#and can major predict shit in this show

[twilightkitkat]

Poolverine but they dress up as each other for Halloween. I'm not just talking about swapping costumes—they go all in. They get those facial prosthetics to get each other's skin textures right, Wade goes in with makeup for detailing, and Wade wears a bodysuit while Logan wears slight platform shoes and shapewear to roughly match their builds.

They put on each other's suits and make sure the proportions are as accurate as possible. Wade even goes as far as to call in a few favors to get voice-changing abilities.

Then, Halloween, they pretend to be each other. They try to match each other's personalities and mannerisms and see if anyone can notice.

At first, you'd think it'd be obvious that they switched. But here's the thing: they know each other. Wade knows how Logan moves and talks and acts and fights. Logan knows how to predict Wade's moods and reactions and decisions. They're incredibly self-aware and in sync.

They both show up to their friend's Halloween party dressed as each other. The crowd is incredibly large because everyone invited all the people that they know, which includes Vanessa's new friends and the majority of the X-mansion.

The only person who knew off the bat was Laura. There was no hiding it from her with her sense of smell, but they didn't intend to. She was in on the joke and came to watch the shitshow in action.

When asked about their costume, "Wade" says that Deadpool is what all the kids want to dress up as for Halloween, and he was just following the trend! Besides, no need to waste money buying a costume when he has the best one right in his closet. He's the scariest to be, obviously, because Deadpool is such a fearsome name.

Logan matches Wade's pitch immaculately, curling his voice into a whine before going back to talking cheerily as if nothing happened. Nobody bats an eye, classic Wade behavior.

Any slight imperfections are hidden by the flashing lights and relaxed atmosphere and large crowd. It's hard to pick out their friends in a crowd, let alone tell the differences between their carefully crafted copycat plans.

Laura gets closer to "Logan" and asks him how "Wade" has been lately, playing along. He responds with a grunt and an exasperated but fond summary of Wade's newest hyperfixation, acting as if he didn't know any of the terminology for it.

She has to hide a shit-eating grin when some of the people who knew Logan from the X-mansion came up to greet him and ask him how he's been. Plan successful.

"Logan" reaches out and pats a few heads, lingering just long enough to show he cares but pulling away soon enough to avoid deep intimacy. He answers questions with the same gruff tone as the actual Logan, giving just enough information to satisfy their questions.

Miraculously, the night continues and they haven't been caught. This is quite frankly hilarious because the two had done their rounds with each other's friends and acquaintances and apparently knew enough about each other to answer accurately. It's a pretty big feat, and even Laura has to reluctantly admit she's impressed by how well they know each other to pull this off.

The two draw together near the end, bickering as usual and using each other's tactics. Wade has to stifle a giggle at Logan imitating his out to not break character, and Logan has to hold himself back from burying his face in his hands out of embarrassment.

The real challenge is when Vanessa comes in to greet "Wade," with her new boyfriend in tow. Because Logan knows how Wade should act: vaguely uncomfortable and awkward, cagey toward the new guy, with an undertone of yearning and regret.

He knows this, but it stings. It hurts to know that while Wade and him are living together, a part of Wade will always belong to Vanessa. He knows it's irrational and that he's the main person in Wade's life, but the thought of them together makes him feel vaguely nauseous.

But he promised Wade he'd try to do this with him. They'd made bets and everything about who would find out and who wouldn't. He didn't want to ruin his fun.

So Logan grits his teeth and shifts into character, acting a little tense but also relieved to see her. Acting a bit more closed off and tense when the new guy introduces himself, and a little embarrassed to be seen with "Logan." Guilty, almost, like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't.

But Vanessa's expression isn't remorseful or awkward. Instead, she raises an eyebrow, crosses her arms, and asks him what's wrong. Tells him that something's clearly bothering him and that he knows he can come to her for anything.

Logan becomes confused. What was he doing wrong? Was he not giving her the "puppy dog eyes" convincingly enough? Was he not portraying the bittersweet feeling of seeing "the one who got away" well?

But then she asks him if he and "Logan" were fighting. If something was going wrong in their relationship for him to act so cagey and upset.

...And Logan is baffled. What the hell does them fighting have to do with this?

Until she continues. She tells him that she knows how much "Logan" means to him and that she knows Logan feels the same (it's obvious just in the way he looks at Wade), so she's sure they'll figure it out soon.

She chuckles and shakes her head and says that it's endearing how Wade constantly talks about Logan as if he's the only topic in the world. That she's glad he's happy and that she remembered him asking to meet her boyfriend at some point so he could "rate her taste." She pats his shoulder, placatingly, and tells him that she's always there to talk if anything happens. Then she leaves.

And oh.

Logan thought he had Wade's personality down to a science, that he knew almost everything about him. His thoughts, his feelings, his relationships. ...But apparently, he was wrong for once.

Then he takes a second to stand there and analyze his interactions with Wade. And he realizes that she was right. That Wade glancing constantly back at him when Vanessa was there wasn't awkward pining for his ex, but just Wade wanting to look at Logan.

Now that he thinks about it, Wade doesn't just do that around Vanessa. He did it around almost everyone. He'd intermittently glance at Logan with what he assumed to be embarrassment over him, but now he realizes it was endearment. Awe. Bashfulness and slight pride over getting to introduce Logan to his friends instead of being ashamed of him.

And Logan realized that maybe he didn't know everything about Wade. That maybe, some of his assumptions were based more on his own experiences and past rather than the present. That he let his jealousy and insecurity and anxiety cloud his interpretation until it became foggy, creating the same rough shape but without the structure.

...And Logan smiles, under the mask. A warm, incredulous thing. That Wade spent most of his time with Vanessa talking about him. That it was so obvious Wade loved him that everyone commented on it. He'd never had someone be proud of belonging to him before, showing him off like he was something worth coveting. It felt nice.

Eventually, he rejoined "Logan's" side. He sidled up to him and threw an arm around his shoulder, throwing out a flirty comment and cuddling closer. "Logan" let him, letting his shoulder slump and wrapping an arm around him in return.

"Wade" stared at "Logan," watching his expressions shift and the curve of his lips as they moved. He let the adoration and wonder swell up in him, seeing how accurately Wade played the part.

It was obvious that he was staring, but nobody batted an eye. They all accepted it as normal, as if it was perfectly in character for Wade to stare at Logan with full focus even while people flitted and talked around them.

When Logan leaned in to kiss Wade's shoulder, nobody said anything.

(They manage to make it through the night without anyone calling them out on their impersonation. When they reveal it the next day, everyone is shocked. It was so realistic that they couldn't even tell.

Well, almost everyone is shocked. Laura rolls her eyes and Vanessa hides a knowing smile behind the rim of her coffee cup.)

[loveinhawkins]

When Steve gets to his last year at Hawkins High, it feels like some kind of veil has been lifted right in front him. Or maybe it’s more that the veil’s actually been slowly lifting for years, and he’s noticing it all the more because it’s no longer there.

Either way, when he receives his yearbook, it doesn’t seem like the huge deal that his younger self would’ve made it out to be; he flicks through the pictures half-heartedly, doesn’t even care when the candid ones taken at sporting events catch him in unflattering poses, lip jutting out in concentration.

If he tried to voice his disinterest, Henderson would probably spout off some precocious shit about societal expectations, and Steve would pretend to nod sagely before stealing whatever dorky hat he happened to be wearing—it’s not like he could let the little shit suspect that he occasionally had a point, Steve would never hear the end of it.

The yearbook signings are predictably inescapable: people passing their books back and forth in class or in the cafeteria—and that one’s a risky move, with the threat of drinks spilling on the pages, whether accidental or malicious.

Steve thinks the fever’s dwindled out until he spends a free period in the school library. The seniors typically all bunch together in one of the far corners, the spots with the comfiest seats—loners included, like the perks of age for once outweigh the usual ridicule.

But that silent truce is not exactly being upheld, Steve notes—Eddie Munson is sitting alone at a nearby table.

It becomes painfully obvious when the signing starts up again. There’s a cluster of girls on the yearbook committee who initiate it, and soon every senior in reach is either passing over their own book or signing one.

Almost every senior.

It’s not like Eddie’s the only person ever to be held back. He’s not even the only one to be held back for next year, either: John Nelson off the swim team is in the same position, and he’s still been asked to sign.

But Steve knows that’s not what the source of exclusion is, not really.

He’s gotten good at spotting silent cruelty—good at avoiding it too, before his popularity gave him a temporary shield.

It’s all just bullshit, he thinks. It’s been a recurring thought lately.

He brings out his own yearbook because he knows it’s expected. When it’s finally passed back round to him, he ends up right near the seat opposite Eddie’s, just by chance.

But actually sitting there is his own choice.

He can tell that Eddie has spotted him even though he’s not looked up from whatever homework he’s doing; there’s a silent tension in the way he’s holding his pen.

Steve mulls it over before he asks the question. It could blow up in his face, but what did that matter, really? In the grand scheme of things, it would hardly count as a major embarrassment; it’s not like it’d be any more mortifying than telling his dad that he didn’t get into any colleges whatsoever.

So he pushes his yearbook across the table, because what the hell.

“Wanna sign?”

Eddie glances up. There’s a guarded look in his eyes, and Steve can almost hear him mentally replaying the question.

“Pardon?” Eddie says with pointed emphasis, like he’s daring Steve, let it drop and we’ll say no more about it, Harrington.

Steve doesn’t take it back. He shrugs and flicks open the yearbook, finds a blank spot and taps it once with his finger, a silent offer.

Eddie stares like Steve’s a riddle, like he’s wondering just who the show’s for—but the other students have turned away, have gone back to their seats, yearbooks temporarily forgotten.

Eddie’s hold on his pen relaxes, ever so slightly.

“You sure, Harrington?” he says. There’s still a wary edge to his voice, but there’s an undercurrent of something else, too, like he’s secretly amused despite himself. “Haven’t you heard what folks say? I could curse you.”

Steve scoffs. “That all you’ve got? I’ve dealt with way worse, man,” he says mildly.

A corner of Eddie’s mouth twitches into a surprised smile. Then it’s gone almost like it had never been in the first place, his gaze turning thoughtful rather than defensive.

And obviously this isn’t Eddie’s first rodeo at the whole senior year thing. Steve wonders if there’s a veil that’s been lifted for him too, wonders if he can see straight through it right now.

The bell rings.

Eddie stands up, gathering his stuff.

Steve thinks that’s the end of it: something that’s neither a success or a failure.

But then, lightning fast, Eddie darts across the table and scribbles something on the open page. Slams the yearbook shut and pushes it back over, and it feels like a challenge, like some of his caginess is back—like he’s just daring Steve to reveal that it had been a joke all along—

“Bet you’re counting down the days till you can hold your own copy, huh?” Steve says dryly, as he stuffs the book into his bag.

It’s a risk; he knows Eddie could easily take it as pure ridicule, could misinterpret it as Steve throwing the failed school years back in his face.

Eddie just shakes his head, but he could be laughing—the moment’s gone too quickly for Steve to know for sure.

“Nah, Harrington,” Eddie says easily, thrown over his shoulder as he leaves, “those things aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

Steve doesn’t check the yearbook until he’s home. He eventually finds Eddie’s signature, simple black ink right in the upper corner of one page.

Good luck, Steve. —Eddie

Some of the letters are bunched a little too close together, drifting upwards on the blank page, as if they usually need lined paper to guide them—left-handed, Steve thinks vaguely.

Within a sea of scrawled nicknames and loudly enthusiastic messages, Steve finds that he kind of likes how mundane Eddie’s truly is. Likes the sign off with minimal fuss. Just “Eddie.” Likes how he was just “Steve”, too.

And yeah, if anyone needed to be told good luck, Steve thinks, with the kind of amusement that only comes from distance—pictures his past self, freaking out about monsters come to life.

He slots the yearbook into his bookcase. By summer he might forget about it altogether, left to gather dust as he works for 3 bucks an hour, but for now he marks its significance: something real, hidden alongside the bullshit.

[interstellar-superdrive]

Random 2025 predictions

RFK Jr's brain is completely eaten by the worm in it

A random Depeche Mode song trends online

The yumeship community has a major drama and then implodes upon itself

Nickelodeon holds a huge event celebrating Avatar: The Last Airbender's 20th anniversary but it goes horribly wrong due to them using AI or other things Well, it kinda went wrong. They didn’t use AI, but around the 20th anniversary they announced a new Avatar show where the backstory is that Korra is "humanity's destroyer." The fandom is in shambles.

JKR will outright say that she thinks only white women can be really women

Nintendo officially changes Diddy Kong's name

Project 2025 is enacted and AO3 gets banned. Then people either try to start a new website or migrate to FF.net, only to be frustrated by the old and ugly UI on that site

For that matter, TikTok is banned as well

Chappell Roan sells out and guest stars in an animated kids show where she voices a literal pink pony.

American Dragon Jake Long undergoes a fandom renaissance, sparked by a popular crossover fanfic with Danny Phantom

Disney buys Sesame Street, under the condition that each new season have at least one episode dedicated to shilling Disney products. So there will be an episode where Elmo, Abby, and Cookie Monster watch the latest MCU movie.

Disney posts an official Nick Wilde thirst edit on TikTok.

Related to the above: The furry community has a war about whether Mr. Wolf from The Bad Guys or Nick is hotter.

Completely AI movies start being released by major companies

Hawk Tuah starts beef with another content creator

Elio somehow beats the HTTYD remake at the box office

The creator of Skibidi Toilet is sued by a parent for "inducing brainrot"

The Witch Hat Atelier fanbase proves to be even worse than Dungeon Meshi. Now you will see Coco pfps attached to the most asinine opinions of all time.

Ouran High School Host Club season 2 is finally announced, but they completely changed the art style into something more generic (most notably removing the characters' noses)

Netflix greenlights an animated series based on Chill Guy

Snyder fanboys try to boycott the new Superman movie, but fail.

Mr Beast gets into huge legal trouble.

Netflix shits out a true crime docuseries about Luigi Mangione.

[harleywarley18]

God of prophecy, music, and plague 𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

I was supposed to post this Sunday but got caught up with stuff so here's a midnight rundown on my relationship to Apollo ;-;

Apollo began showing up around a month after I began my worship to Aphrodite. I was afraid at first. Not of him, but of the idea of worshipping another deity. In the past, I had only ever worshipped one at a time. As a neurodivergent person I was also afraid that my relationship to Aphrodite was just a hyperfixation since I had been playing Hades a lot.

The thought of worshipping Apollo only further worried me. I wanted to assure Aphrodite that she wasn't;t a mere hyperfixation and that she would not be forgotten. The first time I tried to communicate with Apollo via tarot cards, Aphrodite showed up instead and voiced her concerns.

She was afraid that I'd abandon her and forget about her. I knew where this was coming from because I had told her about Hades. Early 2023 I had begun worshipping Hades but after about a month and a half it became too much for me to continue and I kind of just stopped my worship and never went back. I had felt so bad but worship can be so draining sometimes.

Anyways, after reassuring Aphrodite many times I believed I had the okay to begin doing proper research on Apollo before reaching out to him. What interested me about him is his Lo'xias epithet, meaning god of prophecy or messenger of Zeus. I was so drawn to it because throughout my entire life I have always had crazy intuition and predictions.

At first I chalked up to the fact that I'm autistic and can recognize patterns really well. Specifically, I take "data" I've collected about a situation or people and use it to make predictions about what will happen or what they'll do. But, too often did I predict something and it actually happened in a scarily accurate manner. There have been multiple times that it's felt as though I've actually spoken things into existence. For example, while I was ranting to my sister about someone who had talked major shit about me and I said that (for the sake of privacy I will not describe what I said) this specific scenario was going to happen to them. I said it out of anger and in passing but that very weekend exactly the thing that I said would happen to them HAPPENED.

With tarot cards, especially, my readings are always insanely accurate. Even my sister, who is not a believer in anything that I do, is wary about my readings because she knows that whatever the cards say will happen will actually happen. Furthermore, when I first moved to college I had visited a metaphysical store with my cousin and there the owner overheard me say that it had been so long since I had really done tarot that I probably couldn't ever do it again. And she said to me "tarot reading is like riding a bike, you learn once and never forget. She then brought out her own personal oracle cards and had me do a reading on her and her husband. She wanted me to use the cards to tell them who they are. According to them, everything I had said was more than true.

With Apollo, I thought I could use his help to groom and cultivate this proclivity of mine.

After having properly reached out to him, I've come to the realization that I love more than just his prophetic aspect. I stated in my previous post that I had been struggling due to a situation that occurred earlier in the school semester. Even when I was back home, I was struggling with panic attacks and bouts of major anxiety. What always helped, however, was taking my dogs out on their walk and feeling Apollo's rays of sunshine beaming down on me.

Every single time I stepped out of the house-heart racing, hands shaking, ears ringing-suddenly it would all melt away into nothingness the second I felt the sun on my face, enveloping my person, weaving its heat through my curls and over my ears. Even if it had been storming, when the time came to walk the dogs, the sky would magically become clear enough to allow the sun to shine through.

Eventually, I started keeping the tarot cards I dedicated to Apollo under my pillow and asking him to visit me in my dreams. The first night I saw a beautiful, swirling ball of light above my bed, with orange and yellow flares coming out of it. The second night, however, I woke up in a dream. I was in the back of this van sitting next to this man. He looked young with beautiful, black curls. He had his arm wrapped around me and my head rested on his shoulder.

I remember him feeling so warm. He felt like home. He felt like snuggling up under the covers in a cold room. And I just lay there, hands holding his, watching the scenery of the drive we were on. I woke up that morning with the sun shining on my face, clearly attempting to wake me up.

I've heard a lot of people say that Apollo feels like a golden retriever boyfriend or nice frat boy. And while I respect that everyone's experiences with deities is different, Apollo to me feels like some guardian. Maybe an older brother or a father or an uncle. I think people expect Apollo to be boyish and naive because he's always been described as a young thing. We forget that he is just as wise, if not more, as his cousins and aunts and uncles.

Praise Apollo, averter of evil, dark-haired, messenger of zeus!

[ghastlyfilters]

jerome valeska x reader who likes collecting random things and oddities!!

pairings: jerome valeska x reader

warnings: jerome being jerome and.. dolls i guess?? and i suppose if you don’t like things that are out of the ordinary or you’re gonna judge people for liking them then pls leave lol

(ok maybe just MAYBE i’m writing this for my own benefit. i love collecting weird shit myself and i’m specifically a massive horror and living dead dolls collector. from trinkets to replicas, i love em all. and who��s to say jerome wouldn’t try and boost my obsessions, hm? REALLY HOPING THIS REACHES A TARGET AUDIENCE BRO)

gifs not mine!

• Right, first of all, if you think Jerome wouldn’t be into all your odd and peculiar little obsessions.. man you’re LYINGGG

• Jerome is open to anything that’s out of the ordinary. He himself considers to be someone with flair and major differences to others. Hence why if you’re shy to show him the weird things you like collecting, he might tell you to genuinely shut the fuck up then give ya a big ol’ smooch! (He’s the least bit predictable we know)

• The word “normal” doesn’t even exist in Jerome’s manic vocabulary. He sees no true definition for the word, and overall just thinks it’s stupid.

• Ok perhaps he wishes he could’ve had a “normal” childhood but that’s a totallyyyy different can of worms..

• When Jerome pops into your home from time to time, he’s so heavily fascinated by all the things you have placed in different areas of your room. And the fact it’s so… neat??? (He could NEVER)

• If you’re into taxidermy and collecting bones, Jerome is ecstatic to see your collection!!

• He actually finds it quite adorable how much you love the preservation of life. Despite the madman he is, he appreciates that you decide to love the unloved. Hm. Maybe that’s why you fell for him?

• He finds it satisfying to watch you go through the bone cleaning process, though the smell of different products always burns the shit out of his nose.

“Do you want a mask?” Your muffled voice asked him. Your poor carrot topped boyfriend seemed to think he was invincible after coming back.

Jerome squinted. “Mmmmmm.. nahhh. Just lemme watch.”

He’d sit and happily stare at you outside, chin resting atop one of his hands. Watching the bones slowly turn white again after past discolouration was so oddly satisfying to him.

Then you’d hear him gag.

“Jeez it fucking stinks…”

• Sometimes you’ll be trailing your fingers down his back, all the way down his spine, and he’ll start blurting stuff out.

“Heh. Maybe one day it’ll be my bones you’ll be cleaning, gorgeous.”

“What??”

“What?”

• Now one of the things you collect, Jerome swears he’d die for each and every one of them.

Living Dead Dolls.

• You’re certain he wants to buy them more than you do at this point. You’ve caught him many times just sitting gazing at them standing on your coffin shelf, his eyes darting back and forth between them all.

• He has such a fondness for Squeak. She was one of the first Living Dead Dolls you ever got. Her little pig mask and pumpkin bucket for trick or treating made Jerome fall in LOVE.

• He now secretly loves watching people unbox their Living Dead Dolls on TikTok. And when someone unboxed Squeak with ICP’s “Piggy Pie” overlapped on the video Jerome almost died. Again.

• If you ever start yapping to him about a new Living Dead Doll you’ve seen and now want, he’s already off to find out Oswald’s credit card details and random packages just start turning up to your house rapidly.

“AWWW!! TOXIC MOLLY!!” You squealed, throwing the rest of the Ebay package to the side.

“LEMME SEE HER, LEMME SEE HER!!”

• Yeah ok, he can proudly admit he loves them more than you do now. It’s just the concept of them. A Living Dead Doll with an exposed brain? He wants it. One with half a face? It’s his.

• The two of you certainly don’t plan on having kids, so why not claim all your Living Dead Dolls as your children anyway?

Well, that’s the way Jerome sees it.

• Jerome was so SOOO happy finding out you’re a massive horror fan.

• Nothing beats the two of you sitting and watching some classic horror flicks, but you having merch? MERCH???

• Oh this man fucking LOVES you bro.

• Jerome sort of sees himself as your in real life Chucky. Except you’re his doll.

• Seeing both of the Chucky and Tiffany Neca replica dolls sitting in your bedroom just made him think how that’s quite literally just you and him.

• His favourite horror merchandise you have is by far your Terrifier stuff. You’ve had to buy him multiple Art hoodies because he kept trying to steal yours (despite literally not fitting into them whatsoever)

• When Terrifier 3 came out, you had to sneak him in so he could see it. Jerome was really well known even way outside of Gotham. The two of you almost got kicked out though because he kept stealing shit from the pick n mix, and was chaotically howling with laughter at anyone who started walking out of the screening room due to Art’s handiwork getting a little bit too much to handle.

• Yeah, Jerome idolises him. Badly.

• He also digs your Texas Chainsaw Massacre stuff too. Jerome’s constantly going around looking for new Leatherface things.

• He’s always picking you up cool new keychains and pins for your bags whenever he’s out on a spree. He finds most of the comic and collector’s stores so fucking expensive, that is until the owners are held at gunpoint..

• Those are the small details he finds the cutest. From a lighter with the Bride of Frankenstein on it, to a 3D vampire lip phone socket, he’s obsessed with finding this shit.

• Jerome somehow managed to have an obsession with Fugglers after seeing your black bat one. He gave his own a nose bridge piercing and multiple staples??

• This guy fucking hates Labubu’s though.

• According to him Jeremiah looks like the green Labubu.

• His beef with Labubu’s is so personal but he just hates the fact everyone stopped the love for Fugglers and switched to Labubu’s 😔

• There’s another thing you love, and it’s the Alice: Madness Returns plushies by Plushie Dreadfuls. Jerome wishes they were trending instead of those “fuckass Labubu’s” as he so kindly put it.

• But then it ended in the dumbest argument with Jervis because he claimed to be “gatekeeping” those plushies from the whole of the internet. (The games are still popular Jervis my guy, of course people want merch)

• Again with prices, Jerome is baffled by the amount of money vintage shirts go for online. Mainly band and movie tees. Which is something he knows a shit ton of people collect. And yeah… he’s influenced. He saw a Murderdolls shirt he really wanted but can he justify over ninety dollars for a shirt?

No.

But will he dox the person until he gets it?

Yes.

• Overall, Jerome is quite literally the last person you’d be embarrassed to show off your collections to. Majority of the time, he’ll snap his fingers and get his cult to show/tell him more about what it is and where he can get his hands on it for you. Either that, or this man will now fully compete with you on who likes what you collect better.

And you wouldn’t change that for the world.

i feel like this was kinda short (headcanons are supposed to be short ik I JUST YAP OK) and lacked maybe a few details but okay yeah this was more thought of for my own benefit. but y’all if you fw this or agree then yay i’ve reached the people i wanted to reach 🙏🙏

[brucebocchi]

Spring 2025 anime, Pt. 1: Ongoing/returning anime and mixed bags

hey, this post is also available on my ko-fi, so please check it out and consider tipping/donating as this is a labor of love. all of my seasonal reviews and end-of-year rankings are on my ko-fi and under my anime reviews tag, mixed in with my occasional musings. thanks!

Holy shit, I actually got one of these out on time!

Spring was an absolute banger of a season for anime, and I wound up watching way more than I expected. Before I get into the absolute gold, though, let's start off with the familiar stuff as well as the stuff that was... not as great.

As always, OP linked in the show title.

Ikuzo!

Continuing & returning anime

​​The Apothecary Diaries, season 2, second cour

One of the decade’s best anime continued into the spring season in much the same way as it did in the second half of its debut season by rewarding keen eyes and revealing mysteries that had been mounting for weeks, if not months. The Apothecary Diaries’ ability to build momentum as it connects its disparate dots is unmatched, and once again the payoff is building at mach speed.

The seeds planted in the second season’s first cour, and even a couple from the first season, are bearing fruit, and some have even cross-pollinated in unexpected ways. The previous emperor’s crimes were laid out pretty starkly in the first half of this season, and he continues to haunt the narrative as it unfolds. This season can easily be summed up by the old card that “hurt people hurt people,” and his crimes are reverberating in the actions of his survivors. It doesn’t help that some of the older ones see him in Jinshi’s beautiful face (who knows what that could mean!), and the attack on him towards the end of the first cour is starting to look like part of a much grander machination.

Maomao, meanwhile, is closer to the gears of that machine than she realizes at first, and an inconvenient but surprisingly friendly kidnapping throws her right in the middle of it. Identity and playing a role are major throughlines of the second season, and more people than just Jinshi were hiding in plain sight in Maomao’s orbit. She’s always preferred keeping to herself, but simply intuiting the truth has never been enough to prevent it from blowing up in her face. Palace intrigue was never her game, but she’s far too close to too many parts of it for it to not be her problem for much longer.

The Apothecary Diaries has been a tough show to write about following its first cour, mostly because I don’t like spoiling stuff, but also because everything I’ve been saying since its debut has held true: The cast is tremendous, the setting is enthralling, and every last little detail matters in ways you can rarely predict. It’s a wonderful soap opera, period piece, and mystery series all in one, and it’s been appointment television for me for over a year and a half now. It’s been enough of a hit that it’s being represented at Universal Studios Japan now, and it deserves every last bit of its success.

It’s also apparent that the anime adaptation has just about caught up to what the manga has adapted up to this point. Guess I’m gonna have to just go ahead and read the novels now.

Go! Go! Loser Ranger, season 2

I was pretty let down by this series’ first season, in part because my patience with its absurdly sporadic pacing never felt like it was properly rewarded. I’d anticipated more episodes than we’d gotten in 2024’s spring season, and as a result I declared a year ago that I’d reserve judgment on Loser Ranger until its second season. I went in with an open mind and reasonable expectations, and I was let down all over again. This show is a goddamn mess.

Having passed the Ranger exams in his Hibiki Sakurama disguise, Fighter D is conscripted alongside Angel into the Green squadron, much to his consternation, under the watchful eye of the temperamental, sukeban-ish Kanon Hisui. Green Keeper’s forte is stealth, which D should be ecstatic about, but it’s gonna be that much harder for him to take out Red from over there. Hisui, along with her new underlings and mercurial informant Chidori, investigate a high school that seems to be the epicenter of a string of disappearances. Instead of the truth, however, they find themselves in a Groundhog’s Day situation, trapped in a loop of an endlessly-repeating day of high school. D has to try to find a way out without divulging his true identity.

Shit completely hits the fan after this arc, in terms of both plot events and how atrociously they are portrayed. It became clear midway through the season that the studio realized there wasn’t going to be a third, so they opted to rush through dozens of chapters’ worth of material in the span of just a few episodes. The problem with this is that what we ended up with was a series of world-shattering events happening in the span of just a few minutes at a time, with zero gravity given to anything going on. The real Hibiki is back. There are kaiju everywhere now. There’s a monster liberation movement and they’re stepping in on D’s territory by threatening to expose the Dragon Keepers. D’s identity is basically out in the open now and half of the cast is just cool with it. Major character deaths, massive twists, double-crosses, a complete upending of the world as we knew it, sure why not, throw it all on the pile. We gotta get to that big epic ending somehow.

Loser Ranger’s first season already had an infuriating pacing problem, and it’s made that much more flabbergasting that this whiplash-inducing string of events comes after we’d spent basically a season’s worth of consecutive episodes between a parking garage and a high school. Major characters are relegated to side plots while others pop up at the very end like “hey remember us? We’re here too.” I stopped bothering with trying to keep up or even follow the plot, because it was clear that the people slapping this shit together did too. Everything was piled on with the purpose of giving the show some semblance of a climactic ending, which was fine, but then it had the gall to keep the door open just a crack, if only to remind us that it’s based on an ongoing manga series. The only thing that hasn’t completely scared me off from someday picking up the source material is the knowledge (or hope, call it what you want) that no manga as incompetently slapped together as Loser Ranger’s second season would have ever been successful enough to warrant an anime adaptation.

I’m not fully letting the source material off the hook, though; I do take issue with the concept of an ostensible liberation movement acting as a Trojan horse threatening to wipe out humanity; that can be read in the worst possible faith as a disgusting analogue for real-world liberation movements trying to end actual atrocities in the present day. It doesn’t help either that our protagonist jumps in and goes “hey, I think BOTH sides are bad and crazy!” Maybe it’s not something the mangaka gave much real thought to, or hey, maybe this adaptation is just so incompetent it accidentally made it look much worse than it actually is. I’m at the point where I don’t really care to find out for myself anymore.

What a letdown. I was intrigued by Loser Ranger’s premise when it debuted last year, but if I’d known going in that it would be such a slog to actually watch, I’d have saved myself the nine hours I wasted on this show. At least the OP and ED are good again.

Wind Breaker, season 2

One of 2024’s more surprising shonen hits came back with a bang this spring season, picking up exactly where the debut season bafflingly left off. The boys are back in town, and it’s time to beat some ass.

Wind Breaker’s second season picks up with Haruka and the Bofurin boys infiltrating a rival gang’s hideout to rescue a classmate’s friend who’s been extorted. He’s kicking butt like normal, but something new is holding him back: He’s starting to get hung up on the idea of his allies getting hurt. Wind Breaker has largely been the story of Haruka learning to accept that he’s wanted and cared for unconditionally, and though he’s a far cry from the angry loner he was at the start of the serie, he’s still grappling with this acceptance just as much as he would any street tough. Helping him along his journey is a senpai who has mastered the art of self-actualization: Tasuku Tsubakino, one of the school’s vaunted Four Kings and an avid fan of makeup and cute, feminine clothing. Haruka, as you can imagine, is frequently flustered.

An early Tsubaki appearance in the first season piqued my interest, but here in the second they immediately became one of my favorite things about Wind Breaker (Tsubaki’s gender identity isn’t addressed head-on; they attend an all-boys school but use the very feminine “atashi” first-person pronoun, so rather than typecast I will refer to them with gender-neutral pronouns). They are an absolute delight of a character, and far from a slouch in a fistfight. Their own journey to self-acceptance, as depicted in this season’s masterful sixth episode, runs wonderfully parallel to Haruka learning to recover from his own ostracization, even if the latter doesn’t involve lipstick and heels. If Tsubaki can become their true self by loving what they see in the mirror, surely Haruka can become what he’s meant to be by simply accepting that the people around him actually want him there.

Another unfortunate parallel to Haruka, however, rears his head towards the end of the season in the form of what looks to be the Big Bad for the foreseeable future, Yamato Endo, an ex-Bofurin ronin of sorts who takes an interest in the first-year after fanning the flames of a massive street brawl in what looks an awful lot like Kabukicho. Endo left Bofurin to pursue his own self-interests, and he recommends Haruka do the same. Though Haruka’s commitment is tested, anyone who knows him by now knows that he’s never been the type to back down. Hell, he had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from like three other fights right before that. Once again, a season ends on a “welp, here’s the new bad guy” reveal, but this season’s ending feels more like an intriguing teaser than the debut just ending at the start of the next arc for some reason.

Pacing was already an issue in Wind Breaker’s first season, and the second takes a surprisingly leisurely pace for a while. And just like the first season, the back half of this season is monopolized by an arc that lasted probably an episode too long. While the fight animation is typically great, there was enough time spent outside of fisticuffs that I started doubting whether the show’s animation was as good as I remembered it. It doesn’t help that some crowd scenes are rendered in low-quality CGI just distracting enough to remind me that this is the same studio that botched the 3D effects in the otherwise eye-popping Elusive Samurai last year. Overall, though? Can’t complain. Everyone still looks adorable, especially when they get all blobby for gag purposes, and I was just happy to spend more time with my punchy boys.

Another uneven but eminently enjoyable season for Wind Breaker is in the bag, and I’ll wait around patiently for another. This season’s lesson? Dudes don’t always have to look like dudes in order to rock.

Mixed Bags

Catch Me at the Ballpark!

I recognize that if you’re reading this far into several thousands of words’ worth of anime reviews, you likely don’t care much for sports. Maybe you only care about sports through the lens of anime; there’s plenty of great series that revolve around basketball, volleyball, boxing, and the like. I happen to love baseball a whole lot, and I love anime a whole lot, but I’m yet to find a baseball anime that really caught my eye. I bounced off of last spring’s Oblivion Battery after just a couple episodes, partly because I’d already had too many other shows to write about, and I’m yet to find one that really grabs me.

I’m not happy to report that Catch Me at the Ballpark hasn’t broken that streak, but I did like that it took a more casual approach to sports anime, and in a way that reaffirms what I love about baseball. Most sports anime tends to focus on the drama and camaraderie innate to competition, but baseball is a slower-paced spectator sport. There’s a lot of downtime, and much of the act of attending a baseball game is secondary to the on-field product. It’s more of a picnic with a few thousand friends, and I love seeing that atmosphere cross cultures. In this regard (and unfortunately just in this regard), Catch Me at the Ballpark gets it. 

It’s an ensemble slice-of-life that largely eschews the on-field action and drama in favor of the goings-on around the stadium, spanning dozens of segments following the fans, vendors, stadium workers, reporters, WAGS, mascot, and yes, the players. The fictional Chiba MotorSuns are an historically futile club with a dedicated fanbase, one of whom being the dead-eyed young salaryman Kotaro Murata, who finds refuge at the ballpark after long days of fucking up and apologizing for it. His relaxation is tempered a bit when he orders a beer from one of the roaming vendors, the rowdy gyaru Ruriko, who takes the opportunity to push his buttons. We’re left assuming this is the start of some bog-standard romcom shit, but it turns out Ruriko is just excited that she managed to talk to a customer without blowing it.

Setting us up with a ballpark Nagatoro situation is not a great start to the series, but the focus fortunately hops around to various parts of the stadium from there, showing us the ecosystem of disparate elements that come together to bring us the experience of every baseball game. Catch Me is a lovely cross-section of all the little things going on to make the day-to-day of baseball what it is, and the ways they interact with one another: The security guards help a lost child to ensure her memories of the ballpark are good ones, Ruriko advises the stadium announcer on quirky calls, and the devastatingly attractive 40-something clubhouse cook makes sure a younger player feels included and is fed properly. Sun-Shiro, the adorably plump salamander mascot, not only engages the fans but helps out just about everyone in the park with written words of encouragement, professional pointers, and sick wrestling moves. A ballpark is ultimately a community, and Catch Me’s portrayal exhibited just enough charm to keep me watching.

Although not much of the show is dedicated to the on-field action, plenty of time is spent with the players, and the ones that get more focus are pretty darn likable. The aging veteran slugger Kojiro gets a lot of screen time as a hometown hero, as well as his wife who learns to love baseball through the adoration of the Chiba crowds. My favorite is easily Dennis Young, the beefy gaijin trying not to slum it in his exile overseas after flaming out in the American majors. He’s a Chicago native wearing #34 and an ex-Cub, so I have no choice but to stan. There’s a small running subplot surrounding his commitment to the team, but I don’t care about that nearly as much as I care about him peppering his inner monologue with over-enunciated English (a gag I will always love) and horribly pronouncing basic Japanese in an awful American accent. Hell yeah, get our asses.

The moribund MotorSuns are making a push for their first-ever playoff appearance in the background of all this, and the Chiba faithful are catching that baseball fever. In addition to Kojiro’s wife, we’re watching plenty of people get swept up in the hype of the suddenly ascendant team, including a middle-school musician finding community in the cheer section, a reporter whose assigned hit piece turns into fluff, and of course Ruriko herself, who began the season not knowing shit about the sport. There are life lessons to be learned from baseball, especially in the hopeless optimism and perseverance you learn from rooting for a historically middling team, and the playoff push towards the end of the season does a solid job of portraying this. Though it may sound insane from the outside, there is genuine community to be found in a futile fandom, and it makes the eventual successes feel that much more rapturous. Again, I would know, I’m a Cubs fan.

Here’s the part where I undermine all my poetic waxing about baseball: This show just plain isn’t very good. It looks like an equally-cheap anime from 15 years ago, the voice cast is largely wasted, and the pacing is often brutal. I liked Ruriko just fine, but every segment with her and Murata was like nails on a chalkboard; they have negative chemistry and he is the biggest drip imaginable. It’s a wonder that this is from the same studio that nailed Train to the End of the World a year ago. The most praise I can heap upon any one part of Catch Me at the Ballpark unfortunately damns the rest of it, by which I mean that the ED is easily the best part of the show. “Ballpark de Shake! Don’t Shake!” is a blast of a song, if standard anime fare (I’m a sucker for opening and ending themes performed by the show’s cast, especially when Fairouz Ai is involved), and the presentation is the most eye-catching thing in the whole series. The vendor girls’ dances in front of the foamy, bubbly beer background make economic use of a limited color palette and smear frames, bringing an irresistible amount of personality that the rest of the show was sorely lacking. It looks like it was animated in Flipnote in the best of ways. It’s a shame that nothing from the preceding 22 minutes could match this energy.

So no, this isn’t the best show, but I can’t help but be romantic about baseball. I firmly maintain that beer and baseball are two of mankind’s greatest creations, and I’m pretty high on anime as well, so it’s a shame that a melding of the three didn’t quite reach the potential it could have. I do still have a soft spot for this one, but much like Heineken, the Toronto Blue Jays, and Catch Me at the Ballpark, wonderful things can still be sadly mediocre.

Lazarus

By all accounts, this should’ve broken Adult Swim’s streak of original anime misfires. All of the right pieces were in place: The programming block’s run of Cowboy Bebop during its early days cemented the series’ legendary status among western anime fans, so running it back with a shiny new Shinichiro Watanabe original was a no brainer. MAPPA, the prestige anime studio, was tabbed to produce it, with Gainax and Trigger veterans among the animation directors. Contemporary jazz stalwart Kamasi Washington (best known for playing saxophone on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly) joined electronic producers Floating Points and Bonobo for the soundtrack. Hell, they got John Wick director and former stuntman Chad Stahelski to supervise the action sequences! This had to be a slam dunk, right?

Welp.

In the not-too-distant future of 2052, three years after introducing a miracle painkiller and dropping off the face of the earth, Dr. Deniz Skinner resurfaces in a recording to confess that the drug has an unforeseen drawback: Everyone who took it will die three years after the first dose, and thanks to its popularity, humanity suddenly faces certain extinction. A mysterious woman assembles a suicide squad of sorts to track down Skinner and try to schmooze him for a cure, front and center being wisecracking prison escape artist Axel Gilberto. He and the rest of the crew of ne’er-do-wells, assigned the name Lazarus, have only 30 days to track down the reclusive doctor before the first dominoes start to fall, and they do so in an extremely roundabout way, hopping to abandoned labs, nightclubs, cult compounds, and oil rigs, en route to way too many dead ends.

Unfortunately, that synopsis makes Lazarus sound way more cohesive than it is in practice. This is Watanabe’s first show since the passing of frequent collaborator and scriptwriter Keiko Nobumoto, and her absence is groan-inducingly palpable. Lazarus exhibits some of the same freewheeling, episodic feel that helped make Bebop a classic, but at the expense of the actual overarching plot. We’re thrown to all corners of the earth for a new wacky adventure every week, but each one is a dead end on the quest to, apparently, save all of humanity in just a month. I cannot believe how much time this show wastes fucking around. If it weren’t for the “X days until extinction” card at the end of every episode, it’d be pretty easy to forget that this show is supposed to be a race against the clock.

Seriously, it doesn’t feel like anything actually happens in Lazarus, even though I saw stuff happen with my own eyes across 13 episodes. It seems to trade entirely in vibes, and while the vibes are lovely, it seems to be the only thing this show has going for it. Everyone is well-designed, the animation is gorgeous, the action scenes are (mostly) exceptionally choreographed, and the soundtrack is lovely, but all of it feels like it’s in service of precisely nothing. Watanabe’s never been for a lack of Something to Say, and he’s been open about the story’s conception being rooted in the opioid crisis in the US, but everything seems to be lip service with little if any actual thought put in. Little things peppered throughout like crypto traders being accurately portrayed as sleazy dirtbags, AI fanatics being in a literal cult, nods to the human cost of climate change, and the matter-of-fact inclusion of a trans character are all things designed to make a lefty sicko like me go “hell yeah” (and I did), and nothing more. I gave Lazarus the benefit of the doubt that maybe this was all headed somewhere, that all these dead ends and red herrings were placed intentionally to lead us to a sensible conclusion, and it turns out I gave it way too much credit. Every attempt at pathos and meaningful character beats falls flat because these characters do not fundamentally exist outside of their names and faces. I was completely stone-faced by the finale. Lazarus is a whole lot of beautiful nothing.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind that only the English dub was available each time a new episode dropped, but I wasn’t crazy about this dub in particular. I wasn’t immediately familiar with any of the names in the dub cast, but they had more anime chops than I’d initially realized. There’s a good amount of Oshi no Ko, My Hero Academia, and even the rebooted Urusei Yatsura in there. I also didn’t realize that Chris’ voice actress, Luci Christian, voices Nami in One Piece and Yukari in Azumanga Daioh. I owe you an apology, queen, I was not familiar with your game. None of this really matters, though, because the voice direction is no bueno. Everyone speaks in a disaffected, languid tone, like they were purposely directed to emulate the old Bebop dub. Combined with the laid-back pacing, the vibey soundtrack, and the weirdly staccato rhythm of the dialogue to match the animated lip flaps, the aural element of the English-dubbed version threatens to turn Lazarus into televised Ambien. The real shame of it is that the Japanese cast is exceptional (Mamoru Miyano, Maaya Uchida, Makoto Furukawa? Say less), but I have no desire to go back and sit through this nonsense again just to hear it.

If there is one area where I have to give Jason DeMarco credit as an anime producer, it’s that he frequently nails the musical aspects of the otherwise mediocre series he manifests (Mori Calliope in last year’s Suicide Squad Isekai notwithstanding). If you can’t get Yoko Kanno back for a spiritual follow-up to Cowboy Bebop, you can do several orders of magnitude worse than Kamasi Washington. But a jazz virtuoso isn’t enough to save Lazarus from the growing heap of disappointing crap bearing DeMarco’s name, and we can’t keep blaming it all on Zaslav. I praised last year’s Metallic Rouge by comparing it positively to Watanabe’s work before promptly ripping it to shreds for being an overwrought nothingburger of a series, and here I am 15 months later calling an actual Watanabe work the same thing. I think I would have enjoyed this show more if it flat-out sucked.

Maybe it’s on me for biting on another lousy Adult Swim original anime for the third year in a row. Bring me my Fell For It Again Award. I look forward to doing this again in 2026.

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX

I probably shouldn’t have tasked myself with reviewing this one. I’m the dreaded new-gen Gundam fan who’s only seen G-Witch. I promised myself I’d watch the old ‘79 series (or at least the compilation movies), but I followed a baker’s dozen series this season and work full time. So here I am, up shit creek with naught but a dunce cap, trying to write about a series that expects me to be intimately familiar with Universal Century canon.

Set in an alternate UC 0085 where Zeon won the One Year War thanks to Char Aznable finding the OG White Gundam first and then disappearing, GQuuuuuuX largely follows disaffected high schooler Amate, who stumbles upon a prototype Gundam (guess what it’s called!) in the middle of a Zeon hunt for Char’s suddenly-resurfaced Gundam, and commandeers it. You can probably guess that she’s a Newtype and thus able to pilot it perfectly, but this gets her caught up with a group of junkers who decide to use her talents and newfangled machinery in an illegal mech fighting ring. She befriends the guarded war refugee Nyaan and mysterious pilot Shuji, who seems to have a deep metaphysical connection with Char’s Gundam, and takes part in these battles alongside Shuji, while the very-much-alive (and now much handsomer) Challia Bull keeps a close eye on their team in his search for the Red Comet.

Sooooo, this one is kind of all over the place. There was plenty of classic Gundam stuff packed into here with the clear intention of making longtime fans point at the screen like Rick Dalton, so maybe it’s on me for going into this for the original story. I like Amate and Nyaan just fine, and there is a decent dynamic between them that threatens to complicate future proceedings when shit inevitably hits the fan (my condolences to everyone who got yuri-baited), but for a show ostensibly about them, GQuuuuuuX isn’t exactly about them. I was of the understanding that Gundam’s strength was always in its character writing and interpersonal drama, and while it doesn’t exactly go all “Wow! Cool robot!” on us instead, I get the feeling that this show isn’t about much more than Gundam itself.

I knew going in that I probably needed to know more about the UC, and I would’ve probably skipped it ordinarily, but GQuuuuuuX is a pretty special production: Sunrise teamed up with Hideaki Anno’s Studio Khara for this production, tapped Diebuster and FLCL director Kazuya Tsurumaki to run the show, grabbed Evangelion mech designer Ikuto Yamashita to design the new Gundams, and even had Anno himself contribute some scripts and a storyboard. Having Take, the character designer for the last three generations of Pokémon games, design the new characters didn’t hurt either (some of them straight up look like Pokémon characters, and in motion they almost looked like they were ripped right out of Gurren Lagann). This is a wealth of talent with a ton of obvious love for the Gundam franchise, and it shows: It looks and sounds terrific at nearly every turn (save for the overdesigned CGI mechs, which would look right at home in the Eva Rebuilds), and just about every part of this series that deals with legacy Gundam, particularly in flashbacks, looks ripped right out of the ‘79 series, right down to the pink-and-yellow explosions. With the exception of the suddenly silver-fox-y Challia Bull, the classic Zeon characters themselves look on-model from their original designs too, which is a wild departure from Take’s rounded, colorful designs.

This contrast is neat, and it goes a long way towards underscoring the talent and love that went into this production, but it also exemplifies my main issue with it: I think GQuuuuuuX has an identity crisis. I’d say it’s caught between the past and the present, but as it went further along it struck me that it’s so fixated on the past that the present suffered as a result. Why am I supposed to care about these teenagers when the show makes it clearer and clearer that it’s pretty much all about Char, Zeon, and the OYW? In what universe does the love triangle matter when Shuji barely qualifies as a character? The common criticism of G-Witch was that it would have benefited from a longer runtime, and while the 13 episodes GQuuuuuuX got is especially short for a Gundam series, I don’t know how much it would’ve helped for there to be more of it. No matter how much more focus the series could’ve given to Amate, Nyaan, or even Shuji, all roads led back to the UC. Getting a better feel for the new characters would’ve only made the bonkers climax feel even more jarring and further disconnected from them.

I don’t know if going into this as a Gundam casual makes my observations fairer or just worse-informed, but it felt to me what it was probably like to watch the last hour of Avengers Endgame having only seen a few MCU movies up to that point. I was hoping this would be an interesting on-ramp to the larger Gu​ndam canon, as some people insisted it would be, but I just felt left out a lot of the time. I didn’t want nor expect to be spoonfed a half-century’s worth of lore, but to the uninitiated, GQuuuuuuX’s over-the-top degree of fanservice largely feels masturbatory, like walking in on a circlejerk I wasn’t invited to. I’m sure this reads completely differently if you’re a UC stan, just as sure as I am that there’s an alternate dimension out there somewhere where I’m unambiguously gushing over this show. I can see this one being a huge inflection point for longtime fans.

Either way, I’m still probably gonna buy a GQuuuuuuX Gunpla when it comes out. Cool robot.

[transmothman69]

Random Aventurine Headcanons

Just a quick disclaimer; these are just my opinions and are not canon in any way, so don't take them too seriously 😭

Now, have a handful of my Aventurine HCs. There's 10 of them, and they're just general ones, nothing too angsty or heavy aside from mentions of his past (also, look how perfect he is. I love this pic.)

1. He loves caffeine and its effects but not the bitter flavor of coffee or espresso, so he's always rolling up to work with one of those really sweet specialty drinks.

He's also constantly changing what drink he orders, so no one can ever predict what he's going to show up with. Sometimes, he makes his employees concerned because he'll just be sipping on this bright, radioactive looking drink with a shit ton of espresso in it (kinda like the shamrock macchiato from dunkin).

2. He loves giving/making gifts to people he cares about. For people like clients, business partners, and "friends," he gives them gifts like credits, expensive sweets, just polite catch-all gifts that have no real thoughts or consideration behind them; things that everyone would like. He doesn't really find joy in giving these gifts.

However, for people he truly cares about, he will listen to every word they say in order to deduce the best possible gift. Since the Sigonia link rope states that the Avgins were meticulous craftsmen (I'm assuming that if they made the Knots of Cyclicality so well, then their craftsmanship didn't stop there), I also think that Aventurine would try his hand at making things for people if he's especially close to them. I think he would get kinda nervous when actually giving the gifts, though (especially if it's something he made himself). I feel like he's insecure and doubts himself a lot when it comes to his close relationships.

3. Aventurine has a sleeper build. That man is way stronger than people give him credit for. He had to kill the other slaves in the labyrinth with only the chains around his wrists while he was most likely malnourished, dehydrated, and wounded in order to prove his luck. Adrenaline can only do so much, so I highly doubt he's weak by any means.

I think people around Aventurine- much like a majority of the fandom- perceive him as physically weak when he's not using his cornerstone, since he's not that tall and he doesn't appear well-built. Others probably get surprised when they see him use a lot of strength because of this.

4. He's a very hard worker, and he's prone to overworking himself, especially if something is upsetting him. He's very good at hiding when something is bothering him due to his past, but when he starts working a ton of overtime, it becomes easy to tell. He does this to tire himself out so he can avoid thinking about whatever troubles him, and he usually continues on this path until he burns himself out and is forced to confront what's upsetting him.

5. He sucks at driving and doesn't enjoy it at all. He likes car rides, feeling the wind through his hair, and just vibing while listening to music, but he hates being the driver. He has his license, but he doesn't like using it, so he either uses public transport or hired a driver just so he can get around without the inconvenience of driving.

He also really hates traffic. He already doesn't like standing in line, so traffic is way worse to him because he can't just pay people in the other cars to let him cut in front of them.

6. He's good with kids. I think he's one of those people who are like, "Kids are fine, I guess," but then he interacts with children, and all of them absolutely love him. He's gentle with them, plays with them if they want, and only really scolds them if they do something that could get them hurt. He also treats them with respect, like actual people, instead of just extensions of their parents to order around. I think his dynamic with kids is similar to how his sister treated him when she was still alive, so interacting with children is bittersweet for him because it brings back memories.

7. He's the messiest sleeper in the cosmos. Aventurine tosses and turns, snores, drools on the pillow, and always wakes up to at least one corner of his fitted sheet popped off. Half the time, if he falls asleep using his phone, it gets so tangled in his sheets that he has to pull the blankets off of the bed and shake them until his phone falls out. If he's sharing a bed with someone and trusts them enough to fall into a deep sleep, they are 100% getting accidentally slapped, kicked, or partially laid on.

8. He's very fidgety. Sitting still makes him feel restless, so he's always doing something to move around. He paces in his office, plays with his coin, clicks pens, bounces his leg, and taps his foot. Trying to sit quietly in a room with him would be a nightmare unless he's occupied, focused on something, or just really tired.

The only thing that tends to properly ground him and make him calm down enough to stay still is physical touch, but that's a double-edged sword. Due to his past, a touch from the wrong person can be problematic, and there's not many that he trusts enough to touch or soothe him, so he doesn't usually reach a state of calmness and stillness.

9. He has a lot of impulsive and intrusive thoughts. These range from impulsive and harmless things like going on an online shopping spree or dying the tips of his hair to more intrusive and potentially dangerous ideas, like shoving his hand in a pot of boiling water, hurting himself in other ways, or harming others.

His impulsive thoughts don't bother him too much, but the intrusive ones nag at him a lot even though he knows they're not his fault.

10. He wishes he had the opportunity to go to college and have a formal education. He knows he could've done it if he had the privilege and the opportunity, but that was never afforded to him, so he tries not to dwell on it.

He doesn't even know if he would choose to go to college if he had the chance, doesn't know what major he would pick or what extracurricular stuff he would do, but he wishes it had been an option. It ties back to how he wonders how life would've turned out for him if he had any semblance of normalcy- a stable home planet, a living family, the chances and opportunities that people in less oppressive situations had been given-, but he always just pushes those thoughts aside and refuses to consider them, knowing it wasn't a possibility for him and never would be.

-------

I hope you guys enjoyed my thoughts! These headcanons are dedicated to @mysteriaqueen who encouraged me to post these. I would've just forgotten about this app if it wasn't for this kind stranger. I hope these live up to your expectations :)

God, I haven't written anything like this in years. I really hope these are good 😭

[jazeswhbhaven]

Agares Origin Story Event: Hidden Lore | React/Summary Spoilers Didn't see the first react? -> Peep here! TW ahead: mentions of childhood abuse/trauma/violence and self-harm/descriptive gore

Alright y'all we're done with this event and there's been so many things revealed here that really brings it all into perspective about Agares and Belphie's impact on Niflheim (even though this was mostly about our orange lovin' royalty bby in the first place)

Grab yourself a drink and a snacky snack and let's get into it!

So as we left off in the last react, Agares had returned after a day of cleaning up Niflheim to the massacre of Vassago's clan and seeing Vassago still alive but barely breathing. Agares had a new mission now, and it was hellbent on getting back at those who dared to hurt devils who were merely minding their business.

I can just imagine the smell y'all....like I've driven passed a sanitation plant and a landfill before and man it stunk to high hell. Now imagine rotting garbage mixed in with someone just spraying like air freshener trying to cover it up but all it does is mix in with the stank 💀

Lmao he's literally ready for shit to hit the fan which oh man it's definitely about to go down....

So the royals were inside saying that since the stepmother's new son was on the throne instead there would be in order once again. Well...think again idiots because Agares came in flingin' bodies left and right...

Now this was something interesting that I noticed when reading. The royals were viewing Vassago as not how we and Agares see him, but as different horrific apparitions. Now this is something I'll go back to later in this react but for now...

Yeah, everyone is pretty much wondering why Agares is still standing. Was the assassin that much of a lousy shit that he didn't do his job correctly or? Either way everyone was only focused on the main thing, Agares' appearance had changed. No longer reminiscent of that beauty they once knew, or even mimicking that of a angel's beauty, but the face monster that THEY created.

So, we now get to the part of how he got that scar in the first place. What I originally predicted was that he lost his eye due to a major battle or from the angels coming down and attacking Niflheim. Nope.

He slashed his own eye, nothing more than a mere trick spearheaded by his stepmother and political enemies in order to get others to distrust him and throw him out as a child...unable to defend himself and had to go years with doubt about his heritage.

Vassago asks permission to grant his wish of fulfilling Agares' true vengence against the blood that was spilled. With this, he changes into a sword (the same blade we see in his artifact) and Agares begins to cut everyone down.

now when I tell you the descriptive writing of the blood carnage was possibly better than the smut? idk that's my opinion lol I feel the writer went all in on this.

I mean Agares literally grabbed a devil, slit his eyelids open, and had him crawl to the exit through the severed limbs of the other devils inside the mansion. Like...all reason is gone from this man.

Even to the point where he's mad at the slain clan, saying that they "betrayed" him, said that they would stay by his side to see him become King. I mean Agares is going through a lot right now, but I was like just

what are they suppose to do Agares bby, they're dead 😭

Gotta love more of that descriptive gore writing. Because gawddamn.

It also appears that he spared the soldiers/guards of the carnage being spilled. They just sat there and watched, pissing themselves and not even bothering to do anything. This truly shows that Agares is that powerful of a devil. If he's not the King, he's definitely worthy of being one of the 72 nobles.

He then tells Vassago to take the devils who aren't dead just yet, cut off their limbs, stitch wings on their bodies and send a message to Heaven. A simple warning to whatever angel dared to scheme this plan to bring him down...

It's on.

And obviously without any fight from anyone and well...he pretty much killed most of everyone in the mansion, Agares takes the throne. All the royals and nobles who were there before? Nada.

At least he still prefers the tastes of his oranges...peel and all (which I was learning earlier in the year that yes the oranges can be eaten with the peel on as it's edible...but I mean I don't like oranges anyway because of the pulp texture but the flavor/juice is fine!)

So as word travels around Niflheim of what occurred that day when Agares sliced and diced everyone, it has me believe that he allowed those soldiers to gossip...as all it did was just instill fear in everyone and to not challenge him...ever unless they wanted the same thing done to them.

Also, there were some who got away but that was taken care of very swiftly. He had Vassago do that, creeping in the shadows and takin' 'em down. Taking out the "trash".

And what's more is that this little clean up of his only took a week. Man works hard when he's on a mission.

He's still upset that he didn't get to pay back the clan, he made it to the throne but they weren't there to see it. He instead asks Vassago what it is that he wants and he'd get it done for him. Vassago's wish was already fulfilled when Agares rose to the throne. And with that...Agares asks him to leave.

Now we're back to the present again, where the gossiping devils are arguing about how Vassago should have not considered leaving at all or maybe Agares said that on purpose just to hear Vassago beg to stay.

They even called him the "exhaustin' girlfriend" if he was just trying to test Vassago's loyalty. I laughed because lmaooooo Agares does seem like the type.

Hires someone to flirt with you to see if you'd cheat and gets mad about it even if you didn't cheat

And so the two of them kept cleanin' up Niflheim, but I mean you can only do so much when there's THAT much damn trash. Also, Vassago and Agares were well known by the other Kings due to those rumors spreading around but they respected the borders and did nothing about it. (Interesting take....hm, makes sense though!)

Then, there's a shift to where our Niflheim boys are talkin' amongst themselves. Here it's Bathin that brings up that even though all of this happened to Agares and that Belphie is still the King of Niflheim, he didn't just take the role away from Agares just because.

And we know that's true, as we remember in one of Beel's events that the Kings get chosen at random by God himself, or in the event like Mammon's father and Mammon Jr, the throne was just simply passed down to him. Again, later we will go over more about Belphie's role and his agreement with Agares...

The real monster had yet to open its eyes yet....

He's so distressed....I just wanna massage his shoulders and give him forehead kisses.

Agares is truly torn. He had those intense feelings of hatred, pure wrath, power he's never shown before and yet he didn't feel any greatness of being a King. Then who could it be??

whelp... before that

Agares' message was clear and the angels bombarded that country over and over. They would make sure that Niflheim would never stand again.

And Agares was fighting these battles til near death each and every time. The grueling training methods he had the remaining devils go through were not for shits and giggles, and they realized that very quickly and had some form of respect for Agares in this way. They couldn't complain if these methods kept them alive, right?

The devils go to talk about how the other lands have themselves a proper "king" and that there was a "king" on the land of trash that opened his eyes once and then disappeared (lmao) so they just learned to accept Agares for what he is. A "monster" of a King.

But then we get Granddaddy Solomon mentions again! Apparently he's met Agares and made a deal with him????

wonder what that was....

like real talk I don't like these small crumbs of Solomon lore and then no explanation of what he did in that moment specifically pertaining to a devil who isn't even one of the main 7. Like PLS just give something more than "Solomon did this cryptic thing with said devil and went poof"

Anyways, we go into a small spiel of Agares reflecting everything he's done thus far. In order to get stronger, accomplished, clean up all the trash in his life and in the mansion...but the ones he's slain were always in the back of his mind, these hallucinations haunting him getting him to doubt himself all over again.

Even the words of Vassago are starting to just go through in ear and out the other, Agares far too gone now to even see reason or even want to rest or sleep. He had to be on guard, whether the devils in Niflheim were out to test him again or the angels reigning down their fire.

But...was he ready for this?

A darkness he had never seen before, a storm raging, a beast stirring and waking up once again...

Sorry...um I'll finish up here in a bit didn't mean to be so LOUD 😔

AHEM

This brings me back btw to where this guy was only flutter his damn eyelashes and it was causing earthquakes and explosions like excuse me???

THIS WAS CUTE LIKE. I think others here including myself had this theory where it was actually Beel that was coming around and piercing Belphie and such just randomly because there's no way he did those himself. Imagine Beel being so quick and swift he can just stab a hole in your body and poof away into the nothingness....

Lol

Beleth reminisces with the others, talking about how he almost died when he first met him (he in fact did almost die lmao all because he was giving Belphie pushback at first)

Belphie straight up just took his halo, enlisted Bathin and Gusion, Andrealphus too (who isn't present in this event but we all pretty much know where he goes). And they went together in their badass group photo to take down Agares

There we go! (blast from the past, the first Niflheim event)

But yes all three of them can recall just how they felt when in the presence of Belphie. They just knew just by looking at him that they were meant to fight alongside him, serve him, the true King's resonance with his nobles. Beleth event compares it to how he felt in Heaven, that feeling of "faith" deep in his soul.

Now in the meantime, the three notice that it's suddenly quiet and they find out that the slackers had stopped talking and now were begging for forgiveness for slacking off....as guard duty???? Lmao

But Beleth does admit that even though that's punishable, especially considering these devils are under Agares and he'd probably damn near beat them to death for gossiping about his past...they were eavesdropping anyway so he doesn't really care.

But Beleth goes on to tell the rest of the story, and we're back to after Belphie showed his true form, pretty much scared the fuck out of everyone and Agares called it, knowing he was outmatched

Pretty Please... ianslfkjnasjfnaskjnaksj I won't forget him saying that...

Also just look at the comparsion between Belphie and Agares real quick. Agares is like a royal, poised, demure but a little bit crazy from that trauma. Belphie? Chillin'. That's it. Like he literally just threw on his clothes barely tied it together and was like "damn it's loud"

Love him. Need him.

But it's strange here how he promises this to Agares, that after all his plans are done, Agares can be King...

Crying. He really is just a hot otaku gooner. (words i'd never use as a compliment toward any man irl)

So Agares was rightfully pissed off asking him why'd he even bother to show up in the first place. And truth is? It's too damn loud and he can't sleep. The angels are making a racket, he wants to kill all of them so it's quiet again and he can just sleep and do those other activities without having to be bothered. Doesn't care about peace, ending the war none of that.

He just wants silence.

agares: this bitch.....

LMAO

Agares accepted his offer to take things over once the war with the angels is completely eradicated. But I mean considering this shit has been going on for years now even with MC being back, let's get to hoping that actually comes to pass so Agares can take over the throne again.

BUT WE"RE NOT DONE YET

Beleth goes on to mumble to himself that there was one more thing that happened that day too...

So not only did Belphie hold Vassago back to talk to him more, he literally stabs him in the foot, and then gives us this ??????

Unmasked Vassago!!!

So turns out...big lore drop. Vassago ain't even real y'all.

An interesting detail is how he speaks, it's like he's using multiple voices all at once. The voices of his 'clan'. Vassago is a golem, a desperate wish in Agares' mind. Meaning that he literally manifested him during all of that trauma, and when he had hit his lowest point of being poisoned by that orange given to him that's when Vassago and the others appeared.

And then we go a little deeper, after it's clear that Vassago and Belphie have met an agreement that neither of them will tell Agares that he isn't real (that man would crash out I swear) because he simply isn't ready yet, we now have Beleth who has genuine concern about the entire ordeal.

Back when Belphie first used his powers, Vassago was perceived as a shapeless monster, but after being swallowed by the darkness he retained his form. This truly shows just how powerful Belphie is, because he's literally using his power to keep Agares' manifestation alive. His true intentions for doing so? Probably because it's easier to deal with it that way than deal with a rampaging triggered Agares because Vassago suddenly just stopped existing....a phantom that has been keeping him sane (for the most part)

It's funny though that during this part Beleth is like treating Belphie like his wife or something like that being like "Don't use your power just use mine, you need to save it for other things" and Belphie is like "yah mhm zzzzzz"

They're cute.

So thus, the conclusion of this gut wrenching, heart stomping lore filled event. And now it's time to address the things I mentioned earlier in the react...

🍊Others on how they see Vassago: He's a phantom so he has the ability to take whatever shape you see him as. This tracks. Of course Agares would see him as this beautiful similar looking devil that has elegance close to what a royal noble should have

🍊This means that Vassago and his clan are pretty much all made up and phantoms manifested into living devils who had the ability to keep him safe and be able to interact in this world. Meaning that the death that Agares saw that day was most likely due to the assassin sent down to tear up the place he was staying trying to find him, the debris crushed Vassago which caused the other apparitions to fall suit, that is////(theory time: Vassago couldn't be seen by the assassin who did in fact tear up the place, but Vassago depcited the death of his "clan" to give Agares the push he needed to go up to the palace and become King)

🍊Agares is truly alone from his previous family and the devils who stayed there before the newer generations. Vassago is quite literally the only thing in his life that he has

🍊Belphie's powers are definitely on another scale, and he doesn't even use much effort to use it. Truly, these events keep showing us the true power of the Kings in their own special ways and it's only a matter of time...before it all comes together on how it's going to help MC stop this war

I'm actually not sure of what else I wanted to touch on...? I think I may have forgotten something along the way but I'll edit this post if need be if I did lol. As usual thank y'all for stickin' through it readin' my stuff and interactions are always appreciated. This event was pretty lore heavy and I enjoyed it for the most part! I'm really looking forward to any Abaddon events in the future...I wanna learn more about Asmo now.

[rowanthefierce]

brief serious post that may not get as much attention as my off the cuff posts. i have called three of the three major deaths in season two so far. there is a certain language of death in storytelling, i think...the way you can see the specter of the reaper lay a hand on the character's shoulder -- it is not a bad thing for death to be predictable, in fact i think it can make it better because you are waiting for the other hand to land on the other shoulder. when will it happen? why will it happen?

and in a show like andor when someone dies it is to say something. tay kolma dies because he must, because mon mothma must understand, must see firsthand, that the nascent rebellion cannot have rubble in its foundations. brasso dies because the empire is relentless, the empire hunts without remorse, the empire will find you, even when you seem to have all the big guns on your side. and why did cinta die? well i think to spite me personally. but also because someone didn't listen. because the rebellion is still fractured and fragmented and developing. and people don't listen, and when we do not listen, we were are not 100% on the same page about what ACTUALLY matters, shit gets fucked. we destroy ourselves.

[dovelesss]

This game sure seems familiar...

L to R

With Arisu being a gamer, I'd like to think that he has played danganronpa before.

Some DR artstyle doodles and yapping under the cut

So, idk if I'll make this into a fully fledged au but I might doodle some more and see where it takes me. But here's what I have for this already.

Arisu is the protag, because it wouldn't make sense otherwise. He gets to be the ult gamer unless I can think of something better. Though I think a Naegi situation would be fun but instead of Arisu becoming the ultimate hope, he becomes the ultimate hearts player, or something. He's pretty damn good at navigating the trials, but usually is his own worst enemy due to overthinking or blaming himself. Uses his known knowledge of the games to help him reason as well. Probably had some half petrified half awestruck response to monokuma.

In this au, this danganronpa game would replace the canon 10 of hearts. I know that would make this kinda predictable, but I mainly wouldn't want to kill off characters that have major roles with the face card games. For everyone being an ultimate, they could be injected with something at the start that the game says "strengthens their ultimate". Which, of course is not possible but, danganronpa logic. It can placebo effect some people though. That'd be interesting to use in a trial.

Usagi would be the ult climber and Arisu's support. But in the emotional area, such as talking him down. Pulling him out of his mind when Arisu inevitably blames himself for every person that dies. He will. She also will probably be a suspect at some point and Arisu nearly breaks down because he thinks it's Usagi. Ofc it's not her but, he gets to spiral first.

Chishiya is the little shit antag. He starts as the ult ??? of the game and it gets revealed later that he's the ult doctor. Mainly because he doesn't want people to know about him and the profiles dont show the ults ig. But ofc he uses it to scheme and mess with the other players. He's probably pretty good at investigating and will likely figure out who the blackened is before everyone else. He's not going to tell people shit though. Maybe something offhand to Kuina that triggers an argument in the trial. He immediately notices how Arisu is leading the trials and finds it interesting which is the main reason Chishiya even kinda helps in the trials at all. Other than not wanting to die with the group if they get it wrong ofc. Chishiya lacks the charisma that Arisu has to convince the entire room if he speaks up regardless so, if he can get Arisu to the same conclusion he's at, the trial will progress. That, and according to Chishiya, everyone else there is an idiot. He doesn't want to talk to them anyway. He also just, sits down during the trials. He runs with his hands in his pockets, he's not going to stand for a full trial.

Niragi would be the ult video game engineer and this of course, confuses the hell out of everyone. He's still aggressive as hell, he's still Niragi after all. But that means he's also smart. So he knows better to go against the rules. I'd like to think he's the one to try to break monokuma at the start and gets injured from it. He's a diamonds player, but maintaining his dangerous personality would make for him to be an interesting secondary antagonist.

Kuina would be either the ult martial artist or ult stylist. Or she can be assigned the first but say she's the stylist in her heart (bless). Probably heavily debates killing someone if a motive pertains to hurting her mom but either doesn't succeed or gets talked out of it. Likely similar to Aoi or Akane survivor status.

As for other characters, I'd likely add Tatta, Momoka, Asahi, Hatter, Last Boss, Aguni, and Ann. Otherwise I don't have too much an idea on who to slap in to fill out the rest of the cast cuz uh, not that many more characters from the beach that I can slap in here. Plus anyone bonus would be obvious cannon fodder, I already have too many survivors, and I don't really want to put in ocs. I'm already going to have to likely pull some bs someone survives an execution type of beat so. Maybe it's just a shorter killing game. I could have the clear condition be "find the in game mastermind" and have it have a similar solution to the show. If the blackened is successful they could just, let them out of the game grounds but you wouldn't get any visa days or something. So, in reality, it wouldn't help any of them, but of course that isnt stated and none of them know that.

If y'all have ideas y'all're welcome to toss em at me. I'd love to just, yap about this. I'm having fun just kinda, thinking about how this would work out, ya know? Hope if ya read that block o' text ya enjoyed it! Under is the quick rough sketch of the comic on my phone. Hope y'all're vibin!

[hkthatgffan]

What are your thoughts on the Pines parents? Particularly since the reveal of them having marital issues in TBOB?

I'm pretty conflicted tbh. Part me finds the revelation interesting and a pretty insane new layer to add on to the show's established canon, but I also feel like it could be another case of Gravity Falls fans taking flour and trying to predict what kind of buffet Alex is cooking.

In the case for the assumption this is hinting at the twin's parents having marriage issues and going towards say, a divorce, we have small hints in series that could be assumed as that, from Dipper's initial worry of leaving Mabel alone in Cali without him, Mabel's own fears of growing up without Dipper and the future itself, the abruptness as it sounds of them being sent to Gravity Falls, etc.

Of course, we also have the fact that Alex Hirsch's parents themselves are divorced IRL and him and Ariel grew up with their mom. And as they both are the inspiration for Dipper and Mabel, this can be a case of Alex hinting at that and adding another element of his life to them.

It course also somewhat goes counter to his past statements about how we never really are gonna learn anything about the twin's parents, because he doesn't see them as characters we need to know about as the story is focused on the twin's in Summer with Stan and Ford (I mean, all we initially knew was that their dad worked with computers and got Mabel's night shirt at a Windows 95 event, lol). So, adding this to the pot does feel like a pretty major change in direction.

That said, on the other hand, it could just be that...marriage issues the two of them are working to fix. Perhaps they sent the twins away while they sought couples therapy or something to mend things before the kids got back. We can also make the assumption Dipper may have overheard something that he mistook as being more serious than it was.

I say this from personal experience. I've often overheard arguments or pretty heated stuff my parents were yelling about that I probably was not supposed to hear or assumed the wrong thing about and it left me worried about if well...you know. Thankfully that never was the case and as I've gotten older I've come to better understand that sometimes parents fight but they can resolve things on their own in time. Though as kids, that shit can scare you, especially someone at Dipper's age. And while not all parents probably can resolve those matters the same way, it's always a possibility worth assuming here, especially with the little info we know. I mean, Bill said "Why do you think they were in such a rush to get the kids out the door for the summer?" It sounds like he's asking us fans to make our own guess on that.

And speaking of Bill...there's the Bill factor to consider too. Remember, who wrote this?

BILL CIPHER! And Bill is about as reliable a source for accurate info as the US government or Doug Ford is when it comes to Line 5 or why he REALLY closed the Science Centre (IYKYK).

Many fans doubt the truthfulness of what Bill said in the book. So, he could just be making this up and Dipper may never have had that dream to begin with. Of course, it would be weird for Alex to make a book full of lies about the show, but then...this is Alex Hirsch we're talking about.

Personally, I believe Dipper did have this nightmare and he overheard something intense. But as to what it's alluding to...I'm not sure.

I think this is another case of Alex Hirsch leaving the question open ended. What's up with the twin's parents? That's for us fans to decide.

If you believe they're divorcing, you can. If you think it's nothing and Dipper is over-worrying about an argument his parents had, you can. And if you think it's BS and Bill made it up, you can too.

That's again the beauty of Gravity Falls leaving itself open ended. Every headcanon and theory is possible. I mean, fans believed for years Bill was in Stan's mind till this very book killed that theory off for good.

Maybe in several years if Alex decides to, he'll expand on this plot point and answer the question once and for all. But for now, what the deal with Dipper and Mabel's parents is, will remain...

[tawked]

The Batman Always Wins effect is so funny tbh.

I don't care about power levels or who would win bullshit because I understand that comic books work exactly like wrestling. Which character wins a fight is based on absolutely nothing other than which one is the presumed bigger financial draw. Black Canary beats Shiva and becomes the bestest fighter in the DC universe because Black Canary moves books, Lady Shiva does not.

If you think you're liable to net more Batman fans, Batman wins. And they always think that they're going to catch more Batman fans because DC lives in the delusion that Batman fans read comics other than Batman, which is, I mean - is this even a thing Batman fans want to read? Batman beats up everybody? Batman kills the Marvel universe? I'm a Batman fan and I find this shit exhausting.

So, as a result, Batman wins every single fight with another superhero or adjacent character, all the time always and forever.

Of course Batman effortlessly beats up all of the turtles and even drives Splinter off all without breaking a sweat, dude. He's Batman.

The irony is, this is the kind of thing Eastman & Laird would've written in the 80s as a joke at Frank Miller's expense, but

It's such a weird vibe. Like,

OK. Sure. I want to briefly reflect on how their first fight with Shredder went when they were introduced in 1984, though.

They kick his ass, "kill" him, and all of the drama that follows in their life is a consequence of this.

"You're comparing Mirage turtles and IDW turtles! Those are different turtles!" Girl I know. I know the IDW turtles do not instantly beat Shredder. I'm going somewhere with this.

The whole narrative of the Mirage TMNT, once it takes form and the writers work out its flow, is that they have to deal with the consequences of being raised as essentially child soldiers in Splinter and Shredder's ninja turf war. This becomes part of the substance of the IDW line as well, albeit with a different Splinter who, under the right conditions, becomes much more like the Mirage Splinter. The whole thing becomes this fascinating deconstruction of Batman, Daredevil's Stick, Wolfman's New Teen Titans, and the New Mutants. The "Teenage Mutant" element of TMNT was directly inspired by and is in reference to the New Mutants, actually.

The way that cooks, both in Mirage and IDW, and as is deconstructed in The Last Ronin, is that these kids grow up in the shadow of their childhoods. In Mirage, this is imo done best, because they fucking kill that dude on their first major night out and have to sit with that, which becomes the basis of their whole familial drama during their expulsion from and return to New York, the best arc of comics period.

And that kind of storytelling becomes impossible if the writers are uncomfortable with letting the relationship be anything but one-sided. You can't cook complex tension if Batman's interactions with these other crossover characters are always so predictably one-sided. You can see the predictable team-up against a greater enemy (the Shredder) coming, you can see Batman condescending to these unruly kids in a kinda shallow reflection of his arcs with the various Robins, blah blah blah, instead of the more interesting conflict that could have been if they just let Batman be actually challenged by this weird new threat he doesn't understand in Gotham. But that'd mean showing Batman, the cash cow, getting kicked in the face by a Ninja Turtle, and wouldn't that alienate the hypothetical illiterate Batman fan egregore DC editorial seems to think exists?

It's just,

John Cena wins lol.

[ananke-xiii]

Some speculations about the power of stories, cycles and karma and... Boyd.

***FROM spoilers (although it's mainly just my predictions lol)***

One of the things that I like about FROM is how they use different forms of art to help people remember things about their past.

Miranda used paintings so that she could remember and so does her son, Victor, who draws so that the pictures would remember for him. And it's precisely his sister's drawings that help him remember what he had removed.

Then, there's music, obviously, that make Tabitha and Jade remember not exactly their lived past but their karmic past.

There's also dance in the show but it hasn't worked its magic yet, I'm very curious to see how the ballerina is connected to Boyd and... Tillie? It's still minor compared to the previous two but I think we'll see our ballerina again pretty soon.

There's, finally, the power of stories. Ethan is the key-figure here because he's our go-to guy for all the crazy meta-ness of the show. But also Kenny and Kristi were reading a story together (cute and very Lancelot and Guinevere of them), they got stuck at chapter 6 or something before shit hit the fan so... I hope they won't forget about that.

More importantly, I'm very curious about one specific aspect: season 3 ended with Ethan saying that a story that has been told can't be changed so everyone is talking about how FROM is following LOST rule of "Whatever happened, happened", aka: you cannot change the past. Okay. But.

But I wonder if this is going to be the case with FROM since we now know for sure that the main theme is breaking the cycle of abuse. Since the show has introduced the concept of reincarnation I'm wondering if this means that yes, okay, the past cannot be changed, the story has been already told and there's nothing that we can do about it BUT isn't breaking it the whole point of karma?

I mean, a lot of major characters are starting to remember their trauma so this is good news but this also means that the show is faced with the three narrative choices, I think:

keep to its genre and let everything end in horror and blood. I think this type of ending can only be satifsying in movies but in shows where people invest a lot of time across multiple seasons spaced out over long years? Mmmm, it's very tricky to pull off. I mean, it can be done but I think it's very hard to convince people who have watched a show for over 5+ years that yeah, everybody dies horrendously, hurrah!;

the LOST way: some people manage to escape the town and go back to their lives and they all (more or less...) met there because they needed each other to move on from their past. I think this won't happen because of Harold Perrinau. He specifically accepted the role because he was promised it wasn't gonna end like LOST, so... Either FROM's ending will be a huge embarassment for everybody involved or it won't end the same way as LOST (fingers crossed);

since we've been shown that art has healing powers, stories too will be healing for the characters, aka they'll manage to change the narrative/the past. Now I think this is where the money's at and why I'm so intrigued by the introduction of time travels.

My istinct tells me that it's going to be a mix of 1 and 3: I think the show will end with the breaking of the cycle but I don't think that one particular character will make it to the end. The character is Boyd and I think that in season 4 he'll be key to understanding if the show will have a happy ending or not. So far I think it's not gonna be happy-happy for everyone.

I don't think Boyd will make it to the end because the elements so far tell me so:

1. The ballerina dance didn't help him remember anything, as a matter of fact he destroyed the music box to save people. This is a huge red flag: will he destroy his chance to break his cycle for the sake of other people?;

2. He's got two sons in the show: his actual son Ellis and his putative son Kenny. Kenny's father, Bing-Qian suffered from dementia and has been associated with feelings of confusion and with not being understood. He also talks about another form of universal language, that is chess. He unfortunately dies (Boyd seems to suffer from Parkinson's and he's convinced it's that because his father had it but he was never actually diagnosed with it. Or it's not been shown yet). Abby, Boyd's wife, also dies by none other than Boyd's hand. She was described as "confused" and people believed that she had started to show signs of some sort of paranoia, I think (we know now that, perhaps, she was remembering her past life). She wasn't understood/believed, too. Kenny's mother, Tien-Chen, dies as well and her death is also connected to Boyd. So, I mean, as far as parental figures with whom he's paralleled/paired go, things don't look good for our sheriff;

3. The point of the show seems to be that parents must avoid the sacrifice of their children. Boyd has two sons and he has martyr-like tendencies. Sooooo..... again, things don't look good for him;

4. Boyd-as-husband is connected to Henry and Jim. They're all husbands who didn't believe their wives and didn't support them. Henry and Jim are also heavily associated with the Man in Yellow who seems to be the primary abuser of the show (or he's very strongly related to the cycle of abuse that's been happening for who knows how long). Henry and Jim (and Boyd too, by extension) are portrayed as ambiguous figures, they're clever man who're also very morally skewed. There's something dark about Henry, I'm not sure about his intentions, his talk with Donna about thinking that, for a moment, he hoped that Victor were dead... I mean, it was a human moment but it was also ominous. (Let's also not forget about Boyd being a former-military and how the Civil War is a sleeping theme in the show. Henry was doing hard drugs with Miranda in the 70s so this tells me he wasn't sent to Vietnam? There's a latent element of actual war here. I don't know how it'll pertain to Henry, Jim (Jim's father was an alcoholic, is PSTD from war related to this?) and Boyd in the town but I KNOW there's something going on. I unfortunately don't remember much about my American History class at uni so I can only pick up the vibe without really explaining it, it's so frustrating).

While I'm more confident about points 1, 2 and 3, I'm not so sure about point 4. I think this will be the gordian knot of the story.

For whatever reasons, time travels are associated with grand-fathers/fathers and their assassination or impossibility thereof. On one hand, with the introduction of Henry (who's got the same function as Jim), Jim seems to be redundant and therefore his death is final. On the other, if his death is final it means that Julie, as a story-walker and time traveler, cannot change the past. This doesn't bode well for my hoped-for happy ending.

The shows seems to tell us: it's not about whether or not you can kill your father when you time-travel because it's about saving your father! (Julie saved Boyd-as-father in the well by handing him the rope).

So we have a story about parents saving their children and children saving their parents! Isn't this beautiful? I literally can't wait to see if I'm right or not about this, lol.

It all boils down to Boyd: so far the story is telling me that parents will most likely save their children but they probably won't be able to save themselves. However, Julie did save one father-figure so far, will she be able to save her own father? Can children save their parents?

These are very interesting questions but I truly hope they will stick to the "art has the power of changing people" theme (parents, children, everyone!) and give us a healing story rather than a hopeless one. Can we make it through the horrors or not? More importantly, can we make it together and stop this sacrifice madness??? I think we need stories that heal and give us hope!!!

p.s. for posterity: Season 4 will have "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" playing in one of the diner's jukebox. Mark.My.Words.

[mariacallous]

Kyle Brett had a feeling Sinners, the new supernatural horror from Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, would have a big opening weekend—but he was also hyper aware of the consequences of failure.

“It’s already extremely hard to have a successful original horror movie or just any original movie,” Brett, a former Netflix lawyer who works as a creative executive at Blumhouse, the production company behind M3GAN, Get Out, and the Insidious franchise, tells WIRED. “If that shit had bombed, original film would have truly gone away.”

The night before its US release, Brett predicted on X that Sinners would clear $60 million, based “on nothing but the number of Black folks who have asked me about it.” In the business of Hollywood, nothing is guaranteed, least of all a hit movie that’s based on an untested story. But not only was Sinners a hit, breaking multiple box office records, it’s becoming a full-on cultural phenomenon, complete with memes and literary deep dives.

Perhaps most importantly, it has challenged what’s become conventional wisdom in show business: the idea that audiences won’t respond to original stories.

Sinners has almost everything you could possibly want out of an original film: sex, vampires, a haunting score by composer Ludwig Göransson, and Michael B. Jordan in maybe his best performance yet. The movie opens in Jim Crow–era Mississippi during 1932 and follows identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Jordan, who have returned home after time away in Chicago, where they moonlighted as gangsters for Al Capone. They’ve come back to start a juke joint but are put to the test when a coven of vampires encroaches on their new business. Across its two-hour-plus run time, what unfolds is classic Coogler: a lush, complex story about family, community, and survival that dares to reinvent the horror genre into something new altogether.

The premise has resonated with audiences in such a powerful way that Sinners opened with $48 million domestically and $63.5 million globally, making it the biggest debut for an original film since 2019, when Jordan Peele’s Us opened to $70 million. (The anticipation surrounding a new Coogler project likely also played a role.) Sinners likewise surpassed Nope, also by Peele—which pulled in $44 million its first weekend in 2022—as the biggest opening for an original film since the pandemic began. It is now the only horror flick in over 35 years to receive an “A” on CinemaScore.

“IPs are a comfortable, safe bet, but originals, when you have something that right out the gate can connect with audiences, they can have as big a punch,” says Daniel Loria, an analyst at the Boxoffice Company. “That’s definitely what we’re seeing.”

It can still be hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of movie works best in Hollywood these days. The success of big-budget blockbusters—Dune, Barbie, Wicked—aren’t exactly a litmus test of how well the industry is faring or what audiences are ultimately satisfied with. Certain IP, like The New Mutants from 2020, bomb or never take off for a number of reasons; often it has to do with earnings, but poor reviews and studio mismanagement can also be a factor.

“Some franchises are past their best and haven’t performed. This happens every decade or so, which means the studios are looking at new franchise stories to take forward,” says David Hancock, an analyst at Omdia. “A Quiet Place did this. Minecraft may do it.”

Minecraft, a Warner Bros. property, currently holds the top spot at the worldwide box office, with $720 million, and is estimated to eventually top $1 billion. Video game IP is especially hot right now. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, released by Universal Pictures in 2023, topped $1.3 billion. Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog has yielded major dividends for the studio. Until Dawn and Mortal Kombat 2 are also slated to drop this year.

One of the things Sinners got right, Brett says, “is that they treated themselves like they were IP.” That means, per his agreement with Warner Bros., Coogler gets the rights to his film back in 25 years—the type of deal that’s mostly unheard of today. Some studio executives believe it sets a “very dangerous precedent” for copyright ownership and distribution entitlements, Vulture reported, saying it will crater the current power dynamics of the studio system, “effectively imperiling the cinematic back catalogue: the core asset behind all movie-studio valuation.” But “that’s the kind of attitude you need with an original,” Brett says. “It's like, No, this is my intellectual property.”

For a time, a new Marvel epic was a proven seat filler, but the fatigue and declining critical reception around superhero movies that has bubbled up in recent years—a consequence of Marvel flooding the market with comic book IP—means that is no longer the case. Marvel is currently in rebound mode. It dropped Jonathan Majors, who was a rising star in the MCU, in light of his domestic assault case (he was found guilty of two out of four charges), and The Marvels became the studio’s lowest-grossing film across its 33 titles, earning $206 million globally, well below its $374 million budget.

It’s “hard to reinvent that form, and I think this next generation is looking for ways to tell their own stories that service their own sort of collective ADHD,” Avengers: Endgame codirector Joe Russo told GamesRadar+ last year, likening young moviegoers’ communication style to “memes and headlines.”

Not all original films are seeing a huge demand, as the age of streamers has reshaped consumption habits. As of March, movie sales in the US and Canada were down 7 percent this year compared to the same period in 2024, according to Comscore.

In a recent interview with The Independent, director Steven Soderbergh bemoaned that very reality. His latest feature, Black Bag, a spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender that was released in theaters last month, has yet to turn a profit; it pulled in $37 million worldwide on a budget of $50 million. “This is the kind of film I made my career on,” Soderbergh said in the interview. “And if a mid-level budget, star-driven movie can’t seem to get people over the age of 25 years old to come out to theaters—if that’s truly a dead zone—then that’s not a good thing for movies. What’s gonna happen to the person behind me who wants to make this kind of film?”

Still, the success of Sinners offers a beacon of hope. It’s currently on track to have a second weekend increase, which “would be much more impressive for a non-IP April release,” Erik Anderson, the founder of Awards Watch, noted on X. It also belongs to a cohort of original films, many centered around identity, from directors that have also found audiences, commercial appeal, and critical acclaim in recent years, including Celine Song’s Past Lives, Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, Lawrence Lamont’s One of Them Days, and Sean Baker’s Anora, which won Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards.

Hancock predicts the “next decade will see a return to original stories” as a bid to bring in a wider range of audiences.

But the takeaway from Sinners and other movies like it go beyond just IP fatigue, says Brett, noting that these films—and their unique audiences—need to be adequately marketed and prioritized.

“If there is anything Hollywood misses it’s how much Black audiences will continually engage with them,” he says. “It’s not just like this one-time-customer type of thing. People will return to Sinners. The excitement of it, to me, shows that it has a long shelf life.”

[ilikekidsshows]

This is mainly a rant but like. Whatever they're doing in the new season is so stupid and convoluted like why would you do that. Even beyond the fact that the writers are shit and can't even do one plot well, let alone all this other bullshit, having this many plots happening is just way too cluttered. Why was Lila even built up to be this big bad if you were going to introduce a bigger bad immediately after. "Oh she's actually extremely manipulative, she's tricking three separate women into thinking she's their daughter!" and then they do this? Why? Are they trying to capitalize on the fact that people liked the idea of The Supreme from the Paris special and they wanted to reel people in by bringing it into canon? Cause that's what it feels like. Wow repeat of Chloe and Hawkmoth. Lila's the shitty teenage girl they're trying to build up but there's adult villains so why waste time on the shitty teenage girl and you were claiming she was somehow worse than the adult villains or something? Also if they're adding an entire secret organization they're either gonna add to the cast bloating (high chance most of those symbols or whatever are never gonna be revealed or they're gonna be like Colt and will be DOA so the writers can just mention them once as someone's sad backstory and then never again) or they're gonna retcon older characters into being members of an evil organization and either way is just shitty writing.

Also why would you add this whole backstory of Ivan having basically a watered down version of the knowledge and support that Adrien should be getting if you weren't gonna use that to make Marinette regret everything she's done and tell Adrien immediately? Why are you having her say the shit she should be saying to Adrien to someone else? Ivan is a side character, why give him that backstory? It's not even gonna be relevant later in the show it's just a shitty one off to make Marinette see the same thing Adrien doesn't know he's going through and make her look sad at Adrien and the not have her come clean? Oh, right. Because her own discomfort at dealing with Adrien's feelings is more important. She wasn't actually sad for Adrien. She was upsette that she was being guilt tripped. She also showed Nathalie Gabriel's letter for fucks sake and like ignoring all the shit they're doing with making Nathalie still actually evil (which is stupid!!!!!!!), this is a yet another major disrespect of Adrien's autonomy. I don't even like Gabe and I think reading his shitty will and showing it to other people is just absolutely disgusting controlfreak behavior.

And yes, I did also think that this was the writer's way of passing the blame from Marinette, cause we all know they're reactive like that. TA hates that people still like Chloe? Makes her an idiot and deports her from the country to be abused. Hates that people are critical of his show? Makes a "meta" episode in retaliation. Etc. etc. Like I can believe he got sick of everyone rightfully shitting on Marinette for the absolutely shitty way she's been treating people and so they're gonna make Nathalie manipulate her so they can't blame her anymore. But like everything else with the show, it's badly done and not only are they not gonna land this one (do they ever?), my prediction is they're gonna try to have their cake and eat it too like with everything else. "oh Nathalie wasn't actually evil. She was just being manipulated by her shitty evil organization dad. she was actually trained as a child to be the perfect henchperson but it was done against her will so she's actually abused so you have to forgive her like you forgive felix and not chloe. Nathalie's actually a good person and you're stupid for ever thinking she was evil. after all, she had good intentions, she had to be manipulative. as you see in this ep, she's a double agent and she's gonna help Marinette (only Marinette, be prepared for another BugNoir appearance) bring the organization down. also, Marinette isn't to blame for lying to Adrien because Nathalie manipulated her but Nathalie also isn't to blame because she had to do what she had to do to fight against the organization and they """won""" in the end so it's fine! we planned this from the very beginning!!"

And the worst thing is that they're probably gonna drag this arc on for another 10 years and basically every single little they're starting with or inevitably introduce is gonna be abandoned or brushed off. There's gonna be no pay off to this. Marinette's gonna lose the miraculouses like several more times and somehow it won't actually be her fault. There's twelve sections or whatever in that organization. One for each of the Zodiac. Bets now on the side character heroes getting their miraculouses swiped and given to those twelve members. And then that plot point will also die out because the writers can't be bothered to stick to one thing and make it good. They gotta do a lot of different things and do all of them badly.

---

Yeah, like, that's exactly it. The evil organization is just an obvious combined scapegoat and social media hype engine. It's so transparent what they're doing here and I just can't be bothered to be interested even in how they’ll fuck it up, because I already know exactly how they'll fuck it up. They're gonna do the same thing all lazy writers do with evil cabals, they're gonna pretend everything that's happened in the series has been part of their masterful evil plan all along, all villains are either working for or being manipulated by them and everything the heroes do has been predicted by them. Instead of making the story and world more interesting, it's gonna suck what little interest there is right out. Dragon Age Veilguard did it, Young Justice did it, Evil Within did it, Neon Genesis Evangelion did it and that's where Astruc most likely plagiarized it from.

Never mind that the writers have a long history of losing interest in any concept that takes them too long to implement. We still don't know what two of the power-up potions do and only the flight one keeps getting utilized. We got two additional heroes whose character arcs were improved by getting a Miraculous in Alya and Chloé with everyone else just happening to have a problem that thematically corresponds with the Miraculous they get in the episode without it really impacting the episode more than giving them more confidence or something else they could do even without a Miraculous. Or they just get slapped with a Miraculous because the writers needed to fill up the roster, especially when the last four were just handed out like free candy in a single episode because the writers lost interest.

The writers will introduce an element of mystery that the fandom can make guesses about, like what power-ups the different potions give and what Miraculous and powers which classmate will get, and then they'll lose interest partway through. We’ll get maybe two interesting reveals out of this council, with the rest either adding nothing to the story or getting unceremoniously dropped. Like, I wonder when Ray's gonna be interesting? He was introduced in 'Daddycop' but we most likely won't see him again until Zoé's spotlight episode because there isn't enough time or focus to build him up because the writers are just throwing everything at you to try to get you engaged again.

[starlightseraph]

i finally made myself read the vulture article… jesus fuck i’m speechless. and disgusted. fuck.

i didn’t listen to the initial podcasts for my own sake, but i read summaries. it was bad then, it’s somehow worse now. please read the article if it’s safe for you to do so. the detail is horrifying, but it’s masterfully written and organised, it really shows how fucked up every part of this situation is. props to lila shapiro for her work. here’s a list of some of the major triggers. PRIORITISE YOUR SAFETY AND WELL-BEING.

a couple things, because i’m not actually totally lost for words:

- it sounds like he went through horrible things as a child that really messed him up. they were certainly not deserved at the time, because he was a kid. none of that should have happened to him. (and fuck scientology too).

- but he’s now perpetuated the cycle many times over, and there can never be any excuse for choosing to do the shit he’s done. yeah, he might be very deeply traumatised, but as far as we can tell he’s in possession of his faculties and in control of his actions.

- he’s clearly intelligent. he clearly knows he’s been hurt badly. his failure to do any genuine introspection whatsoever (behind the superficial apologies when it looked like he was going to get caught), is almost certainly wilful. he’s been told, probably by many people, that he’s very disturbed and he needs help. but he never did anything that was recommended to him.

- amanda palmer was very likely an accessory to much of this. she’s a victim, but she’s also not innocent. her victimhood may explain her behaviour, but it does not at all excuse it. ideally, she would be prosecuted for her part.

- the major complication in that is their son. palmer clearly wants to protect him. he is absolutely a victim in all of this, and while it’s possible he’s done bad things, he’s still a very young child. he’s not destined to become his father. he deserves a chance in safe environment.

- he absolutely cannot be in the custody of his father. it seems unlikely that neil will end up in prison, and if palmer is prosecuted, their son would almost certainly go to him. he’s got the money, the reputation, and the connections. palmer has always been fairly aloof with money, and the custody battle has financially ruined her. she’s living with her parents. so it’s possible that going after her legally will endanger their son further, but it depends on how the matching legal issues with neil work out.

- i keep thinking about the phrase “hurt people hurt people”. it’s very true. but there are important caveats. if you’ve been hurt, you can break the cycle. if someone else has been hurt and then hurts others, what they do is still their fault. in very, very rare cases people really are born bad because of some faulty wiring or smth, but most monsters are born with all the potential in the world and the best possibilities open to them. and then they’re destroyed by their circumstances and they don’t stop themselves when they begin creating the same circumstances for others. most present evil is predicted on past evils. violence begets violence. but it doesn’t have to.