#and after THAT Editor wanted me to continue a certain story

[blametheeditor]

"You know who would make a great giant?"

"You better not say yourself, Eggs," Scott murmurs offhandedly, focused more on the paperwork needing to be filled out then the conversation.

"Hey, I'd be fantastic!" the mechanic exclaims.

"At what?" David demands. "Almost stepping on us constantly? Dropping Scott 0.5 seconds after picking him up?"

"I wouldn't drop him," Eggs pouts as he crosses his arms, lifting his nose up to look down at the suited man who stands three inches taller than him. "That's something you would do. Stop projecting, Harrison."

David bristles, both from the comment and being talked down to. "I wouldn't pick any of you up. Who knows where you've been."

"Like you haven't been anywhere worse!"

"Says the dumbass who climbs through vents for a living."

"Alright, enough," Scott growls as he finally looks away from his clipboard. "Have you decided who you want to be the giant this week, or am I making the executive decision?"

"Oh no, the executive decision," James murmurs in mock surprise. "I wonder who he would choose."

"That's it, privileges to choose revoked."

"Wait!" Eggs cries as he waves his arms for attention, too focused on being heard to notice David stepping away to not get hit, meaning he misses out on the perfect opportunity to piss the douche bag off. But this is important! "I've got the best candidate I swear! Pretty please, Scott!"

"What are we, twelve?"

Their superior pinches his nose as he sighs. "I'm listening."

Eggs grins as he jumps to spread his arms and legs out like a standing starfish. "Gentlemen! I present to you the greatest giant anyone has ever seen!" With a flourish, he bows as he slides to the right, revealing confused wide eyes under a head of curly brown hair. "The Jeremy."

David pales. "Oh fuck no."

James raises his hand. "He's got my vote."

Jeremy sputters. "Wait, I-I-I never said I wanted to be the g-giant!"

Scott shakes his head. "I don't get paid enough for this."

[etrangeres]

The Curious Case of Kaitou Kid

We love alliteration in this household.

To start with an anecdote, I went to the main Animate store in Ikebukuro some 2-3 weeks after M27 began showing in theaters. I had two reasons to be there: hopefully grab some copies of the Magic Kaito Treasured Editions, and grab what movie-related merch I could. The former I managed, but the latter was a lot harder. Despite them devoting nearly an entire wall on the right side of the first floor to Detective Conan merch, every single piece of non-blind box Kaitou Kid merch had been snatched up already. This trend of Kid’s merch being sold out seemed to continue for at least a couple weeks afterward, at least in and around Tokyo.

This demonstrates something I think we all already know: Kaitou Kid is a crazy popular Detective Conan character.

…Detective Conan character? Yes, but… No. But definitely yes. But… yes?

Kaitou Kid - real name Kaito Kuroba - is such a funny character if you think about him for more than a few seconds. So I chose to think about him for a few, uh. Days.

When I say he’s funny to think about, I don’t necessarily mean in terms of who he is as a character - which is admittedly also fun, because I think Gosho Aoyama is the king of gap moe - but more in terms of his placement in the greater DCMK canon. I mean, the fact that we have the “DCMK” acronym at all signifies the importance of tying these two series together. Even though they technically take place in different worlds. You know. Technically.

So I want to (mostly) chronologically go through Kid’s history in Detective Conan, how it relates to his origin as Kaito Kuroba in Magic Kaito, and amuse myself with the strange relationship he (and his source manga) has with the juggernaut that is Detective Conan.

Before we jump into this, some basic notes:

-I don’t mean for this to come across like some academic thesis. Nor did I actually think this would hit nearly 17k words. I’m just Like This.

-Any translations you see here are done by me, from the source Japanese.

-There will be concrete mentions of events from M27. They are comparatively trivial in terms of the mystery the film offers, but there will be spoilers for certain major parts of the plot as they relate to Magic Kaito elements. This will be clearly demarcated, should you wish to avoid those spoilers.

The MK to DC Pipeline

So I don’t know how many people actually need this information, but for completion’s sake:

Magic Kaito is Gosho Aoyama’s debut serialization (important distinction), and it began in June 1987. Though roughly the first two volumes’ worth of chapters were published at a fairly consistent monthly rate, it grew more and more irregular after that due to the popularity of both Yaiba and (more importantly for our discussion) Detective Conan. Due to it still technically being an ongoing series, it is currently Weekly Shonen Sunday’s longest running manga. This just so happens to be followed by Detective Conan, and they lead this particular ranking by a fairly wide margin.

The manga as it currently exists came out of the one-shot “Nonchalant Lupin,” which he submitted to Shonen Magazine’s manga contest after his editor told him to “draw the story you most want to draw” (Treasured Ed. V5). The one-shot won an honorable mention. His comment in Treasured Ed V1 also mentions that he “all but became a mangaka because I wanted to write about a high school kaitou,” so he’s clearly attached to the concept. He’s also clearly attached to Magic Kaito itself; a number of excerpts from the Gosho Aoyama 30th Anniversary Book, for example, talk about how a greedy part of him immediately thought of Kaitou Kid on the silver screen when he heard about the first movie being greenlit, or how he thinks Detective Conan will one day end but Magic Kaito may not because that’s what he really wants to be writing.

Back to our timeline: the Kindaichi Case Files were gaining steam in the early 1990s, and Weekly Shonen Sunday wanted its own version of the boom. Gosho himself was approached by the editorial team at Sunday to do a mystery series, and he accepted, not thinking it would last very long - not only because he wasn’t all that interested in the idea, but because he didn’t think there would be enough material to last more than three months.

It has lasted 30 years.

I say all this not to indulge in the depressing truth that Magic Kaito only has just shy of 40 chapters, but to specifically highlight the synergy Magic Kaito has with Detective Conan - despite the existence of magic in the former - due to their shared inspiration of Arsene Lupin. Things like Sherlock Holmes and Kogoro Akechi are pretty obvious inspirations for Detective Conan that I don’t need to go into in much depth, but the idea of a “high school kaitou” still very much bleeds into aspects of Conan’s character. Many of the things Kaito is either capable of naturally or has to deal with due to the inherent nature of his position are things that are also reflected in Shinichi.

Feats of physicality (Comes naturally to Kaito due to genetics and practice; enhanced for Conan via Agasa’s inventions)

Master of disguise (A practiced skill with makeup and voice changing for Kaito; use of a voice changer and aid from people in his life to deal with disguises)

Secret identity (a flipped perspective version: Kaito has a straightforward secret identity, while Shinichi has to keep his survival a secret)

The “bumbling police” (A good kaitou story will have a morally upstanding but kinda dumb detective that demonstrates the sheer skill of the kaitou in question while putting a contrast to their morals. Nakamori is this to Kaito; though not a one-to-one, characters like Megure or Kogoro serve similar roles to Shinichi to demonstrate his skills as a detective.)

“Why are you like this????” (Admittedly the most Vibes of the list, but there’s a level of gray morality. We root for the main character while knowing that what they’re doing is at times questionable. Kaito goes without saying, but Shinichi is more likely to engage in suspicious behavior like breaking into cars, bugging people’s houses, or even stealing evidence after becoming Conan.)

Motive (The most interesting - and sometimes the funniest - overlap is the fact that they’re both after a shifty organization. It’s a bit surface level at first, but there’s a suspicious level of overlap between not Shinichi and Kaito, but Shinichi and Toichi.)

All of this is to say that pushing DC and MK into DCMK is almost comically easy once you adjust for tone (and, uh. remove Akako, I guess) because Shinichi is BUILT from the kaitou framework and tweaked into a detective. So it’s no wonder Gosho decided to throw in a Kaitou Kid cameo that turned into the character asserting himself as a recurring sub character, as opposed to a quirky crossover character.

Even if he’s still both. And also a secret third thing.

The Last Wizard of the Black Star

So, there’s not much to mention about Magic Kaito’s early run. All chapters in the pre-DC era are stand-alone stories, with the plot starting and concluding within the span of a single chapter. It was a bit of an “anything goes” era, with the genre fluctuating all over the place and a lot of things we consider “standard” in any given Kaitou Kid story not yet being fully codified. Many of these weirder chapters have their own charm if you allow the gag manga energy to take you for a ride, but if gag manga isn’t your thing then it feels like these chapters are where Kaito himself is at his most…incongruous with the character that would eventually show up in Detective Conan. (Let it be known for the record that I personally find these early chapters SO silly and would kill for an animated adaptation of Clockwork Heart, the truly bonkers third chapter.)

The biggest “what do you MEAN that wasn’t there from the start?!” is by far Blue Birthday, which is the chapter of Magic Kaito that was published immediately before Detective Conan began serialization. It took about half of the currently released chapters to introduce Pandora, a now fundamental concept that is likely to be included in ANY one-paragraph summary of Magic Kaito’s plot. It isn’t the only thing, of course; though Kaito’s card gun debuts in the very first chapter, his hang glider doesn’t show up until Chapter 10.

The other major thing worth pointing out in the pre-Black Star era is the general pacing and fundamental makeup of the stories themselves. Very few case-only (or heist-only, as it were) characters show up in these chapters. When they do show up, they tend to be pretty flat, are often ridiculous, and are there to facilitate the hijinks of the day (the gun-crazy detective, the weird robot inventor, the irresponsible prime minister).

This changes with Green Dream, and it’s an immediate change. Detective Conan has been in serialization for over half a year by this point, and already its formula is bleeding into Magic Kaito. There are multiple new characters per heist, and multiple pages with two to three times more text than before are dedicated to setting up a fundamental conflict. Kaito is also more likely to take a stance in this fundamental conflict and use his talents and status as Kaitou Kid to lead it to a conclusion. Behind all of that, though, Kaito himself is still the cheeky little agent of chaos we all know and love throughout these chapters. (As an aside, the Kid mark used on his advanced notices debuted in this chapter!)

The big watershed moment is very obviously Black Star - the Detective Conan version, in this case. In both this and the Magic Lovers case (despite his very little screen time in the latter), readers of Detective Conan are introduced to a FAR more serious version of the Magic Kaito character. This is largely because what we’re seeing in Black Star specifically is a 100% outsider's perspective. Though we’ll very shortly find out this is not Shinichi’s first meeting with Kid chronologically, it is the first time he not only hears his name, but also has any real interactions with him. Kaito wears the mask of his father in his performance as Kid, and you could very much argue his guard is WAY up around probably the weirdest child he’s ever met. So in a story from Conan’s perspective, we have no way of seeing behind that mask.

Personally, I always put a bit of an asterisk next to DC’s Black Star. This is the case that feels the most like a “crossover” than any other Kid case after this, and of course it would. It’s the very first one! It’s the Kaito and Aoko cameos that really bring this vibe for me personally; great care is taken in Detective Conan not to pull much of anything from Kaito Kuroba’s personal life except in a few stand-out cases, and those  almost never involve anyone in our core cast directly. And I don’t even mean in the “he’s only ever shown in his Kid costume” way, because there are plenty of times where he shows up not wearing that. They key for me is that Kaito is always “at work” as a disguised Kaitou Kid as opposed to as Kaito Kuroba - the hat, the darker clothes, the low-effort disguises as police or staff. That kinda thing. But the appearance of Kaito and Aoko in their casual wear or school uniforms here really makes this case stand out in a way that later cases simply don’t joke about.

Detective Conan shows us Kaito at work. It’s why he comes across as so difficult to grasp and almost intimidating in these earliest of appearances. Those vibes obviously continue into The Last Wizard of the Century, the third theatrical release and Kaitou Kid’s very first movie appearance! His grand total screen time is only a fraction of the movie’s full run, but the vibes have a heavy overlap with that first conversation Conan has with Kid on the roof in Black Star. Though there are debates regarding the movie’s canonicity, this also marks the point in at LEAST movie continuity where Kaito figures out Conan’s identity, so there’s that precedent set. (Put a pin in that, by the way.) This also marks the first time Kid disguises himself as Shinichi.

What’s more amusing to me is that Magic Kaito’s Black Star seems to have been published to coincide with the movie’s release. Magic Kaito’s very first chapter after Kaitou Kid’s appearance in Detective Conan brings Shinichi Kudo to Magic Kaito. This is his only appearance in Magic Kaito to date, whether it be as Shinichi or as Conan. Gosho mentioned in his note on the Yaiba vs Kaito chapter that he really likes crossovers (same hat), so I have to think that the limited run of Magic Kaito is likely why we don’t see more DC characters in MK. Though in a Q&A he did toy with the idea of Conan showing up in Magic Kaito one day, so…

All that said, every time I think of MK’s Black Star my brain shoots off in two directions. The first and easier to articulate direction involves Akako’s presence, but we will get to that in the next section. The second direction is the very existence of this chapter at all.

As I mentioned above, this is the first new heist for MK after Kid showed up in DC. It is also the first multi-chapter heist, which indicates even more influence is bleeding over. It was also published alongside the movie, probably as part of a promotional stunt. Something about it feels like a doubling down of sorts on the stapling of these two series together. Kid showing up in Detective Conan is a fun reference; Shinichi showing up in Magic Kaito instead of the more recognizable Conan feels like a statement of shared worlds, largely because of how it makes you think about the timeline. The Akako issue aside, it really feels like he wanted these worlds to collide. If you have your own Lupin analogue AND your own Sherlock analogue, why wouldn’t you want to pit them against each other?

Add More Staples!

It’s at this point that updates to Magic Kaito get… particularly sparse. But there are a couple of things I find personally interesting about these few years despite that.

We start off with a back-to-back bang. The Twilight Mansion case introduces Hakuba into Detective Conan. Which would be fascinating by itself, but this was also Hakuba’s first appearance in EITHER DC or MK in TEN YEARS if you don’t count his one-panel cameo in MK’s Black Star. The framing of his introduction in Detective Conan is interesting, because the paneling and composition very clearly tell the reader that the character that’s about to be introduced is either 1) important, or 2) already known. In Hakuba’s case it’s clearly the latter, but this would make very little sense to someone that isn’t as aware of his place in Magic Kaito. 

Enter The Gathering of the Great Detectives, the animated adaptation of the Twilight Mansion case that was turned into a two hour special and opened with MK’s Black Star. There are ways in which it’s an odd choice, given Hakuba barely appears in Black Star at all. But I think Hakuba’s status as yet another Magic Kaito character being introduced into the narrative provided an opportunity for them to adapt a Magic Kaito heist for TV broadcast, and the chapters featuring Shinichi were the easy choice. The Yaiba vs Kaitou Kid vs Conan OVA had come out shortly before this, so it’s technically not the first time a Magic Kaito chapter had been adapted. But that was more of an altered gaiden OVA compared to this, and this TV adaptation seemed to hit you over the head even harder that there was merit to delving into Magic Kaito if you were a fan of Detective Conan.

But now we finally get to talk about Akako. Oh, Akako. Bane of the DCMK world. Sole reason we must argue that they take place in parallel worlds despite how ridiculous that sounds.

In the manga, Akako gives Kaito her premonition about the Demon of Light coming after the White Sinner. This is also in the episode, if memory serves. But in the episode as aired on TV, Akako features very little after that… because they fully cut the scene of her attempting to use magic at the base of the clock tower. Magic does not exist in Detective Conan, after all. It was eventually put into the episode another ten years later on the bonus DVD that came with certain versions of the Treasured Edition of Magic Kaito Volume 4.

More broadly, Akako is clearly a sticking point for the combining of these two “worlds” into one. Gosho himself takes the easy way out by ignoring Akako’s existence entirely in the Detective Conan canon, just as the TMS adaptation of Black Star did. He’s often brought up the concept of the two taking place in parallel worlds where the only major difference is the presence of magic in one and its lack in the other, as in his comment on Akako’s intro in Treasured Ed. V1: “In truth, the biggest bottleneck when it came to introducing Kaitou Kid into Detective Conan was the inheritor of Red Magic herself! So please just accept the two series as parallel worlds (lol).” He’s much more straightforward in his comment for Sun Halo in Volume 5: “You really gotta have Akako use Red Magic! (Please just assume Akako does not exist in the Conan world…lol)”

Despite this insistence she doesn’t exist, Sky Walk features an almost blink and you’ll miss it reference to her. Nakamori brings up the idea of Kid’s assistant being in play, to which Conan shows surprise at him having an assistant at all. Nakamori replies that there are multiple reports, some of an “old man” and others mentioning a “young woman.” The old man is obviously Jii, but the young woman is very likely meant to be a reference to the stunt Akako pulls in Akako’s Delivery Service, a very early Magic Kaito chapter.

As you’ll notice, Akako is still very much a practitioner of sorcery as of something as recent as Sun Halo, so it’s not as though Gosho has simply opted to phase her or her magic out of Magic Kaito. But considering there are MULTIPLE DC cases that deal with debunking the supernatural, her presence would most certainly complicate things. That being said, Magic Kaito’s world and plot do not seem to hinge on magic in an intrinsic manner (unless Pandora is literally a magic gem, as opposed to the tale of the gem being a metaphor for something), so I personally don’t see too much of an issue with magic being very rare, even in Detective Conan’s setting.

To keep with Magic Kaito for a little while longer, Golden Eye was the single heist released during this period. As far as its significance is concerned, I actually think Gosho said it best in his comment in the Treasured Edition: “Magic Kaito may be a thief story, but it’s also a magic story, so it was incredible to finally be able to mention the actual legend Harry Houdini. Even so, there’s an awful lot of deduction going on, so in this story you can also really feel how it’s been corrupted by Conan (lol).” It was a thought I had about Golden Eye even before reading his comment, so I’m a bit amused to find he actually called it out to be honest.

The following Detective Conan cases - Sky Walk, Three Instruments, and Four Masterpieces - and the movie Magician of the Silver Sky are all more along the lines of Black Star in terms of Conan and Kid’s relationship, but with an extra added pinch of “coming together for a common cause” in the movie. Sky Walk specifically also introduced Jirokichi to the mix, and he becomes the only Detective Conan character whose purpose in the narrative is tied exclusively to Kid. It’s in this way we begin to create a Detective Conan-exclusive environment for Kaitou Kid, which in turn establishes him more and more as simply “a Detective Conan recurring character” as opposed to the main character of another story that’s here for crossover shenanigans.

There’s a Pandora’s Box reference in Three Instruments that makes me want to pull my hair out because don’t say Pandora that word is important, and Four Masterpieces is a lot more “murder mystery involving Kid.” They happen very rarely in Detective Conan, but they happen basically NEVER in Magic Kaito (Dark Knight doesn’t count), so this lowkey feels like another way we’re shoving Kaitou Kid into the rules of Detective Conan.

In Magician of the Silver Sky, Conan expresses a level of shock when “Shinichi” passes the pinch test. This then marks the first time (in movie continuity, at least) that Conan is aware that Kid naturally resembles him.

But the funniest thing about this series of cases (and the movie) for me is the cracks in Kid’s mask, whether that be for Conan himself or for the reader. The final confrontation in Sky Walk ends on an almost comical note with Kaito being blasted off again via gasoline fire, and there’s a stinger at the end of Four Masterpieces showing a pathetic Kaito after Conan has just shot a mecha-powered soccer ball directly at his stomach. And that’s not even getting into the movie, whose entire first act drops us into a tense confrontation with a very suave Kaitou Kid before rewinding back to when he put on the least convincing act ever as a disguised Shinichi Kudo.

Have I mentioned he contains multitudes yet? King of gap moe. 

But we aren’t truly there yet. He’s a little silly for sure, but there are still times where the mask is on about as tight as it can be in Conan’s presence.

The last two stories mentioned here - Detective Koshien and the movie The Private Eyes’ Requiem - are actually a lot less about Kid and a lot more about Hakuba. So let’s talk about the cosplay detective for a little while.

Hakuba is interesting to me, for a couple different reasons. One is the cadence of his appearances in Magic Kaito. He is introduced late into the pre-Blue Birthday run and is in a total of three chapters. Those three chapters speedrun his discovery of Kid’s identity… and then he’s gone until his first Detective Conan appearance. Golden Eye is his return to Magic Kaito in a short but fairly significant scene that fills out the contours of his relationship with Kaito with regards to that identity, at which point he is in all but one case thereafter.

The other reason is that he seems to slip through the cracks of “significant Kaitou Kid relationships” unless you consider yourself a Magic Kaito fan. But I think this is largely due to the line in the sand we shall not cross: Kaito Kuroba’s personal life is off-limits in Detective Conan. As a result, Hakuba is framed far more often as a detective in his own right that just so happens to have some manner of connection to Kaitou Kid in his few Detective Conan appearances.

This connection is made fairly obvious in Twilight Mansion by both having him introduce Kid’s presence in the case, and having him and Conan highlighted as the two people that are after him at the end of that case. But his next appearance, Detective Koshien, only implies a connection in passing and chooses instead to focus on contrasting him with Heiji in preparation for the movie. In an interesting move, the plot developments of the case actually give Hakuba an excuse to avoid wearing a school uniform like the other students because he ultimately settles into the “foreign detective guest” role. There are, as a result, zero indications that he and Kaitou Kid’s civilian identity are actually classmates - or that he attends a Japanese school at all.

As for the movie itself, Hakuba was Kid in disguise the entire time, so there’s very little we can discuss when it comes to Hakuba himself. But after Kid’s frankly poor performance as Shinichi in M8, his performance as Hakuba in M10 is almost uncanny levels of spot-on (which admittedly turns into a very funny contrast with his Hakuba disguise in Green Dragon).

All in all, this selection of chapters, episodes, and movies pulled more of Magic Kaito into Detective Conan (when those details weren’t flying in the face of it), while Kid himself began to more closely resemble the Kid of Magic Kaito in the small moments. In Magic Kaito, meanwhile, we’re starting to see far more obvious influence from Detective Conan in the writing and pacing of its heists.

But the gates have not yet been thrown wide to truly allow the silly in.

Throw Wide The Gates That We May Sillie

The collection of chapters that start this portion of the list are, in a word, fascinating from a Magic Kaito perspective. 

We start with Shinichi’s Childhood Adventure, which does a couple of notable things. First, it confirms that Toichi was the magician that taught Yukiko how to use disguise makeup for her acting career. It was implied to be him in a very “if you know, you know” fashion in the Golden Apple case over 200 chapters prior, but this makes it inarguably clear. The extension of this confirmation is that Toichi also taught Vermouth the art of disguise, which is a particularly interesting connection to think about. As obvious as it sounds to say, this chapter is also the start of confirming that many things we know of Magic Kaito’s plot and backstory remain consistent in Detective Conan as well. The case ensures you don’t need prior Magic Kaito knowledge to pick up on Toichi being the first Kaitou Kid. That he meets Yukiko with Kaito in tow also means (unless my memory is failing me) that this is the first and only time Kaito’s name is spoken within the Detective Conan manga. It also confirms that the author that named Kid was, in fact, Yusaku.

The big part of this case that people tend to bring up in the wake of the M27 reveal is the “I’m your younger brother” conversation from Toichi to a young Shinichi. Now, 2006 is earlier than what meager sources I’ve managed to find that seem to indicate he had the familial relationship in the back of his mind, so I’m personally not sure how much stock I place in this conversation as any form of foreshadowing. What the entire case does seem to indicate regardless, though, is that Toichi and Yusaku are aware of each other on more than a surface level. At the very least, we’re meant to take away a passing of the baton, from father to son, in their relationship as friendly rivals. It has, apparently, always run in the family.

All in all, this case is a far more intentional mixing of Magic Kaito with Detective Conan because it deals with past events. It says “these things were always here, intermingling” and concretely refutes the idea that the modern Kaitou Kid was the first point of contact, retroactively entrenching the character even more into the world of Detective Conan.

We switch back to Magic Kaito for a heist with Dark Knight, which Gosho acknowledges in his Treasured Edition comment is “another story with a strong mystery feel, and a dark conclusion that isn’t very Magic Kaito-esque.” This also happens to be the first Magic Kaito case to feature Superintendent Chaki, a Detective Conan character and Nakamori’s boss as introduced in Black Star.

The following series of four Detective Conan cases all look at slightly different aspects of Kid that haven’t really made themselves known in DC yet. First is Purple Nail, a personal favorite and the case that arguably leans the most into the idea of a magic show. The focus on having an audience and the employing (and challenging) of Thurston’s magic principles give it a slightly different vibe to other cases. In relation to Thurston, Kid actually opts to approach Conan ahead of the heist to personally challenge him. In the manga, it’s the first clear look at Jii in Detective Conan. But the thing that stands out to me is the sheer level of emotional expression on display from Kid. It’s not in a small moment at the end of a case anymore, but in various moments throughout. You see his panic when Conan shows up above the building, or his sense of satisfaction when running through the crowd in the middle of his trick. All of it combined makes it feel much more like, by this point, Conan and Kid are engaged in a game.

After that is Iron Tanuki, an amusing oddball of a case. That Jirokichi used a fake notice to send a secret message to Kid pleading for help is interesting enough, given it displays a level of begrudging trust the former has in the latter. But more amusing is Conan’s choice to facilitate this upon realizing the truth of the situation, as well as his choice to stay behind and ask Kid if there was anything he could do to help to open the titular safe. If Purple Nail was their first real game, then Iron Tanuki is the first time they really came together in anything resembling a cooperative stance.

Kirin’s Horn seems like an outlier at first - and it sort of is, since Kid thought a little shock and awe was in order - but the case also demonstrates a level of familiarity. Conan remains flat on the ground because he knows how Kid works, and knows figuring out why he’s chosen to knock him out this time is the key to the case. There’s also a level of gag to this case via Kid’s choice to disguise as Genta, and the stinger of Conan getting the last laugh via something as silly as a paper taped to his back.

The fourth case, Ryoma’s Gunbelt, is where the real fun starts. Despite the rather nonstandard premise of Kid opting to return stolen goods, the general flow of the case is fairly standard for a Kid case in Detective Conan. The standout of this case, in my opinion, is the final conversation between Conan and Kid. They speak of their respective mothers in a conversation that reveals key details about each other, and do so surprisingly candidly. There’s an argument to be made that Kid knew of Conan’s identity by this point; regardless of that argument, that Conan spoke of his mother with such identifying details once again indicates a level of trust. Kaito implying Phantom Lady is his mom, while not particularly identifying, returns that trust. And that’s not even getting into the fact that a Kid case in Detective Conan is introducing a pretty important fact about Kaito’s mom.

Skipping ahead a bit, what makes this case notable is not the case itself, but rather its pair: Phantom Lady, a Magic Kaito heist published a year later that serves as an immediate prequel to Ryoma’s Gunbelt. This is the first time since Black Star that Magic Kaito picks up on a Detective Conan case in any capacity, and arguably the first time at all it does so with such a direct connection. The mentions of the Black Star served as a vague framing story for the clock tower heist, but Phantom Lady ends with a shot of the three treasures that assumes you know exactly where things go from here.

All of these cases do much more to peel away the mysterious veneer from Kaitou Kid, and give him a more candid and open relationship with Conan.

But the big thing of this stretch, and a turning point as a whole for Kaitou Kid in the franchise in my opinion, is The Lost Ship in the Sky. Now this? THIS is a Sillie Movie. Kid is playing around with goats, smirking like a fool with Conan before jumping out of a helicopter, and making the most inappropriate sounds when Conan’s hand wanders a little too far. He and Conan are actively seeking each other’s help and indulging in silly banter, even as Kaito makes a fool of himself with Ran. Speaking of Ran, this is the movie where she first fully realizes that Kid naturally resembles Shinichi. And as a cherry on top, we also get a shot of Kaito Kuroba himself.

And I think it’s worth considering what aired the very same day the movie came out: Secret Birth of Kaitou Kid, the first episode of TMS’s adaptation of Magic Kaito.  After years of teasing the door open on who Kaitou Kid is behind the mask, TMS adapted the first chapter of Magic Kaito and aired it in the Detective Conan TV time slot. It, too, is an incredibly silly episode of an incredibly silly first chapter of an incredibly silly gag manga. THIS IS KAITO KUROBA, Detective Conan said. OBSERVE HOW SILLIE HE IS.

Testing the Waters

TMS eventually made 12 of these episodes. Based on the air dates, I can only assume Secret Birth of Kaitou Kid was meant to be a one-off, or at the very least it was a testing of the waters. Whatever the case, the remaining episodes got greenlit and were aired over 2011-2012. The most interesting change to the second half of these episodes is the addition of new plot points related to Magic Kaito’s organization, chiefly the new member Spider. They were introduced alongside Hakuba, who I imagine they wished to give a larger role in the episodes he did show up in. Another major takeaway from the TMS adaptation is their decision to animate Akako’s Delivery Service in The Witch, The Detective, and The Phantom Thief, albeit edited and extended to deal with the new anime-only plot points. In terms of Akako’s feelings for Kaito and Hakuba’s discovery of his identity, it’s a fairly significant chapter. Despite that, this is the only animated adaptation. I have some… complicated feelings regarding this, but now is not the time. 

As for the manga, we have a major arc in Mystery Train. This is not, in all technicality, a Kid case. If anything, his presence is pure coincidence, given he was only there to stake out the train ahead of the actual heist. Though this is a purebred Detective Conan plot, with the Black Organization’s involvement, Kid winds up a key part of their plan to convince the Organization that Sherry is well and truly dead.

Though his appearance in this case would be referenced in the future, this would be the first and last time Kid was directly involved in a major Detective Conan plot beat. This chapter was released before I had an active interest in Detective Conan, so much of what I’ve seen are second- or third-hand accounts from Japanese fans who went through the arc’s release. In short, reception was very mixed to Kid being such a major part in the resolution of this conflict. While there are those who enjoy his inclusion, either because they’re fans of Kid or because they accept the manner in which he was dragged into the plot halfway through, there are also those who consider him a “cheat” character who taints the worldview of Detective Conan by his presence alone. Gosho himself has also mentioned that he won’t be involving Kid in Black Organization plots anymore, either, due to the backlash.

My personal view on Kid’s involvement in Mystery Train is that the arc felt very much like a capital-E Event, so I bought it. There was a clear amount of luck involved in his presence there, so I could see how some may think the entire thing contrived, but it’s that coincidence that sells it for me. It’s Conan needing to fly by the seat of his pants to ensure Haibara makes it out alive, and further impresses upon us that they were half a step away from potentially fatal consequences. Nevertheless, this seems to be a case of an attempt to integrate Kid into the greater Detective Conan narrative that ultimately failed, so he returns to being largely divorced from the overall plot.

Despite this, though, there appear to be multiple chapters after this that focus on systematically introducing Kid to members of the extended cast. This starts with Blush Mermaid, Sera’s first presence at a Kid heist. What’s also unique about this chapter is the small but significant scene at the end that actually does continue the overall main plot - in this case, Sera’s misgivings over the death of Akai. Though Kid will not be overly involved in the main plot from here on out, his chapters do start featuring B Plots that touch on said main narrative. It’s… a half victory, of sorts, in terms of integration.

The other major takeaway from this case is a continuation of Conan and Kid apparently keeping a score of sorts. Due to Kid’s assistance during Mystery Train and the lack of a real theft, Conan lets Kid go. We’re in real “friendly rival” hours now.

Twin Bets pits Kid against Kyogoku, a frankly long overdue confrontation considering he’s Sonoko’s boyfriend. There’s a half-argument to be had that this also involves Kid in a major B Plot for the series as a whole, since this is a romance plot with a major recurring character. There’s also a level of intrinsic amusement in a Kid vs Kyogoku confrontation, since it comes down to (to quote my girlfriend) “guy who is literally from another manga but feels like he belongs here vs guy who somehow belongs here but definitely should be in another manga.”

Twin Bets also serves as the very first time Kid looks at the gem of the day under the moonlight in a Detective Conan chapter. It's the first case post-TMS Magic Kaito where it's applicable for him to do so; he's a bit busy with other things in Mystery Train, and he calls out Blush Mermaid for being a fake. This trend would continue in every case afterward where the plot wasn't otherwise preventing him from doing so (like the murder in Azure Throne).

Normally, this particular stretch of chapters would include quite a few more due to how many of them follow this “Kid, meet [Character]” format. But some of you may have noticed that, despite all the ample opportunities I’ve had to speak of it, I’ve avoided mentioning a certain number…

1412

Thousands of words earlier in this retrospective, I mentioned that Detective Conan’s Black Star felt the most like a crossover chapter. What I didn’t mention at the time, however, was that it also feels like one of the most fundamentally necessary Kid cases in Detective Conan. Not because it’s Kid’s first appearance, but because it introduces a piece of information about Kaitou Kid that eventually becomes baked into his identity despite the fact that it was introduced outside of his source series.

1412, the Interpol criminal code assigned to the internationally renowned phantom thief that was subsequently transformed after an author misread a journalist’s hasty scrawl as “KID.”

It feels like no small coincidence that the A1 adaptation of Magic Kaito added “1412” to the end of its title not just to differentiate this adaptation from TMS’s Magic Kaito specials, but to also indicate that this version of Magic Kaito would be the marriage of its namesake manga and Detective Conan.

In this regard and more, Magic Kaito 1412 modernizes aspects of the original story.

Technology, for example, was updated to reflect what a high school student like Kaito would be doing. Instead of reading the news in the papers, he’s scrolling through news sites on his phone. This is the most common kind of update that you see across adaptations of all stripes, so it’s the less interesting change.

The anime also modernizes with regards to itself, looking inward to find out what people associate with Kid in the modern day and adjusting the story - and the order that story is told - to account for that. This is expressed in ways both large and small. Blue Birthday, for example, is pushed way up to episode 2 of 1412 to introduce Pandora to the audience as soon as possible. Given Blue Birthday is also an Aoko-centric episode, it’s equally fitting that she gets the second episode. Jii’s significance is heightened by reworking the scrapped chapter Hustler vs Magician, a chapter that also coincidentally focused on an aspect of Jii’s past, into episode 3. This focus on major characters continues into episodes 4-6, which introduce Hakuba (chapter 15), Akako (chapter 6), and Shinichi (chapter 23), in that order.

There are also minor changes, likely made for pacing or simply content reasons. One small but frankly fairly significant change involves Kaito’s card gun. He’s shown using it in the first chapter of the manga, which also means he’s using it in the first episode of TMS’s adaptation. Since it eventually comes to be a signature weapon for Kaitou Kid, 1412 prevents Kaito from using it while in his civilian identity (like when he’s panicking about the fish with Aoko). Due to moving Blue Birthday up to episode 2, heists that originally weren’t really bothered with holding the target up to the moon include scenes of Kaito doing just that. Jii is suspiciously absent for most chapters until Black Star, so 1412 inserts him into animated adaptations of older heists, such as helping Kaito prepare the fireworks for Blue Birthday or providing an anime-original explanation of magic vs sorcery. There are similar one-offs with other characters as well, like a short scene of Hakuba being inserted into Akako’s introductory episode.

As a proper series in its own right, as opposed to a series of animated specials, 1412 also had to decide on a unified tone. Though TMS’s adaptation fluctuates wildly, 1412’s tone is a bit more even across the board. It’s comedic and dips its toes in gag vibes without taking it to absurd levels. While TMS’s adaptation of the first episode includes an entire apparatus outside the classroom window in episode 1, Kaito simply jumps out the window and makes it to the ground after running around the classroom in 1412. Though it also pulls away from some of the more atmospheric moments of TMS’s adaptation, it pulls back far more from the gag energy.

As a result of the above two points, many chapters are shuffled around or cut entirely. Chapters like Clockwork Heart, Japan’s Most Irresponsible Prime Minister, or I Am The Master are a level of absurdity that doesn’t fit with modern Magic Kaito’s energy, so they were completely cut. The Police Are Everywhere (chapter 2) was pushed back and adapted as The Princess and the Thief’s Improv (episode 15), because the emotional core of Nakamori potentially getting removed from the police force simply doesn’t work that early in the story outside the gag context. Akako’s Delivery Service was also unfortunately cut… Whether it be because of Akako’s appearance as Kid and the subsequent punchline or because of the technology Hakuba used to ascertain Kid’s identity, they apparently determined it was either too outside the tone or too difficult to adapt. Hakuba’s call in Golden Eye truly comes out of nowhere as a result, though, and that’s one fewer episode for a character that already had a bit of a spotty appearance record early in the manga’s run.

When the anime was announced, there were 30 chapters out. Seven of these were ultimately not animated, and many of the two chapter cases could be easily adapted into a single episode. They needed more material to fill out the remaining episodes, so they did this in two main ways.

The first is by reaching into some key Detective Conan cases. Black Star is a bonafide Magic Kaito case, but shifting it and Shinichi’s appearance in this adaptation to episode six - right after a series of core cast introductions - is actually very telling. 1412 was not only concerned with adapting the manga for modern sensibilities, but also with adapting Detective Conan for a Magic Kaito audience and further strengthening the connection between the two. This “adaptation” resulted in anime-original retellings of Ryoma’s Gunbelt, Sky Walk, and Purple Nail from Kaito’s point of view. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a decision early on in the anime’s development, and if it was their existence that necessitated the tone of 1412 be evened out via not adapting the more “out there” chapters of the source manga.

The second thing they did to fill the run time was for Gosho to write an entirely new heist to function as a finale for the anime. This was Midnight Crow, the first heist to really touch on the driving plot of Magic Kaito (outside of Snake showing up to be ineffective) since Blue Birthday. Gosho’s comment on this case in the Treasured Edition is… a lot.

After a standalone anime adaptation was greenlit, the topic of what we should do for the final episode came up at our first meeting, so I said “Why don’t I write the ‘Black Kaitou Kid’ story I have saved as a trump card in Sunday and use that in the final episode?” Thus I wrote Midnight Crow! I’ll never forget how surprised the members of staff looked when I bluntly told them that Toichi is actually still alive (lol). (…) Though Chikage made Kaito work as Kid in Phantom Lady, she tried to get him to quit in Midnight Crow because of everything that happened in Las Vegas… But that’s a story for another time (lol).

The story itself has plenty of hints that Kaitou Corbeau is a Toichi-Chikage tag-team, but actually seeing him spell it out so casually sure is something.

Speaking of spelling things out, though, I also want to take an aside to touch on the Magic Kaito 1412 novelizations. Six volumes were published roughly concurrently with the anime’s run, and though there isn’t anything drastically different from what we already know from either Magic Kaito or Detective Conan, sometimes the narration can be quite enlightening. For the purposes of this, though, I specifically want to touch on that pin from earlier.

In the movie continuity, there is very clearly a moment where Kaito figures out Conan’s identity in The Last Wizard of the Century. There is no concrete equivalent to this in either Detective Conan or Magic Kaito, and 1412 doesn’t really expand on this either. I mentioned the possibility that Ryoma’s Gunbelt would have given Kaito ammo to figure out who Conan might be, but it’s not the most compelling argument. I’ve heard tell that Gosho once implied Kaito may have simply come to this conclusion on his own outside of the movie continuity, and I’ve personally always taken this stance given he seems to recognize Conan as a “high school detective” in Fairy’s Lips - and simply DOES know, no arguments, by Azure Throne.

Taking novelizations like these as fully canon is always a bit of a risk, but there’s a very interesting expansion on this particular issue in Volume 3, during the Ryoma’s Gunbelt adaptation. After Kaito runs into Conan while under disguise at the museum, the novels go into a brief explanation of how Kaitou Kid came to be known as such (aka the 1412 thing), followed by a flashback to Kid and Conan’s first meeting in DC’s Black Star. The narration then turns to what happened after the fact. This is fairly long, but as far as I’m aware these novels aren’t available in English, legally or otherwise. As such…

***

Kaito investigated the child that was on the roof of the Beika hotel - the young boy who called himself a detective, and with whom Kaito fought during the Black Star incident.

His name was Conan Edogawa.

He was a distant relative of Hiroshi Agasa, inventor and scientist, and was currently freeloading at the house of Kogoro Mouri, the famous detective “The Sleeping Kogoro.”

…And that was all he really figured out about him.

Conan Edogawa was full of mysteries.

But there was one thing that bothered Kaito.

Kogoro Mouri had a high school daughter named Ran. And Ran Mouri was the childhood friend of Shinichi Kudo.

That Shinichi Kudo.

The very high school detective that cornered Kaito during the clock tower heist.

Before his run-in with Conan, Kaito had looked into the young man that had aided the Metropolitan Police Department.

At a certain point after that clock tower incident, he had apparently gone missing.

He was not officially registered as missing, nor did it become a massive incident. But he stopped attending Teitan High School and disappeared from his home. He was apparently gone because he was busy chasing after some case a client had requested of him, but…

The elementary schooler Conan Edogawa appeared before both Ran Mouri and Kaitou Kid as if taking his place.

Shinichi Kudo, and Conan Edogawa.

Due to their mysterious nature, the two detectives continued to fascinate Kaito.

By the way…

The certain young novelist who had given Kaitou Kid his name was currently a world-renowned mystery writer.

His name was Yusaku Kudo.

Shinichi Kudo’s father.

Then there’s his mother, Yukiko Kudo, who was an essayist. She was a former actress, and once studied under the magician Toichi Kuroba to prepare for a role. Kaito had even once met her alongside his father in his childhood.

A strange turn of fate connected the Kudo and Kuroba families across multiple generations.

Did Kaito realize…?

Did he know that Conan Edogawa was actually Shinichi Kudo, who turned into a child after being forced to take a strange medicine?!

-

Professor Agasa was aware that Conan Edogawa was actually Shinichi Kudo… and it was likely only a select few others knew this. Not even Ran Mouri, his childhood friend, knew.

If Shinichi Kudo was keeping his identity a secret… then the reason he became a child must be pretty dangerous. Something that involved crime and the underworld. Just knowing the truth could put your life in danger.

It was only obvious that Kaito kept his identity as Kaitou Kid hidden.

But Shinichi Kudo must be living an even more troublesome life.

***

The narration of these novels knocks on the fourth wall fairly often, explaining that middle bit of this particular excerpt. It never confirms for sure whether or not Kaito managed to connect the dots, but the aforementioned questionable canonicity of novelizations like this means that was probably the safe choice. That there’s extra information here at all about Kaito looking into both Shinichi AND Conan is a pleasant surprise, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s also a bit frustrating that we don’t yet have even a hint of how this occurred in the manga when we now have two potential sources of that knowledge in the movies and these novels.

Which you opt to take as the more likely canon is probably up to personal interpretation, but I think I’m personally a bit more willing to go with a version of the novel’s events. I prefer to include the movies as a level of canon unless they outright contradict the manga (like M10 does, tragically), but the novel’s versions of events is probably the safer option.

But it’s the inclusion of extra scenes like these that further connects Magic Kaito - especially this particular iteration - to Detective Conan. They are holding hands so tightly now.

This all eventually culminates in Sunflowers of Inferno. Though M14 is the more obvious turning point with regards to Kid’s general behavior and personality in Detective Conan movies, Sunflowers of Inferno is a slightly more interesting turning point: all three movies after 1412 airs involve aspects of Magic Kaito, whether it be in its story or in its theming.

For this movie, it’s a very obvious example of the former. I think the plot of M19 is… strictly okay, but Kid’s motivation throughout being related to Jii is something I really enjoyed about the film. You know, assuming you don’t think too hard about Jii’s age as it relates to the timing of the flashbacks. Outside of that, Kid’s behavior in the movie almost looks as though it’s walking back from M14, but that’s only because Kid is playing the villain for most of it. Once that facade is dealt with he’s fully cooperative with Conan, to the point that the latter trusts the former with Ran’s safety. The opening scene with Kaito in his dark heist garb is also a nice bonus.

All in all, I think 1412 airing actually has the biggest effect on the movies. I’m not sure if that was intentional - movies 23 and 27 have the same director, so it could just be that her artistic vision includes MK in it - but for Sunflowers of Inferno it was almost certainly intentional as a show of fireworks after the ending of the anime. As for the manga, 1412 airing actually seems to have had very little influence on the Detective Conan chapters featuring him. Though Kid is a lot more likely to resemble the version of the character from Magic Kaito now, the manga seems a bit more concerned with introducing him to the new guard.

Meet The Fam

The Detective Conan cases in this section continue the general trend from after Mystery Train of either 1) introducing Kid to a significant sub character, or 2) running parallel to a B Plot that is concerned with the main narrative.

Luna Memoria does a couple of interesting things. First, this is the first time Conan explicitly asks Kid about investigating the jewel of the heist, since he knows Kid is on the search for a “special jewel.” Kaito is very candid in his response, telling Conan he ran into the deceased owner as the readers get a small flashback to Kaito Kuroba reverse pickpocketing the necklace. It’s an interesting conversation to have in the first Kid case since 1412 aired, especially since this aspect of Kid’s MO hasn’t really been discussed in any concrete way in DC before this point.

The second thing it does is have a small but nonetheless amusing B Plot with Okiya. While taking pictures of potential targets for his disguise, Kaito inadvertently gets a picture of Okiya’s voice changer. So Okiya joins Conan in confronting Kid in the bathroom and Very Nicely requests they get that picture back. Kaito has an “oh shit” moment, gets the heck outta dodge, and the chapter ends on a comical note when Kid can’t escape because Nakamori refuses to stop looking for him.

The next DC chapter, Fairy’s Lips, does a little bit of 1 and a little bit of 2. Surprisingly enough, Heiji has not had a significant confrontation with Kid in the manga before, and now Kid is getting himself involved in his and Kazuha’s romance plot. This chapter is retroactively significant because it’s the key jumping-off point for Heiji and Kid’s relationship in M27. But it’s also surprisingly significant for the MAIN main plot of Detective Conan by bringing in Koumei as a secondary detective that’s working to capture Kid… because he’s in Tokyo to receive a mysterious envelope addressed to him. The truth of the envelope’s contents is an Extremely Big Deal, and though by this point in the manga I was fully aware that plot developments would often happen in otherwise standalone cases now, I was personally not ready for that in a Kid case. So there’s that.

Between these two cases is the Magic Kaito heist Sun Halo, which puts a focus on Aoko for the first time in a while. It’s also very minorly a Magic Kaito version of a suspicion arc - the first one since Kaitou Kid’s Busy Day Off - though it ends with a return to the status quo. This chapter, as mentioned way earlier, also features some magic shenanigans from Akako in a more concrete way than we’d seen in a while. There’s some stuff about these chapters that are more disturbing the longer you think about them (what do you Mean Kaito just carries some blood neutralizing spray around with him so people can’t figure out his identity based on his blood), and the general tone is a lot more somber because Kaito is suffering from both pain and blood loss. It feels like an extension of Midnight Crow’s tone, in that regard.

After these three chapters is our next Kid movie, Fist of Blue Sapphire. This movie features a romance subplot between Sonoko and Kyogoku, and thus brings Kid back into it via certain aspects of the movie plot. As a post-1412 movie, the major feature of this movie is not the plot, but the thematic underpinnings of said plot.

Many post-Blue Birthday Magic Kaito heists tend to overlap aspects of Kaito’s situation with that of the characters introduced in the heist. The feature character of Red Tear is a woman who has grown to hate magic after the untimely death of her parents. The titular Dark Knight lives a double life as a notorious criminal for his son’s sake, and Kaito works to make sure his son never finds out about that double life. The thief in Golden Eye is attempting to salvage her father’s legacy. If they aren’t straight parallels, then they present what-if scenarios or twists on what Kaito is going through.

Fist of Blue Sapphire pulls something similar with Rishi, one of the movie-original characters. He’s torn up enough by his father’s death that he chooses to dirty his hands in order to get his revenge. After Midnight Crow, where Toichi himself wants to ensure that revenge is not Kaito’s only driving force, this presents a what-if scenario - an alternate path that Kaito might have chosen, had his admiration for his father not won out over his grief at his death. It’s interesting to see this particular thematic through line in a Detective Conan movie because it’s never been shown in a Detective Conan manga case before, and it’s one of the reasons I’m particularly fond of Chika Nagaoka’s Kid movies.

Another major aspect of this movie is how the sheer amount of screen presence Kid has gives the movie ample time to show what more involved cooperation between Kid and Conan looks like. The second Kid is framed for the crime, he chooses to go to Conan; if Kid looks to be in genuine danger, Conan begrudgingly comes to his aid. They spend time talking over the aspects of the case, and work seamlessly together during the climax. It’s by far the most actively cooperative they’ve been before or since, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere (and the spirit doesn’t quite go away, either). The clearest indication of this change in relationship is the line spoken by Kaito after he’s dealt with his wounds on the roof: “A magician makes you believe he holds something within his clenched fist, and a detective guesses correctly what they hold before it’s ever revealed.” It’s a stark contrast to probably his most famous line from Black Star about phantom thieves being artists and detectives being no more than critics.

Fist of Blue Sapphire happens to be one of those movies that I personally have any concrete info about via things like guidebooks. I don’t want to bloat this more than it already is, so there’s only two things I read that I want to share. 

The first is Kappei Yamaguchi’s seeming reaction to the script during recording, specifically in regards to his laugh. Normally, Kid in Detective Conan has had a sort of booming, open laugh, but twice during the recording for Fist of Blue Sapphire he opted to go for a version of the laugh as written out in Magic Kaito - an “ahaha” vs a “kekeke” kinda difference. He talks about this in the Kaitou Kid Secret Archives, but an online article on the movie from Movie Walker expands on this from Nagaoka’s point of view:

This time, we have a lot of aspects from “Magic Kaito” and Kaitou Kid’s true face in this movie. The moment I thought “This is just Kaito” was during ADR, when Yamguchi Kappei-san laughed like ‘hihi!’ Kappei-san said to me “I did it even though I thought it’d be struck out.” (lol) I could tell in those words that he met this movie with his own interpretation. I was impressed. We have a very cool Kid as a result.

It’s also in the Secret Archives interview that we get the “His speed may be at 100, but he has zero combat ability at all” comment from Gosho to Nagaoka, which is… extremely funny.

The other major thing from the Secret Archives interview (and elsewhere) is an anecdote about a certain regret. Nagaoka herself seems to be a big fan of Magic Kaito, but after M23 was released to theaters, Gosho lamented that he should have had Kid allude to Aoko. This was brought up again in a more recent Animage article: “Actually, back during Fist of Blue Sapphire, Aoyama-sensei had told me something akin to ‘We should have had Kid say “I have a better sapphire (Aoko) already” when he returns the blue sapphire,’ and I responded ‘You’re going to tell me that now, Sensei?!”

This is all to say that, despite the lack of any obvious elements akin to Jii in M19, they were clearly thinking of Magic Kaito while making M23.

The subsequent DC chapters continue the “Kid, meet [Character]” trend with Amuro (and Kazami) in Queen’s Bang. He’s a fairly active part of the process, not the least of which because Kid belittled his card trick skills as they were lining up to enter the museum. Though this chapter doesn’t have a relevant B Plot, it is the first reference to Kid’s presence in Mystery Train since Blush Mermaid - and a pretty significant one at that, since Amuro was the one that actually had to deal with “Sherry.”

Siren Splash’s main character introduction is actually Azusa, which feels a bit like a follow up on the minor role she had in Queen’s Bang. This case has a couple of fun things that sort of cover the entire spectrum of ways in which a Kid case could be fun for our purposes. The least significant of these is Kid’s skates, which (if memory serves) haven’t been seen since chapter 10 of Magic Kaito. Gosho mentions wanting to use them again in his Treasured Edition comment on that case, so it’s a lot of fun to finally see them show up again.

Going up to slightly more significant, there’s a Very Ominous Comment from Kanenori about his left eye, which serves as foreshadowing to information we find out about him about a volume later. And then we have the end of the case, which is a little difficult to talk about because we don’t have any elucidating information yet. Regardless, I’ve always been amused that, despite Conan being the talk of the various police departments, he’s largely avoided being in the news… except where Kid is involved. It seems that’s finally coming to a head with the older gentleman that is none too pleased about the news story covering Conan’s victory. We don’t know what role this man has yet, but if this has ties to the main plot, then this is a very amusing way in which Kid has affected the main plot.

There’s not much else of note to say about this series of chapters, because it’s largely continuing the trends of the era that led to 1412’s release and codifying a less mysterious Kid, and an (at times) more cooperative Conan. But it’s also a comparatively sparse number of chapters; in the over seven years since 1412, Kid had only featured in four chapters here. You probably wouldn’t expect any major developments from a precedent like that, right?

…Right?

Erasing the Line in the Sand

We have now entered the modern era - specifically, the immediate lead-up to M27. Recency means some of these things are going to be a little bit harder to extrapolate on, largely because we have no idea if this is the start of something new, or perhaps just an outlier in the general trend. Regardless, some of this stuff fully makes my brain spin. Never mind brainworms - I have brain bees, and they will not stop buzzing.

We start with the most-recent Kid case in Detective Conan as of this writing, Azure Throne. This particular case is significant for multiple reasons, besides just being a good time. First, it’s Hakuba’s first appearance in Detective Conan since Detective Koshien, which means it’s been a whole seventeen years. Help. It’s arguably also the closest it comes to a proper Hakuba vs Kid case in Detective Conan, since Twilight Mansion is a little too busy with other aspects of its plot to spend much (if any) time on Hakuba’s relationship with Kid. Hakuba is also just a little insane, given his plan was to airlift the entire observation deck and sink it into a pool to trap Kid… There’s some minor Magic Kaito gag energy in that idea, and Hakuba’s never done things by halves.

Next, we have yet another reference to Kid’s presence in Mystery Train. Queen’s bang was only a couple years ago, and in Conan Publishing Time that’s no time at all considering Mystery Train was back in 2012. It’s interesting to get two references to that particular case so close together. 

And speaking of references, my third point of interest for this case is that it straight up references Golden Eye. There’s even an illustration of Cartier, the security company manager that Nakamori is thinking about when he responds to Jirokichi’s comment. Magic Kaito has certainly referenced Detective Conan before, and 1412 itself pulls heists whole-sale from it to fill out its runtime. But this is the first time it’s gone the other way around.

It’s also, somehow, the very first time Kid has assumed the Shinichi Kudo disguise in the manga. And even more surprisingly, it’s done so at Conan’s request. Sure, Kid was the one begging Conan to free him of suspicion for the murder that just happened, but “disguise yourself as me and make sure Ran doesn’t find out” was the condition Conan put forward for his cooperation.

This connects to the fifth and sixth points that I’m concerned with. The fifth point is Ran herself; she has a comment toward the end about how she can’t forgive Kid for “disguising as Shinichi every single time.” Which is, you know. Kinda weird, if all we’re considering is manga continuity. This is his very first time assuming this disguise in the manga! So in Gosho’s mind, at least, the movies aren’t not canon. Considering more recent movies are more likely to require “homework” to fully enjoy them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were more carefully written to slot into canon more easily than early movies were.

The sixth and most hilarious point is a single aside in a conversation Kid and Conan have.

Actually, why do you look so similar to me?

Why would I know?! Maybe we have a shared ancestor or something. (To be honest… I’m not even changing my voice much, either…)

Now, the addition of that voice comment makes the whole thing sound like a gag - they do have the same seiyuu, after all - but their similarity has always been a bit of a gag… In the movies. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure it’s ever really been brought up in the manga, so this is a joke that feels almost necessary after Conan requested Kid to disguise himself as “Shinichi,” which Kid managed to do despite being not at all prepared for it.

And, you know. It’s also foreshadowing now. Not by much, considering the movie was only a few months out, but still.

tl;dr: There’s a lot going on in Azure Throne. It is probably the densest of the Kid cases in terms of its relationship to itself and its relationship to Magic Kaito. As a result of that, there’s something about this case that feels like the purest mix of Magic Kaito and Detective Conan. It also feels pretty clearly written with the movie in mind, considering it not only had the aforementioned foreshadowing, but also brought in ideas from previous movies into the manga to create synergy between them.

After that we have Green Dragon, a Magic Kaito heist that ran through M27’s theater release. Meeting Aoko’s mother is certainly a standout of this particular heist, but what I personally find more interesting is the tone. It eschews the steady creep of drama into the narrative by pulling back to something more comedic, and in some ways feels a little like a return to form. Kaito’s fear of fish is brought up again for the first time in ages, and Midoriko gets a whole host of muscle men to corner Kid.

The chapter also opens with a reference to the crimes (as Midoriko would prosecute them) Kid committed in Queen’s Bang. In terms of time, it’s been over ten years since the last MK heist referenced DC in any meaningful way. But in terms of heist count, Phantom Lady was only three heists ago.

It is at this point I must discuss the movie, The Million-dollar Pentagram. As the movie is not yet out on Blu-ray as of this writing and the international offerings were a bit spotty (especially outside of Asia), I want to give another spoiler warning for the information I’m about to go into. I mentioned earlier that later movies require a bit of “homework” for full enjoyment, and M27 is no exception. It has also turned into one of the more common complaints I see from casual DC movie enjoyers, at least on the Japanese side of things - because yes, there is a whole audience of people whose only exposure to the franchise is the yearly movie. While the most easily recognizable pieces of “homework” for this particular movie are clearly cases like Fairy’s Lips or even M21 for familiarity with Momiji and Heiji’s attempts to confess to Kazuha, it is also very much arguable that the second major pillar of this movie requires a working knowledge of Magic Kaito. Like, not just knowing who Kaitou Kid is, but knowing who Kaito Kuroba is.

Which means I’m going to be talking about a lot of this movie in concrete detail. The main thrust of the movie is, to put it very simply, a treasure hunt. What I discuss will give you very few clues as to how or why that mystery is solved, but it will end up touching on key events, motives, and emotional beats. If you’d rather keep yourself unspoiled so as to enjoy those aspects as well, please skip to my discussion on FILE.0. You can find that by scrolling to below the second horizontal line, or doing a Ctrl+F search on “FILE.0.” That being said, there will also be more concrete references to the post-credits scene everyone knows about by this point in the final section of this retrospective as well.

——

There’s a lot I want to discuss with regards to M27, but it’s frankly hard to conceive of how I’d go about it. Going through the movie chronologically would take far too long, so I think I largely just want to list up a few interesting elements and then dive into what significance I think those elements hold. For the curious, I saw this movie twice in theaters: once about a week after premier, and again when they were running English subtitles at certain locations.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the most amusing thing this movie did before it was even released: the lack of a pre-screening. Movies like these usually have a seiyuu event of some kind attached to an early screening of the movie that fans can attend via lottery a little while before the official release, but they used the framing device of Kid “stealing the pre-screening” to avoid holding one at all. This isn’t strictly related to anything I’ll discuss further, but it is amusing to think that they believed the information presented in this movie was important and significant enough that they didn’t want to risk people talking ahead of the official release. And, you know, it WAS, but we’re not getting into that just yet.

Also somewhat minorly was the cover of an-an being Shinichi and Kaito, as opposed to Conan and Kid or even Shinichi and Kid. There’s also been a handful of DC merch that includes both Kaito and Kid in the lineup, and I don’t think stuff like this has happened since 1412 aired. It’s clear in hindsight they were focusing on his civilian identity because of his motive in the film and the reveal in the stinger.

As for the movie itself, I want to start REALLY basic, and actually talk about the score of the movie. The Million-dollar Pentagram is the first Kid film since Yugo Kanno took over from Katsuo Ohno for the movie soundtracks. This normally wouldn’t matter too much, except for the fact that Kaitou Kid has utilized a variation on the same two themes since The Last Wizard of the Century. There was apparently quite a bit of back and forth as to how to handle this aspect of the soundtrack, but in the end they went with a completely new theme: The Grand Circus (華麗なるサーカス). If you’re reading this and somehow haven’t heard it before, I highly recommend you give it a listen. It serves as his calling card throughout the movie and is a much more playful tune. I can’t help thinking about Toichi’s conversation with Kaito in Hustler vs Magician about how the pierrot is the most important member of the circus (yet another reason I’m glad this chapter got salvaged in the 1412 adaptation). I definitely don’t dislike his old themes, but I do enjoy that the vibe of this one expresses a side of Kid in Detective Conan that has seen more screen time lately, but has until now had no musical motif to express it.

Another amusing part of this soundtrack is a certain melody, only a couple bars long, that repeats throughout the entire score. This melody just so happens to play during the final major reveal of the movie: that Toichi had been disguised as Yoshihisa Kawasoe the entire time. Kawasoe is a local detective that is in and out of the movie for almost its entire runtime. Toichi was, in essence, with us the entire time. Just like this melody was, weaved in and out of the soundtrack. It’s a nice touch. Kanno mentions in the Toho Cinemas guidebook that there’s very little impact to a melody introduced in the final moments, and that he wanted to inspire a sense of deja vu alongside surprise by accompanying that final reveal alongside a melody that had played the entire time. It’s kinda neat.

As for Kid’s behavior in this movie, it’s informed entirely by his desire to discover why his dad apparently went after this “potentially world-destroying” treasure, found it, and then left it alone. There’s an overlap between this and his motive in M19, considering both are more personal in nature, but M27’s motive is also far more fundamental to Magic Kaito. Kid is mentioned multiple times to have an assistant of some kind in Detective Conan chapters, but the only mention of his dad is that 1) he exists, and 2) he was the previous Kid. He’s not at all connected to Kid’s search for Pandora or his reason to be the second Kid in the first place, so bringing his dad into things as a motive feels more poignant if you know Kaito’s always been chasing him. Which is to say, it relies a bit more on knowing Kaito’s personal story from Magic Kaito.

The plot leans into this “if you know, you know” vibe by having Kaito only ever indirectly refer to his dad. When he explains why he’s searching for these swords to Conan and Heiji, he only refers to “a certain thief.” In a moment of respite, he only just barely gets to say the first sounds of “dad” before he’s interrupted by one of our culprits. It’s not said in any capacity until the very end of the movie, when the treasure is found alongside Toichi’s glove and a notice from Kid the first: “Wake not a sleeping lion.”

Going back to Heiji and Conan, he’s not openly cooperative with them until they save him from near death. It’s at that point they share info and Kid ropes them into solving this puzzle because it’s what they do best. The rest of their cooperation in the movie usually takes the shape of a “2+1” format. Conan and Heiji are obviously working together while Kid comes in and out via a number of disguises. There’s a comedy to his disguises in this film, since they’re almost too easy to see through. It’s likely in part so Heiji and Conan can be aware of his presence, since they’re technically working together. Minami Takayama also picks up on this in her movie pamphlet interview, adding that he “seems more open and honest this time, probably because that’s just how badly he wants to solve this mystery” and that it feels more like “Kaito Kuroba and Shinichi Kudo have taken a step closer” as opposed to it just being Kid and Conan this time around. Kappei Yamaguchi in the same set of interviews says he’s “basically Kaito” with Conan, even if he still mostly behaves as Kid with Heiji.

To summarize, Kid’s behavior in this movie is far more open due to the goal being tied to his dad, and with Conan specifically the mask is basically off. Add this to the comedic touch of his disguises throughout, and you’ve got some good Magic Kaito vibes despite his reduced screen time compared to M23.

But that only lays the foundation for those vibes. There are plenty of other reasons why it feels more Magic Kaito-y, given key aspects of this movie bring in more aspects of Kaito’s civilian life - and certain emotional beats rely on your knowledge of that.

To start with a more minor beat that wraps up things mentioned above: Toichi’s glove. Kaito takes it with him after discovering the treasure, and there’s a short scene while he’s flying through the sky (after a more significant moment we’ll discuss later) that sees him looking at the glove with a frankly mixed expression. The novelization of the movie mentions him smiling happily as he soars through the sky, but that is not the expression we actually see in the movie. He has Thoughts about finding his dad’s glove there, but the audience is left to guess what they may be. It’s a hole that’s nearly impossible to fill without knowing Kaito’s backstory (and, arguably, without knowing about Midnight Crow).

And we’ll get to Midnight Crow’s significance, just you wait.

The second beat I want to talk about is Nakamori. First (and more minorly) is his engagement in some true gag Magic Kaito energy. A short scene with a disguised Kaito at a hotel alongside Conan and Heiji ends with Nakamori up against the window, looking in with multiple police officers behind him, as he realizes he’s found Kid. Kid then runs, and Nakamori and his officers run across the screen as Conan and Heiji continue their conversation. Real goofy hours.

But the actual most important story beat with Nakamori is him getting shot by one of our antagonists. He’a shot while on duty and escorting another principle character, and the framing of the movie puts us in Kid’s shoes as he discovers a gun aimed at the both of them just a little too late. This decision carries with it a couple of interesting tidbits, whether they be for our purposes or for how it seemed to affect the people that worked on it.

I want to do the latter first, since the snowballing is less extreme. Yamaguchi has talked about this scene a number of times, whether it be in interviews or during seiyuu events. As a voice actor, he was surprised at his own performance as Kid yells out Nakamori’s name. It was desperate and loud in a way he’d never been before, but it still felt natural to him; he thought it was indicative of just how important Nakamori is to Kaito, and that this was less Detective Conan’s Kid and more Magic Kaito’s Kaito Kuroba.

Related to this is a comment he made at a stage event that in his heart, he’d wanted to say “ojisan” instead of “Inspector Nakamori.” But he felt that it would be too difficult to display their relationship that way, so he went with the latter. There’s a lot of character interpretation you can do with regards to what Kaito chose to say in the moment, but I also can’t deny the possibility that it simply comes down to the “Kaito and Nakamori” dynamic not appearing in Detective Conan at all. Well, at least in part.

The other major ramification of this narrative decision is actually Aoko’s appearance in the movie. Nagaoka recounts in multiple interviews, such as in Febri or Animage, that she originally felt the tension in the movie was a little too slow-going, so she suggested someone get shot. The original plan suggested shooting Nishimura, the Hokkaido police detective, but Gosho said Kid wouldn’t save him if that was the case. It was here Nagaoka suggested Nakamori, to which Gosho agreed. He then added, though, that if he was in the hospital, then Aoko would likely show up.

Thus we have Aoko’s first theatrical appearance, and her first appearance in Detective Conan at all since Black Star. Her appearance in this movie grounds Kid’s emotional narrative in Magic Kaito; it implies the existence of Kaito Kuroba in ways Hakuba or Nakamori never could, because her significance rests entirely in his civilian identity. There are scenes dedicated to Kaito watching over her in disguise as she waits for her father to wake up, only leaving once she seems to be okay. He’s on the phone with her in one of the last scenes in the movie, and his smile when he ends the call is the softest it’s ever been in Detective Conan.

That’s not all, though. In a cute example of the movie affecting the manga, Gosho told Nagaoka later on that a gesture Aoko performs - a two-handed clap to the face that helps her psych herself up - was brought back into Magic Kaito for his April serialization. We see Midoriko do the very same gesture when she wakes up after her quick nap, as it turns out.

There’s something else I want to mention about Aoko, but that fits better elsewhere. So before we talk about the elephant in the room, I want to mention the theme of the movie. Both Nagaoka and Takahiro Okura, the script writer, have described the movie as dealing with “parent-child relationships” and “inheritance.” All of the antagonists follow after their forefathers in some way, but it’s an idea most obviously expressed by Hijiri Fukushiro, the main movie-original character. The complicated feelings he has about following in his father’s footsteps, and the things he does as a result, can all too easily be compared to Kaito’s own struggles. As I mentioned earlier, Nagaoka does something similar with M23, but it’s even more powerful here because Kaito is just as determined to chase after his dad as the many other characters in the narrative are to deal with the legacies their forefathers left them.

So. 

Elephant in the room. 

The ship-breaking shot heard round the world.

Shinichi Kudo and Kaito Kuroba are cousins, and their fathers are twins.

I want to just trace this thread throughout the movie, in as brief a form as possible.

It starts with the very first confrontation between Kid and Heiji. When Heiji gets the upper hand and knocks Kid’s monocle off, cutting through the brim of his hat in the process, the moon peeks through the clouds and gives Heiji a clear view of Kid’s face. He’s immediately shocked to discover he resembles Shinichi.

Heiji has a couple of moments following that clearly illustrates he’s ruminating on this. When he first sees Conan, he crouches down and takes Conan’s face by the chin, examining him. When Kid and Conan banter on the train, Heiji sits behind them, a confused but thoughtful look on his face.

Shortly after the above, Heiji confronts Conan: “Do you have any siblings?” He brings up the physical and vocal resemblance Kid has to Shinichi, but Conan brushes it off. “It’s a coincidental resemblance. It happened by chance.” Heiji drops the subject, but there’s an argument to be had that the way Conan says that last line sure is suspicious.

The movie follows the main plot until Aoko’s introduction. In one scene with her, Heiji, and Conan, she watches the latter two talk with interest. She crouches to the ground and stares at Conan, telling him that she’s reminded of her childhood friend’s younger years when she sees him. This is the first time their resemblance has ever been phrased as “You look like Kid/Kaito,” as opposed to the more common reverse. Nagaoka remarks in an interview that Aoko’s presence in this movie presented the perfect chance to further thread the foreshadowing of their resemblance throughout the film, and personally I rather enjoy that one aspect of this foreshadowing comes from the Magic Kaito angle.

Post-credits. Yukiko is surprised to discover Yusaku has an older twin brother. Yusaku is a little…cagey, in my opinion. He expresses mild surprise he hasn’t mentioned it before, says they keep in regular contact despite not seeing each other in over 20 years, mentions he receives gifts every once in a while (including the extremely plot-relevant missing sword) and hints to Yukiko that she’s likely met him before. As she continues to guess who it might be, Yusaku attempts to change the subject to his new book; he wants her opinions on it. This is when he receives a text praising his most recent novel, signed by “TK,” and Yusaku smiles. The scene cuts to a skyline view and Kawasoe standing atop a tower of some kind. He looks at his phone: “Thank you, Nii-san! YK.” He laughs, and the disguise comes off, revealing a smiling Kaitou Corbeau.

Now, I mentioned Midnight Crow earlier, so I want to recover that pin now. Midnight Crow is a Magic Kaito case. It is the case that very strongly implies Toichi’s survival. Absolutely none of this is brought up in Detective Conan in any capacity whatsoever. Not even a REFERENCE to a “Kaitou Kid in black.” I’ve seen multiple stories, whether they be about themselves or about others they went with or saw in the theater, about people that were simply confused as to why THIS was the stinger in this film. I even have a personal anecdote myself, given I dragged my roommate with me to the movie and what surface knowledge she had did not do anything to help her understand what the heck was going on in the post-credits scene.

Within the film, in the vacuum of this one movie, the connection between Kawasoe and “the guy that wears a monocle like Kid who seems vaguely threatening” is actually really well foreshadowed! It’s even BETTER foreshadowed if you know Magic Kaito, because the relationship between Hijiri and his dad has parallels to Kaito and his dad. Because Kaito’s first disguise in the movie and Toichi’s disguise throughout used the exact same method: taking advantage of someone’s vacation, and thus their absence. Because you know this man is Kaito’s dad, the thief who found this treasure before and chose not to steal it, and is now taking advantage of Kawasoe’s klutzy nature to give Heiji and Conan information so they can find and protect it.

As far as Kaito and Shinichi’s resemblance is concerned, it was always used as a joke in previous films. Considering how long this running joke went, I imagine that made their blood relationship that much harder to accept. It was clear they were doing something different with it from the very start of this movie, though, when Heiji’s reaction to the resemblance isn’t played for laughs and it just kept coming up.

This also doesn’t necessarily come out of nowhere. The earliest piece of info that I can personally confirm is from a six-page interview with Gosho in a 2011 issue of Hayakawa Mystery Magazine celebrating the release of M15. After the interviewer implies that the similarity between Kid and Shinichi may be due to Kid being written first as a protagonist (further implying it’s a stylistic “protagonist” thing), Gosho replied, “Their resemblance is not just because of the order they were written in, but because there’s a secret backstory. There’s no way someone that looks so similar exists, you know? (lol) As for why, look forward to it, I suppose.” In the No. 22-23 2024 issue of Shonen Sunday, Gosho also has a little cheeky comment saying he’s relieved he was finally able to talk about Kid’s secret…

The other comment complicating the timing of when Gosho would have first considered this is a comment from Yamaguchi during a later screening of M27 alongside the seiyuu. According to fan reports, he mentioned being told that Kid had a “secret backstory” when he was given the offer to voice him. Combined with the fact that Gosho had apparently specifically chosen Yamaguchi despite the latter already being onboard as Shinichi, and Gosho choosing to go with a Kid cameo in DC in the first place because he wanted to introduce a regular rival… Maybe the idea of them being related existed well before that 2011 interview.

You might be able to tell, given how much I have written about M27 alone, that I think it’s a very interesting movie from a Magic Kaito perspective. It borrows from it the most by far, and I have to agree with the Febri interviewer when they said this movie has the biggest crossover between the worlds of Magic Kaito and Detective Conan by far. Because aspects of the theme, Kid’s motivations, and the entire post-credits scene are frankly lost on you if you’ve never bothered to read Magic Kaito. It’s a very funny thing for the “yearly event movie” to do, if I’m being honest, but this movie relies on the strengthening ties the two stories have made over the years. It sure did break box office records, though, so it seemingly worked out for them.

My only question at this point is whether further media, manga or movie, will pick up on the movie’s main revelation.

——

Since merch releases and promotion for M28 are ramping up, I wasn’t expecting much out of the Magic Kaito or Kaitou Kid mines for a while. Imagine my surprise, then, when FILE.0 was finally released as part of the special rerelease of Volume 1. At a mere four pages, one could barely call it an extra chapter; if it could be called anything at all, it’s more like an omake of sorts. Here we have Shinichi taking a trip to Tropical Land to plan out his date with Ran - and with Fate, of course.

It’s honestly pretty cute, the way he’s likely taking way too many notes on what he could do there. But what ends up happening is Shinichi stumbles upon a scene from Magic Kaito (Kaitou Kid’s Busy Day Off, to be exact), right as Kaito says his embarrassing line about ice cream being as sweet as it is cold. Shinichi is taken aback at how cringe this guy’s being, but he likes the idea of ending his date here by the fountain, so he takes notes regardless.

Did we really just put Shinichi in a scene from Magic Kaito for a rerelease of Detective Conan’s inaugural volume? With Kaito and Aoko, right there? It feels so small and so silly, but I still can’t get it out of my brain. The last time Kaito and Aoko showed up just as normal people in front of our main cast in any capacity was in Black Star, and I’ve already mentioned that this appearance makes the chapter feel even more like a crossover. But now, after everything that’s happened, they show up again. Maybe the line in the sand is still there, but I think it’s moved.

Final Thoughts & Hot Takes

The very nature of Kid originally being from another older series means I have no idea where we actually go from here with all of this. I have no major expectations at all for when or how or IF Shinichi and Kaito being related will be brought into the manga in any capacity, largely because there’s very little precedent for it. You have things like Ran already knowing Momiji in the manga even though they only ever had a “first meeting” in M21, or James Black knowing about Akai’s survival first being confirmed in M18, but stuff like that that’s a pretty rare occurrence. Even so, Takayama and Yamaguchi discuss the idea themselves in an Animage interview. She mentions that the movies seem more connected to the manga nowadays, while he muses at the idea of Fairy’s Lip leading into M27, which may very well then lead back into the manga.

Regardless, I don’t think anyone would argue if you said Magic Kaito felt more integrated into Detective Conan now than it did 20+ years ago, when Kid was first appearing in the manga and movies.

So to cap everything off, I think some Hot Takes are in order.

The cousin reveal isn’t actually all that bad. I’ve admittedly been on this particular train for a decade, so this was like every national holiday and then some rolled into one. I definitely have some questions about things like Shinichi’s Childhood Adventure or Yukiko’s relationship with Toichi, but for me personally none of them really snap this reveal in two. Nor do I think it dampens the way they were brought together as detective and thief, especially since I think you could reasonably argue that Toichi and Yusaku maintained their distance not only due to the divorce, but because of Toichi’s new profession. “Over 20 years ago” puts them at probably no more than a couple years before Toichi became Kid, when he was likely traveling for his magic show, as opposed to the young age they apparently were when their parents divorced. It’s also made fairly clear in DC that Yusaku knew who Kid’s civilian identity was… or at the very least, that’s how I read that interaction. If they intentionally kept their halves of the family from meeting, then it’s pretty incredible Shinichi and Kaito met at all. If the manga touches on them being related in any capacity - and again, I have no clue how likely that actually is - then it’s not going to suddenly supersede the relationship they have now. It’ll just add to it, assuming they chose to entertain it at all, and that complexity could be fun. This is all admittedly personal, of course; my shipping preference leans very heavily into “weird platonic relationships,” so that informs this particular take by quite a wide margin.

1412 is the ideal way to consume Magic Kaito. I don’t know how much I even like this hot take, but I can’t help thinking it’s true regardless. It more closely resembles Detective Conan in tone and vibes than it resembles its own source manga in a couple of key ways, so I do actually think this - over either the manga or the TMS adaptation - is the way they want people new to Magic Kaito to consume it, especially if they’re coming in from Detective Conan. That Gosho created a new finale for it, and did so by pulling out the “Toichi is actually alive” card, is also fairly telling. And if people like it enough and want more, the manga is still plenty available.

Magic Kaito has become a Detective Conan spin-off. I think I also hate this take, but I also believe it to be true in any way that functionally matters. We must respect that Magic Kaito came first - that Kaito and Aoko and Hakuba came first - but Kid’s modern popularity can be almost entirely attributed to Detective Conan. And honestly, I have to wonder if it’s still running, albeit irregularly, because of that. Phantom Lady jumps off of Ryoma’s Gunbelt, Green Dragon references Queen’s Bang and takes a quirk from the movie for both Aoko and Midoriko. The tone does a clear shift after DC begins serialization as well, and goes even further into mystery solving after Kid makes his first appearance in DC. If you didn’t know any better, you might think it was similar to something like Zero’s Tea Time: a spin-off for a crazy popular character. It’s not, and it never actually will be, because Magic Kaito came first. But I think it sort of has become one.

The line in the sand is not bad, until it is. I don’t actually mind the parallel worlds argument, largely because I can understand what kind of slippery slope Akako is for the logic-driven Detective Conan. There’s also a part of me that doesn’t really mind Kid plots being largely stand-alone, with little to no involvement with the main plot. I could even also buy the two shady organizations actually being different, if and when we ever get information about MK’s organization. But after coming this far, and developing Conan and Kid’s relationship to the level that you have, I think not delving into who Kid is when he takes off the costume becomes the more contrived option. Gosho’s said before that solving the DC plot will not simultaneously solve the MK plot due to those organizations being different; I don’t think that means Kid should be verboten from Black Organization plots entirely. I don’t think it means Kid shouldn’t maybe suffer a consequence or two for being so open and casual with Conan, or that we can’t have a running side plot involving him. But then you run into the problem of Magic Kaito being its own series, and if you erase the line in the sand - if you let Kaito Kuroba be in Detective Conan - what do you do with Magic Kaito? The two worlds have overlapped so heavily with M27 that I almost wonder if we’re at a breaking point. Maybe this is the real Pandora’s box.

Kaitou Kid is a Detective Conan character, but Kaito Kuroba might not be… yet. I think DC has claimed Kid for its own. Especially the performance of Kid as displayed by the man behind the mask. But that mask has been chipping away, and Kaito himself is usually the one speaking to Conan at this point in both the manga and the movies. Even so, to so many people, that’s still just Kaitou Kid. I’ve seen disappointment expressed at that suave gentleman thief from the Black Star and M3 era being nowhere in sight in modern times, and it’s because it was always an act. You can’t keep up that act when you choose to trust someone, and they trust you back. You just… start becoming yourself. But he’s not truly himself in DC yet, despite the few scant appearances of Kaito himself we’ve received. For some reason, Kaito Kuroba still feels like a crossover character, and his appearance some special event, compared to Kaitou Kid. FILE.0 was a surprise in this regard, but in relation to the above, I have to wonder: Should Kaito himself ever feel as entrenched in DC as Kid is?

Kaito Kuroba - who many and more know as Kaitou Kid - is such a funny character if you think about him for more than a few seconds. His popularity in the Detective Conan vacuum is more than warranted, given his back and forth with Conan, but I really do want to believe that it’s the duality of his appearances in Magic Kaito and Detective Conan that contributes to this popularity. If M27 and some of the recent trends in both DC and MK are anything to go by, maybe I’m not so far off the mark.

We’ll likely get more stuff to enjoy in the meantime, but I’m currently looking ahead to Magic Kaito’s 40th anniversary in 2027 and hoping we get another movie… Or maybe another major manga arc. If you’ve managed to read all of this, you have my deepest gratitude! I hope this adventure was as enlightening for you to read as it was for me to write.

[minniesmutt]

⚠︎ ━━━ LUNCH

⚠︎ ━━━ SS + WC: 5 + 0.8K

⚠︎ ━━━ CONTENT: PREGNANCY, FOOD MENTIONS, KIND OF TOXIC EX

     Y/n nervously sat in her car outside the restaurant— nothing super fancy as she had asked thankfully. He had already told her he was inside, she was just trying to calm down, finally gathering herself, grabbing her bag, and walking inside. Telling the host she was meeting someone before they led her to the table. 

     Jeongin had set his phone down on the table as she joined him. “Hey.”

     “Hi,” Y/n offered a smile as she sat down across from him.

     “How are you doing?” He asked 

     “Okay? Kind of nervous honestly.” Y/n grabbed the cup of water in front of her and took a sip. 

     “Let's order then we can talk about it. How does that sound?”

     Y/n agreed and picked up her menu. Scanning over the items for a few minutes before the waiter came over. Both putting in their orders and giving their menu’s to the waiter before they walked off. Sitting in an awkward silence for another minute.

     “I’m not getting rid of the baby.” Y/n finally stated after a moment.

     “I wasn’t going to make you,” Jeongin confirmed, “I know it was a one night stand and we barely know each other but I do want to at the very least co-parent this kid.”

     “I can work with that,” Y/n nodded

     Jeongin nodded, silence taking over the table again, “What do you do for work?” He asked

     “I’m an editor for a online news outlet.”

     “You work with Seungmin, right?”

     “Yeah. We were in a lot of the same classes in college but weren’t friends until after graduation and we ended up at the same company.”

     “Same department?”

     “No. He works more in reporting and journalism. I’ve edited a couple of the stories they’ve let him published.”

     “He hasn’t published a lot?”

     “No, (Astird)’s case was actually the first one they let him take on his own.”

     “They didn’t think he was going to be bias on it?”

     “I don’t think he told his boss she was his roommate. But even when I was editing it, you could barely tell he knew her. He’s very unbiased in reporting which is a good trait to have,” Y/n explained as her phone went off on the table next to her

Jihyun ❌: why aren’t you home?                   I know its your day off

     “Everything okay?” Jeongin asked

     “Yeah, just a friend texting me,” Y/n brushed it off 

     “Do any of your friends know about you being pregnant?”

     “Just my friend Hana, the one who was with me at the club.”

Jihyun ❌: Y/n

     “Do any of your friends know?”     “I may have told all of them?”

     “How many is all?”

     “Five.”

     Y/n nodded

Jihyun ❌: when the hell did you turn your location off?                   answer me

     “Do you need to take that?” Jeongin asked, seeing the constant light up of her phone from the text.

     “No. It’s just me ex. He can deal with it?”

     “When did you guys break up?”

     “Almost a month ago. Hana ended up dragging me to a club to just get my mind off it.”

     “Ah. So I was a rebound fuck,” Jeongin joked and it definetly made her laugh a bit.

     “If you wanna look at it like that,” Y/n said, “I was more so looking to get drunk till I forgot but drunk me also is horny.”

     “Bad break up then?”

     “Yeah. It’s over now though.”

     “Good for you,” Jeongin smiled

     “So, how are we gonna work out appointments and stuff?” Y/n asked, changing the subject

     “I would like to be there for them but if you don’t want me there that’s fine. I also can already tell I might not be able to make it to all of them with work.”

     “You own you’re company, right?”

     “Yeah. There’s certain meetings I can’t get out of.”

     “I can try and schedule them as best I can to avoid that but I can always update you afterwards if it doesn’t work out.”

     “That works out for me.” 

     The waiter came back with their food and they both thanked them before eating. Other small talk continued throughout the meal, some regarding their lives, others regarding the baby. Jeongin paid at the end of the meal, walking out with her.

     “Don’t be afraid the text me if you need anything, okay?” He told her, walking her over to her car

     “I will, thank you,” Y/n said, unlocking her car.

     Jeongin opened the door for her, “I mean anything. Even if it’s a weird pregnancy craving in the middle of the night.”

     The two of them laughed as she set her bag down on the passenger seat. “I will.” Y/n assured him and took her seat.

     Jeongin closed her door and waved her off as he walked to his own car. Y/n took out her phone, wanting to text her friend the good news till she remembered the messages— with new ones.

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[valkyrie138]

A Court of Ice and Shadow - Chapter 1

Pairing: Half-Seraphim/Half-High Fae OC x Azriel

Summary: After the war against Hybern, Astrid, a young half-seraphim half-high fae, is struggling with a growing power with little to no answers of how or why it's happening. After an incident at her home in Cretea, Miryam and Prince Drakon send her to train with Rhysand.

With the threat of Koschei looming, Azriel has been running himself to the ground, trying to find more information. The search has been a helpful distraction from a certain Archeron sister, but what will happen with the new guest in the house of wind that he seemingly can't stay away from?

Overview: This is an 18+ series, angst, canon-type violence, murder, torture, smut, fluff, etc.

Note: Please be kind. This is my first time writing in a really long time, but I'm always open to constructive criticism. Also, if anyone wants to be an editor, send me a message!

Word Count: 2.3k

Next

»»————-　✼　————-««

Astrid loved this view of Cretea. Lately, it had become her favorite place on the island. She’d often spend her nights atop the Brightwater Palace, the home of Prince Drakon and Lady Miryam. The palace sat atop the most prominent hill on the island, the stone pillars tall enough that they seemed to touch the stars. She loved this view and how she could observe her home below in almost its entirety. Astrid watched as a half-fae left a tavern with flushed cheeks, their human partner struggling to hold them up. The young seraphim wondered how the couple met. Was it stolen looks in a tavern, or did they find comfort in one another after the war? Astrid sighed as her eyes continued to scan the city below her. She missed the nights when she was red-cheeked and giggling with Lucy and Kendra while they stumbled home. But sitting up here and making up stories of those she observed seemed interesting enough. Her eyes drifted through the island streets to the glittering Erythrian sea surrounding them. A small smile crept onto her rosy lips. She really did love this view. The sound of a person landing was what tour her eyes away from it. 

“They really should put a plaque here.” 

“Whatever for, Kendra?” Astrid drawled, looking at her sister-in-arms. Kendra, with sharp green eyes and auburn hair, was the captain of the Seraphim aerial legion. 

“So they can cement this as your spot, obviously. Your ass has made an imprint in the stone. That, at least, deserves a plaque,” Kendra was also a smart ass.

“I’ll make sure to tell Drakon and Miryam that you think my ass deserves such an honor,” she quipped before turning her gaze back to the city. Kendra moved to sit beside her, her feet dangling over the edge. 

“I’m heading to the taverns tonight. Would you like to join me?”

There would be so many people, so many thoughts, so many memories, and so many emotions. Astrid's chest tightened at the thought. She sighed, “Not tonight.” She could feel Kendra’s disappointment wash over her. The captain stared at her for a while, her face contemplative. “Have you told Miryam and Drakon that you’re struggling? If anyone could help, it would be them.”

Astrid, hearing the question, sucked in a breath. There was no real point in trying to lie to Kendra. Astrid may have the daemati power, but Kendra always knew what she was thinking. A small part of Astrid wished she could go back in time and take back that drunk confession from a few moons ago. The moment she told Kendra that this new daemati ability controlled her more than she could control it, Astrid knew Kendra would be on top of her to fix it. 

“No,” Astrid confessed. “Miryam suspects something is going on, though. I’m staying at the palace tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll ask.”

Astrid’s eyes lingered on the Cretea for another moment; she loved this island. But her eyes drifted to the other side of the palace, which looked out across a dark sea. Her mind often wondered what was happening across those blue waves. She had only left Cretea once, and it was to fight in the war against Hybern. No one on the island knew what was happening in Pyrthian for the past 52 years. Astrid felt that growing pain in her chest again, the warm air suddenly feeling like a small fire in her throat. The war had a cost, and the carnage still plagued her nightmares. But she still wondered what was happening in those faraway courts.

“I wonder what she’s doing, too,” whispered Kendra. She meant Lucy, the missing piece of their trio. The pain in Astrid's chest deepened, her heart aching. Lucy had lost her wings during the battle. Astrid was there when it happened,  saw the Hybern soldier shoot her out of the sky, and heard Lucy’s screams as she fell. The memory played in her mind on a loop, and her guilt festered somewhere deep within her. After the battle, Lucy decided to stay in Prythian and start a new life. Neither Astrid nor Kendra had heard from her since. Remembering Kendra’s comment, Astrid only replied with a slight nod. 

“Maybe the High Lord will know,” Kendra added. 

“I do hear that he has eyes everywhere,” Astrid noted. The High Lord of the Night Court would be coming to the palace tomorrow for what she didn’t know. Kendra stood up slowly, wiping her pants lightly. 

“If you aren’t joining me at the taverns tonight, at least get some sleep. You look positively dead,” the captain quipped. 

“You really do know how to flatter me,” Astrid replied, a smirk spread across her face. 

Kendra flew off with a wave over her shoulder. She watched as her friend flew above the streets and disappeared from view. Astrid’s eyes swept across Cretea, the rolling seas, and then settled on the stars above her. On clear nights, she used to sit on the roof of her family's home with her father, counting the stars, finding constellations, and listening to her father tell the stories behind them. She wondered if he was up there, along with her mother and sisters, watching over her. She wondered if they were proud of the female she had become. She felt the fissure deepen in her chest, full of ice and unyielding. She sharply swallowed the feeling, pushing it down, down, down. She couldn’t afford that cracking, the breaking. With a sigh, Astrid reached her arms to the sky as she stretched her back, her white wings fluttering behind her with relief. The hours spent sitting on the stone edge of the palace did nothing for her sore back. Astrid took one last longing look at the sea and the stars as she stood before gazing at Cretea below and flying home. 

»»————-　✼　————-««

The nightmares had plagued Astrid again that night. She awoke struggling to breathe, and ice covered her room, the temperature far below normal. She almost flung herself off the balcony in her room while trying to gulp down fresh air. Her dreams were full of the deaths of her family, and of her fellow soldiers she lost in the war. Their cries still felt like they were still echoing in her ears. The young seraphim stood examining her reflection. Her moon-white hair was pulled back high on her head, with intricate braids starting at her temples. Her midnight-blue eyes were stark against her hair and milk-colored skin. Her eyes drifted to her leathers. She probably should have worn a dress for the meeting with the High Lord, but her nightmares had left her feeling uneasy, the grip on her power slippery. The supple grey leather provided her a comfort that no court dress would. A knock on her door made her tear her eyes from the mirror.

“Come in, Dalia,” she said, turning toward the door. Dalia was a half-fae, half-seraphim like herself, who was well over half a century old but would never confirm her age. She was also positively senile.

“Astrid, you couldn’t have deigned to wear a dress today!” The old female exclaimed as she set down a tray of pastries. Most would take Dalia’s tone toward Astrid as rude. But the seraphim knew how the old hag felt about her. Astrid loved her; she was like an overbearing grandmother, with her braided grey hair and small, frail body. 

“You know I just like being prepared for anything,” Astrid winked at her as she continued, “I’m guessing the bat is about to land on our shores.” 

Dalia rolled her eyes and sighed exasperatedly, “You should mind your tongue. He should be arriving soon, and I pray to the mother that you don’t converse this way with the High Lord.” 

 Astrid smiled at the old female, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Oh, Dalia, I only reserve this way of conversation with you.” 

“You are going to send me to an early grave,” Dalia quipped as she sat before the fireplace.

“I keep you young, old hag.” Another knock sounded on her door. The smell of sea and hydrangea wafted in Astrid’s nose, “Come in, Miryam.” 

The dark-haired lady slipped through the door, her sage green eyes immediately falling on Astrid.

“I’ll have to tell Drakon he owes me thirty gold marks. I knew you would wear your leathers today.” She smirked as she crossed the room to sit across from Dalia, picking up a pastry as she sat. 

“I told her she should have worn a dress today,” replied the ancient female as she stood. “Now, I will see you later, and please remember to watch your tongue around the High Lord." With that, Dalia slipped from the room. Astrid could feel Miryam's emotions shift from ease to concern. With a small sigh, she sat beside the princess, her palms sweating. 

“I brought you something,” Miryam said as she pulled a rectangular jewelry box from behind her back. Astrid took it from her before resting it on her lap. The red velvet was smooth beneath her fingertips. Lifting the lid, a lump formed in her throat. In the box was a silver warrior’s diadem; it had carvings of feathers and wings sprouted near where it would meet her ears and a large sapphire shaped like a teardrop in the middle. The lump seemed to grow in her throat, an ache beginning to form in her chest, her eyes burning. 

“This was my mother's,” Astrid croaked. 

“It was always going to go to one of you,” Miryam paused while Astrid tried to shove this feeling of despair down till she couldn’t feel anymore. This diadem was going to go to one of her sisters, not her, if they hadn’t been murdered. If she hadn’t- “your mother would want you to have it.” Miryam finished as she delicately picked up the finery and placed it on Astrid’s head. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror; the circlet was the most ornate thing she had ever worn. 

“You look so much like her,” Miryam smiled at her. “She and your father would be proud to see that on you.” She supposed they would. The circlet had been her mother's, but instead of a stone of sapphire, her mother's was emerald green. Her mother was a high fae from the Winter Court before the war, where she met her father. After coming to Cretea, her mother was Miryam's hand, which meant she was officially part of the royal court. Her parents would be proud if they were still alive. The burning in her chest only seemed to grow at the idea. She shouldn’t be the one wearing it; her parents should still be here, and her sisters should be too, and it was her fault they weren’t. Her skin began to tingle, her throat dry and hot. Astrid quickly took the circlet off her head, its weight feeling too much. 

“Astrid?” She looked at the princess. Miryam’s eyes were wide, and her feeling of worry was closing in on her. “We might not be blood, but you are part of this family. Whatever is going on in that mind of yours…let me help.” Her voice was soft and empathetic as if she were speaking to a skittish deer.

Astrid gulped. The knot in her throat slid down to her stomach, heavily nestling itself there. “I’ve been…struggling.” She couldn’t meet Miryam's eyes as she said it, the dread of admitting she didn’t have a handle on her power. She didn’t know how the princess would even be able to help, but she continued, “I can handle getting into other's minds and shutting them out, most of the time, but” she paused, trying to find the words, “I can feel everyone's emotions all the time, I can’t escape them. No matter how hard I try, I can’t shut them out. It’s honestly…suffocating. And it sometimes just becomes too much to control at once.” 

Miryam didn’t say anything at first, just grabbing the circlet from Astrid's hands and placing it back on her head. Light green eyes stared at her as a wave of reassurance and determination washed over her. 

“The High Lord, Rhysand, you know he is a close friend. One of the few who knew this island existed before Hybern. He’s a very powerful daemati, and so is his mate. If you're comfortable, we can ask him for some assistance during dinner.” 

Astrid sucked in a deep breath. It would be embarrassing to admit to a High Lord that she couldn’t master this dumb power, and not many were privy to the knowledge of Astrid’s powers. It was unusual for fae to gain new powers as they aged. The seraphim was young in fae terms, only seventy-six, but her power was growing and expanding to levels even the oldest fae on Cretea weren’t familiar with. She had spent hours in Cretea’s library with their oldest scholars, trying to find answers. Still, because her people found refuge here, their libraries were considerably less dense than those in Prythian. Since the war, her daemati abilities have grown to feel others' emotions. And after the war, none of the feelings were good. These past months, she had found herself drowning in it, the sorrows of those around her suffocating her. After a while, she stayed in her townhouse, never leaving unless going to the palace. She knew she couldn’t live like this forever; Astrid only nodded in response before she felt a slight panic snake around her chest, a foreign feeling, not her own or Miryam’s. 

           “I believe the High Lord is here,” Astrid replied, knowing the time for this conversation was over. Miryam only gave her a soft smile of reassurance before taking hold of her hand. Together, they walked down Brightwater Palace halls, the seafoam-marbled floors and tall white pillars surrounding them. Standing at the home entrance was one of the most handsome man Astrid had ever seen. 

[jalenay]

Nothing's Wrong with Dale - Publishing Update May 4 2024

So my work work is starting to relax - it'll be 'normal' working hours after May 15, but i'm manifesting some early additional free time (by ignoring some of the things i still have left to do) and i thought i'd give an update on my current NWWD plan to fill you guys in (if anyone wants to know) and to motivate myself to, you know, do it.

let me know what you think and if you have any questions! or if there's anything else you want to know!

So the overall plan is as follows:

First Rough Edit - this is basically just changing the POV from 2nd POV to 3rd POV. This is very tedious and currently what I'm doing right now. I'm also making a list as I go for high level updates/changes i want to make. Just thinking about the story as a whole and what tweaks i want to make now that the whole thing is finally done (primarily moving exposition around, if there's anything extra i can remove, timing of when certain things are discussed, and so on).

My Main Edit - this will be more time consuming but probably more fun as i do my main revise and edit of the story as a whole. i'll likely print the entire story out, make edits on hard copy, and then type up all the edits. I will also probably be sending the updated chapters to my main beta, for her opinion. (this would be the person i first texted about Dale in Dec 2021, she deserves first look lol)

Editor - After I'm happy with what I've done, i'll send the entire thing over to my editors, the main ones who worked on DSM. This will likely take a good amount of time (DSM took one month) but in many ways involves less effort from me lol. Just nerves.

Cover, Self-publishing Details - while my editors have the manuscript, I'll be narrowing down what I want the cover to look like and hiring a cover artist. (i've got a short list of artists right now, but i'll probably continue to refine that). I'm bad a visualizing covers and so this will be hard for me, although i have some basic ideas. i'll need to gather reference photos too and then work with the artist. I also want to publish more widely than just Amazon and will hopefully get DSM out to other places as well as a test run before NWWD. Look into more marketing? This is the most miscellaneous of the steps.

Process Edits - actually go through all the edits and notes given to me by my editor. This takes a lot of time (and is mentally taxing - no one likes to read pages of people telling you what you need to fix about what you wrote even if its overall extremely helpful and necessary)

Finalizing - I'll send the edited version to my first beta and another ARC reader/friend. I'll work on the formatting for the book. Coordinating where it will be published and when.

Publishing!

This is a loose list of steps that I mostly defined right now, but are similar to what i did with DSM. As i said, I'm in step one, currently just finished Chapter 25 of 36 of that rough edit.

I'll try to provide some updates on the process at it moves along, if people are interested in hearing about that. I'll most likely keep those updates on this blog, along with any other publishing specific commentary. if any one has any questions or thoughts on the whole thing, please feel free to send them to this blog or comment on this post.

I'm very excited to really dig into publishing NWWD and looking forward to sharing it with you!

Thanks to everyone for all their support - I wouldn't even be considering this (i probably wouldn't have even had a finished draft) with you!

[yall-batman-fanfic]

Fear Toxin: The Memories that Haunts Us | Batman/Bruce Wayne x Magician!Reader

Synopsis: Wanting to test his new fear toxin, Scarecrow installed it in an event that had all of Gotham’s elite and powerful. As one of the guest speakers for her new book about the history of the Wayne family, Vivian Pryor was too late to realize what was already happening and inhaled the gas, subjecting her to a spiral that brought her back to her most horrific memories in her past and wakes a dormant power that rings beyond the waking world

Vivian looked at herself in the mirror and tried to calm down by fixing whatever she could on her dress. It was a beautiful dress, one that Bruce offered she wore for the launch of her newest book that told the story of the Wayne family – their history, bloodline, and how they influenced Gotham. It was one of his mother’s dresses, a beautiful classic design in the shade of blue and black lace patterns on top, which complimented her auburn hair. It had a square cut neckline that connected to her lace sleeves. 

When he offered her the dress, Vivian felt so honored and overwhelmed but Bruce reassured her that it was alright, in fact it was perfect since she will be presenting the book about his family history.

The book took her almost four years to write, and she made sure to not be biased by having her former mentor be her editor. The man was the best person to question her work about certain topics, and he advised her to write the book away from Wayne Manor and away from her boyfriend, Bruce Wayne, to keep everything factual and neutral.

It took a lot of edits, a lot of drafts, but after four years, she finally finished her thesis, presented it to the board, and was going to publish a new book yet again. This time, unlike her first book launch, the guest list quadrupled with almost all of Gotham’s elite and powerful were present, along with the media, and experts in her field, and, of course, her colleagues from Gotham University.

And, unlike the last, it had more press. More people are writing about the event, about her, about her relationship with Bruce Wayne, and about how she took advantage of her relationship for a new book. She’s seen the articles posted online and on the tabloids when her publishing team started marketing the book. It nearly broke her as she started questioning her own work, but Alfred was there to bring some sense into her, and Dick was always there to cheer her up by doing some absurd thing to the press by raising the middle finger at them.

And Bruce.

Bruce would always remind her that it was all just media, that once the book is on the shelves people will see that she did work without bias, that their relationship wasn’t transactional but two people who found comfort with each other. Who found happiness and love. 

It didn’t help when paparazzi would follow her around or block her from getting to her car, but Bruce would always be there whenever she needed her, shielding her from them. He had a talent for that. 

The knock on the door didn’t pull Vivian from her anxious thoughts, but the feeling of his lips on her neck did. Vivian only realized that Bruce was there when she felt his warm enveloping her, and then saw his reflection. She let out a sigh as he continued to kiss her at that spot he knew made feel jelly.

“Don’t even think about leaving a mark there,” she warned him.

“I can’t help it,” Bruce teased.

“I mean it. I don’t need another headline about me being your whore so I’d write only good things about the Waynes.”

Bruce stopped with his kisses and then looked at her through the mirror. “Who wrote it?”

“Bruce…”

“Viv. Tell me.”

“You don’t need to do anything. Please, It’s just something I saw. See? Forgetting about it now.”

“That doesn’t look like a face that’s forgetting about it.” Bruce sat on the desk and brought her close to him. “Who did it, Viv?”

“What, you’re gonna go all dark knight on him just for me?” She gasped teasingly, making him roll his eyes.”I’m touched, I didn’t know I meant so much to you.”

“You do. Very much, in fact,” Bruce pulled her in for a kiss. “What can I do to make you relax?” He asked suggestively.

She saw right through it though and said, “Scotch. Double. Neat.”

“That won’t get you drunk in the middle of the event.”

“Please, a double won’t even ease the nerves,” she let out a sigh. “Where’s Dick, he can calm me down.”

“What is that that Dick can do that I can’t?”

“Be adorable,” she walked to the door and looked around for the boy. She found the teenager hitting on a girl, who happens to be one of her students and was older than him. “Dick, she has a boyfriend and you’re too young for her. Get over here!”

“Vivian!” Dick blushed in embarrassment. He apologized to the girl and went to the room where Vivian has been pacing around and closed the door before saying, “Are you serious right now?”

“I am. Just stay here and help me calm down. Please,” Vivian slumped on the boy’s back. Dick sighed and let her lean on him while he did nothing. It became some sort of his job to calm her down these past few weeks when the Internet started writing about her relationship with Bruce Wayne and not about her book. He would find her in the manor lying on the couch with her laptop in mid-scroll of the article, and to cheer her up, he'd sit on the floor, take her hand and put it on his head. Like how he finds comfort whenever she brushes his hair, she too finds it relaxing.

“Come on, Viv, it’s gonna be alright,” said Dick.

“I’ll go head out and see what else needs to be prepared. Dick, make sure Vivian’s alright before we start. And don’t give her any drinks.”

“But what if she’s thirsty?”

“Then give her water.”

“And if that’s not enough?”

“Coffee. I had someone bring a coffee maker here. That’ll do.”

~*~

One moment Vivian was sitting on the leather sofa with the host of the event, talking about the research she made for the book, and what it felt like digging through the archives of one of the most private families in Gotham, the next she found herself standing in the middle of the wet road. Police sirens flashing in the night.

How did she end up…

“Vivian Pryor,” an officer approached her. They didn’t wear the standard police officer uniforms of GCPD, instead they wore light reflector jackets over the white shirt and bulletproof vest, their hats resembled tophats but smaller and round. And this one had a Liverpooldian accent. “Better come with us.”

She followed them, not sure why but she did and –

They were in a morgue? 

How did they…

“Can you help us identify this woman, Ma'am?” The police officer pointed to the body on the table, covered with a white sheet.

“I… why my? Why…” she was confused. How did she even come to this place? Why did they suddenly want her to identify this dead woman? When the officer didn't say and continued to write something on the pad, Vivian walked towards the body and pulled down the –

A gasping scream left her chest and Vivian almost fell to the ground as she saw the face of the eyeless woman. “No, no, no…” Vivian sobbed as she identified her so easily. The woman's red hair, her high cheekbones, her once tan skin now pale and lifeless. “Mom? Mommy, no! Please, no!” Vivian cried as she held her mother's arm and sunk down on the ground. “WHAT IS THIS?!” Vivian cried out.

“Vee,” a voice spoke. A cold hand came to her arm.

Slowly looking up, the scream got stuck in her throat as she came face to face with her mother's dead and eyeless face looking down at her, sitting up and holding her arm with her nails digging in. “He's coming. He's coming. He's coming.” Madeline's corpse repeated over and over and her nails buried on Vivian's forearm. 

He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. 

“Let go of me!”

He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. 

“Mommy, please! Let go! AH!” She shrieked in pain as her mother's nails started carving to her flesh, following the pattern of the seal that bound the majority of her magic.

“Mommy, please! Please!” Vivian cried –

Madeline's hand grabbed her face and brought her close –

“WHY DID YOU BURY ME ALIVE, VIVIAN?!” 

“NO, I DIDN'T ! I DIDN'T!”

“WHY?!”

“NO!”

“WHY?!”

“LET ME GO!” Vivian cast the spell, freeing her from Madeline's hold –

“VEE! VEE! VIVIAN!” It was a different voice this time. “Damn it, Vee!” The man grabbed her by her shoulders and made her open her eyes. “Love, we need to do this now!”

“John?” She said in a whisper as she saw the man she swore to never see again. He looked exactly as the day she left him. Young, blonde, with an arrogant face, he wore that ridiculous black shirt with the ripped sleeves and the pentagram in the middle. Who was she kidding, it was rock and roll then, and John Constantine was the literal personal of it. He still smelled like cigarettes but there was sulfur in the air too.

“Love, come on, we need you,” said John. “Angela, needs you! Richie is down. Isabel is gone! You are our only hope now!” John said. “Use it!”

No…

“You know what will happen if I –”

“LOOK AT HER!” John pointed. 

On the ground, Chas Kramer, held down a woman thrashing around while one of their friends, Gary Lester was holding her head while performing the exorcism ritual.

She can't be here…

This is impossible.

But she was, and she could see the demon trying to claw its way out of Angela's body, literally, as the woman tried so hard to keep it down with Chas and Gary's help.

“If you don't do this, Love, the bastard will come out!” John told her.

“John, I don't have my powers – I don't have them – I – I'm sorry –” Vivian sobbed. “This isn't real. This can't be real.” Vivian closed her eyes. “Wake up! I need to wake up!”

Silence came to the room. She knew that silence. It's what set them all off. It's what brought her to near insanity as it killed them for only a moment and she saw the other side. 

A breath blew in her ear and a whisper said, “Open your eyes, Vivian.”

She did –

The distorted face of Angela was before her. The demon has possessed her fully and –

“Mommy,” Angela spoke laced with the demon's voice. “Why did you bury me alive?”

“Please, don't,” Vivian begged.

Angela’s face contorted to a sinister grin. 

Over Angela’s shoulder, Vivian could see John’s hand holding out to her their direction, the pentagram marked on his hand, and was starting the incarnation. The binding spell of a demon. 

“John, don’t… please, don’t,” Vivian begged.

Angela’s grin grew. The demon was killing her body, causing the massive deterioration that blood flowed out of her mouth like waterfalls. “Oops, looks like the baby's coming.”

Vivian was pushed back down, to a slab where her hands were tied down. The morgue, she was in the morgue again –

“AAAAAH!” Vivian screamed in pain as something inside her was clawing its way out. Looking down at her body, she saw her belly round with the demon's claws trying to break free from her womb. “STOP IT! GET OUT OF ME! GET OUT OF ME!” Vivian cried out. “GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT! NO, PLEASE, JOHN! PLEASE! PLEASE, DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE! JOHN, GET IT OUT OF ME! PLEASE! I DON'T WANT THIS! PLEASE! AAAAAAHHHHHH!”

She felt the creature coming out of the womb, crawling like a monster reaching for freedom. Breaking every bone there was to break. Then she saw it's arm raising from between her legs and slowly, subjecting her to agonizing pain, pulled its body out, all boney and flesh, with horns and claws. Vivian screamed in pain, she tried everything to stop it but the demon tore its way out of her flesh and was now standing before her, covered in the soot and sulfurs of hell, mixed with her own blood. 

Trembling, Vivian watched as the demon climbed the table, hovering over her and loomed its horrific face over hers and said, “You've dug yourself into your grave, Vivian Pryor. No dream can save you from me now. I will come and I will take this body, and you will birth the soldiers of hell for our wars,” the demon grinned sadistically as it saw the look of pain and realization in her face.

A bloodcurdling scream tore from her throat as she felt them, all of them, inside her, trying to claw out of her body.

She can't. She can't let them do this. She'd rather burn than let this happen. She'd rather burn than let them use her body like this. She'd burn, she’d burn all of this.

Release me, Vivian Pryor.

A chain broke deep inside, and Vivian let out a scream as she let the power surge around her, burning the demons and herself –

~*~

“LESLIE, SHE'S GOING INTO SHOCK! HER FEVER IS GOING HIGHER!” Batman said as he held Vivian down on the medical bed in the Batcave. 

He should have known about it. He should have anticipated it but he knew Scarecrow was in Arkham Asylum, he and Robin put him there a week ago, and now the man came during Vivian's launch and tested his new toxin in the venue that had all of Gotham's rich and powerful, and the media. The easy part was apprehending Scarecrow and stopping the release of the gas variation of the Fear Toxin into the vents. The hard part was getting all of the affected to the hospital. The hardest was Vivian Pryor. When the paramedics tried to sedate her, Vivian started to go hysterical, crying about her mother, then it happened. The powerful release of energy that Batman knew all too well.

Vivian's magic pulsed through them like a heatwave, and he knew the hospital can't help her now. After telling Jim Gordon that he'll take Vivian to a more isolated facility, he and Robin drove across Gotham to get back to the cave. At the back, Dick had to restrain Vivian as she kept thrashing around, crying in pain and horror, begging them to stop. 

It will be the source of his nightmares for a while, hearing her cry out: “GET IT OUT OF ME! GET IT OUT! JOHN, GET IT OUT OF ME! IT'S COMING OUT! LET GO OF ME! PLEASE!”

Dick, near to tears, held Vivian tight and said, “Batman, she's burning up!”

Through the chaos, Batman contacted Leslie Thomkins and had her brought to the cave as quickly as possible.

But she wasn't fast enough. They came before Leslie did. Dick and Brue held Vivian down as Alfred strapped her down to the medical bed as she kept thrashing, screaming, and crying.

“GET OUT OF ME! NO, PLEASE! NO, PLEASE!” Vivian cried. “I DON'T WANT THIS! PLEASE! JUST KILL ME NOW! JOHN, KILL ME NOW, PLEASE! PLEASE!”

She kept crying for names that neither of the men in the cave knew: Chas, Richie, Angela, Isabel, Maureen, Gary, and a John, who was the most called name and begged him to kill her.

When Leslie came, she immediately went to work. Taking blood samples to see why the antidote wasn't working.

It was her body. Her temperature was so high the moment they injected the antidote it burns up and never goes into the bloodstream. It was also making the toxin worse.

Then it came. 

The pulse of power that shook the cave and caused a blackout. Resembling a sun’s solar flare.

“ROBIN, CHECK THE GENERATOR, NOW!” Batman ordered.

“On it!” Dick jumped and grappled down to where they kept the generators to bring power back to the cave. He had a feeling this blackout wasn't just at Wayne Manor. That surge of power was too strong to be contained in a certain radius.

“Leslie, please,” Bruce pulled down his cowl and looked at the woman, who has been his surrogate mother since the tragedy at Crime Alley. “What do you need me to do? Wh-What can we do?”

Leslie looked down at Vivian who was clearly no ordinary human after seeing all methods were not working. 

“Leslie, please!” Bruce begged. “Save her. I don't care how, just save her.”

“We need to flush out the toxin from her blood, and the only way to do that is an exchange transfusion,” said Leslie. 

Without hesitation, Bruce turned to Alfred and ordered him to get the equipment they needed, and the blood that they have banked that matches Vivian's. Alfred jumped to action immediately and went to grab the tools before Bruce could even finish. Actually, the moment Leslie said the process, he was already looking for the machine they would need.

Dick restored the power to the cave, and Alfred prepared the machine and the blood bank, Bruce pushed Vivian's bed to the station and held her down for Leslie to start the procedure. 

Her thrashing started to cease but her fever kept going up. It was as if she were giving up. Bruce would have preferred she kept fighting whatever she saw in that hallucination than this. It meant she was giving up. 

For the first time, Dick saw Bruce nearly fall to his knees as he leaned down and pressed his forehead on Vivian's and begged her to stay with him. That this will pass. Telling her that they were doing everything they can to save her, so hold on.

When the process started, Vivian was no longer thrashing around. She fell silent and her cries stopped, but tears still fell. The storm has passed, what awaits now is her recovery. Bruce never left her side since, and was only forced to do so when Dick said that Commissioner Gordon was at the other line, asking about Vivian Pryor.

“I'll keep her company, Bruce,” said Dick. “You need to talk to him.”

Bruce reluctantly left Vivian's side and went to the computer where the call was put on hold. Wearing the cowl, Batman spoke to Jim and answered the man's main concern, what happened to Vivian Pryor. The press were not leaving them alone when they heard Vivian wasn't in the hospital. 

“They're biting our heads off with this. Vivian Pryor's been the center of the media and she can't just disappear, especially with Wayne –”

“Don't worry, Jim. Professor Pryor is with Bruce Wayne at the moment. I contacted him to retrieve her when she was stable. She's with him at Wayne Manor now, being cared for, privately. If you want to see her yourself, you can. I'll inform them about it.”

“I'll contact Wayne myself. Next time, call me and I'll handle the transition,” Jim sighed.

“Of course. Batman, out.”

Ending the call, Batman informed Alfred and Leslie, who were having a visitor, Jim Gordon once Bruce gets the call. Not long after, he did, and after reassuring the Commissioner Vivian was with them, Bruce ended the call and asked for help to transport Vivian to one of the guest rooms where the treatment will continue.

Changing out of his Bat costume, Bruce wore his usual attire and had Dick do the same for the commissioner. They were sitting in the room where Vivian was kept when Jim came in with Harvey Bullock, and Alfred leading them there.

“As you can see, Commissioner Professor Pryor is very much taken care of. Doctor Thompkins, the family doctor, has given her the best care there is to rid of the toxin from her body,” Alfred said.

“Why the transfusion?” Bullock asked. “What about the antidote?”

“The antidote wasn't working with Professor Pryor,” said Leslie. “We were forced to make other measures to remove the toxin from her.” 

“Do you have any more questions, Commissioner?” Bruce asked.

“I just wanted to make sure she was alright, Mr. Wayne. Of all the people there, she looked like she was the most affected one,” Jim’s gaze went to Vivian as the memory of her going hysterical in the room and in the hospital replayed. “It's the ones that always have a smile on their face that have seen darker things. Don't you agree, Wayne?”

Bruce remained silent.

“I know the sound of real terror, and that girl sounded like she just went to hell and back. Take care of her, Wayne. Let's go, Bullock,” Jim said his goodbye and left.

They waited until Alfred returned from escorting the Commissioner and Detective Bullock out of the manor before talking about the matter at hand. Leslie told Bruce that the transfusion will last for two more hours, and after that she'll be in bedrest for a while. 

“Bruce, as your family doctor and, now hers, I need to know what was that?” Leslie asked. “And you know what I mean. That girl's fever should have killed her, she was burning from the inside – Burning, Bruce. And not just because of the fever. It felt like flames were inside her.”

When Bruce remained silent, Alfred spoke, “It is for the best, Master Bruce. So, Doctor Thompkins may know the best course of action the next time such an encounter happens.”

“But it won't happen again,” Bruce said. 

“Bruce,” Leslie began.

“I won't let this happen again.”

“Bruce, if this is some sort of secret, you know that I can keep it.”

Bruce only looked at her, and then gave in. He apologized to Vivian as he told his surrogate mother the secret they have been hiding. “Vivian is a Homo Magi. A Magician. A witch. She stopped practicing her magic a long time ago after an incident. We still don't know what it was but it still frightens her. What happened now is something we have never encountered before.”

“Viv usually just casts spells or something,” Dick spoke. “Nothing too major. A bit of teleportation. Trust me, she never did anything like this.”

“I see. So, not exactly something science can handle,” Leslie sighed. “Talk to her, Bruce. It seems that's the only thing I can,” a sigh. “That's all that I can give to you now. And when she's awake, bring her to the clinic. I can’ get a good blood sample with it burning up and evaporating before we could test it.”

“Thank you, Leslie,” Bruce told her.

Seeing the fear still in his face, Leslie went to Bruce and patted his shoulder. “The storm has passed. She will be alright now. While you wait, rest.” After that, Leslie left and Alfred drove her back to the clinic in Parkway. 

~*~

Bruce was sitting on the leather seat when Vivian woke. He normally succumbs to micro sleep and then be fully energized for the day and night, but this time he was truly knocked out. He hasn’t left Vivian’s side the entire night, leaving Robin to do most of the patrols for the past few days. Ever since Dick turned sixteen, Bruce has been taking trips abroad for Wayne Enterprise or just stay in with Vivian to get a break. 

It was Dick who suggested it to him, wanting to do crime fighting on his own and prove that he could. Bruce was reluctant to agree, though, when Vivian supported Dick’s idea.

A flatline. The sound of the long beep of the heart monitor pulled Bruce from his sleep and jump from his seat, his heart dropping as the worse happened. But Vivian wasn’t there. She wasn’t in bed, and there was a trail of blood from the ripped IV leading to the door. Following the trail, Bruce heard Alfred’s voice calling for Vivian in panic.

“Ms. Vivian!” Alfred called for her. “Please, Ms. Vivian! Calm down!”

“Alfred, I… I need to…” Vivian’s voice was weak and hoarse. “I need to go to the…”

“At least let me bandage your arm, please, Ma’am!” Alfred begged.

Arriving at the entrance hall of Wayne MAnor, Bruce saw Vivian barely holding herself as she leaned on the wall for support. Her pajamas stained with blood from the IV. 

“Alfred, please,” Vivian was trying to catch her breath.

“Ms. Vivian!” Alfred caught her as her knees buckled, but as soon as he did, Vivian tried to push him away and cried in fear, startling Alfred.

“Please, don’t touch me, please!” Vivian backed up against the heavy door, holding herself.

“Ms. Vivian, I…”

“Viv!” Bruce arrived and kept a good distance from her, not too far nor too close to frighten her. “Viv. Viv, please, listen to us. You’re bleeding, we need you to let us fix that before you lose blood. Vivian, please, my love, you just had an exchange transfusion two days ago to get rid of the Fear Toxin in your body. Please, let us help you.”

She looked at him for a moment, fear seen in her eyes, but Bruce could see the conflict inside. To trust him yet she didn’t want to be touched. What did she see while under that toxin? After a while, Vivian finally opens her arms and takes Bruce’s hand, but she flinches upon touch and took a moment before she held tight and lets him come close. 

Bruce cautiously scooped her up from the ground, taking one step at a time that wouldn’t frighten her. They brought her to the living room where Alfred came with a first aid kit. He expertly removed the remaining wire of the IV, and placed a bandage on the puncture. Once done, he excused himself to get Vivian new clothes to change out of the bloody ones she wore and the entire time, Bruce sat beside her. Holding her.

When Alfred came back, Bruce asked Alfred to see to Dick, who has been asking a million questions in his comms. He must have been notified of the flatline and was panicking. Bruce helped her change her clothes, and noticed how Vivian looked at her reflection on the window glass, pressing on her belly and then lower as if to check an injury before taking the jumper and sweatpants. 

“Leslie said you need bedrest,” said Bruce.

Vivian shook her head. “Take me to the chapel.”

“What?”

“I need to go to the chapel, in the estate.”

“Viv, you need rest. And it’s pouring out.”

“Please!” Vivian hugged herself again, just as she would do whenever she felt overwhelmed and could feel all that he couldn’t see. “Please, please, I just need to go there.”

“Alright,” Bruce gave in and asked her to sit for a while as he went to get the keys for the car and a raincoat.

The drive to the chapel only took a couple of minutes. As soon as he stopped the car, Vivian got out, not bothering too wait for him or the umbrella he prepared. “Vivian!” He called out, running after her, as she entered the rundown chapel. He expected the inside to be dark, yet as soon as Vivian stepped in the candles and the torches lit up. Each step she made, the candles would light up until she sat down and the the candles on the altar now had flames to show the cross on the wall and the bible that has been eaten by moths and other insects that’s been living in there.

Bruce sat beside her, both of them wet from the rain, and asked, “what are we doing here, Vivian?” 

Silence.

“Vivian, please,” Bruce knelt before her, holding her hands. “I want to help you, but I don’t know how. Viv, my love, please, tell me… I almost lost you – you were burning up, the antidote won’t work because whenever Leslie would inject it, it would just evaporate or be burned up before it would go into the bloodstream. We had to result to an exchange transfusion just to get the toxin out of you. And during that time this power came from you and it…

“Vivian, please, tell me. I don’t know what to do, and I can’t stand seeing you like this. So afraid. I promise you, we got Scarecrow, he’s in Arkham now… and he won’t hurt you anymore.”

“It’s not Scarecrow I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “It’s what I saw and what’s coming. There’s a reason why I asked to be brought here because I don’t feel safe right now.”

Vivian wasn’t a practicing Catholic. She can’t claim she was an atheist since her magic showed her all that was in the other world. She believes in the hierarchy of things, especially in the mystic arts, but she doesn’t exactly follow them. She once told Bruce that “all gods are the same, all have rules, and all have the idea of good and bad, right and wrong, and the ego of a narcissistic asshole.”

Swallowing his pride and facing his fears, Bruce asked, “Vivian, whose John?”

The mention of the name made her flinch. Bruce wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but if made him scared. Of what, he wasn’t sure.

“Catholic religion was once an art or practice of magic that became a religion. And it’s one of the oldest magic there is and to practice it means risking the line of crossing to dark magic,” Vivian began. “When my mother died, I practiced dark magic so I could bring her back again, but that’s not how the world works. I can’t bring back the dead nor I just bring them from whatever plain they’re in just to talk to them. So, I went to where there myself. I didn’t do it alone though. No matter what I tried, I can’t kill myself.” 

She saw the shock in Bruce’s eyes. But she continued. “That’s where John comes in. I met him in one of Papa Midnight’s clubs, drinking and smoking thirty-cigarettes a day. He’s an occultist, dabbles in the dark arts. John fucking Constantine. I should have listened to the first person who told me to stay away from him, but I didn’t. I told him what I wanted to do, he told me to fuck off, until I showed him a wad of cash. Stolen from an ATM. 

“Then fuck it. He brought me to his place where he brought me to the place where all souls nowadays goes. He drowned me in his tub. I was dead for thirty seconds, and when I woke up, I saw him blasted off to the wall and the tub broken. Thirty seconds, I was gone. But it felt like an eternity in that goddamn place.”

“Where did you go, Viv?” Bruce asked.

“Where all souls go nowadays. Hell.”

Bruce got up and brought her to an embrace, he couldn’t imagine what she must have felt then. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, going through Hell. Literally.

“After that, John told me what happened outside. He said that I had some kind of power he’s never seen before and he gave me his card. Back then it was just a scribbled piece of paper for his cigarettes. But I didn’t go home that night, how can I? I just saw hell. I needed a drink, and I needed something to make me forget.” She laughed cynically at the memory. “Or maybe he just thought it’d be an easy way to get laid that night. I don’t care, but it helped.”

She felt Bruce’s hold on her tightened, and she squeezed his arm to reassure him that she was alright. Or to reassure him that it was all in the past now.

“You can say we dated, but it wasn’t exactly exclusive. He’d fuck around with someone, I’d do the same. Practicing the dark arts was taxing, and alcohol and fucking were the only things we knew how to get a piece of sanity from seeing all of those things and feeling all of those horrifying experiences. Alcohol numbs us, sex makes us feel good. But only for a while. Once that’s gone, it’s back in the rut.

“We’d take on jobs, get called on for jobs by mortals and immortals and divine alike. We even got a little group… and then it happened. There was a case of a woman jumping off a building. Police said it was suicide, but the sister didn’t believe it was. She said that there was something demonic that made her sister jump. John and our little group investigated in it. All young and idiotic. All foolish to think we’re fucking gods ourselves. Until we saw it.

“The demon was one of the princes of Hell. And He wanted to get through to the mortal world and ravage on the lands. To do that he took the body of Isabel but she killed herself before he could take her. So, he went for the twin. Angela. The exorcism was a mess. A lot of us got hurt. Some died. It was the first time I saw real horror, Bruce. The first time I experienced fear, and I just stood there as they try to save Angela from being ripped to pieces. She was dying and the demon was about to get out… until.”

Memories flashed before her eyes as she remembered John holding her down with his magic and then starting the incantation. His last words to her that night were: “Sorry, love. But it’s the only way.” 

“John fucking Constantine, knew the demon needed a powerful witch. So, he presented me like a fucking prize and was about to bound us together so he could kill both the host and the demon. But I didn’t let him. I burned it. The demon, putting it back into hell but I knew it’d be back for me. Angela died that day. Richie got this demon-inflicted cancer. And the rest just went our separate ways.

“After that, I left John and I went back home and tried to forget. For nights I’d dream about that horrible experience, and I could feel it pinning me down and trying to get to me. So, I did the only thing I could think of to stop him. I sealed my powers away, which also seals the fucker in hell.”

“You gave up your magic – your real power so you can seal the demon in hell?” Bruce asked.

“A good trade for a good night’s sleep and a new life,” Vivian shrugged. “What I saw while I was infected with the Fear Toxin was a mix of all that – my Mom’s death, that night, but this time. The demon got me and it crawled its way out of my body and –” The memory of the dream came back as flashes that had Vivian running to vomit at the corner. Bruce approached her and rubbed her back and held her hair. “I can still feel them crawling out of my body. Using me like some gateway.”

Which was why she didn’t want them touching her earlier, Bruce concluded.

“Is there anything I can do to help you, Vivian?”

She let out a cynical laugh, “I don’t think Batman can battle a demon. Let alone a Prince of Hell.”

Bruce chuckled. “You’d be surprised. For you, I’d battle monsters, aliens, and demons just to keep you safe.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of…” Vivian whispered.

~*~

Upon returning to the Manor, Vivian was tackled to an embrace by Dick, despite Alfred telling him about not startling her with such attacks. But this time, Vivian didn’t flinch, she welcomed Dick’s embrace and brushed his hair. It always did calm her.

“I’m gonna make Scarecrow pay,” Dick said.

“Dick, I’m fine,” Vivian told him.

“You’re not! I-I thought — I thought we lost you. We couldn’t get the fever down until Doctor Leslie did the transfusion – He crossed a line this time!”

“I know, kiddo,” Vivian hugged him again. “But please. Scarecrow is in Arkham, he can’t touch us again.”

“If I see him out here again, I’ll fucking –”

“Master Dick!” Alfred chastised him.

“Sorry, Alfred…”

Releasing him from the hug, Vivian told him to get changed. Clean up and head to bed as tomorrow it was a school day and he only had a few hours left before he goes to school. Dick was about to argue but one look from Alfred and Bruce, he was marching up to his room.

~*~

Cleaned and changed from their muddy clothes, Vivian entered their bedroom and saw Bruce sitting in his spot on their bed, looking through one of her books. Specifically the one of demonology. She took the book from his hand and tossed it to the floor.

“Not tonight,” she told him. “Don’t be Batman tonight.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Really?”

“With you, Vivian, I’m your partner first before I am Batman.”

She smiled and leaned down to kiss him. 

“I got you scotch. Double,” he handed her the glass. “To numb the pain… but just for tonight.”

Vivian nodded and took a shot and let the alcohol do its work. “And to forget?”

Bruce led her to the bed and kissed her slowly, but just as he was going to lay her down, Vivian pushed him back and climbed on top of him. Not tonight. Not after that dream. Tonight, she’ll lead. She’ll have control. 

They made slow and passionate love as Vivian rode him. Both focusing on the now, the pleasure sex brought them, and how they used it to show their love. When she came, Bruce followed and with a loud grunt, and spasms of his cum filled her that it leaked out. They rarely did it unprotected, despite Vivian taking contraceptive pills, but tonight they just wanted to feel each other. Vivian wanted to feel him.

~*~

A week later Vivian returned to the campus. Bruce insisted on driving her to and from work, wanting to make sure she was safe. Upon stepping in, she was greeted with concerned colleagues and students who learned of the bad effects of the toxin which resulted in her body going into shock and requiring a blood transfusion. She reassured them she was alright and insisted she just wanted to work.

Her mentor chastised her about drowning herself in work just to bury what she experienced, but she told him that she’s rested long enough and processed long enough and just wanted to work.

The hovering didn’t stop there though, Kirk thought it was a good idea to be a hovering mother by telling her over and over that she should take a break.

“Vivian, Professor Strauss is right, you need to rest,” said Kirk.

“I have rested long enough.”

“Or talk to someone. What you saw that day – others haven’t recovered and are still in the hospital. They said you were in that thing for much longer than they have – the university is more than willing to let you rest. If they don’t I can talk to them –”

“Kirk, please,” she raised a hand to push him away gently. “Thank you for the concern but I am fine. I’ve been talking about this with my therapist –” lies, she couldn’t do it or else she’d be thrown in Arkham as clinically insane “-- and Bruce has been helping me through it.”

Kirk scoffed. “Yeah? If he’s so rich and powerful, he would have had the board given you more days off – I heard he’s chummy with them –”

“First of all, back off, alright?” Vivian snapped. “That is none of your concern. He told me to rest for another week but I wanted to come back and work. I didn’t want to stay at home and do nothing. And for your information, Bruce is doing a good job in making me forget.” Kirk could read through the lines clearly and glared at her. Good, she wanted him to get the message. “And he’s very good at helping me process all of this. So, thanks for the unsolicited advice, but I’m more than fine. And speaking of,” Vivian picked up her phone which rang. “Bruce, hey. No, not busy, just finished with my last class before lunch. I was wondering if you’d like to meet up at our usual place,” she turned away from Kirk and walked to the front of the campus.

Vivian wasn’t the only one who's been busy too.

At night, after getting her to sleep, Bruce would kiss her lovingly before getting to the Batcave and prepare for work. He and Dick have been hunting down the remaining men of Scarecrow who were behind the attack during Vivian��s book launch. It took them a while but they got all of them, and tied them up for GCPD to collect. 

When he got back to her, he wrapped her in an embrace to let her know that nothing would get to her as long as he was there to protect her.

~ Epilogue ~

Beyond the Waking World, the pulse traveled across the multiple realms that build the cosmos. Rattling those that reside in the shadows and in between the world of mortals, gods, and Endless. 

"My Lord," Lucien came to the throne room where Dream stood, looking around his palace, looking perplexed. No, that wasn’t the right word for it. Since the return of the Lord of Dreams, Lucien has seen the Endless show more emotion aside from his usual stoic nature. Was it a concern that appeared on Lucien’s master’s face?  "You felt it as well..."

"Yes, I did,” said Dream. “Matthew, see The Dreaming, and report to me at once for any cracks in its foundation or any sort of anomalies.”

“Yes, Sir!” Matthew flew away, exiting through the window.

“Cracks, my Lord?” Lucien asked.

“Yes.”

"Dream," Dream heard the voice of one of his siblings speaking to him through his sigil that they hold. “We’re coming through." It was Death, her usual face that wore a smile was too now filled with concern. With her was Desire. To have his younger sibling there meant this also disturbed them. "We sensed it."

"It seems it is awake," Dream said.

"This early? Now?" Desire questioned. “How are you so sure?” It was the first time Dream heard his sibling speak without certainty, without their voice that charms mortals and immortals.

"Yes,” said Dream.

"Then we must find it."

Death met Dream’s eyes and then called for this sibling to stop them from leaving The Dreaming. “Desire. It cannot be done.”

"If it is fate, then we have no right to meddle," said Dream. “It is in the laws to not intervene with the works of our siblings,” Dream reminded them. “Don’t

"Have you forgotten, brother? This being can destroy the cosmos, which includes us. Which includes Father Time and Mother Night!"

“And from that destruction shall the Phoenix birth new life. A new world. A new universe. A new order.”

“And if we cease to exist in that?” Desire questioned him.

“That is for the Phoenix to decide – and where do you think you’re going, sibling?” Dream appeared before Desire, stopping them from leaving his realm. “Do not try what you have done with me, dear sibling of mine. Your tricks might have worked on me – trapping me for nearly a century, and tricking me to kill my family by fathering the Vortex with Unity Kincaid while she was in The Dreaming. 

“But not this time. Because this is beyond us and beyond our realm. Beyond Father Time and Mother Night. This is Creation itself.”

“Watch me,” Desire smirked and was to leave but Dream grabbed them by their neck to keep them from slipping away.

“Do not test me, dear sibling,” Dream sneered.

“Dream,” Death warned him.

Glancing at Death and then to Desire, Dream released them and let his young sibling leave The Dreaming. Alone with only Lucien to hear, Death spoke to her younger brother: “You know who it is, don’t you?”

“I do,” said Dream. “For a while now, I have known. And Desire cannot and must not move against them. Or else they will be killing family.”

[trillscienceofficer]

I think it's actually quite interesting to see “Someone To Watch Over Me” still considered among the Voyager best (needless to say, I disagree!) Here are two perspectives, one ‘unofficial’ from shortly after the episode aired, and another more official for the show's 25th anniversary, which just ends up borrowing from the former, by then already 20-ish years old, source!

from Cinefantastique Vol 31 #11, April 2000

from Star Trek: Voyager - A Celebration (2020)

Transcription under the cut:

From Cinefantastique:

MY FAIR BORG Behind-the-scenes of fifth season's “Someone To Watch Over Me.”

By Anna Kaplan

When thinking back on VOYAGER’S fifth season, executive producer Brannon Braga enthused, “One of my favorites of the year is ‘Someone to Witch Over Me’, the Doctor-Seven show. It’s very, very charming, and heartbreaking." In the episode, Seven finally decides to go on a date, and the Doctor coaches her on proper etiquette. Along the way, the Doctor realizes he is falling in love with Seven.

Noted scripter Michael Taylor, who worked from a story by Braga, “When an action show finds that it can do a comedy, it’s gained a certain level of confidence in its actors, in its writing staff, just in a general sense of what the show is about, that it can loosen up a bit." Enthused Jeri Ryan, “Even the editors were coming up to me on the set and saying, ‘This never happens, but everyone was coming in out of the other editing room, and stopping what they were doing and watching this show while we were cutting it together.’ They said it was just so charming that everybody loved it.”

Robert Duncan McNeill, who plays Tom Paris, directed the show. “It was a very unusual episode for STAR TREK, because it’s a very traditional romantic comedy,” he said. “I have to admit, when I first read it I was a little nervous. I thought, this is not what someone would expect from a STAR TREK show. But the response has just been incredible. A lot of people are saying it’s going to be one of our best episodes. It’s got the Doctor and Seven of Nine in a kind of MY FAIR LADY situation, with the Doctor trying to teach Seven about love, and improve her social skills, and in the process finds himself having feelings for her.”

In a subplot Ethan Phillips as Neelix gives a tour of the ship to a repressed alien monk, played by Scott Thompson of KIDS IN THE HALL. “We want to get something from his race,” said Phillips. “They arc a highly moral race, and before they can give it, we have to make sure that they sec us as an equally moral race. I am entrusted to show him our ship and all our functions, so that he can assess our righteousness. The guy turns out to be a lush, and a complete drunk. It’s kind of like that movie with Peter O’Toole, MY FAVORITE YEAR; the guy is entrusted with keeping him sober. It's a funny part and a really neat role.”

McNeill continued, “I really enjoyed working with Bob. He never gets tired of figuring out new ideas, and funny moments, and quirky things to do. Jeri found, I think, a different kind of humanity in Seven of Nine than we have seen before, a real kind of child-like sense of humor in her character. Seven and Bob sing together in a real nice, little moment."

McNeill added, “The ending wasn’t written when we shot the whole episode. When the whole script wasn’t written, we were just sort of making it up, shooting it as it was being written. It’s very hard to plan ahead and say, ‘You don’t want to give away too much in this moment. You want to save it for the end when you realize your feelings.’ It definitely kept us on our toes, kept us aware of how much we were telling, in what order we were telling the story, and not to have the Doctor fall in love with Seven in Act One, to really find the whole journey, and fill it out fully. It’s a real actors' show, so I felt particularly excited, being an actor, to work on a show that really depended on the performances and the subtleties that the actors could bring to it.”

What about the end? Said McNeill, “Because it’s two series regulars that are playing around with love, that’s always a very dangerous subject. If you go too far with it, you’ve got to live with the consequences. If you are not ready to deal with it on an ongoing basis on the series, then you have to be really careful with how far you go.”

The ending was filmed some time after primary shooting finished. Laughed Robert Picardo, “This episode is like the movie CASABLANCA, because we shot it without knowing what the end will be. It’s like shooting a romantic story, without knowing the payoff. But CASABLANCA turned out pretty well. I’m hoping that we will be equally fortunate.” The writers chose not to reveal the Doctor’s feelings to Seven. At the end, the Doctor is alone at Sandrine's, playing the Gershwin tune “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

****

from Star Trek: Voyager - A Celebration:

SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

SEASON 5 EPISODE 22

AIR DATE: APRIL 28, 1999

Teleplay by Michael Taylor

Story by Brannon Braga

Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill

Synopsis The Doctor teaches Seven about dating, then realizes he may have feelings for her himself.

One of the most popular episodes of VOYAGER is a bottle show, with the captain barely seen and no serious peril, unless failed diplomacy and a broken holographic heart count.

That Robert Picardo's EMH was going to be standout character was obvious from his first scene in VOYAGER's pilot episode. Three seasons later Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine revitalized the show with her debut. Pairing them proved to be a magic formula.

The Doctor established himself as a mentor for Seven, helping her come to terms with her humanity, a complement to Captain Janeway's maternal approach. The on-screen rapport between the two was self-evident. Ryan agrees: “I loved any of my scenes with Bob Picardo's character the Doctor. I love their dynamic. He's a delightful human being to work with and be around anyway, So that was always fun.”

In season 5's ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’, when Seven reveals a curiosity about human mating behaviour, the Doctor eagerly a lesson plan for her first steps into romantic relationships. His class is initially played for laughs. with the Doctor performing a farcical interpretive dance in front Or the image of an ovum. When Tom Paris adds his own input, he turns the tuition into a wager, which the Doctor happily agrees to. However, when Seven discovers that she is the subject of a bet she is genuinely hurt, leaving the Doctor to realize how insensitive he has been.

If the plot seems familiar, it is. “It's My Fair Lady with Seven,” cowriter Brannon Braga smiles. “‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ is one of my favorites. I thoroughly enjoyed writing that episode." Cowriter Michael Taylor summed up the setup. “Putting those two characters together in that episode, it's not the blind leading the blind, but it's the partially sighted learning from each other and also standing apart from the rest of humanity.”

A key early scene has the Doctor select a tune for Seven to sing. which she does with aplomb. Taylor said, “I remember walking around with all these ideas I had for what the song should be, and Brannon just picked this much simpler song, which was all that was needed to really focus their interaction.” The Doctor and Seven perform a duet of the much-covered 1939 ditty, ‘You Are My Sunshine’ which elicits a look of pride, or first hint of love on the Doctor's face. The story was becoming more than an amusing look at Seven's clumsy dating efforts, though her at dinner with Lieutenant Chapman at Chez Sandrine was a comedy highlight.

This episode marked cast member Robbie McNeill's third stint in the director's chair. “That was one of my favorite episodes to direct,” he says. "It had more comedy than we'd typically have. It had rom-com silliness. reached out to some actors who were very good friends of mine play some of the supporting roles that Seven went on dates with: Brian McNamara (Chapman and David Burke (who played the hologram Steven Price) Was one of my best friends and a wonderful actor."

The parallel story involving Neelix's ordeal with visiting Kadi ambassador was also farcical. "That was the episode where we had the comic actor from The Kids in the Hall [Scott Thompson]." McNeill continues. "He was the alien that came on board. the Drunk Monk We cast an actor who had a lot of comedy chops. It was one of the better light-hearted, but also really meaningful and heartfelt episodes."

The story shows just how versatile VOYAGER could be. It's a romantic comedy involving an artificial intelligence teaching a former Borg drone how to be human. There are no action sequences or alien threats and yet it is one of the series' best stories.

“There is nothing wrong with that episode,” Braga says. He was particularly pleased with one shot. “The Doctor realize he's in love with Seven of Nine and that she isn't in love him, when she's singing. Robbie McNeil does this when shes nice little push in to the Doctor as she's singing ‘You Are My Sunshine”—a great moment. That wasn't planned and you know it kind of ended there for most part, unrequited.”

The ending for the episode was yet to be written when shooting began, leaving the director and crew having to wing it. McNeill remembers, “It definitely kept us on our toes, kept us aware of how much we were telling, in what order we were telling the story, and not to have the Doctor falling love with Seven in Act One, to really find the whole journey. and fill it out fully.”

On the last scene between the Doctor and Seven Jeri Ryan reflects, "I thought that was so lovely and so touching. [The end] just broke my heart.” The conclusion is deliberately subdued as the writers were not planning to develop a romance between the Doctor and Seven of Nine. And so, the Doctor returns to holo program Paris 3 Chez Sandrine for what would be a final visit, to perform the title tune for the episode—‘Won't you tell her please to put on some speed, follow my lead, oh, how I need someone to watch over me.”

[nicosraf]

Sorry if this gets rambly, but I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate and admire you for turning down a traditional publishing offer to continue to write the way you want. There's a certain level of tender rawness in your works that I know would be completely stripped away by a publishing house. From the topics you write about to the way you portray queerness, it would all be soulless and devoid of any beauty if you signed it all away. I don't think I would love your work as much as I do if you didn't self-publish. From the topics you write about to the way you portray queerness, it would all be soulless and devoid of any beauty if you signed it all away. My previous experiences with reading self-published books has always been 50/50, and most of the time, I felt like they would've been better if they were polished and cleaned by a traditional publisher. In reading Angels Before Man, I've come to realize how important it is to read books outside of the "approved publisher" bubble. It feels so liberating to read something so unapologetically queer and dark and emotional. In a world where queer works feel like they're getting more and more santitized for the comfort of cishet corporate overlords, it's comforting to know that we're able to tell our stories on our own terms.

Hello!!! Thank you for saying this. I'm sorry if I also get rambly but I have a lot, a lot, of thoughts on self-publishing and the industry after I've taken some big steps away from it.

I need to make the small correction that I didn't turn down a deal itself. I was in limbo waiting for the deal and had already gotten a rejection or two on ABM getting picked up. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about but I'll try to be clear

The series of events goes: I posted ABM online in November 2022, my agent reached out to me in January, ABM immediately gets sent to a "very interested" publisher in February, then I revised the book before I sent it to other "interested/excited" publishers around March. I lasted until early August, had a meltdown, then begged my agent to tell the publishers to let go of my book so I could work on the sequel.

I'm giving context because "stripped away by a publishing house" really struck a cord with me.

Here's the thing: the publishing industry is in a downward spiral. The author dream is gone. If you sell a book, your advance is more likely to be, say, 50k instead of 100k and that 50k is going to split into 4 payments over 2 years. Publishers don't market books anymore; they just make you open up a TikTok account and tell you to dance. Editors are overworked and picking up books that either are or feel already developmentally edited and (some) are asking for blurbs from big name authors (?!) before they look at your manuscript. They want books they can line edit quickly and send to market — but it's not their fault. HarperCollins editors were on strike for an absurdly long time and have gained... well, basically nothing. Agents and editors are leaving the industry. Publishing houses are "poaching" successful indie books and stroking indie author egos to take half their royalties.

I haven't even gotten to the racism and white liberalism problem. Look at Xiran Jay Zhao having their work being held hostage by their publisher for being anti-genocide. I worry about how queerness is represented in tradbooks but maybe more deeply worry about the race problem. There were calls for diversity 10 years and they've led absolutely nowhere. "Diversity" focused imprints keep getting shut down and leaving their authors in limbo.

But about editing again — so I'm sure you've heard of this book Babel by RF Kuang. It's popular but gets critiqued for hand-holding a white audience too much. Here's the thing though — I made a similar comment to my buddy and he told me whether that's the fault of Kuang or the fault of the editor. And that made me think — how many books are critiqued for what authors may have been forced to do? Yellowface by Kuang, written after Babel, goes into a manuscript getting heavily changed to appeal to white readers. Editors say "But I'm confused" and "But it doesn't make sense to me" because your editor is themselves the inescapable, white audience. And usually the cishet audience too — the straight person sighing that your fags are too problematic in these scary political times.

So why am I saying all this?? Look, I've never thought ABM was perfect. I think it's got some mediocre lines, some things I attempted that I don't think I pulled off. I, also, got into the habit of looking at self-published books (my own included) and thinking, "Oh this needed a professional hand-holding it." Tradpub was exciting to me because I could have someone hold my hand and work on the prose with me. I wanted to make the prose better.

But so I step into tradpub and it all goes wrong. They don't know what to do with me. They suggest a revision to cut it down to a novella. I get angry and then get angrier when I'm treated like I'm being spoiled; it's not about my "vision" here. Imagine if I announced to ABM readers that I cut ABM to 80 pages for a little bit of money?? Others started implying Part 2 basically needed to go; it's too confusing, too fucked up. Part 1 was perfect. Rafael, have u considered it being more of a romantasy? Have you considered a happy ending. Have you considered Michael and Lucifer having romantic virgin sex and have you considered cutting that other part with God entirety. Have you considered whether you're just trying to shock people and maybe you need to calm down

Well, I responded to all this with "What about the readers?? I can't make any big changes. They wouldn't like that." But I saw that they didn't want my readers.

There's a publisher right now who has Angels Before Man by rafael nicolás slapped on their "type of books we want" brochure they sent to (I believe) agents. They never contacted me though. I started to see that maybe no publisher ever wanted ABM. They wanted something like ABM, the idea of ABM and the idea of rafael, the mysterious queer mexican guy. you see, the publishing dream is not dead! you too can be like rafael. you can be a nobody who gets their book picked up by Penguin Random House and Fixed to Be Good and make a hundred thousand dollars and youll get to sit at the cool kids table.

Anyway, I love to read self-published, 0 rating books. They're usually weird, full of typos sometimes, but I never care. I don't read to judge something on a merit of goodness anyway (what does that mean) but just to experience something. I love reading porn, but I'm not usually sexually tantalized but it; I just love how insane it is. And seeing someone put their whole heart in something full of typos and pacing issues and plot holes is a thousand times more fulfilling to me than reading a polished husk of 3-act structure, perfect clean characters, strong prose that was worked on by 19 people and doesn't hold the dreams/desires/flaws of anyone.

I'm really happy to self-publish. I like not having a censor and pouring my heart into something. And work! Hard work is incredibly fulfilling to me; I care more about the work I put into A&M than the product it'll end up being. But I also keep thinking of situations like Babel and I think that if my work sucks, at least it's because of me and my skill, or lack thereof. It gives me a little bit of dignity.

thank you again for the ask. i appreciate it very much.

[everythingblreview]

Regarde moi (Kawase/Tamamori SS) Translation

Hello fellow Kawatama simps. Today I bring you yet another short story translation. In my and editor-san 2′s opinion the most romantic SS of these two so far. This story has a second part, I eventually will end up doing too. Please enjoy~

Regarde moi*

The shadows, spurred on by the setting sun, begin to spread, an orange light emits from the damp gas lamps as they start to burn.

It was a certain day in June. Like last year, this year’s weather conditions were also requesting you to wear a cloak.

I quickly make my way through the city weaving through gaps of people. When I finally arrive at Ikeda mansion, I cautiously stop at the front of the door.

…What should I say before “I’m home”. Tamamori-kun is narrow-minded that’s why, he would never forgive me for arriving home late on such an important day. I probably can’t even enjoy his usual cute-looking angry face to my satisfaction today. That’s how much I messed up. To be honest, it is my fault.

“Kawase-san didn’t do anything wrong…. If you talk with him about the reason, he will surely understand.” The frog, who became emotionally attached to me, consolingly says, while sitting on top of my shoulders out of nowhere. Unfortunately for me, this guy can read my inner feelings, and occasionally would redirect them into Tamamori-kun’s heart. …Is he an illusion? Or a ghost? Anyways, I have no intention explaining the whole situation to this frog.

Without deciding what to tell Tamamori-kun, I open the door. …As I do so, a surprising smell welcomes me. Warmer than any other house, the smell of dinner. A gentle aroma drifts from the kitchen into the living room.

Without being able to turn back, slowly, with soft steps I walk along the corridor.

Then, as I open the living room door, the scene before my eyes astonishes me.

“!” The sofa and the coffee table are put away and instead in their place stands a table as high as my waist. It is never used and is usually sitting in an empty room. The dust was cleanly wiped off and plates are lined up. He was probably cooking until now, the room is still slightly warm.

“…Tamamori-kun, ...” Tamamori-kun, who is most likely responsible for this empty room, is sitting on a chair with his arm crossed. He seems to be mad after all, his back is facing me.

“You’re late!!!”

The volume of his voice is so strong that it could shake the room. “What day is today?!” “Your birthday.” “That’s right. That’s why, isn’t it the most important thing right now?” “…”

“Despite it being my own birthday, I prepared a luxurious feast for this sweetheart here, and you’re so heartless and late, veryyy late. Eh, i-it’s….”

“It’s 10 in the evening.”

“It’s 10 in the evening you asshole!!!”

“…You’re really angry.”

“Angry? This is a misunderstanding. I’m not angry at all!!!” Wanting to be forgiven by him, I sit down in the front chair. Did he eat the last dish earlier? One side of his cheek has a bulge. Then he turns away and swallows his last bite. “I’m sorry Tamamori-kun.” “I told you, I’m not angry!” “But you also won’t look me in the eyes?” “Well, that’s because I’m angry!!!” Now he is contradicting himself.  If I continue to nudge him even further, I will only put fuel into fire. So, I take off my coat and hat for the time being. “Don’t just relax all of a sudden!” “I ran so I’m sweaty.” “Until I say it’s fine, stay as you are! Go on, reflect on your actions!” But still it’s hot, I can’t help myself. Since he doesn’t pay attention to what I just said, he grinds his teeth out of anger and crosses his arms and feet annoyed. “Tamamori-saaan, that’s not really mature. Please listen to what Kawase has to say seriously.” “Are you on Kawase’s side?” “I just don’t want you two to fight! And it’s not Kawase-san’s fault that he’s late.” “…” “He got involved into an incident…” “…Where?” “In Ginza…” “It’s his fault for going to a place like that.” “The shop assistant Kawase-san talked to, suddenly collapsed!” “…” “His face turned blue very fast, and he suddenly started to vomit foam…It was symptoms of poison…” “…”

“It was murder! Kawase-san suspected that it would be bothersome and tried to leave that place! …However he was unlucky and ran into a crime police officer who recognized him, and he forced him to show his detective abilities…” “So who was the culprit!? …No forget it!! …Being late and being late. Even though you said you would come home at 6, it’s your fault for making a stop on the way!” I somehow want to make Tamamori-kun turn his face towards me. But I can’t think of something other than a prank that would make him angry. I created silence unexpectedly by not saying anything.

….Did Tamamori-kun received recipes from the café? The room smells strongly of French dishes. I can’t eat anything made by other people. But it’s a different story with the food he makes. …This is how a dog probably feels after he did something bad and is not being fed anymore.

Even so, I have to show him some honesty. “Hey, Tamamori-kun.” “…” “Hey.” “Shut up.” “Just lend me your left hand only.” “…I-I’ve seen completely through your thinking!” “?” “Last night, you touched my left hand strangely too! There is no mistake, you were measuring something...” He was awake. That’s embarrassing. Then he turns his face to the other side and points his tight gripped hand towards me. “Here! I’m lending it to you. Be grateful.” “…” Even if I touch his hand it doesn’t look like his grip will loosen. Rather than loosen, his arm also shows not even a slight movement, it’s as firm as metal. Well, it’s just right for me if he holds it like this. I put a wristwatch around his arm. “…?” Was he expecting a different kind of sensation? Tamamori-kun looks surprised. …Even if he is mad and troubled, such an honest reaction from him is amusing and makes me almost laugh. However, I’m not allowed to yet, that’s why I keep a serious appearance and look at him.

“Isn’t this, a watch?” “I bought it in Ginza.” “It’s a terriblyyyyy expensive item!”

Even though I fastened the belt of the wristwatch, Tamamori-kun is trembling, is he not familiar with it? He also completely forgot his anger, and then turns his body towards me.

“H-h-how much…?” “You really have no charm… You don’t have to worry about such things.” “Still….Money is not infinite, you know?” “I don’t buy things without meaning.” “Uh huh…” “Honestly, what did you think I would get you?” “!?” “Something to put on your finger?” “…, what…!?” “You were even the one who suggest to celebrate your birthday. Have you been influenced by western countries lately? “~…” “…Are you unhappy with the watch? I’m worried about that.” “I-I’m happy with it. Of course…” “That’s good then.”

Finally, I can laugh from the heart too. I let a natural sign of relieve and sink into the chair. In a moment, Tamamori-kun takes off the wristwatch. “!?” “I could break it…So I’ll take it off for now…” “It’s expensive enough not to break, sturdy and a first-class item!!” “But you see, it’s a waste on me…” “You really are amazing…I have no bad intentions and you are crushing my feelings with your foot like that...” “It’s better if well-made things like that are cherished… Ah, that’s right! I’ll drive a nail into the wall and hang it up.” “Hold on…”

I forgot that Tamamori-kun is a thickheaded guy. Maybe it would have been easier if I just picked some flowers on the roadside and gifted them to him.

Thanks to the expensive watch, he is walking around the room in high-spirit. It’s almost like he can’t decide a position for the household shrine.

“What should we do Kawase-san…! If this continues, he will hang it on the wall!” “Ah-…. What to do…”

This is rather interesting too. A watch is something you should only gift to important people. This wristwatch matches with the one I’m also wearing on my left arm. It’s ticking at the same time as the one Tamamori-kun has. I wanted him to wear it all the time without taking it off, no matter where he goes, so he can always feel my presence…

Well, it’s fine. Tamamori-kun seems happy, that’s enough for me.

I’ll save my congratulations for tonight.

*(Translator note: The title is referencing to one track of Hashihime’s own soundtrack which always plays when Tamamori is meeting Kawase at the café, it’s French for “Look at me”.)

[vilnan]

fandom: the wayhaven chronicles

rating: general

pairing: nate sewell/female detective (charlie langford)

word count: 661

A/N: originally written in 2021 (so well before book 3!) but i've never posted it. i still like it, so i'm releasing it into the wild!! :')

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

Nate has been quiet for a while. At least ten minutes, maybe closer to fifteen now.

Charlie watches impatiently as Nate circles yet another word on the paper and hums underneath his breath, chuckling a little while reading along. He seems pleased so perhaps Charlie shouldn't feel as nervous as she is but her long nails click against the wooden surface of the table at an alarming speed, her ordered macchiato completely forgotten next to her hand.

It was too sweet, anyway.

Charlie sighs. Nate looks up at her and smiles softly and she finds herself wondering how he would look like with a pair of eyeglasses framing his warm brown eyes.

Peak sexy, she decides, no doubt. Also even more like a librarian. The thought makes her hide her grin to her sweater's sleeve.

"You're not usually this impatient," Nate comments as she stretches her neck to see what page he is on.

"I know," Charlie answers. "I tried a couple of new things on this chapter and I want to know what you think."

"I noticed," Nate says. He seems amused but not at her writing, she's certain, he would never be so unkind. Most likely he's endeared by her impatience, something she doesn't show often. "I'm done soon, I promise."

Sometimes Charlie wonders at how incredibly easily Nate makes promises. Sweetly, genuinely. Truly content at keeping them. It's probably one of the reasons she loves him so much.

Charlie continues clicking her blue fingernails on the table. Click click click. She's not usually so nervous-- Nate has read all of her novels so far with great enthusiasm, completely genuine in his praise and gentle with constructive criticism.

He is a fast reader, so it takes him only a few moments to finish the draft of Charlie's next book. After he's done, he smiles at Charlie so incredibly affectionately that she almost feels like punching something. It's been a while; maybe she should go a few rounds with Adam at the warehouse after they leave Haley's bakery to blow off some steam.

Charlie links her fingers together and looks at Nate with a raised eyebrow. "Well? What do you think?"

Nate's eye corners crinkle. He reaches over the table to sweep his thumb on her cheek bone. "Every day I remind myself how lucky I am to have found you."

Charlie can't help but laugh with a small eye roll. What a sweet man she loves. She would do anything for him.

Nate takes a thoughtful bite of his muffin. Chocolate today instead of blueberry.

"You're keeping me in suspense," she says and crosses her arms only to uncross them a few moments later.

Nate tuts.

Charlie pouts.

Then Nate chuckles at the look on her face. "I thought it was lovely as always," he says softly, fondness fulfilling his voice. "The way you describe the love between these two young women in your story is amazing."

Charlie's lips bow upwards. "Thank you," she murmurs. He steals the muffin from Nate's plate and takes a bite. The chocolate is like velvet on her tongue.

"It feels very personal to me," Nate continues, a thoughtful look on his face. Charlie hesitates.

Nate's familiar dark brown eyes are warm and non-judgemental.

"It is. In a way," she answers after a moment. She doesn't feel like talking about it, though, and Nate knows her well enough to notice but not to push it.

"Let's hear the professional opinion," Charlie says instead.

Nate laughs, soft, loud and free. "A professional, am I?" He seems impossibly amused by her words.

Charlie's heart beats in the rhythm of affection at the unhidden delight in Nate's tone.

"You are!" she says. "Kind of. Basically my unofficial editor at this point."

Nate laughs again. "If you insist," he chuckles. Charlie smiles. She loves him so much she feels dizzy with it.

Then Nate clears his throat. "So," he begins, "here is what I would change…"

[icedroplove]

Chapter 3

-------x-------

It was already morning, Gray felt well rested and ready to start the day. The mages were at the lobby waiting for Natsu to join them since he hadn’t left the room yet. 

“Do you guys want me to go check if everything’s okay?”

“Please, Lucy.” Erza answered.

As Lucy went upstairs, Wendy sank on the puffy chair she was sitting on and sighed, petting her friend ecxeed who rested on her lap. Erza kept her firm, yet impatient posture. Gray leaned against the column and watched from the corner of his eye as Juvia played with her necklace. She looked so absorbed by it and he noticed how her lips were curved in a slight smile.

Gray looked away and crossed his arms, trying to hide the little blush on his cheeks from his friends. It was not that any of them were looking at him, though. 

Suddenly, they all heard someone yelling. It was Lucy, raging because Natsu had fallen asleep again after changing his clothes. They looked at each other and chuckled (except Erza who looked even more irritated with the delay). Ten minutes later, everyone was set to go.

First thing to do was visit their client, whose house was by the wealthier part of the village. Octavius, a short old man with a taste for vintage clothing, welcomed them into his place with a big smile. He ushered them to sit and served them hot tea. The team was getting impatient with making small talk about how the trip was and if the inn was amiable, but they waited. After a bit, Octavius calmly put his cup down, cleaned his round glasses which got blurry from the smoke and looked at them. 

“I deeply apologize for holding you so long in this conversation. I just wanted to certify myself that you were a qualified group for my request. Even though I’ve perceived that some of you lack proper manners…” He glanced quickly at Natsu, who was on his third teacup. The fire mage gulped it down at once  without even waiting for it to cool down. ”...I’ve considered that this fine team of Fairy Tail mages has the virtues I was pursuing. Now. allow me to explain what is that I need from you mages. ” Octavius acted like he was a character in a period drama story, which made sense considering the aesthetics of his clothes and house.

“I indulged myself for seven years to the work of a novel which I was convinced would become the newest classic on the market. It was a beautiful and completely original story about royalty, duties, forbidden love and a happy ending. I even ventured myself into including more… passion… on some interactions between the main couple. Of course, only because I consider that a younger audience would further appreciate the narrative with the inclusion of such scenes.”

Gray noticed how Lucy, Erza and Juvia looked at each other. Natsu and Wendy, on the other hand, just continued listening without any further thoughts. The increase of the girls' attention on what Octavius was saying confirmed his hypothesis on what those scenes were. 

“What I’ve been meaning to tell is, I sent the final draft to my editor a few months ago and got no response from her. I concluded she hadn’t received it, but a week ago I heard that this unknown author had just published a book with the exact same premise as my draft and it’s a success. I bought the novel, and Upon reading, I’m certain that it's a full copy of my work. However, I don’t have any concrete proof that Ludovic plagiarized me, that’s what I need from you mages.

”It has come to my knowledge that he’ll be attending a party tonight at his place. I can get tickets for all of you.” Octavius eyed the group, his gaze stopped at Wendy. “I wouldn’t advise the little girl’s entrance, though. It is a more adult party.”

Wendy shrugged, but didn’t look much disappointed. 

“Don’t worry, she can stay at the inn. Speaking of which, it was very kind of you to pay for our accommodation, mister. We appreciate the gesture.”

Lucy spoke, easily adapting to Octavius’ weird kind of speech. This seemed to make him happy, since the man got up and kissed Lucy’s hand. 

“I see that my choice of mages for this mission has been the most fortunate.”

Natsu gulped his fourth cup of tea and threw his fist in the air. 

“Okay, I’m all fired up! Let’s kick some ass!” 

Erza elbowed him. Octavius did not show any reaction besides eye Natsu. Apparently, the gentleman wasn't one to be rude. He reached for his pocket and handed Lucy a paper.

“If you may, please write your names here so I can get you on the guest list for tonight.” He wrote on another paper and gave it to Wendy. “This is the address of my publisher. It is possible that she has some information on what happened, she was the only person who read my draft.”

After talking a bit longer, they returned to the inn. Erza ordered Natsu and Gray to wear their best outfits since they didn’t know how fancy that party would be. The boys got ready in thirty minutes, but the girls were still inside the bedroom. Natsu huffed loudly. 

“I’ll go hurry them up.”

“Don’t.”

“But they’re taking too long!”

Gray rolled his eyes, sure that if any of them walked in they’d definitely get Lucy-kicked. After convincing his friend that it wasn’t worth it, they sat in the lounge ready to wait a good while.

-x-

“I’m lucky I brought an evening dress by precaution.” Lucy looked at herself in the mirror, examining her outfit. What heels do I wear? The red ones or black ones?”

Juvia looked away from her open suitcase to give her opinion. The red shoes were pretty, but too fancy for an event that they didn’t know how the other guests would be dressed at. The black ones were more versatile and matched the maroon dress Lucy was wearing. The girls agreed that the black heels were better. 

Wendy came to Juvia, who was still looking at her suitcase. She asked her what happened.

“Juvia didn’t bring any fancy dresses…” The girls turned to her, confused.

“Why didn’t you say anything? You can wear one of mine!” Erza said. 

“Oh...” Juvia felt embarrassed, she still felt weird asking for things like this. Even though now she had friends she could count on, she’d been used to being alone for so long that keeping things to herself was a normal thing. “Thank you, Erza-san.”

The redhead smiled and gave her a navy blue dress. “Go on, try it!”

Juvia wasn’t used to wearing revealing clothing like this in her day-to-day life. She liked it, though. The color looked good on her. She adjusted the thin straps to better support her breasts and took another look in the mirror.

“Juvia-san, you look so pretty!” Wendy said.

Lucy looked at her from head to toe and winked. “Oh my, you’ll end up killing Gray like this.”

Juvia squealed and covered her head with her hands, blushing hard. Erza made her sit on the bed and started working on her makeup. While she rambled about which winged eyeliner would match best her eyes, she let her mind wonder about what Lucy had said. Would Gray like her look?

“And… done!” Erza took a step back to look at her work and gave Juvia a hand mirror. She liked her look. It was sexy, but not too different from her own style. She put on her heels and gathered her purse.

“Okay, everything’s set?”

Suddenly, Natsu opened the door.

“Yo, you’ve been here for an hour! Let’s go!!!” To no one’s surprise, he got Lucy-kicked in the face.

After assuring that Wendy and Carla would be okay at the inn, they all left the inn.

-x-

They were lost. The instructions Octavius gave them weren’t enough to find the venue. After walking in circles for a while, they stopped at the main square as Erza went to ask for directions.

Gray crossed his arms and stole another glance at Juvia. She looked… different. Her normal attire was so chaste that he was awlays caught by surprise when she wore more revealing clothes. Of course he already knew that she was sexy, but having her wear a dress that flattered her body was… different. 

He looked away before his eyes lingered for too long on the dress' neckline pushing up her breasts. Gray didn’t want to stare at them, nor at the slit on her skirt that showed a bit of her toned thighs. Shit. It was becoming hard for him, even harder when she walked to his side as they waited for Erza’s return.

“Is everything okay, Gray-sama?”

He nodded, crossing his arms. Juvia looked at the square, toying with the necklace he gave her the night before. His chest warmed upon noticing that she enjoyed the gift that much. It assured him that he was off to a good start.

However, Gray was unsure what move he should make next. He was nervous to just ask her out. His plan was taking small steps. He wanted to make Juvia happy, but rushing wouldn’t be of any good. After all, romance was still an unknown matter for Gray Fullbuster. 

“I’ve never seen you wearing this dress.” Was everything he managed to say.

“Erza-san lend me. Juvia’s not used to this…” She gestured to her outfit “But it’s not a problem.”

Gray hummed. He saw Erza walking back to them.

“You look good.” 

He smiled lightly at her. Juvia blushed. While they followed Erza to the venue, Gray walked by her side.

[the-badger-mole]

There is, I think, a universal sense of guilt among fic writers that we feel when we find ourselves hitting a wall with a story (or two, or three). In spite of the knowledge that we aren't being paid, aren't being held to anyone's schedule but our own, it feels bad when we let a story sit for a long time. I've had several stories like this, but the one that left me feeling guiltiest was The Djinn Dilemma.

I started that story in 2012, and it was one of my most popular stories. I never intended to abandon it, but I got to a certain point, and I couldn't figure out how to move the plot forward in the direction I wanted it to go in. So, I took a break from it and worked on a different story. Then that story was finished and I tried to go back to Dilemma, but the words still wouldn't come. So, I decided to continue my break. In the meantime, I worked on other stories. I think I started and completed 7 full length, multi-chapter fics, and a lot of one-shots in the meantime, which is how I justified leaving other stories like Dilemma and a couple of others to gather dust. In the back of my mind, though, those stories just sat there expectantly, telling me that I was letting a lot of people down by not completing them (my stories get a bit megalomaniacal when they're guilt tripping me). I was still receiving occasional comments on Dilemma in particular, asking when I was going to complete it, or if I had abandoned it.

In the grand scheme, I know that completing my unfinished stories isn't end all, be all. Fanfic writing is supposed to be a fun hobby, and I guess I had put too much pressure on my incomplete stories so revisiting them just felt like wallowing in my own failure (I also tend to get dramatic when I'm guilt tripping myself). It wasn't fun. So, my stories got laid to the side while I wrote the stories that were still fun for me. Finally, though, I sat down and reopened Dilemma and suddenly, I knew exactly what was going to happen and how to get there (though, full disclosure, I'd written the ending years ago). It was fun again! And now it's finished.

What I want to share from this experience is that it's okay to step away from something and pick it back up later. If you're writing a fanfic and the prospect of a couple dozen chapters seems daunting, it's okay to set it down. The beauty of fanfic is that it's mostly for yourself. It's great when other people get enjoyment out of it, and Lord knows I love getting paid in attention and praise, but at the end of the day, it's your story that you're choosing to share with other like-minded people. There are no deadlines. There's no payment advance, no editor demanding chapters. It's just you, your imagination, and forum to post your story. It's never too late to come back and finish a story. And if your original audience has moved on, well, maybe you'll find a new one. Or maybe you'll decide you don't want to finish the story after all. Either way, it's alright. If it's not fun for you anymore, let it go until it's fun again.

[blametheeditor]

What Could Go Wrong

Run Down: What everyone should've expected to happen at some point given Monkey King’s track record of being a lousy teacher.

Content Warnings: Mentions of violence. Fighting over someone.

You owe me Editor

_________________

“Come on, Macaque, there’s nothing to worry about!” 

Such a sentence had been banned from Wukong’s arsenal, but apparently today was the day he wanted to test if Macaque was feeling gracious. 

He is not. “Wukong, the kid needs more than just ‘you’ve got it bud’. I think it’d be more beneficial if you, oh I don’t know, actually taught him?”

Because as it currently stands, MK has been listening to every word his mentor has said. Fixing his posture, striking the correct pose, standing on his head for some unknown reason. But the poor kid’s mentor has refused to actually teach something. Only given words of encouragement. 

That’s why Macaque declared he had a right to be on Flower Fruit Mountain after realizing that while Wukong is many things, from a backstabbing friend to a powerful being who’s mastered 72 transformations, but a teacher is not one of them. That would require a little bit of hindsight. And everyone knows only a certain shadow possesses such a quality. 

Quite a laborious burden he bares. 

Wukong glares from across the clearing, having stated he wanted to be as far from Macaque as possible. A feeling that’s mutual. “Excuse me, he’s my student. Meaning I know what works best for him. Right MK?” 

“Right, Monkey King!” MK immediately agrees. And then only a second later the kid hesitates, rubbing at his neck. “Uh, would you mind repeating how I turn into a hawk?” 

“That didn’t prove my point at all,” Macaque drawls as he looks over his claws. 

“You just need to concentrate,” Wukong urges with a glare sent toward the shadow. “Imagine yourself as a hawk and everything that goes with it.” 

“...that’s it?” Macaque asks. He had only joined this particular training session a few moments ago and therefore didn’t have the full story. But he hadn’t expected the all powerful ‘Monkey King’ to be this incompetent. Turns out he held the bar much too high. “You can’t even give specific descriptions? Like wings, talons, basic things that would be extremely helpful?” 

MK sends a grateful look his way, but the kid’s mentor is waving a paw as if to shoo a pest away. “You clearly don’t understand the complexity of the training MK goes through. It’s spiritual. Something he needs to find himself.” 

Macaque gives a look that says he’s not buying it in the slightest. Someone who, you know, had to master his ability completely by himself? No help, no guidance, no mentor. And not once did this ‘method’ of learning ever work for him. 

He doesn’t continue to argue, however. Not with MK looking much more confident as he closes his eyes to concentrate. Of course, Wukong is currently beaming with the assumption his ‘teaching’ got the kid this far. What matters is they’re on the right track. He doesn’t necessarily care about the journey as long as they get to the end. For this round at least. 

It’s completely silent save for the wind rustling the leaves on the trees. And then MK just...disappears. 

Now, he might not have much experience with the actual transformation part when it comes to things like this. But Macaque doesn’t believe he’d be too off the mark with the assumption it’s a bit disconcerting, especially if this is one of the first times shape shifting into an animal. But what does he know? Why would Wukong ever think about an idea being a bad one? Especially involving yelling. 

“Nice job, bud!” the celestial primate congratulates as he proceeds to walk through the grass. Meaning the shadow is quick to make his way over to the kid as well.  “Piece of cake, right? Flying’s going to be a little more tricky, but we’ll do it mama bird style!” 

“...you are not throwing him off a tree.” 

“I am doing whatever I want,” Wukong growls, hands on his hips as he stops just shy of where MK had originally been standing. A stance that can be seen as something playful, but Macaque knows it’s meant to be a warning to back off. “And what I want to do is-” 

Macaque’s fur stands on end when the most talkative being in existence suddenly cuts himself off, something that can only be a bad sign. One that’s made worse considering how still Wukong became. Pupils narrowing as something is watched. 

That’s not normal. 

Actually, none of this is. It’s much too quiet. Even if MK needs to learn how to fly, they should’ve seen a hawk jumping up in excitement, or at the very least be chirping up a storm. Much like his mentor it’s a bit of a chore to get him to shut up. 

But there’s nothing. Not a single peep Macaque would have been able to hear yards away. So what-? 

The shadow freezes when he’s finally close enough to see what currently has Wukong looking like he’ll pounce at any moment. Realization dawning on him what’s going to happen in about five seconds. Unable to help feel an incredible amount of sympathy for the poor kid. Because someone’s poor teaching skills made it so MK didn’t transform into a hawk, but instead shrink. 

Now he’s no taller than about three inches. With blades of grass towering over him like mountains. Looking absolutely terrified and like he wants to run at any second. 

The kid takes a single step back. “M-M-?” 

They lunge at the same time. Instead of aiming for MK, however, like a certain impulsive celestial primate, Macaque collides with Wukong to ensure the miniscule figure who needs some time to process isn’t grabbed only a minute after shrinking. In which giants were stomping as they drew closer and closer, loud voices that would make tiny ears throb. 

It earns him a genuine snarl as Wukong attempts to bite Macaque’s throat out. Who is happy to give a fierce kick in the chest and gain some space. “He’s mine!” 

“Give the kid some space!” Macaque exclaims. Softly. Glad he’s the only one with six ears or else this would be ten times worse for MK. “He’s-!” 

Wukong leaps at Macaque with a battle cry, one that says his attempts to ensure the kid isn’t traumatized aren’t appreciated in the slightest. Not when it’s clear ‘baby monkey’ instincts were triggered. Which, if he may add, wouldn’t have happened if Wukong actually taught about transforming. 

But the damage is already done. Complete with Macaque doing everything he can to keep the sharp fangs as far from his face as possible. He’d be worried about how this might look to MK considering two colossal beings are wrestling a mere few feet away. But, again, he’s too busy not dying. Again. 

“Wait-!” 

He hears the soft and terrified cry. Barely dodges teeth wanting to sink into his shoulder and forces them to roll once, pinning Wukong to the ground at the same time he opens a portal directly below MK and onto his paw. Gently traps the kid in a fist to ensure he doesn’t pull a stupid move like jumping off. 

“Okay,” Macaque pants as Wukong goes still, understanding this is an active hostage situation. “Look, I’m not trying to hurt the kid, but you need to be careful with him.” 

Wukong sputters. “Of course I’d be careful!” 

He barely holds himself back from slapping the most annoying being in exitance. “You’re going to burst his eardrums.” 

There’s no surprise Wukong immediately opens his mouth to retaliate. No words are said however when MK’s flinch in noticed along with miniscule hands covering his ears. Finally there’s a look of regret. “He’s safe with me.” 

“Uh huh, sure,” Macaque growls. “The rockslide incident was, what, only a millennium ago and you already forgot how to be a good giant?” 

“Well if you weren’t-!” 

The shadow sighs when it becomes clear Wukong’s more focused on arguing than anything else. He stands up in order to begin walking toward the mountain, opening his paw in order to not make MK feel like he was trapped. “Sorry about that, kid. Are you okay?” 

He’ll admit, holding someone so small and fragile makes him feel not only powerful, but genuinely terrified. He’s seen Wukong use his transformations in order to win fights, display dominance, and just because he can. Yes, it’s absolutely terrifying to be on the receiving end even if that person is a genuine friend he can trust. But it seems like being a god isn’t as fun as it seems to be. 

Not as MK trembles even with a giant smile on his face. “Yeah, of course! Wh-Why wouldn’t I be?” 

He needs to teach the kid not to follow Wukong’s ideology of fake it till you make it. 

“Hey! Hand him over!” 

Macaque raises an eyebrow before stepping through a portal that puts him inside Wukong’s dedicated ‘mediation’ spot, ears twitching at the ‘MACAQUE’ that echos from below. 

“Alright, let’s work on getting you back to your proper size.” 

MK looks almost surprised, yelping as he’s gently slid onto the ground. Macaque can’t help giving a poke that makes the kid nearly fall over, smirking when he’s given the single most nonthreatening glare. “So what’s the story with the rockslide?” 

Not what he thought would be said. Possibly ‘please don’t kill me’ or ‘Monkey King’s going to be here any minute’. Then again, Wukong isn’t one to tell about his failed endeavors. “Oh, it started because someone was being an idiot while climbing the mountain.” 

“Don’t you dare finish that story!” Wukong calls as he races through the hall, skidding to a halt. Hesitating at the sight of Macaque sitting on the floor with his student perfectly unharmed. “And stop kidnapping MK!” 

“I will if you properly teach him something,” the shadow growls. 

“...will for which one?” 

“Wukong thought it’d be a great idea to-” 

“Okay, okay!” the celestial primate grumbles as he joins them on the floor. Gives MK a poke that ends in the kid falling over. “Growing back will involve a bit of meditation. Which requires silence.” 

Macaque rolls his eyes, but he’s content in letting Wukong continue the lesson without interruptions. Especially when MK immediately raises his hand. “Question about the hawk transformation. Am I supposed to think about more than just its size?” 

They both stare down at the kid for a few moments. 

“...maybe I should’ve been more specific.” 

“You’re both hopeless.” 

[last-domain]

I finished Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris in the last few days. They were good, Shriek: An Afterword might be my favourite, but it's hard to compare it to City of Saints and Madmen. Mostly because CoSaM is more of an anthology, with some truly exception pieces and some made made weaker by proximity to them.

(I will add a cut here. I have written more than I expected, with more information than you might want before reading. Proceed with caution.)

Frankly, while I still loved Finch, I found its ending weak. Perhaps I will come around in later re-readings, but I can't help but feel it lacked the necessary full catharsis for the tension built up before it. Additionally, while necessary due to its premise and format, its prose and handling of the core concepts of the series felt clumsier.

It gave too much, too freely, and the presentation of this was more plain. It reduced the dread and tension to the familiar (but not mundane) and explicable (as much as is possible for such topics).

Regretably continuing to heap up negativity: There were three primary threads that failed for me. Threads that perhaps would remedy the above if they had reached me.

The thread of the protagonist's father,

The protagonist's previous identity, and

The (only sometimes) subtle villain. (Spoilers abound!)

1.

I did not connect to the emotions tied to the father past a point. I felt it held a personal significance for Vandermeer, but I do not share his history and could not find it sufficiently affecting. Not for a lack of sympathy, but empathy – it felt too close to something powerful for Vandermeer alone. (I will point out some parallels in my personal experience that could theoretically, in the most calculating and impersonal way possible, lend me the experiences needed to translate the themes; if only to better demonstrate how they failed, or how I failed them.

(My father is dying from stage four blood cancer. He has been made a pariah. He has betrayed, and been betrayed. There is love, tinted with confusion, for I can not, and may never, truly know him. I don't understand who he is or why he did what he did. He is a known quantity only in hindsight, a stranger in the present. We share a deep connection through our names, in our sympathy for each other, in the frank and bleak acceptance of the hand we have been dealt. That we are weak, limited and short-sighted men doing what we can in a vicious world.)

There is a connection, but I do not feel enough of it, and I suspect it is crucial to this story. The great reveal is buried amidst more of the same: relentless exposition and an ever-urgent escalation. It lacks the necessary 'pull back' that gives impact to such a moment -- The opportunity to take to the stage alone and reach past words.

2.

The same can be said for the protagonist's past life and identity. It lacks room to breathe, boxed in claustrophobic company with players and events too large to permit its scale.

Too much is divulged too regularly for the tightening of emotional chords, and thus resonance. We know more than is needed each time the topic becomes relevant, until what could have been crescendo arrives flat.

Just a known and expected fact among many.

Once he was James, now he is John. Once he was a bastard, now he is a different bastard. The difference between a womaniser who loves whiskey and cigars and a cynical unwilling detective who loves whiskey and cigars is not enough to merit the weight implied when this information is presented.

We know, unfortunately.

3.

Finally (and this is far more than I anticipated to write on just this one novel) is the villain.

They feel like someone has stitched them into the story after enthusiastic and misguided recommendations from the publisher (I cannot say editor, because the glamorous Ann Vandermeer is Jeff's wife and editor, and has never disappointed.).

Like using a ball of twine and a knitting needle to sew back together a rich but torn silk tapestry. It is functional in the literal sense, necessary in the mechanical, but still confusing and upsetting to see.

Risking outright spoiling everything: I felt a rush of baffled familiarity towards the end of the book.

Suddenly, I was reading the most inventive and creatively liberal written adaptation of a video game ever envisioned.

Specifically: Half-Life 2.

Now, while Shriek: An Afterword and Finch were both published after the games release, City of Saints and Madmen preceeded Half-Life 2 by over three years, if you wholly discount the time spent writing the books. More still, the whole series is too significant and developed to be informed and transformed that quickly. These are the sort of stories that take a half-decade or more to plan and build up.

I admit, I haven't read or listened to Vandermeer talk about his work, much. Just the excerpts at the ends of his novels and a few short posts, about his disappointment in Alex Garland's adaptation of Annihilation and re-wilding lawns. So perhaps he has spoken on this. I am afraid to learn if he has.

To explain more; it is not just in specifics of content that I drew connections, but in tone. Towards the end, it truly does begin to feel like the plot of a game. It becomes too abrupt, too direct and too normalised as the verisimilitude of the world shifts from horror and a languorous living city resplendent in cruelty, beauty and pleasure -- to a shallow pool of one-note characters, alien invasions and resistance to an all too comprehensible (if mindlessly evil) occupying force.

The villain itself is, well... absurdly tied in? As if they are sewn across the book to rejoin wandering scenes; to shuffle and shuttle the actors to their places in the next scene (once, very literally), and then, with a metaphorical but embarrassingly exaggerated wink to the audience, reminds us the story takes place in a world of mysteries before (again, literally!) vanishing. To which our man clumsily muses to himself (and thus us) "It sure is a scary and mysterious world we live in. Welp. Not my problem anymore."

Okay... so. This came out far more passionate a diatribe than I expected. I had wanted to quickly note the negatives before moving on to the positives, as to not leave anyone reading on a sour note. I love these books. Have loved City of Saints of Madmen for years, and I don't truly regret reading the sequels.

There is a genre in fiction that I would describe as 'The City'. I am tempted to attach 'monster', '(anti-)hero', 'protagonist', 'beast', 'ancient' or 'eternal'. But we all know these tales; in Gaiman's Neverwhere, Dishonored's Dunwall, Miéville's New Crobuzon, Bioshock's Rapture, Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, Disco Elysium's Revachol, David Edison's City Unspoken, Jon Ware's Eskew, and any number of the countless fictional depictions of London, Hong Kong, Cold-War Berlin, Los Angeles and, of course, New York.

This "genre" is a favourite of mine. Most strongly felt when the unity and vision for their subject (of affection) is unified in vision, deeply defined, longingly familar, tantalisingly strange and unique in a ubiquity of perspective between its physical architecture and the absurd views of its inhabitants.

These are places where you can refer to both the (un)mapped streets and their citizenry as "The City" interchangeably without negating the autonomy and presence of either.

Places that cannot be described as "Like x city, but with y concept" without utter disservice.

Places that are alive and changing and wanting and hostile and loving.

Places that are cruel and ugly and comforting and utterly remarkable.

Ambergris is one such place, a paragon of its kind. It is so much more. Its paths are winding and beautiful and deeply unsettling. It is wrong in all the right ways. It is a cathedral built in the mind, a channel of lasting silences and roaring senses flowing through them. It is a place no one has ever been, that lives now inside me.

It really is something.

"If you don't feel a certain sadness toward the past, then you probably don't understand it."

[kuekyuuq]

One of the things that bug me about how CWSG ended...

And no, it's not (just) a certain lacking endgame XD

We've got a serialized show about Supergirl, Kara Zor-El, Kara Danvers. And yet the show spent overall so little time on her.

She got traumatized several times over, it got implied that she suffers from claustrophobia and PTSD. Yet it was never fully addressed, the next episode Kara just moved on, carried about - as if this was an episodic show. Which, yes, with the freak-of-the-week nature it was at certain points, but it also did in many others aim to have connected and continuous plots, story and character developments...

Now, what is it that bugs me in this installment?

Kara coming out to the world as Supergirl. Aaaand cut. Show over.

Is this a continuation or inevitable destination of Kara's struggles? Well, I argue, no.

What we did have was Kara struggling to find her place in the world. Kara is many things. She's a (no longer) orphan. She's (no longer) the last daughter of Krypton. Kara(thought she was but really is no more) the last Kryptonian to carry Krypton’s legacy, history, culture, education.. everything.

... Kara is Kryptonian. Was raised as one until she was 13, throughout the majority of her informative years. Kara Zor-El. Kara has incredible powers, which her very nature dictates she uses for good, become a hero. Supergirl. Kara is.. a refugee, adopted and in some ways till the end of the show at times struggling to fully integrate herself as: Kara Danvers. Kara's nature, without her powers also have her to strive to help others, uncover and fight bad things. A reporter. Kara's also just the girl who loves musicals, Big Belly Burger, Karaoke, hates greens, wants a perfect partner at Game Night... Just Kara. Kara is a sister. Kara is a daughter. Kara is a loyal friend...

Several times in the show, whenever Kara was struggling, Kara thought she had to chose between Supergirl or Kara Danvers.

The Black Mercy clearly showed Kara’s longing to be Kara Zor-El, missing the what-if.

During her redK incident some more seeds of that were sown, her red-veined self mildly risking her identity - but mostly showing that Kara was unhappy playing herself down (e.g. as Kara Danvers at work).

The downside of revealing herself was depicted in the 100th episode.

There were more instances whenever Kara became overwhelmed, that she wondered if her duality (person vs. persona) was the cause of her problems. 

But the solution was NEVER to go full Supergirl! 

It was always something else. ALWAYS, the show, told us, showed us, Kara was ultimately happier being bouncy Kara Danvers at the office and the proud hero on the streets.  That despite her pain and whichever most recent trauma, neither her cape nor the glasses were the problem. Nor was the double-act. [...except when it came to Lena]

Kara considered going full-time Supergirl in season 6 (episode 16), too. Alex and William (quoting Kara who quoted Cat) talked her out of it by letting her know, she can have it all, taking one step at a time, and maybe not all at once - because she's got a team, a family! 

And then she does it anyway.

She also becomes editor-in-chief at CatCo (which likely cuts down her investigative reporting time by a great chunk... You know, the very thing she loved about the job, loved so much it even - temporarily - did cost her that very job).

Oh, and there was also this:

The argument was made, that the whole double-life spiel had long since lead to Kara no longer knowing who she really was.

But did it?

I mean... yeah, it sure can be stressful at times, but... right, speaking of stress. Kara made that decision after

being part of reshaping the universe (and having witnessed the death of all of them beforehand!)

which reshaped Kara's history she now has no knowledge of (due to being a Paragon) or, if J'onn or her stay in the fractured PZ somehow bestowed her with her Prime-Earth memories, she now has two sets of memories...

she had been cast into the Phantom Zone again, where she had to suffer at the hands... claws... of the Phantoms and their nightmare inducing powers which are known to drive people insane for them eventually no longer being able to tell reality and the nightmare apart.

she found out her father was still alive and she sent him off to Argo / her mother - her family now well, whole and alive somewhere out in the universe

loosing yet another friend (William)

...

So, she tells the world she's Supergirl,

which will not erase the in episode 100 mentioned threats to her fam's lives

while the Children Of Liberty had been beheaded, the mistrust in people is still around

two years prior, during the Red Daughter incident, she had been declared public enemy number one

her sister's got a kid

ALL her prior reasons not to do so, have not magically evaporated!

I know, she's the Paragon of Hope, but...

People know Supergirl. Only very few know Kara Danvers. Hardly anyone on Earth ever knew about Kara Zor-El.

So, ask yourself, after revealing herself to the world, how would/will people perceive her now?

I think it's very naive to think, that Kara can be "herself" when people (at Al's bar, Noonans, work, performing the rare interview she manages to squeeze in between supering and her new, demanding job at CatCo) now either get star-struck or nervous at "meeting Supergirl", or at worst can't think past her being an (over-powered) alien. Supergirl is (in)FAMOUS! There is only Supergirl now, in the eye of the public, to anyone she meets. ...how could that possibly help her be more “herself”? The only people who she can be herself are the ones she could all along - her friends and family.  If anything it made going for a walk much more stressful, whereas Kara Danvers could eat ice cream without judging her for the messy way she may go about it in her eagerness... 

Is she being more honest?

Yes. There’s no more need to “fly on the bus”, am I rite? No more lies. 

Does this lead to her being more true to herself?

...on the surface at least, yes.

Does this lead to her being able to live as herself, her true and authentic self?

No, and not for some decades either (eventually, far away in the future, her having taken that step, and others following her example, this may very well lead to people not making distinctions anymore, being a Hero possibly just becoming considered yet another job, like a fireman/-woman or police officer).

Just a few years ago they've built the woman a friggin statue!

So, no. I do not think - and the show has not given me anything to believe otherwise, rather kept affirming my conclusion - that Kara would indeed be able to live as "herself" after the finale episode and her public "coming out".

I think the writers or whoever was in charge of that decision only saw the superficial symbolism (and a woke pro-LGTBQ+ implication). But they've entirely ignored Kara's path, her evolution and her experiences.

Truth be told, if there had been a seventh season after this cliffhanger (which it essentially was, as it raised more questions than it provided answers and/or closure), it would have had to have featured Kara facing the plenty-fold backlash of that decision. But making the show about Kara - the character - may have been a bit too much to ask for anyway... Maybe even culminating in her needing to call back Mxy to cash in her do-over raincheck.

So, no.

I see what the show was trying to say.

"Be yourself, don't hide, be proud." And that IS a good message.

But within the context of the show? Oh, boi, this one failed hard IMO.

My advice for Kara Danvers? 

TAKE A VACATION! Really, just be "Kara" for a while. No Super, no Danvers, no Zor-El. Just kick up your legs, DEAL with your trauma (talk to Kelly!), clean up shop, find your center, focus on your needs for a while.

Go sing Karaoke with your extended found family. Eat buckets of ice cream. Watch every musical in existence. Maybe even go and visit your re-united parents! Go on a road-trip with your bestie. 🥷 Finally take some time off to mourn: Red Daughter, William, Jeremiah (for good), Oliver... Go meet your nephews! There's two of them now, and they are teens already!

Trust your friends, trust in them having your back, that the world won't get destroyed (again) just because you take a few months of a sabbatical or to just limit yourself to rescuing kittens and helping grandmas cross the streets for a while. Maybe you'll even find a hook for a story to snag yourself another Pulitzer while you're just out there enjoying the world.

And yes, just ENJOY the world you've saved (over and over and over and...) for once! There's so much beauty in it. Prove to yourself why it is all worth it!

Because, Kara is NOT just Supergirl OR Kara Danvers OR just Kara...

She's all of the above and so much more.

Revealing herself to the world is not changing that it isn’t an instant solution to Kara's multitude of problems, her traumas, her inner(!) duality (tripality? quadrality?...).

The seasons have put her through the ringer several times over without giving her a chance to breathe, have thrown trauma, drama, loss, grief, shock and terror at her over and over and over again. She's a former last Kryptonian orphan refugee adopted by humans who has her parents back but estranged by time and space, facing xenophobia, racism, sexism (lots of 'isms...) left and right, had to face, fight and lose her own "evil" twin, possibly contradicting memories of her teenage years up to Crisis, keeps losing even when she's winning, spreads herself way too thin because of Big Bads constantly showing up....

For Rao's sake! The girl really doesn't know who she is anymore!

And it only on the surface leads back to her being a reporter and a Super both day and night.

There is a reason the comic book arc of Superman revealing himself got retconned / axed. ...after all, if I grasped that correctly, it was Lex' great idea for Sups to reveal himself to the world...

And no. I don't think either Cat nor Lena meant for Kara to come out like that. They were being supportive. Cat in her "you need to figure out what you want, so just dive, Kara!" way and Lena in the more gentle "whatever you feel is right to you, my one true love best friend" approach. Cat was trying to push Kara (meant well, but IMO after the previous events just wrapped up, a bit of a bad timing). And Lena was ...kinda enabling, having just come on the other end of her own life-long trauma spiel and possibly being over-supportive after the year of hell...

So yeah, I've got issues with the last few minutes of the finale. In my head-canon it was Kara's fever dream after she finally had a full night's sleep after the final show-down.

Feel free to disagree!

TL;DR:

“I was missing the point. It is not about what you do. It is about who you love.” 

- Cat Grant [2x21]

#Kue out.

[projectcruise]

⚓️ Project Cruise now has its own dedicated site!

From now on, the newest chapters will be posted on here!

Why the change?

Various friends of mine who haven’t been on tumblr have told me they found it difficult to access Project Cruise. Without making an account, it would stop them from viewing the chapters after scrolling down to a certain point. Even after making an account, it could still be confusing and hard to access… Additionally, I found the tumblr tagging system ineffective in organizing the story, with the new site it’s as easy as clicking a button in order to navigate to any of the previous chapters. I could’ve done this by creating a pinned post to be a table of contents sort of thing but it would just take up much of the blog and updating it each time would be a hassle.

But fear not tumblr user! Updates and announcements will still be posted on this blog.

The usual announcement chapter cover posts will continue to be here, only the link to read them will now direct users to the website.

Final notes:

I just want to give a huge thank you to everyone who has continued reading Project Cruise, I’ve really put so much thought into creating this story, and now, the fun part is just about to start! This whole operation is just run by one person (besides my wonderful editor who reviews the writing) so it’s been a huge effort to make it all happen. Anyway, chapter 4 is currently in the works. It should be out soon, it’s without a doubt the most exciting one so far so stay tuned!