to slowly come to the realization that he does know, because he's resisting believing in superstition. Only when the knife passes through Dracula without harming him does he panic because it's undeniable that he's facing a folklore monster.

That build up is entirely absent from The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Anna just tells them within the first half hour of the movie (she's also a very inconsistent character, but I'll get back to that), and within days the crew has literally seen Dracula multiple times. People aren't mysteriously vanishing; they've been killed pretty clearly and there are survivors with bite marks. The deck is littered with body parts at points. It makes the voiceovers about "some doom" being on the ship seem comical, because the captain has seen with his own eyes what is going on.

The only reason given for why they can't make port to deal with the issue is that they're too far away, I guess? Which is also not the case for a ship sailing that route. This isn't an open sea voyage.

While the pacing of a movie and the pacing of a show are different, The Terror did this so much better. You don't get to see the Tuunbaq clearly until quite late in the series. People just vanish or get mauled by...something. That sense of mystery is just gone in The Last Voyage. And it is disappointing because that was a huge opportunity to nail the tone.

If I had to come up with the key elements of what the Demeter section is, it would be: A Horror Story about a ship with a tragic ending.

They didn't nail the horror, but what about the other two?

There's also a puzzling lack of understanding of the dynamics on a ship throughout the movie. One glaring example is that the First Mate and Clemens make the decision to sink the ship without even asking the captain first. I know this is the merchant navy and not the navy, but that is still a galling lack of discipline. The captain is in charge and his duty is to the whole ship and the crew.

The original captain's log makes use of this. Dracula more or less kills his way up the chain of command because he's a sadist. He's forcing the commanding officers to feel more desperation as they fail in their duty to protect their crew.

The Last Voyage makes the captain a very minor character, which at least to me reveals a misunderstanding of how hierarchy works in a ship. While I don't think including new characters is necessarily bad, Clemens and Anna make most of the important decisions, and neither of them particularly have standing with the crew. It undercuts the idea of responsibility and letting people come to harm under your care (which carries through later to Lucy and Mina).

I'll return to other ways the ship setting feels incorrect later, because those are closer to nitpicks.

So, third element: is it a tragedy? Does everyone on board die by the end?

The opening scene may make you think so. But no, actually they don't. Clemens escapes and ends the movie vowing to hunt down Dracula. For one, this is where it is a bad Dracula adaptation because that simply cannot happen and maintain the plot of Dracula. Unless he was rather dense when he read about the Bloofer Lady in the paper and decided that wasn't related. But additionally, the tone of the ending radically changes. It isn't a tragedy where the last act of a brave man is to stay at the wheel, because he isn't the lone survivor left to be battered to death by either the storm or Dracula anymore. In fact most of the crew is still there for the multiple people vs Dracula fight.

This is where the tone really failed for me: the story has a winner, a hero, someone who can make it out alive. And it's the new character. That just did not sit well with me when the original is such a poignant tragedy.

The First Mate, who is the character most primed to come to a realization, hardly has an arc in The Last Voyage.

The insistence that they can fight and maybe even win also makes both Clemens and Anna incredibly inconsistent characters. She especially suffers from this, because she should in theory have the knowledge of how to repel a vampire (the villagers certainly have some idea in the book), but then she says things like "do you think I have the faintest idea how to kill him?" and in the next breath is urging the crew to kill him before he reaches London. She also says Dracula is going to London because "there is no one left in my home country to feed on" but her backstory is that she's on the ship as a deal so Drac can have a snack. So, clearly, he can get people to feed on if he wants.

Clemens is the "too smart and rational" character. But he also never thinks maybe they should expose the boxes to sunlight even after seeing people combust in sunlight after turning. It's all terribly inconsistent.

The decision to not write the story as a tragedy ends up cascading, and that's the root of the issue. They can't win and kill the monster without completely changing the story of the novel, so they are only competent to a point. It makes it a worse horror movie, even disregarding it as an adaptation.

Now for the nitpicks, including quite a few about boats that probably only I noticed:

The aesthetics are all over the place in terms of period. Clemens spends a large part of the movie (which is set in the 1890s) running around in a lace up pirate shirt. No one on this ship owns a period appropriate boat cloak. None of their shirts have remotely the right collars, giving the sense that nautical fashion was sort of vaguely consulted over the long 18th to 19th century-ish.

Please look at this and tell me that it is even remotely late 19th century:

Here's Olek from 1899 for comparison (note the correct high collar and undershirt):

The dialogue suffers from this too. More than one person uses the word "heathen" which just feels wildly out of place in something that is supposed to have rationality and superstition as the key touchpoints (at least if it wants to be like Dracula). It sounds weird coming from a time period 20 years before World War 1. Sailors especially were more likely to be vaguely Christian but mostly superstitious, not zealots using terms like "heathen."

Additional aesthetic nitpick: The ship looks way too old for the period. That is an early to mid 19th century ship sailing in the 1890s without any retrofitting. There's a throwaway line about the captain not wanting a fancy new steamship, but that doesn't account for how antique the captain's quarters are or the lack of metal on the hull. Again, the nautical aesthetics are all skewing too early. If this ship was still a Russian ship like the original, an older sailing vessel might have said something about the lag in Russian shipbuilding, it works less with an English merchant ship.

There's some functional issues about understanding sailing: The ship is way too spacious inside. Really tall men are standing up straight and walking around the hold with no trouble. That may seem like a small point, but imagine what actually exploiting the claustrophobic feeling below decks could have done for the ambiance.

The ship is definitely undercrewed given the number of masts they are showing. That many men would really struggle to reef all of the sails in a timely manner (which would matter in a storm). The writers put a crew of a small fishing vessel on a ship that is much larger and requires more hands. And it is puzzling because more people would mean: more kills and disappearances as well as giving a progression of being unable to raise and lower the sails and also keep someone at the wheel. Which, I will note, the original log does.

My first red flag about this movie was having seemingly no Slavic characters on a ship that was Russian in the original. But now that I've seen it, I'm even more annoyed that the one Russian character exists to: call a woman a slur, call a black man a slur (a rather British one imo), and then immediately be murdered on screen. Can't have nuance in how we portray Slavic people in Western media, huh?

I also get the sense that the screenwriter didn't know the difference between Romanian and Romani, because the first mate is vaguely hinted to be Romani (the kid mentions "Wojchek taught me some words in Romani") and has a Western Slavic first name, not a Romanian one. When in the book he is explicitly Romanian.

Rapid fire ways the movie gets the book wrong on a nitpicky level: Dracula doesn't get more human looking as he nears London, a vampire who prides himself on being aristocratic isn't going to drink from pigs or rats, the vampires in the book can go in sunlight but are weaker, religious artifacts are way more powerful deterrents in the book, and Clemens is way too casual about transfusions. It makes Van Helsing doing it seem less like an act of desperation. Anna gets Mina's ability to sense Dracula without putting in the effort to reverse engineer the connection.

Someone please tell me that Nosferatu is better. This was honestly very frustrating.

[whatlurksbean]

any advice for someone starting comics who feel like the storytelling side is their weak point? i started a couple comics but always loose steam on them because i feel like the storytelling/plot/writing is my weak point, and ive found the plots and characters i come up with so uncompelling that it feels embarrassing to even use them, its never been something ive been interested in ive always just been passionate about the art side and never been awfully good at writing as a whole, but i could spend hours diving into stylizing artwork to look like various types of comics and ive had that itch to just make something. am i just built to work freelance being paid to draw someone else's story or do most comic makers feel like that and what ways do people improve?

Writing is also an art! It is something that takes years of practice and learning and it's absolutely fine to aim to improve with it. It is a skill to refine!

I would say, that if it is not something you are passionate about though, you could try looking at other options.

Collaborative stories with friends are an option! Rabbit on The Moon comes to mind, it's a collaborative comic that my friends did. Songdog wrote the script, and Nitteh illustrated and designed the characters. It's a lovely story, and beautifully drawn, I can't recommend it enough.

You could also consider public domain stories! Adaptations are done for a reason! You could make a comic of a an old folktale, or adapt a fable or greek myth, while having the flexibility to do whatever changed you want! There are quite a few webcomics I love that are based on public domain/myths, it can take some of the pressure off of you as a writer.

There is also the freelance option you mentioned. If you're not too passionate about the writing aspect, and are mostly invested in the art, getting paid to do it seems like a pretty winning option!

To be honest, the writing has always been the part I am passionate about. I am constantly writing and rewriting stories in my notes, I have dozens upon dozens of comic concepts written up and even scripted that I can only hope to get to. I like doing lineart and expression work, but the rest of the art process is only the means to an end for me. It's not my focus and would happily hire artists if i had any sort of budget lol

I do not think it is uncommon for creators to be into one aspect more than another, I think it's about just figuring out what works best for you.

[hai7ani]

橘 (TACHIBANA/JÚ) haitani rindou

nsfw (no smut), complicated relationships, canon-typical violence, mentions of blood, wounds & abuse please proceed with caution

thank you for 300 followers! i thought i might as well upload this today ^^

masterlist | playlist

part iii / your lips, my lips; apocalypse

2004

Rindou had experienced true homesickness when he was 16.

Middle of December when the snow had just started falling in Tokyo, and he is home alone, disassociating to some Mozart playing at max volume along some other things (or thoughts) while laying flat on his bed. If Ran was home to hear the kind of music he is currently playing, he'd be a dead man by then.

But he doesn't care about Ran, no. He cares about you. You're the one who's been plaguing his mind -- so sticky and frustrating -- after he'd left your pouty figure back home in Kanagawa with kiss-swollen lips 5 months ago. You and your stupid, pretty lips that has taken his first kiss, your laugh that feels a lot more effective than those pills his Mother tells him to swallow for his migraine, your soft, shaky hands when they reached up to cup his cheeks as you open your mouth wider to allow his tongue in . . .

Requiem in D Minor reaches its peak, and he finally finds it in him to turn the volume down with a click of his tongue -- he's to become a madman if he continues this any further.

It's been 2 years since the boy's moved up to Tokyo alone with his brother. Rindou doesn't think he's struggled much in adapting to the lifestyle -- in fact, it suits him a lot more than he's expected it to. He likes to think he's adapted to it sooner than Ran, although the older seems to be much more put together than he is -- judging from the listening habits and different lifestyles both brothers have chosen to adopt in this big city as two young teenagers -- because Ran is actually doing something useful right now: staying back at school for extra Physics lessons and then attending his Track and Field club meeting after class, and Rindou is here: still dressed in his uniform, still not yet finished his McDonald's that he'd abandoned at the dining table before retreating back into his room to sulk because he's been missing a certain somebody a little too much.

He admits that things are more fun in the city -- the nightlife that he finds himself getting excited to when walking past the centre of Roppongi to get back home after night class, easily accessible skate parks that he frequents with a few friends after school in his half-buttoned uniform, the drifting culture he's taken up after spending most of his savings on a second-hand MX-5 to drift illegally on weekends where he doesn't have to get up early . . . It is all so different and fresh, and Rindou thinks he hasn't felt this good while having fun before.

But you wrote him a letter 2 months ago for his birthday and he still hasn't replied to it yet.

I still think about our kiss in summer. I also miss you a whole lot. See you next summer, and again, happy 16th, 竜胆.

You'd wrote it in the ending paragraph of your lengthy four-paged letter -- all the things you wished he was there back home to experience together with you, your stupid little thoughts flashing by your head while laying flat in bed at 3 in the morning, your already-planned new year resolutions that he knows you're never going to finish despite your sudden burst of motivation, recent hobbies that you've started picking up due to extreme boredom now that December is here and everything outside is cold and slippery -- and Rindou finds himself thinking about you and you and you over and over again.

Summer of 2004 -- when he finished his can of beer and crushed it in his hands as he silently admired you through the curtains of his eyelashes. When you caught his eyes and bit your lip before shifting closer to him on the floor while fixing the loose strap of your tank top. When he inched closer to your face and smirked, before puffing out a small, warm air that smells like beer with a hint of peppermint over your cupid's bow.

When you blushed and decided to be bold by placing both hands on his sturdy chest as you knocked your forehead against his very warm and red cheek. When he looked you in the eye one last time before pressing his dry, boyish lips tight against yours that tasted a lot like your favourite honeydew flavoured lip balm and he'd smiled into it.

Sweet, peachy, and the kiss wasn't perfect; it was merely just a quick peck, but it was so lovely that he finds himself growing warm at the memory of your eyelids fluttering open when he pulled away, only to lean back in and peck at your lips once or twice more before shoving in a tongue and getting you all worked up in the process, because he just couldn't help it -- you were so addictive. You were so pretty.

You are so pretty.

The boy sits back up in one swift motion and looks out the window to his right. He stares down at the bustling, happening city below from the comfort of his high rise.

A train passes by through the underground tunnels of Roppongi. Pristine, white snowflakes falls heavily from the sky and lands on the ground before slowly piling up on the sidewalk as a young child happily tugs on her mother's hand while pointing at it. The yolk of the sun is hidden behind thick clouds, but it is still bright outside.

The wires connect. Stars align. Clouds fade away.

He blushes.

Rindou wants to kiss you again.

He glances at your crumpled letters still splayed across his desk for the past 2 months, and the boy comes to a realisation.

Things are fun in Tokyo.

Life isn't.

And the next thing he knows, he is shoving a bunch of winter clothes and a few bags of expensive taiyaki into his black Jansport, before leaving a quick note on a yellow Post-it to Ran on the coffee table while finishing up his leftover McDonald's.

Going back home for Xmas *a badly drawn Christmas tree*

Will be back before the new years... or not

Depends on my mood. C u

🖕 - ur 弟

He throws the pen down, not before doodling yet another huge, ugly and messily drawn middle finger on the remaining space in the Post-It, and he slaps it on the table.

Rindou leaves for Kanagawa in the earliest train at 5 in the evening with your letters folded, safely tucked into the left pocket of his puffer jacket with a bag of warm chocolate chip muffins placed into the confines of his jacket to keep warm on the ride home. An elderly lady sitting beside him points it out with a teasing laugh and a silly pat to his forearm.

"Who are these for?"

He says it with a lopsided smile.

"My girlfriend."

Three more days to Christmas and Rindou is standing outside of your school gate.

He'd came straight after he arrived, not bothering to phone his parents or inform his brother of his safe arrival back home. Seeing you seemed to weigh far heavier to him, judging from how he's waiting patiently in the cold for you to get out of night class. Rindou knows of your schedule well -- he's memorised it ever since you showed it to him the last time he visited home.

"Fuck," he cusses, nose growing redder and patience growing thinner with each passing moment that you don't appear at the entrance. "Did I get the wrong time?" He murmurs to himself and pulls out his phone to check. Did he perhaps be smart that day and snapped a photo of your timetable? But he's sure you finish at 8 on Tuesdays, with Math being the last period -- he remembers you complaining about it because you have always been one to hate Math, while him on the other hand, is an absolute beast at it.

White snow slowly covers his two-toned hair as he shuffles his weight from one foot to another, and a deep crease forms between his brows after realising that his stupid ass did not, in fact, be smart that day and snap a photo of your timetable.

Rindou clicks his tongue. He's contemplating on leaving -- to turn around and just go over to your house right now. Maybe you are actually home this whole time as he's stuck here pondering his thoughts and you're getting bored out of your mind.

He thinks he cannot waste another moment to see you.

And after a few more analysing and breaking down on what would be the best option to do, a voice calls out for his name. A girl's voice -- smooth and filled with so much excitement, it seems -- and he turns around to look at her.

Himeko approaches him from the entrance -- dressed in her cozy uniform and a heavy book bag is slung over her shoulder. "Rindou, you're home." She jogs up to him, leg warmers falling off her calves as she runs and stops just right in front of him. There's a wide grin stretched across her face as she stares up at the much taller boy and doe eyes squints a little from the lamppost shining down into them. Light snowflakes cover her eyelashes and she simply dusts them away with a little smile.

"Oh, hey." Rindou blinks. He then turns on his heel to head towards your house and Himeko follows along with a finger hooked onto a strap of his Jansport. "Why are you back home? It's not Summer." She states, and she soon realises that the last sentence had sounded a little stupid -- so she attempts to make it less awkward for her by asking more questions and attempting to converse with Rindou, to which the boy doesn't oppose on answering.

"It's the last week before winter break." She states while picking up her pace behind him to catch up with the boy's wider steps.

"I know. How's school?" He asks, his vacant hand shoving down into the pocket of his jacket to keep warm but Himeko nudges his elbow. He looks down and sees that she is handing him her book bag.

Rindou fishes the hand out to get a hold of the strap and he slings it over his shoulder -- just as habit allows. Himeko seems delighted at this, as she crosses her hands behind her body and starts skipping beside him on the sidewalk. But a brown bag hanging off his left hand catches her attention and curious hands starts inching towards it without him knowing.

"Just fine. It's been a little boring though, even the teachers are getting ready for the holidays." She replies. Rindou simply hums at it. He's never been great at conversations -- always the listener with you as his speaker.

And he feels a sudden jolt at the bag in his hand. He snatches it back quick, eyes sharp and movements turning defensive as he stares at the girl who is clearly shocked at his behaviour over a bag of chocolate chip muffins.

". . . What?" He clears his throat and stops in his tracks. He's getting irritated. Himeko tilts her head to the side. She points at the bag of muffins with a pointer, "Are those for me? I like muffins."

"'S for Mom. She wanted me to buy 'em before coming back." And with that, Rindou hands Himeko back her own bag to take. He doesn't say anything further, and he shoves its strap back into her hands, the weight pushing her arms down and she furrows her brows at his suddenness.

It's so awkward. But she is Himeko -- always the peacemaker of the group -- and she decides to clear the atmosphere with a change of topic.

"Ran didn’t come home with you?"

Rindou remains quiet for a while -- obviously feeling a little pissed, but ultimately, he decides to reply to her anyway.

"Nah, he's still in Tokyo. I came back without him."

"Why’d you come home then?"

"I just missed Mom's cooking, 's all." He shrugs. A lie, but Himeko doesn't need to know that. Though she beams at his response, "I went to your house for dinner yesterday. Your Mom's cooking is way too good." My house, dinner?

"Did Y/N go, too?" He asks a little too quickly, the steady beat of his chest growing quicker at the thought of you most probably sitting on his chair at his dining table while enjoying his mother's cooking before finding ways to sneak up to his room and mess with his DJ set that he'd purposely left home for you to play with. He smiles a little at the possible scene playing in his head.

The smile on Himeko's face falters a little at his sudden burst of emotion with the mention of you, but she fixes herself fast and shoots back a response just as fast.

"No, her father came home on Sunday. I haven't seen her since."

Rindou turns his head to look at the shorter girl beside with a worried expression -- a total contrast to all that he's felt just now. He stops in his tracks, and Himeko stops too -- just two steps ahead of him -- with the smile on her face completely gone now.

"What's wrong?" She asks, face full of genuine concern.

"What do you mean?" Rindou frowns.

Himeko tilts her head to the left, trying to grasp what exactly that he's asking, so she repeats her words from earlier by talking slower.

"Y/N's dad came home on Sunday . . . ? She hasn't attended classes today or yesterday. I haven't seen her since she left to pick her father up from the airport. That was Sunday. But we know how it is. Her dad's probably just looking for some family bonding time with her."

Rindou scowls at it.

No, you don't.

Though she doesn't notice it, she shifts a little awkwardly at Rindou's visible shift in mood.

"Bye." He bids curtly and he leaves Himeko behind. The boy quickens his steps and turns into the road that leads straight to your house. He can see the building from a distance and Rindou can faintly make out that the lights are on.

You must be home.

"Rindou? Where are you-" Himeko calls out, but she pauses after realising the road that he's taking. He hears faint footsteps behind him but he doesn't reply -- his beating heart way too frantic for him to say anything at this point, let alone actually think for a response.

Her words play in his head over and over again, and it gets so overwhelming to the point that he has to take a breather and fix his unruly hair that's starting to block his vision.

Your dad is home.

A step closer to your house. Snow crunches beneath his sneakers.

Your dad is home.

The gate is open. He sees the quick wagging of a fluffy tail just beside the metal.

Your dad is home.

Inu-sama sits by the gate and upon sensing his owner's childhood friend's arrival, it barks at him. And it doesn't stop barking despite Rindou being someone who it has grown so familiar with over the years of your childhood and Inu-sama's place in your family.

"Hey, bud." He reaches down to pat your old Shiba, combing down its fur and giving it a few belly rubs before reaching into the pocket of his Jansport to fish out a little treat for your dog. He's not forgotten its treats despite leaving the house in a rush. "Where's 姉さん?" He asks -- as if Inu-sama could speak -- and it can, actually. It barks again to the door after his question and Rindou takes it as a hint that you are probably inside.

But the gate is open. Weird.

So he kicks off his shoes by the entrance and brings a nervous knuckle up to knock on the door. His hearts thumps fast in his chest, breath stuttering in his throat -- not because the thought of you possibly opening the door for him makes him giddy, but because the thought of your father possibly opening the door for him makes him weak. Scared.

Rindou is scared.

Everyone is afraid of your father. Even Ran who is known to have no fear towards anyone in his life -- not even his elders -- is scared of your father. But everyone except Himeko, though. Somehow through her rose-tinted eyes she still holds on to the idea that your father is just like any other: a man who leads and a man who brings structure. But you can't blame her, for she hasn't seen your father in ages. She hasn't seen the man he has become.

And Rindou knocks again, but still, no response, so he tries his luck by twisting the knob. It's unlocked and he pushes it open. Perhaps it'll earn him a black eye for attempting to enter your house without your father's approval, but he'll risk it just this once.

"Y/N?"

He's half-expected the house to be empty -- from the state of your unlocked door and gate to the awfully quiet and icy cold atmosphere of your house. Rindou doesn't think there's anyone in the house.

That is until he looks down at the sound of a sob.

The monster has done it again.

You're crouching on the floor, surrounded by what seems to be broken shards of glass and a few blood stains tainting the marble white of your floor.

He bolts towards you in an instant, not before throwing off his bag by the foot of the door and stepping over the sharp glass to reach over to you on his sock-clad feet. They cut into his flesh and he hisses a little at the sting, but he ignores the pain, and he diverts his attention back all on you.

You're not moving from your position, but he can tell that you're crying. You're hurt -- the cuts and dark bruises that's starting to swell on your arms and legs cracks his heart at the sight, and you're cold -- God, you're so, so cold when he scoops your frail body up and into his arms, away from the wrecked floor.

Weak, shaky hands immediately move to grip on his shoulder, nails sinking into the flesh as you suck in a deep breath upon realising that there's someone holding you -- someone is touching you. You panic a little, a whine escaping your throat and you try pushing him away with all the strength that you can muster. You hadn't realised that it is Rindou. You hadn't realised that he has entered the house. It doesn't hit you that Rindou is back home in the middle of December. You continue fighting against in his arms with more tears springing up to your bloodshot eyes.

"Stop, Dad. Please. It hurts."

That alone sends the boy into a shaking mess.

But he gathers himself, and he attempts to ground you by sitting you both on the couch and pressing your cold body into his warm chest. He buries his nose in your neck and kisses the skin gently, feeling the quick pulse of your heartbeat against his lips while rubbing warm circles on your upper back -- a means to soothe you, a means to tell you that he's here. "'S me, babe. It's me." He says it so softly -- right next to your ear, only meant for you to hear, meant for you to listen.

You shudder a little at the sudden warmth invading your skin and into your bones, and it then strikes you that the person holding you is Rindou. Rindou is home. The peppermint of his smell that you've long grown to love makes its way in grounding your senses and you eventually relax in his secure hold.

You're safe now.

Rindou is home. You are not alone anymore.

And then you start crying again.

"Where's the bastard? Your mom too." He asks, tone rough but he's gentle when cleaning away the blood on your lips from being busted by no doubt a harsh strike and he wipes it off on his jacket. You hold the other hand of his on your cheek to kiss the palm. "The airport. He says he's going back to the States. Just after a day." Your voice is shaky as you try your hardest to explain to him clearly amidst your choked sobs, "Mom is still in Osaka." And he doesn't make you speak any further after that -- he simply nods at your reply and opting to hug you close to his chest and calm your cries instead.

Rindou sighs angrily at your answer, a deep breath escaping his nose. You only bury yourself closer to him at it.

So your father did actually leave you in here all alone like this and went back to continuing his career. He wonders just how long you have been staying like this, in this state.

He looks around the house to make sure the man is actually gone and his purple eyes don’t miss the heavy stacks of medical textbooks and printed samples of medical reports scattered all over the coffee table. Your test paper -- Math, Tachibana Y/N, Fail -- sits atop of the books, the papers crumpled and a little torn at the sides. The large frames that hangs on the walls of your living room -- none of them are yours, all are his -- are all displaying professional photos of him attached with the many titles and prizes awarded to him.

Doctor Tachibana Hiroji, PhD in Oncology.

Doctor Tachibana Hiroji, board member of Harvard Medical School.

Doctor Tachibana Hiroji.

Doctor Tachibana Hiroji.

Tachibana Hiroji.

What a man of noble character and high intellect, but is such a monster behind closed doors to his only daughter, his family.

Rindou turns his head back, and he’s gentle with you - soft hands wiping away the free-flowing tears and light bloodstains off your face.

And he decides that he doesn’t want to see you like this anymore.

Rindou presses his forehead to yours.

"I'll kill him, you know?"

"No, don't. You'll-"

"I'll kill him. I promise.”

Himeko stands behind the two of you -- scared behind the couch -- with eyes so wide and a heart pumping blood so fast underneath the bones of her chest that she thinks she might die.

But a broken sob from you on the couch breaks her out of her bubble.

She looks around the house.

She looks at your state.

She takes it all in.

"But we know how it is. Her dad's probably just looking for some family bonding time with her."

Oh.

tags: @nana-osakii

this took so long omg but i had time today to finish it so here it is ^^

reblogs are appreciated! thank you for reading :3

[ghooostbaby]

i've had this idea that since viktor seemed all but dead at the end of s1, and with what they said about the hexcore's ability to learn/adapt that really seems to connect to AI, that viktor after the hexcore transformation is really just the hexcore that has hijacked viktor's body and nervous system, and attempting to sort of exist as viktor experimentally, in neither a moral or immoral way, just sort of this curious being exploring life through viktor's consciousness and memories.

especially in last few years seeing how AI applications kind of adhered into human experience and tries to imitate our patterns and just… garbles them. and so much science fiction about what would happen if AI took control and tried to 'fix' human society, i thought it could be interesting that the hexcore is sort of rooting around in viktor's nervous system and encountering these desires to help others, to focus on the undercity, reliance on rationality and faith in progress, and then enthusiastically setting about that task in this garbled way. like if chatgpt decided to figure out world peace. it felt relevant to current issues and to me seems to fit viktor's behaviour after his transformation. it's like… he's a bad translation of himself. he could be the hexcore's imitation of himself as it interprets a version of viktor from all the material of his memories and impulses of his mind and body…

the show really does not explore any of the conflict between viktor and the hexcore consciousnesses ...even though it sets up that the hexcore has its own consciousness and there is some degree to which viktor isn't acting of his own free will... it seems like they really phoned in the last several episodes writing-wise. but it does seem that most of viktor's behaviour after merging with the hexcore is pretty much totally discontinuous with his behaviour before his transformation. (and it's incredibly annoying everytime i read a meta analyzing viktor like there's no distinction between his behaviour pre-hexcore transformation and post-hexcore transformation at all) there's loose connections but it's like he has the same traits on paper but in a completely distorted way. it just makes sense to me that this is another intelligent entity interpreting viktor and performing it for it's own learning.

i've seen some people say they dislike ideas like that because they want him to have agency. and yeah, i think it would be nice if he has agency (like maybe he's not dead but dormant and can emerge or is fighting the hexcore actions...) but also I don't think this is the story that arcane chose to tell. It's literally all about viktor having his agency taken away. (i was really mad about this when i first watched it and wanted a story where viktor got to make choices for himself.) even in s1 viktor is continually thwarted from being able to make the choices he wants, or he makes a choice and someone imposes something else on him (looking at you, jayce). they took a video game character who while perhaps less sympathetic, chose to adapt his body out of scientific interest, into someone who had a fatal illness, who was adapting his body in a last desperate effort to avoid death. and that caused a lot of harm and so made the last choice he is able to make, to accept his death, but even THAT is taken away from him. and in a way his actions after the hexcore transformation is this amazing revenge for the way he was subordinated to the wills of others so often, by flipping it on them.

its really a shame that the writers just ... didn't explore the actual story happening in the background because it's really interesting for the way hexcore!viktor takes the the values of progress and non-violence and moderation of piltover society to their extreme level, and they really don't like it. the values hexcore!viktor is basing things on is this garbled mix of insincere truisms from the piltover council about moderation and progress and original viktor's interest in helping the undercity and rationally solving problems and enjoying the company of jayce. it reminds me of AI making inedible recipes that very closely resemble food but aren't quite it, but applied to political/social conflict like oh you love these completely self-contradictory values of moderation? great! let's do that to the level where the violence inherent in your moderation becomes undeniable! you'll love it! but then again, arcane has no idea the story it's actually telling and this is why the ending is so depressing to me - the so-called desired outcome is the return to moderate conformity (rescued from hexcore!viktor's severe conformity) instead of moving to transformation, and upholding old self-contradictory ideas of moderation that caused all the problems in the first place. and after a brief rebellion that exposes the cruelty and nonsense at the logic of piltover society, viktor is once again safely contained and subjugated to normalcy by jayce's deeply condescending speech (when did he ever show he thought he was broken?) ... and it's jayce who is this saviour of viktor who was incapable of making the 'right' choice. to my mind it feels almost like in the speech jayce is turning viktor from someone who atleast gained the power to fuck everything up into a victim that can be managed and controlled again. which just makes me fucking sad

[butchhamlet]

are there any shakespeare retellings you recommend? i really enjoy retellings but it's also difficult to find ones that like. actually understand the source material... i've read your novella duodecimal and really liked it btw! excellent take on twelfth night :-)

THANK YOU SO MUCH WAH... yes, i can recommend some retellings! i keep intending to make a big post with my recs, actually, but there are so many out there that i haven't read yet... so for now here's an incomplete list:

a thousand acres by jane smiley: the first one that came to my mind seeing this ask. it's a retelling of lear set on an american farmstead, and the adaptation is done beautifully and smoothly--it's just distinct enough from OG Lear that you can judge it as a book on its own but also as a lear retelling. and it's sooooo good. it starts a little slow, but the character work is so excellent and it almost made me cry (i will note that there's a pretty hefty cw on this one but... saying what it is is technically spoilers? but feel free to send another ask or message if you want to know up-front)

the last true poets of the sea by julia drake: books that made me have to turn my camera off in zoom class so i could bawl properly. books written for me specifically. this is a loose YA retelling of twelfth night (looser than some of the other retellings on this list) and it's like. perfect. the teenage dialogue actually sounds like teenagers. every emotional beat clubbed me over the head. the love triangle is present--and done really well; it's not present for drama but because sometimes being a teenager is confusing--but more than that this is a book about the relationship between violet and her sibling, and about mental health, and god it makes me CRAZY. also girls kiss in this one

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead by tom stoppard: i mean. i think most people into shakespeare know r&gad. but in case you haven't read it yet, it's an absurdist play from the point of view of rosencrantz and guildenstern and it's absolutely fucking brilliant. not sure what else to say about this; you've really just gotta read it

teenage dick by mike lew: another play, this one on the modern side--a retelling of richard iii set in a high school, focusing explicitly on disability issues. kind of more a reimagining than a retelling, honestly, but i really like the exploration of r3's themes and also it's fucking hysterical. although i will say there's a kind of jarring tonal shift in this one near the end, so don't go to it for something 100% comedic

american moor by keith hamilton cobb: okay this isn't exactly a retelling but if you've ever read othello you have to read it. you just have to. please god if you've ever read a shakespeare PLEASE. it's a monologue from the perspective of a black man trying out for the role of othello, half-resigned to being pigeonholed into playing that specific role in a very specific way as directed by a white director, but also half-chafing against that resignation, and also exploring the complexities of loving shakespeare as a black man, and it's soooooo so good

exit, pursued by a bear by e.k. johnston: this one is kind of cheating because it's not really a retelling, in that it has next to nothing to do with the winter's tale except that there is a hermione character and a leontes character and a paulina character. i still think it's a very very well-done YA book, though, and one of the only ones i've read that deals head-on with abortion

foul is fair by hannah capin: okay, i will admit i read this one some years ago when i was more into YA, so i'm not sure i would still go crazy over it now, but the plot of this book is that the modern lady macbeth character gets assaulted by a guy at a party and decides to kill everyone who let that happen. and then she does. and idk i read it in two days it felt like being on crack

the wednesday wars by gary schmidt: this one is DEFINITELY cheating, because this isn't a retelling of anything. but if you like shakespeare and you're open to reading historical fiction about a kid in the 60s using shakespeare as a lens through which to understand the chaos of his life (from the vietnam war to his school crush)... it's so good. it made me nearly sob. beautiful book

i'm also a fan of ryan north's shakespeare choose-your-own-adventure books, but those aren't exactly retellings and also the humor will probably not work for everyone. but i like em <3

and finally, i would be remiss not to shout out the fact that @suits-of-woe wrote an INCREDIBLE retelling of the two gentlemen of verona that, like, redeemed the fact that that play exists. if you've read that play and you thought, "wow, i wish this were explicitly homoerotic, or not a rape apologia, or good in any way," you will LOVE macy's book. unfortunately it isn't fucking published yet but WITH YOUR HELP--

[soullessjack]

talk about that stupid lil hedgehog. go hog wild (punintended)

oh my god i keep Trying to answer this and it keeps getting deleted somehow ok. deep breaths. and spoilers for the 3rd movie also.

SO.

sonic 3 is, naturally, a very loose adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2. and just like the other two movies there were details from the games that were either changed or taken out to better suit the movies, bc as much as they are sonic movies, they aren’t just beat-for-beat remakes. they’re definitely aiming to be their own thing while also respecting and keeping close with the source material they pulled from (and personally, I didn’t grow up with the games; I’m a watcher over a player; I’ve always had more interest in the game’a story than actually playing it—so just from a creative standpoint, I immediately respect any adaptation that does the same).

the 3rd movie has a lot of major detail changes for the sake of running with their own plot and trying to keep its PG rating, and it works fantastically. I’ve watched it twice already and there is no doubt in my mind I’ll watch it again bc it’s genuinely So Fucking Good. but one of the most important detail changes for me is how they handled Maria’s character. in the original SA2 game, and I don’t mean this as an insult or anything, Maria is frankly a non-character. she falls into the archetype of a character who exists just to die for the plot and doesn’t have much personality as a result. it’s not inherently a bad thing; it’s just a narrative tool. but the issue comes from how it’s done, because when it’s done right, it’s done right. but when it’s done wrong, it becomes lazy fridging (we as supernatural victims know this well).

I don’t think game-Maria was necessarily fridged; it’s her clear purpose in the story and pretty much a canon event that she and Gerald will always die (thanks gens), but it also makes her a little less interesting to engage with as her own character bc she isn’t really her own character. she’s like, the idea of shadow’s goodness. she’s this perfect paragon of love and kindness and forgiveness that, at 9-12 years old, somehow has a fully formed opinion on the nature of humanity as inherently good and worth being saved [by shadow]. it’s not bad storytelling, but it’s just a tad heavy handed.

movie-Maria, on the other hand, is an actual person. she still dies in the end, of course (canon event), but through shadow’s memories of her we’re able to see how she connected with him and what made that connection so important to him that it ruined him severely to lose. movie-Maria is just a kid. she’s curious, a little mischievous and plainly innocent. she doesn’t really know what shadow is or what his purpose on the Ark is, and she doesn’t really care. she just knows that she likes him and cares about him and that’s good enough for any kid. it’s all, “let’s watch movies together,” “let’s use your air shoes to roller-skate really fast around the colony,” “let’s dance to this record,”etc etc.

the actual scene is such an adorable little montage but it also shows how simplistically Maria connected with shadow and made him feel like more of a person. instead of directly asking shadow to be a good person and save the world, she encourages him to be whoever he wants to be. instead of sending him off and making a final promise with him, she just dies. suddenly and without any last words. which means shadow has no promise to remember like he did in the game. he doesn’t come to his senses because he finally remembered Maria actually wanted him to do good.

and that’s my segue into the second major difference of the movie! hooray for segues!

so, one of shadow’s final memories with Maria is sitting with her under the Ark’s dome and looking up at all the stars in space. just like the montage it is an adorable, even beautiful scene of them together all by itself and I had to pause the movie during my second watch to sob into my hands but the one thing I’m picking on today is when shadow tells her, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” again, very simple, but still very hard hitting because we’re seeing in real time what he’s doing without her. we’re seeing how much her loss has affected him because we finally saw exactly what it was like, what it meant for him to have her in the first place.

and, between the game and the movie, shadow’s end goal is still revenge for Maria. her…presence…(?) her memory, at least, is still with him at every step of his plan and fueling him to go even further. in a way, it’s almost like Maria becomes the face of her own loss, because each time he remembers something about her, it’s only ever painful and only ever makes him more determined to enact revenge. and then when he beats the shit out of Tom (sonic’s dad who’s also kinda boring) (sorry), and the flash between sonic kneeling over him to shadow kneeling over Maria, it starts a sort of…tipping point for shadow to doubt if this is what he really wants or has to do.

and the thing is, it’s not about right and wrong with shadow. he knows what he’s doing is wrong (i personally must disagree with revenge on the military for murdering a child being framed as wrong but this is a paramount produced kids movie so that’s how it goes). he knows it’s just pure, anger driven revenge for the sake of revenge and he doesn’t care. in his own words, it’s who he is internally, bc it’s all he’s had or known for the last 50 years. and then, when he and gerald are on the eclipse cannon together, shadow asks him, “is this really what Maria would’ve wanted?” again, it’s not about right or wrong for shadow (or even Gerald honestly). it’s just about Maria and avenging her and dying in the process bc nothing is worth living or saving anymore, including themselves. that is, until Gerald responds, “the question isn’t ‘is it what Maria would’ve wanted,’ the question is ‘what do they deserve?’ Remember what she meant to us; remember what they took from us.”

I genuinely think that was Shadow’s wakeup call (and I love how it was changed from Maria simply wanting Shadow to be good all along, to Shadow coming to that realization for himself). pretty soon after that exchange, the fight between him and sonic starts and the entire time it’s just shadow instigating and antagonizing sonic to do his worst and End It. Straight up kill him, bc he’s too far gone now and there isn’t even enough time left to begin processing any doubt or regret for it all, and the plan was always a revenge-suicide-genocide anyways (you know, for kids!)

let’s go back a few paragraphs to when I said that Maria had almost become the face of her own loss, her own absence, because shadow’s memory of her only fueled his pain and determination to destroy everything. just like her game iteration, she’s an idea now. she’s an embodiment of the past, for better or for worse, for both shadow and Gerald. and remember, in both the game and the movie, it’s Gerald’s need for revenge that sparks shadow’s. Gerald uses shadow’s grief and anger to encourage it and it does eventually become shadow’s own goal too, but Gerald always wanted it first. shadow was just a means to an end that he thought he wanted.

it’s Gerald who tells shadow to remember what Maria meant and remember how it was taken, while shadow focuses on her and how she would’ve felt. and I really think it’s that moment afterwards that pulled shadow out of it, just enough to try and instigate his own death since the cannon can’t be stopped and, again, even if he did regret his actions, it won’t matter after everything is done. he thinks he’s just as far gone as Gerald is with this need for revenge and anger and hatred. he thinks This is who he is, until sonic gives him the classic “it doesn’t have to be who you are. love is stronger than pain, and even if she’s gone the love you had for her is still there, so keep going on that instead of the pain.”

(paraphrasing like crazy but it is genuinely a very well written scene like all the others.. IT’S A CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE AND I AM DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT THAT).

I’m not trying to say the original game’s story is any lesser or not impactful, and if I did that would just be a straight lie bc that’s one of Sega’s most renowned games in the franchise to this day, but I do think it hits a lot harder for shadow to have this arc away from Maria, if that makes sense. no final promise, no idea of what she wanted him to be. she’s not the embodiment of all that was good in him, but she was the support system he needed to (eventually) realize he could be good and be more than his purpose.

[the-and-sign-anon]

Stationary Shop

Word Count: 931

BSD Masterlist

Ranpo was one of your dearest friends and he knew exactly how to take advantage of that. Whenever he was bored around the office, you were the first one he’d bother. He took to asking you riddles, playing games, or seeing how quickly he could set you off on a tangent. 

Kunikida tried to discourage him from this behavior, but the young genius didn’t tend to listen to anyone. You didn’t mind most days, having adapted your schedule to work around his wandering attention. It surprised you to some degree then, when his habits changed.

Ranpo certainly wasn’t leaving you alone, but now he tended to try to entertain himself during work hours, then stuck to your side as soon as you stood up to gather your things. You would lead him along the streets and go your own way at one particular street corner. He insisted you didn’t need to accompany him from there, so you listened. 

Ranpo knew he couldn’t keep his two friends apart forever. Poe was an engaging young man who reveled in his attention. You were an absolute sweetheart who practiced nearly endless patience with him. Unfortunately, Ranpo also knew, in his infinite intelligence, that the two of you were sure to hit it off and he couldn’t risk the idea of becoming a third wheel. He treasured you both too much to let you form some kind of relationship that didn’t involve him and end up alone again. 

Like all good things however, it came to an end eventually. You were in a little store you loved visiting intending to get more of your favorite pens. Dazai teased you for being picky, but you had a reliable type of pen and preferred to stick with it. The best place to get them was this very store, so you stopped in to pick up more and got to chatting a bit with the cashier. 

She was just leaning over the counter to show you photos of her new kitten when a raccoon plopped down on her phone, startling you both. 

“Karl! Get back here right now!”

A man with thick dark hair hanging past his eyes scrambled to grab hold of the creature while the cashier snatched her phone back. The raccoon jumped down to the floor and skittered off between the shelves, forcing his apparent owner to pursue it. You tried to help out, dropping your pens on the counter and darting around to the other end of the aisle to corner it. 

The furry little beast skidded to a stop at your feet, staring up at you long enough for you to gingerly pick him up. He sniffed at you incessantly as you cradled him in your arms, allowing the man to shyly approach you. 

“Karl, that was completely uncalled for! You come back here right now.”

You looked him over for a moment, taking in his loose waves and the dark coat he wore despite the bright sunshine outside. He was… cute. And clearly a fan of animals. 

“Are you okay?”

You wiggled your fingers at the raccoon as it slowed its sniffing and looked between you and his person. 

“I’m so sorry, Karl is usually much more reserved than that. He’s just upset with me today I suppose.”

“It’s alright. Maybe your little friend was just looking for a change of pace. You okay over there, Aoki?”

“Yep! Hey, Poe.”

The man- Poe- offered a slight wave around the shelf before turning back to you. He kept his physical focus on Karl. The raccoon chittered at you softly before wiggling around to return to Poe. He clambered up on his shoulder to watch you from there with his tail hanging down across his neck. 

“He’s pretty cute.”

“Thank you. I’ll have to make sure the compliment doesn’t go to his head.”

“A big-headed raccoon just won’t do, huh?”

You reached out and Karl leaned forward to press his snout into your hand while Poe tried to ignore your proximity. He wasn’t blind, you were clearly cute, which he was never prepared for. He wasn’t the most confident guy in general, and your immediate affection for his beloved animal companion made it even harder to keep himself together. 

Against his own desire to keep talking to you, he stepped back and flickered his eyes around before they landed on what he’d come in for. Poe bent down for a moment to snatch up two bottles of jet black ink, then shuffled back towards the checkout counter. 

“Here are your pens, Y/N. See you again soon!”

“Thanks, Aoki. It was nice to meet you, Poe and Karl.”

You offered a sweet little wave and a shining smile on your way out the door. Poe stared after you until Karl nudged him, forcing him to turn away. Aoki had a knowing look in her eye while she rang up his purchase, but opted not to say anything directly. She’d met him enough times to tell he wouldn’t handle any comments well, so she just smiled as usual as he left with his fresh ink. 

In spite of all his passion for mysteries and his desire to stump Ranpo, Poe found himself thinking of nothing but you. When he put pen to paper, the only words that flowed were about you. For the entire evening, Poe moaned miserably to Karl about suffering such an intense distraction. He’d never before been rendered unable to think of his stories. Perhaps Ranpo could help him if this didn’t resolve itself quickly. After all, he had mysteries to create.

[thekingofwinterblog]

So one interesting aspect of Akane is how Ranma's go to insult of her as "Fat" or "Macho" is one that completely changes in tone as the manga goes on due to Rumiko's developing artstyle.

Akane was never portrayed as particularly overweight, but in the early chapters, as shown above, she was portrayed as having a particularily big rear and huge outwards flaring hips.

Something that meant that when she is actually dressed in her regular, loose on her body attire, she has the appearance of being much, much stockier than she actually is.

Hence why Ranma when he wants to insult her calls her fat, something she really is not, but he knows she is very selfconcious about(as we see when she gets pissed about making a jab at her waist).

and as for macho, Akane was never particularily musclebound, but she has noticably thicker and more developed arms, and an especially thick neck than female ranma does, showing her muclemass.

in other words, the things ranma insults her about are not aspects that does not exist... but he really is making a mountain out of a molehill because he understands that akane is sensitive about these parts of herself, and when ranma gets mad, his go to strategy is trying to hurt the person who annoys him either physically or with words.

meanwhile, skip forward and as Rumiko's artstyle begins its march to becoming more and more like her animated adaptions(that would crystalize during inuyasha's run) Akane's body loses pretty much everything that innitially separated her from Ranma or the rest of the female cast(except cologne) where the only thing that really makes their bodies look any different from each other is differing heights.

she completely loses her rather distinct lower curves, her musclemass, and her thick neck that once stood out is now as slender as everyone else.

this in turn also completely changes the tone of Ranma's go to insults to seeming like something completely pulled out if nowhere. completely generic insults, rather than actual physical traits unique to Akane that she feels very selfconcious about.