#and just a very cool person in general aside from her art and career

[mariska]

theres an unintentionally funny non-bad side effect my brain experiences from having to take specific medications to be able to fall asleep at night and that side effect is that, because i have to knock my adhd off the rails Crazy Train By Ozzy Osbourne brain out to get it to shut up enough for me to try to focus on calming routines/learned skills for falling asleep, there is usually a point where im physically in bed but have not started preparing for sleep yet, and because i am literally always in a state of constant panic and stress and physical pain during the day, sometimes i just take a few mins to sit and appreciate the sensation of my brain slowly quieting its naturally loud background noise.

and sometimes i also happen to be partaking in like. one activity like scrolling through tags for things/people/media that i enjoy like i was last night. and i had seen a pic that immediately made me think of one of my ocs, Paige, who is mostly like 1960s-1980s in the main story stuff i've written/created for her over the years, and put it in my oc inspiration tag for her when i reblogged it, and then my immediate next thought was 'OH that reminds me i wanted to save some photos of Marianne Faithfull (cool as hell rock star and actress who was very active in her career/in the public eye in those same eras my character's main story takes place in) as art and writing inspiration reference for Paige since they look pretty visually similar thru that time span and i keep forgetting to do that'. so the idea was that like. i was gonna save maybe 5 photos and that would let Future Me know that i had that thought and could look up more reference photos later at some point.

but because this was middle of the night sleepy chill Mariska. the train of thought de-railed immediately. so. long story short, woke up today and opened my camera roll to find pages upon pages of like every fuckin photo that has been published of this woman in my camera roll

[thelostrainbowthenovel]

Finally got around to making an official/colored ref of Apollo! :3 He has been on my mind a lot lately(mainly thanks to this one idea I've been thinking about, of him and Mini knowing about Nate's sexuality/supporting him there), and since I had a little time for art I wanted to finally make an official ref for him! :D

He is still not a character that I will be focusing on too much, but I do have some other ideas I want to get to with him sometime. These mainly being drawing him with Damini(since they are dating, and I just imagine they would be so cute together), writing something with him and Damini(again to showcase their relationship, but also to explore some of the backstory changes I made to Mini), and writing something with him/Mini and Nate, since like mentioned above I have been thinking about the idea of them being a mini friend group, plus also giving Nate some Feorian LGBTQ+ friends since he doesn't currently have any. But yeah, I hope you enjoy! ^w^

Here is a mini bio for him!

================================================

- Apollo Lumen . Age: 27 . Gender: demiboy(he/they) . Sexuality: bisexual . Relationships: Lady Damini Koeler(together for two years) . Abilities: hand-to-hand combat, bow-and-arrows, solar/sun-based magic(natural)

Citizen of Feor, boyfriend to Lady Damini Koeler. Growing up in a poor family, he at first joined the army as soon as he could, as he was following on the footsteps of the other men in his family and he wanted to help out with earning more money. His time as a soldier was short-lived however, as he was only in the army for a couple of years before he gained a serious injury that gave him a large and rather nasty scar on his back, as well as an early retirement. While it took him sometime to recover physically and mentally from his injury, he was not that sad about retiring from the army as he always had dreams of becoming a traveling musician and finally had a chance to pursue that dream. At first he started out as a backup guitar player for this smaller band, working on his own music on the side, before it eventually picked up some interest and he was able to start his solo career. He first met Damini at one of his earliest solo concerts, and they bonded after she came up to him after his show and complemented him on his work. They clicked enough that they kept up communication afterwards, mainly through letters as he was out traveling for a while. When he returned to Feor was when he asked her out for the first time, not wanting to lose anymore time with her. Their dating has been a little more low-key since they have different occupations and are not seen in public together often, but they haven't been keeping it a complete secret either, and are currently making plans to move in together as they are hopeful for their future together. So far in his musician career he has become famous enough to both live comfortably and have many fans, even in other countries outside of Feor. Aside from Mini, another fan of his music is Princess Hestia, as they both play the guitar and she finds some of the things he has done with it very cool. Through Mini he has also become good friends with Prince Ignatius, with them only hanging out occasionally but they have become close enough, to the point Nate felt comfortable enough to open up about his sexuality and lover with him and Mini. Considered strong, warm, and bright, he is a very charming and friendly person that is able to get anyone to loosen up and have fun with his carefree and happy disposition. He is also incredibly open-minded and accepting of everyone who is not appreciated by general society, but he is also very critical of said prejudiced societies as he proudly stands up and advocates for what he believes in, even if this has not always been appreciated by close-minded people. In terms of more negative traits of his, he is a perfectionist to the point he will forget to take care of himself in order to get something done the way he wants it to be(causing him to feel pretty awful afterwards), he is easily distracted and forgetful so he always has to write things down, he bottles his stress too much to the point he either gets sick or lashes out, and while not necessarily a negative trait, as he is always out traveling he often forgets to make time for his loved ones, but he always makes it up to them when he returns home.

[thepermanentrainpress]

THE PERMANENT RAIN PRESS INTERVIEW WITH DORALYNN MUI

Doralynn Mui didn’t view acting as a probable career path in her youth, but she’s making good use of her time now – gaining knowledge both in front of the camera and behind it along the way. After guest spots on shows like Riverdale, The 100, and Kung Fu, the Chinese-Canadian actress finds herself entangled in murderous mystery as Fiona on One of Us Is Lying.

We spoke with Mui about her journey in the arts, growing up in Vancouver, and more.

You have been acting since a young age, dating back to elementary school plays. Did you always see yourself pursuing a career in the arts, and can you describe the feeling you get when you perform?

I did have secret hopes of becoming a pop star (I’m partially kidding?), but I honestly didn’t know that acting was a real, attainable career until much later in life. I remember the first time I acted in a play in Grade 7, there was this buzzy feeling right before stepping onto the stage, and then on stage I sort of lost myself in the moment. I had maybe two lines in that whole play. I crave that feeling when you’re locked into the moment, and so open and present with your scene partner and the story that you lose track of everything else.

Viewers can now see you as Fiona in Peacock murder-mystery series One of Us Is Lying. What did you enjoy most about this role, and what challenged you in playing her?

I love Fiona. She's so messy and insecure, and at the core of it all, she just wants to be loved! I had so much fun exploring everything that goes on in her brain.

During prep, I actually clued in from the makeup and wardrobe tests that she was going to be a bit edgier than I imagined her to be when we shot the pilot episode. I was honestly a bit intimidated about portraying Fiona's constructed "cool girl" persona, while also tying that in with other elements of her character (AKA being an outsider). It was challenging to find the right balance in making her a believable, rounded person.

What excited you about the story this season?

I was so excited about all the action that was packed into this season, they really turned it up a notch! Personally I got to learn how to drive a little motorized dinghy, which was surprisingly scary and fun at the same time.

Aside from Fiona, who is your favorite character and why?

Oof, that one's an impossible question to answer. I love all the characters so much and it would kill me to pick one!

You shared many scenes opposite Cooper van Grootel (as Nate). How was he as a scene partner, and did you discuss your characters' relationship?

How lucky I am to work with Cooper! He’s such a generous and curious person as an actor and human being, it was genuinely a lot of fun. We discussed our characters’ relationship a lot before we started shooting, because we really wanted to be specific about what drew them together. We also brainstormed some ship names (I vote for #fate). During shooting it was great to bounce ideas off each other without judgement, and discover the journey together.

The series was filmed in New Zealand. Did you have the opportunity to sightsee with your castmates on downtime?

Yes! New Zealand is gorgeous, and they’re very protective of their ecosystem so we were extremely lucky to be able to explore the volcanoes, beaches and forests. The first free weekend, I hiked with Zenia [Marshall] and Karim [Diane] up Rangitoto, which is their youngest volcano. Climbing into their lava cave was surreal. We almost didn’t go in because the opening looked so tiny and terrifying, but thankfully some kid shamed us into going in, and it was unforgettable.

I also loved getting to learn about Maori culture in Rotorua and walking around Piha Beach; it was so beautiful. My absolute favourite spot was actually Devonport Village, which isn’t really a tourist destination, but it had the cutest op shops (Kiwi-speak for "thrift stores"), ice cream on every corner, and the best ever CARROT CAKE. I’m still dreaming about it. I feel like I’m writing a travel blog for New Zealand, but anyway, those are my highlights!

You have had guest roles in shows like Riverdale, The 100, and Deadly Class. What did you take away from working on these more high-profile shows?

All the experiences I’ve had make me really appreciate all the moving parts that go into getting a show made. Everyone has their own role and expertise, and you really notice how collaborative the whole process is. As an actor you have to show up and be prepared, but also be flexible enough to roll with the punches. I love watching experienced actors who have been doing this for so long that they have this sense of ease, and are able to try something new on each take. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but they really don't sweat it.

Did you ever face any challenges as a POC in the industry, and if so, how were you able to overcome them?

I would say, especially as an Asian-Canadian, I’m more aware of how POC can get sidelined in stories or neglected in terms of character development. I’m encouraged because I’m starting to see more effort being made to include Asian voices and characters on screen, but I would love to see more representation in the writers’ room, or in producing and directing positions. A lot of times when there is a lack of representation in those roles, our stories can be easily forgotten or misunderstood.

Personally, I'm grateful for every opportunity that I have and try to make the most of each role. For every character I play, I do my best to create an inner world and fill in the lines of their story, even if it's not something that gets to be explored on screen.

Who are some actors you are influenced/inspired by?

I’ve never met her, but I would love to work with Sandra Oh one day because she’s a fellow Canadian-Asian actress who seems genuinely down to earth and just hilarious. I love how varied her career has been so far. Cillian Murphy’s character work is so interesting to me, and I’m always in awe of the work that Jodie Comer, Florence Pugh and Emma Stone do.

You grew up in Vancouver. What are your favorite places to visit - and restaurants to eat at - in or around the city?

I feel like I’m the wrong person to ask for exciting recommendations because all I want to do when I’m home is lounge around at my familiar places. My perfect day would be digging through thrift stores on Main Street or in New West, getting hot pot at Gokudo Shabu Shabu or Boiling Point, then getting chocolate, tea or ice cream at Teapressu, Shiny Tea, Purdys or Earnest Ice Cream. Maybe getting bubble waffles at Crystal Mall after that. There’s also a person in North Van who runs a clothing swap out of her basement – it’s a magical place for me. Ooh! And getting giant bags of fruit for a dollar in Chinatown. I always get a thrill out of that.

What is up next for you?

I’m working on a couple of guest spots on CBS and Hulu shows – I’m not sure what I’m allowed to give away, but I’m very excited about them! I’m workshopping a couple of indie projects with some friends, and slowly doing some writing of my own. I’m also going to continue purging my closet, tending to my plants, and learning how to do a body roll.

If you could be any ice cream flavor, which would you be and why?

I love this question because if you haven’t noticed, ice cream is one of my first loves on this planet! My dad always says I'm like a ball of fluffy cotton candy with spikes hidden underneath – as in, I can seem soft and bubbly on the outside, but I can be pretty feisty if you try to test me. So, if I could translate this into a flavour, maybe… cotton candy mixed with popping candies. Is that a flavour? I'm sure it is somewhere!

My alternative answer is chocolate. If you are what you eat, I think I'm made up of 90% chocolate.

-

Thanks to Doralynn for taking the time to answer our questions! We can’t wait to watch the second season of One of Us Is Lying, premiering in Canada on Thurs, Jan 19th at 9pm e/p on W Network. In other regions, it is out now on Peacock and Netflix (international).

Keep updated with Doralynn on Instagram and IMDb. 

Photo credit (headshot) to: Jenna Berman

[verysmolspams]

More things about my OC Aurelia!

(So that she makes better sense lol)

May contain spoilers!

Backstory/sad stuff:

TW: some mild family trauma, mentions of separation/divorce

You learn early in the game that your character moved recently, so I decided to make her Unovan

Moved from Unova for her mom’s career

(Also the lack of a father in the game means hers is absent. in this case her dad ran off with another woman so Aurelia and her mom needed a change in life)

Aside her mom being busy with her career she’s had a good relationship with her:

lack of a father did make things tough for a bit

So Aurelia generally has a mistrust in boys (shocker, right?)

A Little insecure about her body image (on top of natural young adult things and being from Unova, where beauty standards are wild sometimes)

She did experience bullying in Unova for not quite fitting in, so it takes time for her to open up if someone approaches her for friendship

Personality:

She is neurodivergent coded: her special interests are particular Pokémon (lucario, Pikachu, dog Pokémon, etc), music, the arts, literature, and likes to doodle when she can

Sensitive emotions are always a thing for her, so she can feel a lot at times

Definitely one of those “I’m quiet at first but when you really get to know me I go nuts” people

If y’all really wanna know, she’s a Cancer in the zodiac (so maybe they call it being a Klawfy? Krabber? Idk crab Pokémon puns)

Very close with her Pokémon. Some of her team doubles as emotional support because her lucario is in touch with her emotions. (The power of aura, baybeee 🌀)

Trust and honesty are huge for her, she’s a bad liar unless it’s a good surprise for someone/something

Quality time and physical touch are her two biggest love languages, but she tries to mix in a few others is she sees that a friend needs help or whatnot

Will Listen in conversation first unless she has special information pertaining to a subject, or is super excited about one of her hyperfixations and “I just need to tell you this cool thing I found” energy

Just wants to be a good friend most of the time, she is prone to loneliness

She’s very sweet, but if you hurt her friends or piss her off, she’s a little scary.

Cue the Unovan accent coming out and using a mix of Unovan/Paldean swears if she finds out someone hurt her friend

Fiesty, she would fistfight the bullies if she could without getting in trouble

And she’d absolutely win, she’s scary when she’s angry.

General UVA shenanigans/storyline

She is able to nurture a love for her new Pokémon once she becomes a UVA student

Does overwhelm emotionally easily, she’s an extraverted introvert and highly loyal to her friends, which meant choosing her first path was hard because she didn’t want to let anyone down

The first path she completes is the champion one because she wants to get stronger with her Pokémon, for the purpose of being able to better protect herself and her loved ones 🥹

After the third titan she realized she caught feelings for Arven

She becomes a giggly, bashful mess when he compliments her

Takes her till after Area Zero to confess her feelings

It was nowhere near her original plan, but it still worked somehow lol

She loves talking about figurines and Pokémon with Penny, type techniques with Nemona, and will listen to just about anything on Arven’s mind (she’s a simp)

Was absolutely PISSED when she made the connection about the professor and Arven

She almost gave the Professor a piece of her mind because she knows what it’s like to have an absent parent

Almost fist-fought some of the star grunts for their remarks about her friend or the fact she was known to have chased off the other two grunts from Penny

She loves sharing tidbits of info about someone’s favorite subject

Not just as a way to impress them, but to show she cares, listens and wants them to be happy

Loves baking, but hasn’t gotten used to the switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit so she doesn’t do it as often yet.

Her strong subjects are in literature, home ec, the arts, and she remembers type matchups very well

Not as great with math and some biology

She had to retake the math final a couple times, she just needed to let things sink in, the poor girl.

Doesn’t have a favorite teacher, but she really enjoys most of her classes.

She was a little nervous when she began to realize the star squad bosses were all different victims of bullying. She wanted to hug Eri after beating her.

And when Cassiopeia revealed herself she almost cried right then and there, but she knew what needed to be done.

General appearance:

She is short, 5’0”

Pale blue eyes, sometimes they look steel-blue in different lighting

She’s midsize, so not skinny but not unhealthy

She is rather plush in the thigh department, something she was once insecure about from Unovan beauty standards until she learned they had different uniform accommodations

Her medium brown hair falls just past her shoulders when it’s down in a long bob, but she loves putting it into a romantic tuck

She just thinks it’s neat how her hair falls and curves in the style

Definitely wears glasses. Her eyes are sensitive to extreme light so she gets a prescription that will help her tolerate sudden light flashes from Tera battles

She has fair skin, so she burns easily (not used to the sun as much from the part of Unova she lived in)

This made the first few picnics and outings a little awkward because Arven wondered why she kept getting sunburnt

After she told him where she was from, he now always has a travel size thing of sunscreen when they’re out because she forgets sometimes. She’s goofy

If y’all wanna know more about her, I’m working on some short skits of how she’d interact with the rivals, the gym leaders, maybe a little something about Area Zero. I hope you enjoyed learning about Aurelia!

[thechekhov]

So hey. Rusty Quill Gaming ended. 

I finally got a chance to listen to the last episode a week or so ago.

And... that epilogue (at least the first part of it) has me feeling some sort of ways.

(spoilers for RQG end + Epilogue ahead)

Where to begin...

I think I’ll begin with - I really loved that campaign as a whole. I loved the characters, and I loved the progression of the story, and so of course I hated to see it end. I think that’s a common issue for many things, and it doesn’t reflect badly on the podcast itself, regardless of how negative my feelings may be.

At the same time I have to admit a weakness and say that ‘all the magic is now purged from the world’ is one of my least favorite tropes in magical storytelling. I understand why it may make sense thematically. I understand WHY people are drawn to that ending in some circumstances. I understand that jokes about how magic builds reliance have their place, and how it’s a valid reading. 

And yet.

The fact that the world went mundane and all the characters (save for Hamid) seem to have moved on relatively quickly and without issue feels like such a slap in the face. 

I don’t mean ‘moved on’ in the technical sense. I understand that the epilogue dealt with many fallouts of the world having to adjust to loss of magic. I appreciated the details added into that - the fact that communication has slowed, the fact that mass production has slowed, the fact that travel without use of Elementals has become a problem... Those are all very cool things to see in a worldbuilding sense. 

But I feel that, aside from Hamid, none of the players have bothered to draw any attention to the emotional fallout of removing magic from the world wholesale.

Magic, which is a historically powerful, well researched and well known study of energy and matter, and the interaction of the real world and those beyond. Magic, which was some people’s life work - and some people’s life blood. 

Einstein was a Wizard, for fuck’s sake. This was his whole LIFE. Yes, he is a bit wonky at this point in his life anyway thanks to magic, so he may be adjusting to this on a skewed scale. 

And yes, Azu is the most emotionally adjusted of all of them so I can forgive her dealing with her lack of connection to her deity in private. 

Yes, Zolf has always been an emotionally constipated asshole, and YES, he has had AMPLE experience with loss and grief, and this is not his first rodeo, so he is probably better equipped to handle this than most.

Even Wilde, who is a powerful bard in his own right, used his magic as a support for his other talents, and has things to fall back on which are not built entirely on magic. 

But Hamid? Holy fuck, Hamid. Magic was him.

He is the YOUNGEST of all of them. Before beginning to discover his magical abilities, he didn’t have anything to call his own except his family’s money. He didn’t have anything he could be proud of - indeed he was deeply ashamed of the person he had become. He built his whole identity, his whole pride, on the basis of his draconic bloodline. 

Magic - his birthright, his connection to his adventuring career, his reason to keep going - was torn from him and now he is just. Existing. 

And damn, that hurts.

Maybe I’m reaching here, maybe I’m projecting my own dependencies onto this sad little character. But I feel like people often underplay the importance of magic in a world that has co-evolved with it for so long, as has become so deeply entwined with its history, its cultures, its way of life. 

It’s not just a shortcut for lazy wizards - it’s something they studied, understood, worked years of their life into. It’s not simply something that makes their life easier, it’s not a deus ex machina generator for real-life problems. It’s something that has literally existed alongside physics, and something as integral to their world as gravity is to ours. 

I am an artist, at heart. I don’t pretend to be particularly exemplary at it - I didn’t go to art school. I just loved to draw. It was something I connected with early on, something that I called my own, and something I would always come back to as a form of self expression. 

I keep imagining a world in which I had gone on a quest to save everything I’d known - and had unwittingly sacrificed art in the process. 

I think about coming back into a world devoid of art. I think about realizing I could not draw - would never draw again. I think about flipping open empty comic books, trying to remember what they looked like. I think about stores, and libraries, and museums - empty of illustrations. I think about caves where the paintings of our ancestors have ceased to exist - our connection of them forever lost to time. 

What would that be like? To lose a part of yourself so integral to your identity that it feels like the part of you that kept you alive has been wiped blank? How would you feel if the world simply tried to keep going? Would you have the strength to turn to something else, to try to find something new? Or would the betrayal of losing decades of your purpose sting? 

In the epilogue, there was a gentle hint that Hamid avoids drinking now. I would not be surprised if it was the result of turning to drinking early on in that first year without magic. I can very easily imagine him feeling lost and alone, and wanting nothing but the numbness. 

And I am glad that a few others seemed to have noticed it somewhat, but I feel like the weight of that sort of thing is nowhere near done being discussed. I hope it isn’t. I hope we hear how the others may have dealt with it. I hope we hear how Wilde can no longer make illusions. I hope we understand how Azu dealt with losing her friend Topaz, and her god, and her healing. I hope we get a glimpse into that world, and the suffering that rift had caused. 

Because damn, it deserves mention.

[l-sincline]

OC + OC Interaction post

Valorant OC Week day 3 - Besties

If you want to give me permission to use your oc for the post please do and I’ll add them when I can !!

Nuniq - @flooficandii

Definitely starts out as cautious interaction

01 comes from the future just as Kay/o does, so there’s some curiosity there

01 enjoys Nuniq’s passion for her cause, she finds it formidable and is extremely impressed by it

01 feels for Nuniq through Kingdom’s destruction of her village, she understands what it’s like to lose a part of oneself, she also understands the pain of knowing what was once beautiful is to be turned into a battleground.

She probably turns to Nuniq for help on better understanding the agents, I can imagine Nuniq was probably in the protocol before her and 01 trusts her knowledge of the others to a general extent, especially since they both dislike Reyna and Nuniq seems to be pretty straight forward. 

Wants to pet the dog. Constantly. 

“Sorry to bother, but I fear your snow has accidently frozen one of my joints.” 

Lakan - @starstainedarts

Hello there...

Their relationship can be a bit funny because 01 is mostly oblivious to any sort of flirtatious quip or sly move- a lot of anything that 01 does that could come off as flirtatious tends to be purely by accident. Girl needs serious help

01′s body is advances technology from the future that mixes human, robot, and minor amounts of radianite, any scientist is going to be extremely interested in what it has to offer, and she’s often not bothered by the probing

01 is particularly interested by Lakan’s tattoos, she thinks they’re cool

Lakan’s relationships with the protocol make 01′s head spin a bit. Lakan and Chamber have something... but so does Lakan and Omen... but Lakan also talks suggestively with the rest of the team... what tactic is this? 

In the beginning 01 would often simply watch Lakan, she soon grew out of the habit of watching and just moved on to talking 

There is a lot to Lakan that interests 01, specifically their current condition seeing as she too lost her original body in a way

“My blood? I’m not sure there’s much left.”

Circe - @henridda

01 is pretty friendly with Phoenix and sees the way Circe interacts with him. She wholeheartedly enjoys sitting back and watching. It’s very interesting.

Circe is pretty motherly... what is this... mommy issues.... coming through

Jokes aside 01 remembers literally nothing about her mom so sometimes Circe’s actions can confuse her, that level of care is just not something she’s used to

give me more info on circe so I can make their interaction longer *gun emoji*

“Stay safe? My body is metal, I’m not sure I can be any safer.” 

Zero - @solitudexviii

Hello tech woman

01 is partially interested to see what Zero would do with her own cybernetics, but is also like ‘mmm maybe stay away from that’ so she tends to keep herself at an arm’s length. 

Silver/white hair buddies

While 01 was more active in battle than in technology, Zero seems to be the opposite. It’s interesting to consider that they might’ve been more similar should they have been in similar careers

01 admires her sense of fashion

01 feels similarity to Zero in the way that they both mostly favor work over emotions, though 01 finds that Zero acts in a self-interest that was more like 01 as the commander in comparison to 01 in the protocol

Due to this she tends to watch Zero closely, always wanting to know how she handles herself, how she carries herself. 

“You seem so on top of everything all the time... whats going on in that head of yours?” 

Koi - @niagaragrape

Small... so small

Seriously, 01 is 5′9″, she’s borderline impressed

Koi is so colorful, 01 loves it. She loves how bright her outfit is and she loves all the art that she does and how she works with paint

Has absolutely zero clue how anyone could be interested in Yoru though, she is concerned

01 really loves her personality. She enjoys how lighthearted Koi can be. People like Koi tend to lift 01′s mood significantly, it also just helps her feel more comfortable.

01 is almost offended at the idea of Koi doing others paperwork. As a previous commander she’s used to paperwork and believes everyone should do their own, she’s the type of person to badger Koi to stop letting others give her their paperwork, likewise she’s the type of person to tell off other agents if they try to do so. She’ll likely be nicer to Koi about it than she will be to the others, though. 

“Do you think you could paint my door? I’ll buy you lunch.” 

Cub - @fishincherrycola

01 is interested by her frequent French speaking- she hasn’t been around many different languages until she came to the protocol, but realizes that Cub speaks French seemingly more often than not.

Oftentimes, 01 tries to pick up what Cub is saying and has figured out a few words (She’s familiar with Bonjour/Salut particularly, and tries to use them to greet Cub when she can. She’s also now familiar with ‘ca va’ as well as ‘bien’)

Otherwise, 01 and Cub probably don’t interact terribly often. Neither of them are very outgoing nor the type of person to talk first. 

01 loves her piano playing. 01 loves music and seeing someone play music in front of her is very impressive. She could listen to it for hours.

“Ah, Salut, Cub. Did I say that right? I enjoyed your music this morning.”

Rift - @shmoodles

Isn’t quite sure what to make of him

Rift travels in between spaces- ‘rifts’- which makes 01 think of her travel back in time, but knows the two things are very different. She also knows that she didn’t choose to be sent back in time, but Rift chooses to use these spaces to travel.

give me more Rift content so I can make this longer *shakes you*

Trojan - @kath-trashh

Another case where 01 is cautious because she’s not sure what a hacker’s intentions with her cybernetic body might be.

She thinks he dresses really cool. 

You too. More Trojan content. Chop chop.

Ukiyo - @melonnmiru

Oh lawd here she comes

Like in most cases, 01 finds herself able to be more relaxed around Ukiyo due to her upbeat personality, though the energy might wear her out occasionally.

Mentioned in an earlier Ukyio post, she apparently trips a lot, and I can see 01 being on constant catching duty as her mind and body tend to move and react very fast.

100% introduced 01 to k-pop. She unapologetically enjoys it a lot, especially when its upbeat and fun

The ghosts were a bit of a shock. 01 has never really been a really spiritual person or anything of the sorts. 

“Please walk more carefully... I would hate to slip up and miss you.” 

And that’s it for now! I’ll definitely come and expand on some of these later and add on to them. There were also a few that just didn’t have enough information for me to add them, so I’ll be watching u quietly to see when there’s enough for me to write some more. I look forward to adding more to the sheet in both new and just in expanding as I learn more about everyone’s ocs !!

[ilooklikeaburntchickenugget]

Addressing Lindsey

I really, really hate this topic a lot.

The fandom has been split forever over Lindsey. And here’s my take.

I’m the type of person where I believe love prevails over any emotion. It’s like overrule, the veto of emotions. There’s something so incredibly fascinating about love, true and genuine love. It’s a mystery until someone has found it, an unopened, untouched box.

That same box can open to a treasure chest of gold, and show the truest form of love. Or it can be Pandora’s box.

Yes, I believe Lindsey Way has many toxic personality traits. I don’t believe it is fair for me to classify her as a “bad person”, I don’t know her personally. However her actions lead me to believe she is definitely not a person to be necessarily fond of.

I’ve always been supportive of her and Gerard’s relationship, because (at least from what we can see) she makes Gerard happy. And after all that man has been through the very least he deserves is happiness and love. And he loves her, so I respect their relationship.

I’ve always had a very weird feeling about their relationship, however. Just the quick pace, and the events surrounding it. It just seems so calculated by her.

So Projekt Revolution starts, this is just post-Eliza breakup for Gerard. Yes, we all know she was also incredibly toxic. He was very possibly vulnerable, unsure what to do or where to go. And here comes up a woman who is ready to assist him through all of this.

We all know Gerard is highly emotional and empathetic, time after time in interviews he’s admitted it, other members of the bands have admitted it. Coming from someone with an EQ of 160 and an incredibly empathetic person as well, it’s easy to fall into the traps set up by other people. I’ve done it time and time again, but I’m still young and I know I can grow from those mistakes. So, he probably fell head over heels, not thinking too far in advance and thinking with his current emotions.

And what does she get in return? Gerard is an incredibly attractive man to begin with (I write fan fiction about him, lol, I would know) and MCR was practically on top of the world at that point. She’s a decently well known name in rock at that period, but marrying the cover of rock at that point would, well, boost you up quite a bit. Both as a musician, and in her art career.

I also want to truly mention the differences in the way they talk about one another. Basically every interview where Gerard talks about Lindsey he uses extremely strong and passionate language. When she talks about him, she does not. It almost seems bland, little to no emotion or tone. 

Not to mention as well the 2008 Fuse interview pre-Madison Square Garden show where Gerard mentions how she flew out to see him play his dream show. No offense, but in a marriage with someone who you will be spending the rest of your life with, isn’t being there to see them achieve their dream the lowest expectation? He made such a big deal out of her flying out, which tells me she made a big damn deal about it to him, which is incredibly unfair lowering the bar for yourself.

Her lack of emotion isn’t only with interviews regarding anything with Gerard. In general there’s almost no tone to her voice, she has little to no range. Her facial expressions don’t range, and her fan interactions seem less than emotional. I know various people have various ways of expressing themselves, but in general she seems to have a lot less expression within her voice, facial features, and actions than the average person.

And don’t get me started on her incredibly public, and incredibly immature meltdowns. I think it’s so important to mention that Gerard has never once defended her, which shows that he knows enough to conclude that she’s in the wrong in these situations. Especially with the whole opossum post making fun of Frank’s car accident in 2016, not cool.

In general she gives me such a weird, very off vibe. It’s hard for me to research her interviews, recorded through video or just printed and try to say that she seems like a caring, good, sound minded person. I really think something’s off, and I don’t want to accuse her of anything because I find that unfair, but my gut feeling since I joined the MCRmy almost four years has always been that she has her own intentions behind marrying Gerard, and it wasn’t just for love.

So Gerard fell victim to the forces of love. And to me, this seems more of a Pandora’s box situation. It seems in their early marriage he was incredibly happy, the happiest fans had ever seen him. In Danger Days he regresses back to his days of abusing substances, and I’m not saying by any means it’s due to her, but lots of people have commented on how he looks more miserable since then.

And I think now that he’s a father, it only adds an additional string of some sort of obligation he holds to her. We’ve seem him talk about Bandit, explain how she was the main reason he chose to come clean and eventually end the band after, once again, finding himself in another down turn of misery.

I just can’t help but think that when the timeline of some of his decline again matches up with their relationship, and no I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

And some fans may argue with me all they want, and accuse me of pushing a false narrative. But with how open Gerard has been with his character and how closed Lindsey has been aside from her public meltdowns, I can’t help but think there’s something off about the whole thing.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: The entire relationship to me sounds like a fucked up 1800s gothic novel. Someone falls in love with someone else, and true love is a permanent glue: You can try to pry it off all you want, the stains remain forever.

However you guys feel about this I hope what I’m saying here won’t affect your perspective or view on my writing, since that’s my main forte. I’ve just been seeing more people bring this up again, especially after she blocked a fan on Twitter for calling her out for BLM (since MSI does have quite a few highly racist songs and lyrics) so I think it’s important to at least express my opinions, whether people agree with them or not.

[hargrove-mayfields]

Harringrove tag game! by @lovebillyhargrove

I was tagged by @mrsblackruby! tysm!! <3

1. Do they get together BEFORE MF possessing Billy or AFTER shit goes down? (Or maybe DURING😲)

Typically I say before, like at around Christmas time in ‘84. I think anybody in a small town puts aside character prejudices around the holidays and tries to make those connections with everyone, so I’ve always felt, especially since the fight was literally only a month before, that Steve would reach out to Billy the night of the Snowball and things would, well, snowball from there.

2. Who kisses who first?

Definitely Steve. I firmly stand by the hc that Billy’s never kissed a boy before Steve, and maybe Steve hasn’t either, but he’s the romantic, no way is he going to let Billy kiss him first.

3. Where do they have their first sex? (Location) (HJs and BJs count)

I don’t really have a solid answer for this? But definitely somewhere very spur of the moment, maybe somebody’s couch or the locker rooms?

4. Who says 💖 I LOVE YOU 💖 first?

Imma say Billy. Opposite of my last answer, I don’t feel like either of them would say they love each other on accident or like, in the moment. I think their first I love you’d would be very very controlled. I also think Billy has less experience with actually being in love, so when the time comes that he’s actually mustered up the courage to say it to Steve, I think he’s super nervous and practices the perfect scenario in his head a dozen times. It’s definitely not blurted out.

5. I believe this fandom is way past having hard feelings about it, so

BottomSteve! or BottomBilly?

I don’t have a strong opinion either way, but typically, I prefer bottom!Steve. No particular reason, that’s just the way I tend to read things!

6. Do they give gifts to each other?

Absolutely! Billy doesn’t have the disposable income to run out and buy Steve new things every time he wants to give him something, so I think he does a really cheesy like, giving him a kiss as a present and making a big deal out of it.

Steve is sort of the same way, in that he doesn’t like to give Billy material things, because he doesn’t want him to think he’s being pretentious or trying to hold his wealth over Billy’s head like he’s his mom or something, so he only gives Billy personal things. Old pilled t-shirts to wear to bed and a blanket to keep on the couch in his room that smells like him. Things like that.

They also try to make eachother things as presents, like food or little knick knacks in art class, but they always fail miserably and think it’s really funny when all they have to show is a smoking mess.

7. Where do they end up living? California, Chicago, Hawkins... Idk .. Alaska??)))) Any other location?

I honestly think they stay in Hawkins. I don’t think after everything Billy would be able to leave Max behind, and I also think that Steve would like having a connection to where he grew up, even if bad things happened there. If they did leave though, I see them going down south, maybe tourist trap Tennessee?

8. What are their future jobs?

In my mind that very much depends on if we’re following canon and this is post Starcourt or like, if it’s a whole new AU. Because after that I don’t think Billy would actually ever be physically well enough to work again. I know it’s a pretty unpopular opinion, bc the general hc is that he bounces back within a year or so with some scars (which is cool! I’m not knocking that I’m just sayin) but I think he'd be permanently disabled, on oxygen support 24/7, and just with all sorts of health complications from, you know, literally having a gaping hole in his chest, that would make it impossible for him to work. In that sort of scenario I usually think of Steve as a being teacher or an artist, something that he doesn’t have very long work hours or can do from home so he can be there to take care of Billy.

If we’re going with like, a no upside down or a Billy is never hurt au, I think he stays in Hawkins and just works in some sort of a mom and pop until he’s the new manager, like at an antique store maybe?

(p.s. stay tuned for an upcoming fic about Billy working in a fix-it shop!!)

As for Steve, I feel like he wouldn’t ever be able to settle on one career when he didn’t have limitations. I don’t really know what he’d eventually decide is his calling, maybe design of some sort? Jewelry making?

This is a hard question, I don’t really see them as being tied down to one career indefinitely, but I do know I don’t see either of them ever working desk jobs.

9. Who's a better cook?

Neither of them. Billy wasn’t allowed in the kitchen growing up because Neil said it’s a woman's place, and Steve is just god awful at following directions, like, can’t tell the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon or preheat the oven awful. They just eat takeout and like, cold sandwiches literally all the time until someone (Joyce) notices and teaches them how to cook on the weekends.

10. Steve Hargrove or Billy Harrington?

Billy Harrington. I don’t see him wanting to be a Hargrove anymore. He has no positive ties to the name with his mom leaving and his dad being his dad, so I think he’d want to take Steve’s last name. Also this is kinda weird but I am VERY particular about my middle name hcs (I think it’s an ocd thing? idk) and I have an alliterative name for Steve that wouldn’t work if he was a Hargrove instead of a Harrington, so that’s also part of the reason.

11. What's Max's reaction when she hears they're together?

I think probably just like, confusion. Not over Billy being with a boy, but over that boy being Steve. Like, she doesn’t know Steve well, but she knows he’s the responsible big brother to Dustin, and that’s the exact opposite of what her brother is like, so it catches her off guard. She’s definitely a little gossip though, wanting all the not-gross details about Steve from her brother. She’s basically just a little sister about it, I guess.

12. Describe in ONE SENTENCE Hopper's reaction when he hears the names Hargrove and Harrington mentioned together?

Not again.

13. Does Robin like Billy OR does Robin hate Billy?

I think she likes him. I have a little hc that she and him were together in an underground pre-gsa kinda thing in high school. She pretends she can’t stand him, but the two of them are quick best friends. (this might just be me but I think the two of them together would give statler and waldorf vibes)

14. What about Dustin?

Dustin I think actually thinks Billy is really cool. Like, he’s like a little double agent, hearing from Max all the annoying things about Billy, and from Steve the good things. He’ll gag if Steve gets too mushy over him and he’ll definitely join in with Max in calling Billy gross, and he also absolutely gives Billy a (very non-intimidating. he’s too soft) shovel talk, but I think he really likes and looks up to Billy as like, his other big brother.

15. Fav Harringrove AU?

Oh gosh, I can’t even pick. I think I like childhood friends aus best? They’re really fun to play with and it always ends up being super sweet. I’m a big fan of soulmates too for kind of the same reasons. I like mushy stuff.

16. Billy+Camaro=...??? (Not strictly Harringrove, but I can't not to ..)

I honestly don’t think Billy cares about the camaro that much. He’d be sad when it gets totaled because that was his only way of getting around and also his first car, but I don’t think the car itself has that much value to him. I mean, he treats it with absolutely zero respect, jumping curbs and driving too fast and slamming on those breaks. The camaro is just a car. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’ll tag: @lifegaurd-hargrove85! @deardmvz! and @strangebrainrot! no pressure! and as usual, if anybody else sees this and wants to participate, feel free!

[introvertguide]

In Honor of Bogey

Born on Christmas Day at the turn of the century, the acting legend Humphrey Deforest Bogart is considered the greatest male acting icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was an early Christmas gift to the 20th century and eventually was recognized by the AFI as the greatest male star of classic American cinema. This is quite a title to hold with all the great actors of the last one hundred years, so I wanted to take a little space in my analysis of the AFI top 100 to recognize this acting icon.

He was a kid with a lot of potential and intelligence, but his parents were not very affectionate (according to him) and he grew up with a chip on his shoulder. He went to some prestigious East Coast schools but was expelled or left on many occasions and ended up in the Navy. He joined up following the end of WWI and was part of the time of American Military glory. He loved it. He even tried to re-enlist when WW2 broke out, but he was too old and was instead registered as a volunteer reserve with the Coast Guard. He didn't get started in films until 1930, but started stage acting after his naval service in 1921. He might have gotten his trademark scar on his lip while in the Navy, but he got in a lot of scraps so it is not really certain where it came from.

Scars aside, Humphrey Bogart was a very good looking person that just exuded the ideal of manliness for the time. He started playing roles of young impetuous men and moved on to gangsters and villains. He did some work with James Cagney in a film called The Roaring Twenties. He met many woman with his star power and brutish manliness, marrying 4 times over his life before finally settling down with the fabulous Lauren Becall in 1945. He was part of the famous "Rat Pack" of the 50s. He was just so cool.

Since this is part of the AFI top 100 review, I want to cover the four movies on the list he was in as well as a couple other American classics:

High Sierra (1941) - Nominated for AFI Top 100 but not ranked

This was a big opportunity for Bogart because it was a leading gangster role written by his drinking buddy John Huston. The part had been turned down by some of the great actors of the time, including James Cagney. Bogart had been getting a lot of small roles and appeared in as many films as he could at the time (he is credited in 20 movies between 1937 and 1939), but this was a big break as a leading man. He worked alongside Ida Lupino, which caused jealousy issues with his wife at the time, Mayo Methot.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - AFI #31

This was a career starter for Bogart as the no nonsense anti-hero with a chip on his shoulder and a heart of gold. This film was also turned down by other more established leading actors (George Raft) because it was a remake of the same story that was done in 1931. He played the part of Sam Spade (great name), a detective in search of a bejeweled object while getting in way over his head. Bogie had a great smoky voice and his film noir narratives set the standard for the genre. It was also the directorial debut of John Huston. Humphrey Bogart was known for downplaying his work (such a hipster), but this was a film for which he openly showed pride.

Casablanca (1942) - AFI #3

This was Bogart's first real romantic lead as an expatriate in Africa at the outbreak of WWI. As far as my generation is concerned, this is his most famous role and cemented the man as a Hollywood icon. This movie won Best Picture and got him nominated for Best Actor, vaulting Bogart past James Cagney as the highest paid actor in Hollywood at the time (half a million a year; that is nothing to sneeze at now much less right after the Great Depression).

The Big Sleep (1946) - Not on AFI Top 100

This was arguably the most well known of the four movies that Bogart starred in with Lauren Bacall. His wife at the time, Methot, was jealous and was afraid that Bogart was cheating on her. He was. He and Methot got a divorce and he almost immediately married Bacall. Bogart also got a little bit weird at the time because he tried to sign up for the Navy and then bought a yacht, allowed use of it by the Coast Guard, and then patrolled around the California coast with numerous weekends around Catalina. The film was actually scheduled to be released in 1945, but had a bunch of scenes of sexual innuendo added in to play up the real life relationship of Bogart and Bacall.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947) - AFI #38

This was a film that showed the genius of Huston's writing and Bogart's acting. It was a chance to for Bogart to show off his grittiness and willing to suffer for his art. He character was one of three greedy men with stake on a gold claim that was more than enough for all three, but constant fear of backstabbing (literally and figuratively) causes problems. The movie was filmed in the Sierras during the summer heat and Bogart looked pretty bad. The movie lacked a love interest and highlighted dissension amongst a group, so Huston and Bogart (an outspoken liberal democrat) were mentioned in the Un-American Activities trial that was looking for Communists. Bogart wrote an article entitled "I'm No Communist" and distanced himself from anyone accused, but still had a slight reputation for being outspoken about first amendment rights.

Key Largo (1948) - Not on AFI Top 100 but nominated for AFI Top 10 Gangster Films

The last film that featured the couple. In this movie, their characters were stuck in a Florida hotel during a hurricane. It was another John Huston directed film noir and featured Bogart's character boating around and taking out gangsters one by one. There is a somewhat racist subplot of hunting down some wanted Native Americans that a known gangster pins a murder on. That aspect of the movie always bothered me. A real standout that somewhat upstages Bogart (interestingly enough with his help) is actually the gangster's girlfriend who sings a song for the group to earn a drink. She plays a great part as a woman attracted by the villainous lifestyle and then becomes trapped in an abusive relationship. Actress Claire Trevor, who Bogart liked very much and encouraged throughout the film, won Best Supporting Actress for her part in the story.

The African Queen (1951) - AFI #65

Maybe the film with the most star power during the Old Hollywood Era, this film starts Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, perhaps the two biggest stars of American film. It was his first film in Technicolor and the role won him his one and only Oscar for Best Actor. The film was shot in the Belgian Congo and once again proved Bogart's toughness. This was again a John Huston directed film and it is interesting that both of the stars of the film had friends in very high places that kept them acting in great roles: Humphrey Bogart had John Huston and Katharine Hepburn had Howard Hughes. I want to note that, in my humble opinion, this was neither actors best work but they both were given a lot of credit for braving the elements and appearing on screen looking haggard.

The Cain Mutiny (1954) - Nominated for AFI Top 100 but not ranked

This was the last film that Bogart was relatively happy with, although he had to drop his salary to get the part and he was bitter about it. The part of a paranoid captain earned the actor his final Oscar nomination, but it did not really bring the same satisfaction as earlier roles. Huston wrote Bogey's characters as a loner and an antihero with an internal warmth and humor. This character did not have the charm that exuded from Bogart, the person.

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Humphrey Bogart continued with high profile roles like starring with Aubrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954) and Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), but he was starting to get sick from a life of smoking and drinking. He was also in his mid 50s and couldn't play that charming young loner that he was so famous for. He had started to come across as old and didn't have his youthful charisma. He really hated working with Billy Wilder and didn't want to be the distinguished older gentleman in Sabrina. He didn't want to work with Ava Gardner because she had just broken up with his drinking buddy, Frank Sinatra. These films were successful and Bogart was a true professional, but I would not call it his best work by any means.

Humphrey Bogart was a great actor and a true Hollywood icon. Through research and watching interviews, I don't think that he would have been somebody that I liked personally because he drank and smoked heavily while enjoying arguments and confrontation. He came off as a bit of a contrarian in his later interviews and that is something that has bothered me. Don't meet your heroes. It does not lessen his accomplishments as an actor nor does it reduce the number of great films he has starred in. Just because he wouldn't be my best friend doesn't mean he wasn't a great man. I still believe that he deserves the AFI honor of being Hollywood's most famous actor. Check out some of his works and see what you think.

[maxwell-grant]

You are your top 5 Shadow agents

I don’t talk about the Agents as much as I should, even though I constantly try to stress their importance, because I’m working on essays for them individually. To be honest, I think about the Agents practically every day to the point I have a hard time separating my headcanons from the actual canon material, but I have to stay true to it, and the lack of material regarding them means that the only way I can truly talk about their characterization is by diving deep into the novels and taking notes, which I don’t have much time to do, and then finding the right books or moments to talk about, which is even more difficult. 

This by no means constitutes my big thinkpiece on them, but it’s a start, and ultimately narrowing it down was a lot harder than I expected. This order is by no means final, if you asked me this question next week or next month I’d probably have a different answer, but it’s the 5 that I find myself thinking on the most. 

Honorable mentions: Jericho Druke and Myra Reldon, who are incredibly awesome characters conceptually and who have great moments each, and whom I definitely think deserve big turns on the spotlight if the Agents ever get put on the spotlight again, but are held back by issues with their presentation and lack of prominence. Margo Lane, whom only just narrowly missed the cut because, as much as I like her and think she gets an underseved bad rep and definitely has great things going for her, I sadly have to concede isn’t as consistently great or well-written as she should be. Clyde Burke, whom I definitely like a lot based on what I’ve read and consider an integral part of the line-up, but haven’t read enough of the novels he’s in to really solidify him as one of my favorites just yet. And Slade Farrow, who is a bit too complicated to talk about superficially.

Allright, so here they are

Number 5: Burbank

As the center of all communications within The Shadow’s network and the only character in the series who is even more mysterious and elusive than The Shadow himself, Burbank is fascinating and the kind of character who simultaneously seems to be both begging for an in-depth exploration and yet who also should be dead last on the list of mysteries about the series we want spoiled, because nobody wants the mystery ruined. He’s a bit of cipher personality-wise compared to the other agents, but he kind of has to be, and I think it helps to illustrate the many forms the agents of The Shadow can and should take, that one of them is this total mystery whom we know nothing about and yet is so vital to the whole thing. And it’s interesting also because, for all the many variations we’ve had on The Shadow’s life and thoughts and feelings and etc over the years, Burbank has stayed more or less the same. Whatever variations he’s had in design aside, Burbank just is. 

The pulps did often have moments where we would get to see moments that told us a little more about Burbank, gestures he did, capabilities he had and didn’t have, little details Gibson would sprinkle in to keep people fascinated. Several scenes with Burbank are almost presented like you’re watching a movie, in the way Gibson keeps describing his face being mysteriously blocked from view by objects or lighting, like not even in your mind you are supposed to know what he is. And it’s all the more fascinating because, unlike The Shadow, as far as we know, Burbank is just some guy who’s good with tech, who was only recruited in the 2nd story but apparently knows The Shadow from before it, and whom The Shadow entrusted with virtually every secret necessary to keep his operations running. 

It’s kind of a sign as to how utterly neglected the agents are that, to this day, few writers who’ve ever touched The Shadow has ever come close to giving us any sort of explanation or backstory or anything on Burbank, and I refuse to believe these people had that much self-control. Of course I have my own ideas for Burbank, but even I would hesitate to put them on a story, because Burbank epitomizes that double-edged sword that comes with a solid narrative mystery. Burbank just is, and hopefully he will stay that way. 

Number 4: Dr Roy Tam

Mention of Dr. Tam meant much to Sayre. He was acquainted with Roy Tam, the Chinese physician. He knew that Tam was a power in Chinatown; one who worked for good

Unrolling a map, Tam showed the entire Manhattan area, studded with tiny dots in districts quite remote from Chinatown.

"These represent my outposts," he said soberly. "They are places, owned by Chinese - restaurants, laundries, curio shops, other places of business. In each of these places, I have a friend."

The Shadow understood. Dr. Tam was the motivating factor among the Chinese who adapted themselves to American ways. His mission was to create good will among races, to put an end to prejudice and superstition.

A newer and more sober spirit had replaced the old and dangerous festivities. Feuds in Chinatown were a thing of the forgotten past. Dr. Tam and his associates had done much to bring about the present sentiment; but there were persons - even among that group - who felt regret at the passing of old traditions.

Dr Tam is a remarkably layered character for one that only appears in about ten stories, and he’s one of the agents I’m most eager to discuss in-depth. He’s another one of those agents that Gibson introduced by tricking you into seeing him as a villain, as a Yellow Peril cliche, until he is revealed to be in fact a good man. Not just good, Roy Tam is presented as a powerful, influential and cunning Chinese man with a lot of assistants secretly working for him, and who is consistently presented as a progressive, pacifistic, benevolent civic leader and ally, even friend, of The Shadow. 

Tam is very much westernized and the stories paint that mostly as a good thing, and this is one of the areas that I think could very much result in an interesting story that looks at the ramifications of his role, because of course not everyone is going to agree with his viewpoints, of course him being an advocate against superstition and tradition isn’t necessarily a good thing (and it’s not how Yat Soon, The Shadow’s other major Chinese ally, works, which puts the two at odds), and of course it’s a complicated situation, but the fact that Tam invites this kind of debate at all I think is something very interesting

Largely because of the movie, Dr Tam is one of the few agents of The Shadow who’s managed to sustain appearences in modern stories, and none of them have ever really went with his original angle as a powerful civic leader. Instead he’s been largely painted as either a scientist, like in the movie, a general practitioner, and a psychiatrist, and his age has been all over the board. 

I prefer him in his original form but I also very much like the idea of Roy Tam being, like the Chinese supervillains he was created to be a subversion of, an incredible genius who’s got skills in all fields that can fit under the “Dr” part of his job and is also an incredibly capable leader able to unify splintered communities under a cause of unity and cooperation, someone who absolutely could be the adventuring genius so many other pulp heroes are, except he dedicates himself wholesale to his community and the fight against prejudice and the betterment of lives, even if he’s misguided or wrong at some of the causes he takes up. I really think this character could partake in really great stories if ever brought back.

Number 3: Cliff Marsland

(Fan-art by @cryptixcreations)

Cliff may have actually been the first agent I really fell in love with based on concept alone, even before I read the stories he was a part of and started loving all of the others. He’s one of the few agents who has prior history with The Shadow and we get ever so tantalizing hints at his background that we ultimately never get to learn about in full. He’s the resident tough guy and underworld contact of The Shadow, which in any other series might have made him the biggest badass and a loner action hero who’s too cool for things like thinking and relying on others for help. But here, trying to be that only gets Cliff into trouble, and circumstances gradually morph him into the series equivalent of a Team Dad. 

He was one of the agents who we got to see develop as a character. As he appears more frequently past his introduction, he grows from a headstrong, careless jackass, mostly interested in the action parts of the job, who “resigned himself to an adventurous career with violent death as its inevitable termination”, into one of the most reliable and capable agents, taking the lead during action scenes but otherwise fully defering leadership to Harry, and being the agent most likely to partake in gunfights and rescue The Shadow out of trouble, joining in missions like infiltrating circuses or high-society clubs and forming very strong friendships with Harry, Clyde & Hawkeye, who almost kills a man with his bare hands when he thinks Harry’s been killed. He’s the hardass, square-jawed ex-con who plays the reputation of a brutal killer, and is in reality a great friend, ally and husband (Arline has sadly only been mentioned in three stories), on top of being an invaluable fighter and secret agent.

Cliff could have easily been the protagonist of a long-running series all his own and that’s one of my favorite aspects of The Shadow’s agents. They are people with agency, goals and dreams and relationships and lives beyond the roles they play, they all have strengths and weaknesses and faults and positives that bring them much closer to us than The Shadow could ever be, with no end to the variety of roles they can take, and Cliff in particular is a character I’m very attached to. 

I do hope that he eventually found peace in a quiet life with Arline once his business with The Shadow was over.

Number 2: Harry Vincent

The Shadow as a franchise has been vastly worse off as a result of Harry Vincent being completely sidelined and mischaracterized in virtually every adaptation since, and the sheer love that Shadow fans hold for Harry purely may be the closest thing to a true universal opinion in the fandom. 

Harry is a lot of things: the audience surrogate, the protagonist of much of the early stories, the leader of the agents in field duty, the dude in distress who gets kidnapped far more than even Margo, a hopeless romantic, an action hero, the one who gets sent to recruit agents because all The Shadow has to do is send Harry on an assignment and wait for him to come back with a new friend. He is a competent, resourceful, strong, extremely kind ball of sunshine who's got the potential for greatness, even if he can't see it. 

And for this post I’m going to highlight this: Harry is, on top of all that, the ultimate embodiment of what The Shadow strives to protect, help and uplift. He is the living proof that The Shadow's mission has a good, positive effect in the world, long after criminals are brought to justice and plots are failed and victims are rescued, purely by the fact that he’s alive and helping others who were once like him. Someone who, despite having so much to offer, could have easily been swept away by the world’s callousness and cruelty, if The Shadow wasn’t there to rescue him and uplift him.

I liked The Shadow pretty much at first sight after seeing the character’s design and listening to episodes of the radio show, and my appreciation for the character grew after reading The Shadow’s Shadow, but it wasn’t until I encountered @oldschoolcrimefighters and her brilliantly informative writings on The Shadow and Harry that I not only fell in love with the series, but decided to do everything in my power to try and get other people to love it too and see the potential it has. I think a lot more people should at least be aware of why Harry matters. 

Number 1: Moe Shrevnitz

I was honestly a bit surprised when I rounded up all of the agents to make this list and Shrevy here ended up in Number One, but in hindsight, it may have been obvious all along. 

My reasonings as to why Shrevy is my favorite agent do get a bit too personal, especially because of something that happened to me as I was writing this post, so I’m putting it on a separate post here. 

[talesfromthebandgeekmafia]

I wanna hear abt ur ocs owo 👉👈🥺

AAAA omg bless u you’re a peach <3

I would love to tell you about my OCs I’m like Charlie It’salwayssunny over here I’ve got boxes full of OC stuff I’m just dying to talk about. I’ll put everything under a read more so anyone that’s not interested can just skip past here cause I’m about to get RAMBLY okay let me tell you about my beloveds

Okay so by far my favorite creative project right now is my novel that I’ve been planning on & off since January of 2019, the working title is Villainous, it’s like the most refined and likely to actually go somewhere of all my story ideas and I swear this thing holds my entire soul

The actual story is a play on the classic Career Woman RomCom setup except her name is ~Magnate~ and her big city career that never gives her time for love is ~Supervillain~

unfortunately I don’t have any art of her or any of the other characters yet because good super designs are difficult to nail down, but I’m working on it!

Anyway Magnate is amazing and a bit of an ass and I like her so much <3 She’s a big time supervillain that uses the high tech gadgets she creates for your standard robberies heists kidnapping the mayor the usual. Her parents were shitty white collar criminals that on top of being totally uninvolved in their daughter’s life embezzled from their numerous charity organizations, leading her to be suspicious of anyone that calls themselves a hero + giving her a whopping case of trust issues and a loose grasp on ethics, cuz hey, morality may be a ruse but the power and prestige sure aren’t. She's worked hard and climbed the ladder and made a name for herself as a kickass supervillain, and she plays cool and dramatic but underneath all the bravado she’s just an endearingly awkward nerd who wants a friend, which is where the next character comes in~

So for plot reasons Magnate joins up with another even more infamous supervillain to get a spot as his right hand woman in his plan for world domination, and she’s fine and everything’s business as usual until she’s told that she has to work with another person he’s recruited for her part of the plan to do biochemistry stuff synthesizing the compounds they need while she engineers the tech components, and so enters best boy Dr. Bodhi Bright who crashes into her carefully curated life and ruins everything in the nicest way :)

listen, I LOVE this guy he’s weird he’s a weirdo, just a chill funky lil dude with the most incomprehensible moral compass on Earth. Because of their job he and Magnate have to spend a lot of time together forcing Magnate to actually socialize for once beyond hurling quips at her nemesis, and right of the bat Bodhi completely throws her off her game vis a vis her supervillain image with just his whole deal. He’s this sweet polite guy who’ll talk about a death ray in the same casual tone as the minutiae of city parking, he’s new to the villainy thing and he just thinks Magnate is cool. Bodhi thinks he’s just good at reading people but he actually has minor latent empathic abilities which let him pick up on Magnate’s bravado and so he’s just...not intimidated by her at all. He completely circumvents the whole ‘big evil supervillain’ thing and just talks to her like they’re normal coworkers. And it’s not like they can just find somebody else to replace him so Magnate’s forced to respond and build an actual relationship and rapport with someone for the first time in ever. So they get closer and become actual friends, Bodhi starts calling her ‘Meg’ because Magnate kind of sounds like Margaret, and she lets him. Meg shows him the ropes of villainy, and just sort of learns to be a person again through working & developing this friendship with him, remembering what it’s like to be genuinely happy and excited about her everyday life and care about more than just her job, to open herself up to care about other people at all, and this is a romantic comedy so of course as the story progresses they fall in love and just—GAH I love their relationship so much they're so good for each other I could talk about them forever and I’m literally writing a book about it so like yeah they’re great. my darlings <3.

Here I’ve got some memes to give a better impression of their dynamic

I've only really got one other important character left to talk about aside from Meg & Bodhi's boss (he's literally the worst & the major antagonist for the book that's all that needs going into for now otherwise this thing is just going to reach unwieldingly more rambly and specific heights) and she's the secondary antagonist, superhero extraordinaire and Meg's nemesis AmaZing (get it? like amazing? except it sounds like amazon? cuz she's a lady superhero—) in a shocking turn of events this woman is the best person out of any of the people here and also the most well adjusted, she is also a very interesting character to me and I could probably pull a whole other book out of her character if I wanted to. AmaZing’s real name is Zoe Amison, before she was a hero she was a professional ballerina with a kickboxing hobby that she used to keep in shape, her first night out I think she was just straight up dressed in her costume for Firebird or something. She has superhuman strength and agility, her powers manifest with these bursts of golden sparks and arcs of electricity which she can direct as a close range weapon, basically she’s very good at the big punchy aesthetics. She’s known as one of the best superheroes in terms of like who they are as people, she tries to help rehabilitate the supervillains she fights, including Magnate, even though most of them have none of it, any money she gets from her hero work she donates back to the community so she can contribute more than just punching muggers, and she does a lot of activism and charity events on the side. She makes most of the money she needs to eat and whatnot in the cornerstore she inherited that her family’s owned for generations, and she lives in the apartment above the store with her girlfriend because YES she’s a lesbian YES her girlfriend is trans YES they are disgustingly in love and YES they own a cat named Petal together. (Her girlfriend’s name is Callie (short for Calliope) she’s a nurse and patches Zoe up when she gets hurt on the job)

And there is so much more I could say about this thing but that’s about all I can muster right now in terms of like a basic overview of these characters. Thank you so much for this ask dude this was so fun to do!!

[bers1990]

Before i go any further, make no mistake, i own nothing. I don't own the clip art pictures i used, i don't own the show and i certainly don't own the characters. The only thing i own are the younger characters and that's about it. I guess you could argue that i also own the adult designs for Zak and his wife, but that's debatable.   Like the title says, this is a future portrait of the Saturday family, and it's a full family portrait, which means it includes more than just Zak, his wife and his 3 children. It also includes his parents, his Uncle Doyle and his 3 cryptid "siblings". I'm aware that Doc, Drew and Doyle don't look any older, even though Zak is roughly in his 40's or so, and i admit, that was my faux pas. I suppose one could argue that it makes no difference how Fiskeron, Komodo and Zon all look at this point, since very few animals show signs of aging any way. But i was going to at least give Doc, Drew and Doyle gray streaks in their hair, maybe a small wrinkle or two, anything that would reflect them aging 27 years (they would still be in tip top shape though, of course). Anyway, let's go around and get some more information about the Saturday family of the future: Left to Right: Dr. Solomon "Doc" Saturday - Even though he's going on late 60's to early 70's, Doc Saturday is still the adventurous yet science and reason minded man he's always been. Though, in recent years, he's allowed his love for his work and inventions to gain more influence over him, and needless to say, that's begun to put some strain on his marriage. Drew Blackwell-Saturday - Still as feisty as ever, even when between the ages of late 50's to early 60's, Drew Saturday has begun to devote more of her time to the archaeologist aspect of her career, which she had long set aside for many years. This has allowed her more time to get in touch with her emotions and, needless to say, it helped bring about a storm to her marriage with Doc. Komodo Saturday - Thanks to the genetic engineering that he went through early on, Komodo Saturday is still alive and kicking, with old age only creeping up on him in minor ways (e.g. being out of breath when he moves so little). At one point, Komodo and his fellow cryptids; Zon and the Fiskerton Phantom (Fisk), all had a strong and inseparable bond with their adopted human "brother", Zak Saturday, who returned their loving feelings in full. However, as time went on, the strength of this camaraderie began to weaken, as Zak started to spend more of his time with the woman who would one day be his wife and, eventually, started a family with her. The strong bond is still present though, just in different ways. In Komodo's case, it's in him acting as the nanny and nursemaid to Zak's daughter, Carol, whom he protects fiercely.   Carol Drew Saturday - As i've said numerous times in the past; this is my fan-made daughter for Zak Saturday. She is very good at planning things out before acting and is a true prodigy when comes to dealing with Cryptids. However, like her father, she is often prone to allow her impetuous nature get the better of her, causing her to do things that, under more cool-headed circumstances, she would never think right. Carol has always been close to her father, to the point where she inherited his original "Claw" as her own signature weapon. But if there was one person was a close second in terms of bond, that would be Komodo, her nanny and ever vigilant protector. By the way, as i'm sure you can already tell, Carol owes her middle name to her paternal grandmother, something that she is proud to know. Zakery Thomas Saturday - At one point, he was the scrappy and adventurous little boy of Doc and Drew Saturday gifted (or cursed) with telapathic powers over cryptids. Now, he's the stern, no-nonsense and physically imposing Beta of the Saturday pack (set to take Doc's place as patriarch of the family). Having lost none of the skills he had as a child, as well as gained a few new ones, Zak is still just as formidible an opponent as ever. Though, just like his own father before him, Zak's paternal instincts are his strongest trait, right alongside his loyalty to his wife.   Ulraj Elija Saturday - Named after both his ancestor, Elija Saturday and his godfather, the King of Kumari Kandam, Ulraj is the first born child of Zak Saturday. Being the eldest, Ulraj constantly feels the need to be the responsible and level-headed one of the litter, to the point where he acts as the leader of his siblings. For the most part, he is leadership material, and is rather mature, responsible and level-headed. But, unfortunately, those very qualities have also led him to be a tad self-righteous; he almost always thinks that his way is right. Still though, his inner sense of humilty does keep that aspect of his character in check (more or less). He inherited the Saturday genius gene and is quite the aspiring inventor because of it. Whenever he has the time, he is usually seen using a blowtorch on something or wrenching something tighly. He even designed his own modest suit of armor which is both protective yet light to move in, proudly sporting the Saturday family logo on the chestplate. I'm well aware that his hair makes him look like Zak Monday, that's why i gave him the suit of armor in the first place. Fiskerton Saturday - Still the same lovable giant furball he's always been, this 8-foot tall Gorilla-Cat remains the most unique and mysterious member of Saturday family, as well as its main muscle. At one point, Fiskerton and Zak were as thick as thieves, along with Komodo and Zon. Though, out of all of them, Fiskerton had the strongest bond with Zak. This cameraderie began to weaken, however, as Zak began to start a family of his very own. But Fisk remained as loyal as ever, and even took an active interest in the development of Zak's eldest son, Ulraj, often trying to keep him humble. Wadi Saturday - Ever since they first met as 11-12 year old children, Wadi's chemistry, and general relationship, with Zak Saturday has always been erratic at best. On the one hand they had a few qualities that made them similar, but on the other hand, they tended to bicker and clash quite a bit. It wasn't until Zak's 13th Birthday that the two of them realized that all of this was the result of a growing romance, one that officially began when Wadi kissed Zak on the cheek. The two of them began a long distance relationship after that and it lasted for a good long time, many years in fact. But Zak and Wadi were not hopeless romantics, they were well aware that their relationship was no different than anyone else's. Which means, like anyone else's, it could come to an end for any reason at all. How long the two of them thought about this, they would never tell the other, but think it they both did. Still though, both ultimately decided to burn that bridge when they came to it, and did their best to keep their minds in the present when it came to their relationship. Surprisingly enough, Zak and Wadi's love for each other never once wavered and ultimately led to Zak proposing to Wadi when they were both between the ages of 23-24. She gladly accepted this proposal and they were married as soon as possible, much to the delight of their respective families. As far as Wadi's personality goes, it's relatively the same as it was years ago; she's still pretty assertive yet relatively soft-spoken at the same time. She has also become more open about her feelings towards Zak, now that she knows how he feels about her. But the biggest change to Wadi is that she's gained more control over her kleptomania; now she will only steal something if the situation calls for it (like getting a dangerous object away from a villain). Like her mother-in-law, she is a fiercely protective mother (though she's not as over-bearing), she will do anything to protect her three children, even pummel someone into submission.     Maboul Farhan Saturday - The youngest of Zak and Wadi's littler, as well as the most timid, is little Maboul Farhan Saturday. Needless to say, he was named after his maternal grandfather, a fact that he is very proud of. In fact, out of all of his siblings, Maboul is the most in touch with his Hassi and, subsequently, Arabian heritage. He has done all he could to learn the ways of his people and, because of this, has developed a strong bond with his mother. She even passed on to him her treasured Thieves Yo-Yo, much like how Zak passed down his "Claw" to Maboul's sister, Carol. Now, personality-wise, Maboul is a rather meek and timid child, which makes it pretty easy for his siblings to sway him. However, when the situation calls for it, he will at least try to be assertive. Fortunately, he will always have the protection of his "aunt", Zon, on his side. BTW, Maboul's middle name. Farhan, is actually Arabic for "happy", because that's how his parents felt when he was born. Zon Saturday - With exception of being the de facto nanny of Maboul, Zon is relatively the same, though, i'd imagine her skin and wings would be more rusty looking by this point. Much like her two adopted "brothers", she used to be very close to Zak Saturday in his youth. But when Zak started to spend more and more time with his growing new family and spent less and less time with her, Fiskerton and Komodo, Zon eventually tried to cope with this by forming a bond with one of Zak's kids, Maboul grew closest her and they've been inseparable ever since. Doyle Blackwell - Doyle's pretty much the same guy he's always been, nuff said. Though, he is somewhat more concerned about the frequent issues his older sister and brother-in-law are having. He is also just as close to his great nephews and great niece as he was with Zak.

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                      Harper Song, who is known by no other name;                                       a 19 year old son of Arawn.                   He is a ballet & lyrical instructor at LOCO Motion.

FC NAME/GROUP: Song Hyeongjun / Cravity CHARACTER NAME: Harper Song AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 19 / 30th November 2001 PLACE OF BIRTH: Tongyeong, South Korea but mostly lived in Seoul OCCUPATION: Ballet and Lyrical Dance Instructor at LOCO Motion HEIGHT: 174cm DEFINING FEATURES:

Usually speaks in a Seoul dialect but his native Tongyeong dialect comes through when he’s stressed

Tall frame and broad shoulders

Athletic frame with highly defined muscles: especially legs, arms, chest and back

Sweet smile and a baby face

A colourful flower bouquet tattoo on his inner arm (https://tattooblend.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/52.jpg)

Wears glasses when he’s reading for long periods of time

Weak right ankle with surgery scars

PERSONALITY: Harper spent most of his life living under his mother’s direction: what school to attend, what classes to take and what opportunities to accept. He isn’t very used to making decisions for himself and often finds that he reverts to his mother’s strict values; whether it is a strict diet or the countless hours of training every day. He knows that she’s wrong though and is actively trying to live for himself instead - it’s the exact reason he moved to Mount Phoenix.

He is passionate and lives for the sole purpose of dancing - with his favourites being Ballet, Modern and Lyrical. In fact, he possesses an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the history behind those styles, but is still wanting to learn and experience more. Although he was on the road to becoming a principal dancer, Harper had thrown it all away. He is now more interested in just chasing his passions. He is both happy and satisfied working as a dance teacher, but longs to return to the stage in the future.

To most people, Harper comes across as a very polite and warm hearted person. He’s genuine in everything that he does and is seldom known to lie. He is encouraging of the people around him and wanted to uplift all of his students - regardless of experience and skill level. Although he is young and with a pure, good heart, that should not be confused with naivety. His life has been filled with many years of pain and the experience has made him a stronger person. He tries to see the good in everyone but will also stand up for any injustice.

To his closest friends, Harper is an obvious Dance geek. He’s the type to become over excited about rewatching an old dance performance and could probably speak for hours about the technical details of a dance routine. He also had a cheeky sense of humor, embellished with a hint of good natured sarcasm. He has an innocent charm, especially since he is relatively inexperienced in terms of dating - Harper has been in relationships before, but is generally new to meeting people outside of his dance circles. Most of his life has been fairly sheltered and limited, so he has only a few life experiences to draw from.

Harper is known to wear his heart on his sleeve. He speaks his mind and, if the situation calls for it or if he is asked, would be willing to share even the most painful parts of his past. He takes the darkness in his heart as a reason to grow and is willing to relive his bad memories if the story will help someone in the present.

HISTORY: Harper had always known that he was special and, according to his Mother, that meant that he couldn’t do things like the other kids. He was the only son of Song Hayoung, or Hanna Song as she was professionally known. As one of Korea’s few internationally renowned ballerinas, she had a prolific career as the Principal Dancer for a number of foreign dance companies. Although she retired when she fell pregnant with Harper, she was never able to let go of her past fame.

Hanna was always about trying to be the best of the best. As a dancer, she pushed herself to the absolute limits and boldly grasped at every opportunity that came to her. Coming from a small town, she wanted nothing more than to be greater than anyone thought possible. Even her brief relationship with Arawn, a strange and powerful man with abilities beyond human, was an example of how she gravitated towards power. After she had Harper, a child that she initially wanted to erase from existence, she saw him as another opportunity to prove her greatness. Hanna raised him as though she were his talent manager - every ambition that she had for herself, ambitions that she felt were stolen from her, she forced onto her son.

She named him Harper, giving him a foreign name because he was going to be an internationally renowned dancer - a Principal Dancer for certain, and perhaps with the Berlin Dance Company. She would accept nothing less than that, so saw no reason to give him a Korean name. She didn’t intend on him leading any real life there.

She put Harper into dance classes as soon as he learnt to walk and hired him a private tutor to ensure that he could maximize his practice time - elementary school was just an excuse for play time, after all, and there was nothing homeschooling could not accommodate. Hanna was also rather outspoken to him about his parentage - thinking that knowledge of his father as well as the magic that he might have inherited would propel Harper into being a more aggressively ambitious person. But truthfully, Arawn and the dead had always scared him, so Harper avoided pursuing those abilities.

Instead, he put all of his energy and focus onto dance - doing just what his mother wanted. He genuinely loved it but his mother was always quick to criticize. Harper was never good enough. Winning first place was just an expectation, not an achievement. Hanna didn’t allow him to do much aside from dance, so he didn’t have the opportunity to meet other kids his age. He was a sweet boy though, with a warmth that his mother never possessed, and became close to other dancers easily.

It was only when he reached his teenage years that Hanna enrolled him in an actual school. Deciding that he had outgrown the backwards community in Tongyeong, she surprised him with a sudden move to Seoul. In fact, she hadn’t even spoken to Harper about it until the moving trucks arrived. Unable to even say goodbye to his handful of friends, he cried silently in the back seat, trying to make sure that his mother didn’t see his tears. She did though and, for the first time in her life, she hesitated. But only for a moment.

Success did not come to those who held themselves back.

…

Harper has been enrolled into the most prolific performing arts school in Seoul, where he also had his first experience living away from his mother. Being in a dormitory was different and it took him a while to get used to it, especially since most of his life has been spent living to such rigid rules. However, his concerns melted away and Harper made friends easily - his satoori, which he was initially self conscious of, was actually adored by the other students who thought he sounded cute and shy by default.

In his first couple of years at the school, Harper just managed to pass his academic classes but was absolutely excelling as a dancer. He enjoyed trying different styles but, with every phone call from his mother, there was another demand that he focus more of his time on ballet. Consequently, he ended up spending a majority of his time with his Pas de deux partner - Miyoung, a prodigal dancer and daughter of a renowned dance company director. She was an elegant and beautiful girl who shared a similarly strict lifestyle to him and so they were always on the same wavelength - it seemed only logical that they would date. His mother approved of the relationship, considering her a suitable partner for Harper even if she would have preferred him to focus on his training instead.

However, that happiness was short lived as the relationship lasted mere months - their chemistry as friends and dance partners didn’t translate to a healthy relationship. The two spent more time training and analysing dance techniques than actually getting to know each other. As the pressure of trying to feign a happy relationship built up, Harper also became closer with his new roommate - Junkai. He was an older student from the countryside in China, orphaned and without any money, but possessing such incredible musical talent that he was attending school on a full scholarship. He had a cool, stoic nature and seldom spoke, so Harper initially felt uncomfortable around him.

However, tragedy brought the two closer.

Harper had just returned to their room after late night rehearsals, thinking that Jun would have been asleep already, but instead found the older boy sitting desolate on his bed. His eyes were red rimmed and puffy, as though he had spent hours crying. Concerned for his roommate, Harper went to sit silently by the other boy’s side, waiting and giving him time to share what had happened. There was no pushing, no inundation of questions; just silence and the comfort of hands being held.

Jun revealed that he’d received word that afternoon that his younger sister had passed away. They had been each other’s only family for years and, while he was still living in China, he had been her sole guardian - even if he was only a child himself. She was the one who had sent his application to Korea and who encouraged him to go to study abroad, even if she would be left alone. As a childhood Leukemia patient, his sister had been admitted to the hospital in recent months but Jun wasn’t able to fly home to her - they didn’t have the money and she didn’t want him to give up his scholarship. In the end, all he had were daily video calls and then a final call from her doctor, delivering the news that she had passed away in her sleep.

Jun blamed himself for not being there for her, hating that his sister was alone even in her last painful moments. She was gone and there was nothing anyone could do, except Harper knew he could. He had never done it before, only having heard from his mother about the powers Arawn possessed, but he wanted to try it for Junkai.

“I want to try something.”

…

The two roommates grew closer in the following months and Harper could very confidently pinpoint the moment that he fell in love with Junkai - he was on the piano and Harper was barefoot in the dance studio, the music weaving its way into both of their hearts. Where he had to try so hard in his last relationship, being with Jun felt completely natural - the other boy balanced out all of Harper’s weaknesses, whilst Harper encouraged Jun to open up to the world around him. Sharing a room soon turned into sharing a bed and they often found themselves holding each other through the night.

In Harper’s mind, it was his first real relationship - and Junkai was the only person he wanted to be with - but Harper’s mother thought differently. Initially only shocked by her son’s sexuality, she was further appalled to find out about Jun’s impoverished background. She could not accept that her son would go from Miyoung, who she viewed as the perfect girlfriend, to someone who had absolutely nothing to his name. She forbid the relationship, going to great lengths to ensure that the boys were split up.

However, in his first real rebellious moment towards his mother, Harper refused. The two continued to see each other secretly throughout their high school years, often talking about how they might run away together after graduation, but reality soon caught up.

Due to his family background and good looks, Harper had been scouted throughout his high school years. He rejected them as the offers mostly came from modelling and idol agencies, but the one he had been preparing for his whole life came just weeks before graduation. The Berlin Dance Company contacted him to offer him a permanent role in the corps de ballet - with potential to graduate to a soloist and then principal role as well. The only downside would have been having to relocate to Germany.

Junkai, meanwhile, had to go home. He had graduated two years ago and had been trying to find stable work in Korea with no luck. His Chinese background and citizenship worked to his disadvantage in Korea, with no place wanting to hire him permanently. At the same time, a call had come from his hometown’s high school to offer him a position as a music tutor. He was concerned about leaving Harper, knowing that the other boy was still very much under the selfish control of his mother, but had no option left.

Before Harper’s graduation recital, and knowing that their paths would be inevitably split afterwards, the two boys had slipped out on the weekend. Heading to one of the more reputable tattoo studios in Hongdae, they spent a few hours getting matching tattoos on their upper forearm.

“But why the flowers?” Harper asked.

“Because I want to be the first one to congratulate you after every show.”

…

An entire year had passed and Harper was getting accustomed to life in Berlin. Although they had broken off their relationship, Jun was always on his mind - as the nightly phone calls proved. Over time though, Jun became quieter again and harder to contact, but there was nothing that Harper could do on the other side of the world. And so he just tried again and again.

1 missed call.

8 missed calls.

15 missed calls.

There were minutes to go until curtain, and Harper was backstage of the theatre checking on his costume. It had been nearly a week since Jun had called and so Harper nearly pounced when his phone lit up with a new message. For once though, he had wished that he hadn’t read anything. The words seared into his brain as the stage manager came in to rush them onto stage. Harper followed her instructions like clockwork, ascending to the raised platform for the opening number.

The orchestra started with a delicate melody that seems only to toy with the sinking weight in Harper’s chest. The world was spinning but Harper pushed on, because that was what he had been trained to do. Push on. Go on.

He slipped, his ankle snapping in the wrong direction and body falling meters below. The pain seared through his leg and Harper was certain that he’d broken something, but that wasn’t why the tears came, why his heart clenched, nor why he sobbed the entire night into his sheets. It was only one message, a couple of words, but it tore his world apart.

“This is Doctor Li. I’m not certain of your relationship to my patient, but I am sorry to inform you that Ma Jun Kai passed away this morning.”

…

Harper spoke to Junkai after that just once. On his bed with his leg in a plaster and his face sunken, he had called up all of his strength to use his powers once again - but for a more selfish reason. Jun came fairly easily to sit beside him in quiet comfort, much like what Harper had done for him before. The boy in front of him was different though - thinner than he had been just a year ago and with a deathly look to his complexion.

Harper looked up at him, his breath caught in his chest as the tears came to his eyes again. He’d promised himself not to cry.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Junkai looked at him, his expression filled with a mix of sadness and regret, “Because I don’t want you to remember me like this.”

…

Life is short, and Harper realised that he had spent most of his living under the control of his mother. Her words were so much a part of him that he didn’t know who he was without her direction. With Junkai gone as well, his singular attempt at pursuing something for himself, Harper could no longer continue the life that he had been living.

And so he left. He submitted his resignation to the Berlin Dance Company, citing time needed to rehabilitate, and packed all of his possessions up. He didn’t say anything to his mother, not giving her the chance to stop him, but had her to thank for his next move. When he was younger, she had told him about a place just off from Korea - it was an island where people like his father and, in turn, him, could go to become stronger.

And maybe find a fresh beginning.

PANTHEON: Celtic CHILD OF: Arawn POWERS:

The ability to communicate with the dead - this is not a passive ability and Harper has to put quite a lot of energy into actually doing this. At the moment, he is only capable of short communications. This will not work for any spirits that have moved on or reincarnated.

The ability to raise the dead - Harper has only ever attempted this once and is only able to do it for very short time spans (a few minutes at most). It is a very exhausting process and leaves him so weak that he may completely pass out.

Physically strong - Harper has his rigorous exercise routine and dance training to back it up, but his natural inclination towards physical strength surely helped the process.

STRENGTHS:

Physical strength, agility and flexibility

Encyclopaedic knowledge of dance history

Natural talent and professional training in a number of dance genres - specifically Ballet, Modern and Lyrical dance

Takes past experiences and failures as reasons to become stronger

WEAKNESSES:

Is absolutely terrible at making decisions

Does not have good grasp or understanding of his demigod abilities

Is trusting of the people around him and can be easily hurt

Has a very regimented lifestyle that he is trying to ‘unlearn’

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 35: AMJ #6.2

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Much as we did for AMJ #4 we will be turning this issue into a three parter. This is because the next page we will cover has a Hell of a lot to unpack. As always, if you want the full context read the previous post.

MJ’s mental rehearsal continues, with her imagining Peter’s questions and the answers she plans on giving.

Why didn’t she call Peter? Because she couldn’t get to her phone safely

Why didn’t she scream for help/aren’t there security guars on set? Because she was the only one being pursued.

MJ plans to pause for dramatic effect and say (with enough conviction that Peter would have  to understand): “I’d just seen this guy kill someone. Who knows what else he was capable of? I didn’t want to endanger anyone else by making them my shield. Especially since this guy was intent on following me and only me out of the building.”

Whilst MJ is going through this in her head she is shocked and scared at the sight of Oni. Oni reaches into his jacket (seemingly for a gun). MJ’ facial expression changes (I don’t really know what it’s trying to convey) and she smashes a fire alarm. Oni pulls his hand out of his jacket revealing nothing but his hand in a gun pose. Behind him the audiences rushes out in a panic.

Okay, the storytelling between the art and captions is actually very well executed here. If this was an original character rather than Mary Jane, someone who was perhaps characterized as brash, impulsive (possibly self-destructive), then this page would actually be really cool.

I appreciate how the art and dialogue marry up together creating irony and a contrast to what is happening. The framing of Oni and the ‘lighting’ (for lack of a better word) are also excellent as is the pacing and ‘rhythm’ of the page. It’s just executed very well.

Too bad MJ isn’t an original character and the context ruins the page.

Not only is MJ planning on deliberately lying to Peter but going to extra lengths to do it. It’s not just the one lie it’s several about her being in danger and unnecessarily. The worst part is the ‘I will say with enough conviction that my….boyfriend has  to understand…’ It’s just so underhanded and exploitative, its MJ planning on in a sense tricking Peter into believing her lies.

And I do not know why.

Why  is she planning to lie to him about this at all? Is she so egotistical that she can’t admit she made a mistake? Has she or is she planning on always lying to Peter about pursuing crooks herself?

I just do not understand the need for MJ to lie to Peter about this. Yes it will upset him but surely she knows he’ll get over it. Even if it’s just to save her some kind of hassle with him later surely she knows lying is just generally bad for a relationship, especially over something as serious as this. Peter doesn’t lie to her about being Spider-Man or the risks that entails for God’s sake.

This isn’t even connected to the Mysterio thing. This is just an extra pack of lies about an essentially unrelated event.

The most grating aspect of the page is that MJ recognizes the obvious questions and the obvious reasons she should have done something different. Which means Williams does too. Williams knows there were other more reasonable options for Mary Jane to have taken but has chosen for her to not take them.

And let’s dig into those options shall we.

She could have called Spidey. She is planning on lying about her phone being out of safe reach. Except it wasn’t.

She could’ve screamed for help or screamed about the murder. She could’ve gotten the security guards to help her. She plans to claim she was the only one being pursued. She wasn’t, the guy was leaving and she  pursued him. He isn’t even pursuing her on this  page.

Even if she was the only one being pursued she still could’ve gotten security guards involved. Putting aside the fact that that’s their job, this guy is seemingly not a super human. If he was why is he walking away, keeping to the shadows and using a weapon to strangle his victim. If he had enhanced strength he’d not need that. Therefore there is no evidence to suggest this man couldn’t be stopped by several burly guys or a bullet. After all, even in New York city the number of regular human criminals outnumber the costumed criminals.

And yes, this guy is seemingly a cold-blooded killer so MJ couldn’t be sure what else he was capable of. But if this chat show hosts celebrity guests then surely the security services have provisions in place to protect them? They are celebrities, there are always going to be one or two lunatics who might take things too far. So provided they aren’t incompetent the security guards should  be armed and prepared to deal with a normal non-powered person at the very least, even an armed one and a cold blooded killer. In fact I’d have thought a crazed and armed celebrity stalker would be far less predictable than a sane and rationale killer.

Also, MJ’s point about not knowing what Oni is capable of applies to her. She  doesn’t know what the man is capable of beyond obviously being willing and able to kill; we’ll come back to that in a moment.

MJ final point on this page regards not wanting to make other people her shield, especially since he was just after her. Again he wasn’t. In fact her pursuit of him wound up endangering more people. Not by accident either, she  deliberately put them in danger by triggering the fire alarm.

That’s aggressively out of character for Mary Jane. Risk the lives of innocent people to save her own skin? Get fucked, Mary Jane would never do that. I can’t say I’m surprised. MJ’s moral compass has been utterly broken throughout this series. She’s been mind bogglingly selfish throughout this series.

You know when I wrote part 16, I was only thinking about MJ prioritizing her career over other people. I honestly never expected that I’d have to point out that she’d obviously not use other people as her shield.

There is an element of good craftsmanship to that moment though. The juxtaposition between what MJ is doing and the rehearsal dialogue MJ is running through in her head. As a moment intended to deliver irony it works magnificently. It just isn’t something Mary Jane would ever do. Oh, unless it was six villains and they were threatening the movie.

I guess in this series MJ’s priorities are:

Mysterio’s dream film project/Mysterio’s ‘redemption’/The employment of current super villains/Her career/Her life

Her relationship with Peter/the lives of innocent people

In that order.

Why do people sill laud this series again?

Anyway, MJ’s point about not wanting to use people as shields doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Not just because that is literally what she is doing on this page. Not just because she basically did that last issue when the cast and crew battled the Savage Six for her. Not just because Mysterio battled them in issue #3.

But MJ has sought the help of others countless times before.

In part 20 I recounted several instances of MJ getting assists to save her self. Whilst some of those instances entailed help finding her, others involved her actively seeking help. In ASM #261 she asked Harry about Peter as she wanted Spider-Man to come help them. She asked Spidey to help rescue her and Liz from the fire in the same issue.

In part 17 I also pointed out that Mary Jane sought assistance from the police, body guards and Peter to deal with her stalker. In that instalment I also went over the time she encouraged Peter to go out and deal with a gangland shoot out going on. Obviously MJ was not in any direct danger there but wouldn’t asking Peter for help qualify as looking to him to protect innocent people, as MJ is herself was (allegedly) trying to do by pursing Oni?

There are numerous other instances where MJ has looked to others to help her in times of peril or when innocent people are in danger. 

When Smythe abducted her in ASM Annual #19 she tried to get the attention of Peter or the authorities.

In Web #49 to Peter to sort out Lorraine’s drug dealer?

In ASm #317 she suggested calling in the marines when Venom was on the loose again.

In MKSM #11 she called S.H.I.E.L.D. to save Peter and Felicia from she (correctly) presumed would be a trap.

Or how about Spec #228 where a pregnant MJ was pursued by a mind controlled Peter bent on killing her? In that issue Mary Jane sought the help of the New Warriors and Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider who acted as a shield between her and Peter.

No matter how you slice it, if MJ is in danger or thinks others are, she is more than willing to seek assistance from people who’s job it is to protect others. Shit, how many times has MJ suggested other heroes or the police could save the day instead of Spider-Man?

These do not mark her out as a weak coward. If you know your limits and can reasonably assess danger then often you serve the greater good by seeking the assistance of others. Sometimes serving the greater good means handing over responsibility to them if they are better qualified.

Spider-Man himself has sought help from other heroes when he feels outgunned on countless occasions. One of the most recent (as of this writing) occurred in FNSM v2 #12-13 where Peter asked the F4 to help him.

It’s all about scale. I went over this in parts 19-22, but MJ is not a super hero. She’s just a very capable civilian. But a capable civilian is still not on the same level as a very capable trained cop or trained security officer, someone who knows what they are doing with a gun basically. She’s probably more resourceful than those people, but her resourcefulness boils down to luck. She needs the right resources around her to exploit. Hence why her only course of action on this page was to create dozens of human shields.

Noticeably she was scared and unprepared deal with him one-on-one. Like what the fuck did she think was going to happen when she caught up with him. Her apprehension seemed at it’s worst when he was seemingly pulling out a gun and…yeah. What would  she have done if he was armed.

Look back at the prior page. The distance between them would’ve been too great for her to have knocked the gun out of his hand or even attack him hand to hand. The pacing of the panels on this page make it clear that Oni would’ve had ample opportunity to have shot her if he wanted, even after MJ hit the alarm.

You could argue that her distraction worked because he wouldn’t have dared kill her with so many witnesses. That is to say he might’ve refrained from pulling a gun specifically because MJ hit the alarm. Or maybe you could argue if he had pulled a gun he wouldn’t have fired because of the witnesses.

The problem there being that he apparently wasn’t that fussed about witnesses because he knew MJ saw him but was leaving. And again, he’s wearing a mask! So what if people identify him. People know Spider-Man is guilty of countless property damage and other acts of vigilantism. It doesn’t matter because he wears a mask. Obviously he doesn’t want to be framed for a more serious crime like murder, but he’s on the side of the angels. Oni clearly isn’t and clearly doesn’t care to be. Not only because he just murdered someone but because he is literally dressed as a demon!

His decision to wear a mask like that at all actually destroys the idea that he is particularly worried about being spotted. From a realistic stand point no one would wear something so garish unless they wanted to be spotted. Super villains often want attention and have big egos, hence the flashy costumes. If this guy’s job was to be a shadowy assassin who kills with no witnesses why wear a bright red mask (which is specifically how MJ spotted him btw) with big impractical horns on it. I’m not saying this guy is actively trying to get noticed, but he clearly wouldn’t care about witnesses because his disguise is highly attention grabbing. Look how nonchalant he is amidst the crowd on this very page? If he really did want to just get in and get out, no witnesses he’d never have worn that.

Oh well. At least MJ isn’t nonplussed like she was last issue…Hey wait a minute. Why isn’t Mary Jane nonplussed like last issue? She could hold her own against the Savage Six single handily but one guy in a scary mask and some garrotte rope and she’s intimidated?

How does that  make sense? I mean yes, it makes sense and is totally believable if you take this situation in isolation. But it this series isn’t consistent even with it’s own stupid ass rules!

Let’s leave it there for now. We’ll wrap up the issue with the next instalment.

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[split-n-splice]

"Her reputation going sour was no secret." – a line of interest from Ch1 of The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie. ;3 Just throwin’ that out there. Also! A definite nod to the cupcakery here, because headcanon: those recipes were taken from Drakken’s cookbook. Also headcanon: Drakken likes baking, fite me. This makes sense to me since Ron likes baking, and since Drakken’s shown interest in recipes.

Edited by @gogofordrakgo ♥ (ohlawd thnx for putting up w/ me)

[Chapter Guide]

7. Enabler – 4

As his first day alone in more than two weeks wore on, Dr. Drakken became increasingly aware he was off his game.

He haphazardly wrapped up the order of power staves and shipped them off to free up his schedule. Even left with a surplus of free time on his hands, left in the total privacy of his lab with no one to hover and no distracting upgrades to personalized combat gear to win himself brownie points, he made very little headway on his drones.

He managed to get one robot up and running, so to speak, but commands that seemed so simple like stand and walk just didn’t compute. Yet the buggy self-aware machine managed to rise on its own accord and point to the unassembled duplicates strewn about in a thousand different pieces on his worktable. Worst of all, the bare-bones robot began chanting, “sisters, sisters, sisters,” incessantly until something Drakken said or did caused its head to snap his direction. Preservation activated and an artificial fight or flight drive tripped, unfortunately geared toward fight. The skeletal droid abruptly announced him a threat to the sisters and lurched into action. Lucky for him, there was still a plug to pull.

He could have used some assistance in disabling the mutinous drone, but he managed on his own, as he always had. He shut down the project for the day to tend to a swollen lip received in the collision of steel knuckles and his face.

Back in his quarters, he couldn’t help casting glances to the phone, itching to dial – to dial someone. Anyone. He knew exactly who he wanted to ring up and give an earful to, but he clenched his fists and stamped a foot and grunted to himself as he stalked away from the landline. He had a headache and didn’t need to deal with her attitude now anyway.

Solitude was still disheartening. If he had expected a call from the runaway that evening to update him of her progress or lack thereof, or even to say goodnight or make small talk or anything at all, then he was sorely disappointed.

Drakken knew she wouldn’t have approved – in fact he was certain she would have been furious with him if she’d known – but he’d taken the liberty of sending out henchmen to gather intel on the superhuman. Granted, he’d lost those resourceful fellows, who’d only just returned from the assignment with their haul a day before getting the axe.

As Drakken lugged the overflowing box out of the storage room the next day, he reasoned with himself that he deserved to know who he’d been harboring, especially if he planned to continue to do so. He’d been just a little too wary to touch the box before, lest she pop up behind him to catch him red handed.

He deposited it on his coffee table and locked the door to his quarters for good measure, just in case the woman returned and came barging in at an especially undesirable time.

An abundance of manila folders stuffed with news articles topped the box, and if the men hadn’t already been fired, Drakken might have tipped whoever was responsible for courteously ordering the articles by date, even if he’d nearly scattered them as he unthinkingly tossed them aside while rummaging. VHS and cassette tapes at the bottom of the box made up the other half of the heft. Infiltrating a Global Justice base to steal her official records had been asking too much of the henchman, but an excess of media coverage to expose her would have to be good enough.

With the Bebe bots a bust and a woman who wasn’t even present distracting him still, Drakken settled in to squander his day reading what the sacked henchmen had scrounged up. He could spend an entire week reviewing her hero streak, reading the articles and watching the news reports or listening to interviews on tape, but he elected to skim through the past the four years worth of clippings, pulling out a folder from the bottom of the stack to begin.

A few nights ago, at three in the morning, he had been woken by the girl slamming his “front” door and stalking to his kitchen, the green embers glittering over her skin burning off perspiration and nearly setting her pajamas ablaze. She forwent a glass and drank straight from the faucet before hanging over his sink to hold her head under the stream of water, cursing about a comet. She’d looked just a little too unstable for him to hazard questioning her then, and had returned to his room to let her raid his kitchen for a midnight snack in peace.

So Dr. Drakken wasn’t altogether surprised when the earliest scant news coverage regarded a chip off a comet that had struck down in the suburbs of Go City. It had come so fast and so sudden that there had only been a couple blurry shots of the meteorite’s decent and recovery to accompany the articles. That it hadn’t left a bigger crater or caused fatalities was a mystery, but there was no mention of five quarantined adolescents caught up in the catastrophe either, so a cover-up wasn’t improbable.

Within the year, a trio of teenagers in uniform were garnering admiration of the general populace with their heroic feats. Front-page photos of a distantly familiar girl with her hair still short and boyish beside defeated villains bound up and posed with like trophies, frequently smiling smugly for the camera, should have been enough to make any villain in his right mind reconsider taking her in. Drakken wanted to believe he knew her better than that – that she wasn’t the vigilante she claimed she never wanted to be, and that there was no chance she might be on her way back to his lair with her teammates to hand his ass to him at any moment – but it wasn’t so easy.

Guiltily, he came realize that maybe she hadn’t been pulling his leg about her piloting capability after all when he found a clipping from last fall, featuring a photograph of a far more recognizable woman in uniform along with two young men like her in front of a jet as colorful as their suits, which had been generously donated to them by Global Justice. The Go Tower constructed in the bay a year earlier served as a monument and a base, and Dr. Drakken would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little envious that some superhuman youths had it all handed to them on a silver platter just for swearing an oath to use their gifts for good.

The set of gloves he’d fashioned paled in comparison to the extravagant gifts from Global Justice and Go City. Clearly, giving her things was no way to win her allegiance, because the girl’s hero career had been short-lived. She’d served little more than three years. If she’d only abided by their rules, she could have been living it up, yet she’d formally quit her team months ago.

As of this year, there was a marked change in the tone of the headers. There was less and less praise to be found, until there was next to none at all. If he’d been hoping to find reassurance she was genuinely a bad seed, he got it, though snooping made him feel worse with each article he skimmed over.

Nasty gossip sprung up like weeds. Disbelief and speculation aplenty could be found in clippings from newspapers and magazines as to why she’d abandoned her occupation as a beloved hero. The supply of libel following her resignation was endless. If he had to guess, serving under Global Justice had kept such publications suppressed before, but she’d lost that perk when she put her foot down on doing their bidding.

Blasting scandalous, one popular rumor circulated that she’d withdrawn because she was a typical case of irresponsible teen pregnancy, such negligence marking her unfit to be a role model any longer. That she was still occasionally seen in uniform despite her quitting should have proven she wasn’t expecting – but instead it inspired ridicule and controversy over endangerment and abortion. There was no wining on that front without a good lawyer, which he doubted the girl behind the mask could afford without Global Justice’s charity.

That lost traction when the former hero lashed out at a news reporter on live television. Written accounts played it off as if it had been unprovoked, but Dr. Drakken found a tape on the incident at the bottom of the box that proved otherwise. He was hesitant to hit play on the copy of the broadcast. The masked young woman trying to escape a bombardment of questions was hard to watch as she was confronted by the press with the matter of substance abuse, among other things, all because marijuana was said to be smelled on her clothes. Once detox was mentioned, the cornered superhuman – disheveled and fresh out of an unsanctioned battle – lost her cool and attacked the reporter outright. It was all caught on camera until she was swept away screaming profanities by her gorilla of a brother.

Less than a month later, paparazzi spotted her outside of her hero attire, a familiar ponytail and mismatched boots enough to give her away. It was bad enough she was recognized without her uniform and mask, but she was caught smoking with some punks on a school campus. The snapshot was fuzzy, and there was no way to distinguish what was probably only a cigarette from anything else, but nevertheless it brought an impending graduation into question.

It did not help when some wacked-out addict, an unreliable source if there ever was one, came forward claiming to have taught her the art of cooking meth. The junkie was later found battered and left on the steps of a rehab center. Her signature plasma burns left on the man sparked ever more gossip as to her changing demeanor and bad habits.

On the hero scene, Shego had been golden – but after quitting, the press wasted no time in tarnishing her reputation. Her worsening temper and foul mouth didn’t help the backlash. Her name had been drug through the mud over the past six months, with only a few gems of praise from faithful groupies to be found among the stack of slander.

Dr. Drakken wouldn’t be surprised if it was all true, even the conspiracy theories mixed in about her being from another planet.

"This is why I don't like the hero scene. Everyone knows everything," she’d told him the night he’d found her wandering down a highway in the dark. He hadn’t had much to lose that night when he went with a gut feeling and sprung the proposition on the downtrodden young woman, but whether or not it was the right decision remained to be seen.

Given the stress of the media hounding her every move, both on and off duty, and the family turmoil he’d witnessed from a distance, Dr. Drakken had to bottle his pity for how discontent the runaway must have been to actually jump in a car with an utter stranger and just go.

Before the guilt of prying could get to him too badly, he called it quits and stuffed everything back into the box, double-checking the VCR to be sure he didn’t forget anything she might find later. She’d made it explicitly clear she didn’t want him digging into her past. Even if the box contained publicly available media – for the most part – going through it left a bad taste in his mouth, as if he’d been reading her diary.

Despite the evidence he had that she was indeed a bad apple with a slim chance of returning to her old life, it still felt unwise to put everything on the line for an ex-hero that could easily thwart his plans from the inside. Drakken sat back and shut his eyes, straining to take her words to heart no matter how difficult it was to do so.

“Trust her,” he snorted. “Trust her to what? Bring her brothers to my doorstep?”

But then, he supposed she could have done that already. If she’d wanted to stop him before he could become a major threat, she could have cornered him back in Go City, when she had her team close by to back her up. And even once she was in the lair, she’d had ample time to call in the hounds, and plenty of opportunity to hack into his computers to uncover any master plans, yet she hadn’t busted him yet.

Drakken slumped with his head thrown back over the spine of the couch, stewing a short while on how trustworthy this new partner of his really was, before tuning in to Go City broadcasts to watch the news. She’d only been gone about thirty hours, but he still waited with the bleak expectation to hear some breaking news announcement of her return to the metropolis, anticipating it to be a reason to rejoice. None came, but it still served to worry him.

Leaving the television on, he gave it just a little longer as his stomach drew him toward his kitchen. He’d never had breakfast. He wasn’t even sure if he’d had dinner yesterday. The phone drew his eye though, and he forcibly looked away from it and to the fridge as he took inventory. It was getting a tad late to start on any lab projects, and he could still taste a sore reminder of yesterday’s mishap on his lip.

A check through his cookbook and he found himself gravitating back toward the phone once again. He grudgingly made a call, although it wasn’t the number his fingers itched to dial, and greeted his mother with a weary, “Hello,” and waited for the next half hour for the woman’s exuberance to die down enough to get a word in edgewise.

“That one?” chirped his mother. “Honey, are you feeling alright?”

Drakken blinked and sucked on his split lip. “Relatively speaking,” he slipped. He fished out his notebook and spread it open, eager to get the call over with. “Um. The market will be closing soon,” he lied. “So can I get that recipe?”

“Only if you call me later to tell me how they turn out,” the woman haggled haughtily.

“I’ve made devil’s food before, mother,” he sighed, drumming his pen on the pad. He noticed the pages of memos on the recent gloves and flipped to a fresh page with a small snort.

“Not with my recipe, you haven’t,” chided the woman, and proceeded to let him in on the family secrets in detail. Word for word, he copied down the recipe she knew by heart, running the instructions and ingredients by her once before thanking his mother and heading out the door.

By midnight, a sweet tooth had been satisfied, but sitting alone at the counter with a warm devil’s food muffin drizzled with chocolate ganache just brought his awareness to a weird sort of cavity he wasn’t unfamiliar with but had been successful in ignoring for years – until now, apparently.

He decided he’d have to tell his mother about the muffins tomorrow. It was late, and if he dared pick up the phone now, he might dial the wrong number accidentally on purpose.

The third day alone wasn’t any more productive than the last, but at least he didn’t spend it holed up in his quarters gorging on muffins. True, he’d slept through his alarm, but he gave himself the excuse that it was Sunday, and he’d spent the latter half of his night lying wide awake staring at his ceiling in a vain effort to get some shut eye.

He could tell himself all he wanted that fresh air would do him some good, but it was a lie. Testing out a back-burner product on new targets the henchmen had been tasked to whip up did little to improve his mood. The vaporizing rifle prototype did its job fine, obliterating the targets, though the sight was off and it really needed work to fix an issue of kickback that just about dislocated his shoulder.

Other than taking down a couple memos to be sure he did that, he didn’t make any progress to speak of on his projects. The random destruction of dummies and henchmen fearing they’d be the next targets did little to inspire him and get his head back in the game.

He knew exactly who to blame for it, too. Little ol’ her was a troublesome woman. Though he wasn’t sure if he was worried for her wellbeing – maybe a little, but maybe not – he was certainly stressed enough worrying about the potential consequences letting her go could have. The thorn in his side wasn’t even here and she had him more distracted and frazzled than ever.

Drakken shoved the elaborate rifle into the hands of the henchman on standby and ordered him to return the contraption to the closet, but the henchman didn’t march off immediately, and instead asked something as daringly out of line and ludicrous as, “Rough breakup?” Which sent Drakken reeling as if he’d been cut, and he vehemently ordered the goon to get a move on if he didn’t want to be booted along with the rest.

He ate another damn muffin for lunch, knowing damn well the sweet confection wouldn’t improve his bitter mood.

When the phone rang, he was all too quick to dive for it. Answering was a mistake, and he struggled with the balance of taking bites of savory chocolate and holding a conversation with his nosy mother. She accused him of being upset and went through a list of every likely reason why, and he denied every possibility. If the nagging didn’t alleviate the loneliness somewhat, he would have hung up.

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” his mother finally guessed, and Drakken had to bite his tongue and hold the phone out lest she hear his weary groan. No matter how wildly far off the mark she was, it was an inevitable question she always fired off at some point – only this time, maybe for the first time in history, she was actually right. Sort of. But he sure wasn’t going to admit that.

“No, mother,” he droned. “It’s just been a rough week,” he assured her for the umpteenth time. It really hadn’t been. Slaving over unique gloves had actually been quite rewarding, the worst part of the week being the part where his car got hijacked and he was left worrying if the new recruit would be friend or foe when she came back, if she came back at all.

After the phone call, he eyed the plate of delectable muffins sitting out on the counter, and decided it best to stow the remaining half dozen of them in the refrigerator out of sight before he could make himself sick.

The next day, Drakken was drilling it into his own head that he didn’t miss having anyone to hover, breathe down his neck, or criticize him as he tinkered with the fine inner workings of a robot brain. If he could only get the droids up and running like half-operational human beings, the Bebes would theoretically fill the human need for company. And even if they didn’t, he still had three organic subordinates – the henchmen – to fall back on. He didn’t need a snarky girl leaning on him and giving him sass trying to get his goat.

His lip was curled at the very thought of someone breaching his personal bubble uninvited when suddenly his subject booted up. It took him a second of staring back at the robot before the Bebe blinked mechanically and he leapt back. What really scared the bejeebers out of him was the fact the android hadn’t even been plugged in to a power source. Before she could fully start up, he reached into the Bebe’s cranium to pull out the CPU to put her to sleep for a nice long while until he was ready to deal with self-aware robots sporting hyperactive preservation drives again. The other two dormant severed heads received the same treatment just to be on the safe side.

His heart was still thudding from the first surprise when he received another unwelcomed jolt.

The room flashed red and a bone-rattling siren buzzed to announce a threat. Either someone had sounded the alarm, something had been tripped, or something malfunctioned. Whatever the case, he was in too much of a foul mood to be pleased by the uncharacteristically swift response of two of his henchmen cutting through the lab with their staves ready.

False alarms were more common than not at this point. There must have been one at least once a month for the past year since establishing his Nevada lair.

Dr. Drakken cast aside his tools and replaced his goggles with his eyeglasses, ready to storm out after the goons to find out what the hullaballoo was all about. It was probably just another unfortunate raccoon stuck in the fence.

Before he could take three steps from his work station, a henchman’s voice crackling over the intercom made him jump once more. “Dr. Drakken, sir, you’re needed outside,” came the urgent summon, and Drakken heard a thunderous snarl booming before the intercom clicked off.

It certainly didn’t sound like snared wildlife.

The insistent siren alone induced a dreadfully unwanted adrenaline rush, urging him to hurry and shut the alarm off at the lab desk. Even without the blaring system that had left his ears ringing, he swore he could still feel a rumble under his feet, and cast a nervous glance upwards at the stalactites holding steady before he exited the lab.

He all but ran down to the garage. The second he opened the door and stomped out from the foyer, he heard the rumble of a jet engine dying down to a whine, and if he didn’t associate the sound with military, he might not be so concerned of the trouble that could be brewing.

The thought that he should have brought a weapon with him was fleeting.

Before he could make it outside to search the sky for the source of the rumble, his jaw dropped.

He wasn’t anticipating a jet to come rolling out of the dark and into the half-lit hangar, the wingspan barely making it through the broad garage door. The flashy new sky beast sported multicolored streaks and bolts, and as it came to a stop in the middle of the scrap-filled warehouse, it dawned on Drakken exactly where it had come from. He’d seen that jet before in a photograph just the other day.

As his men rushed in after the aircraft in the hot wake of the engines, their electrified rods raised in defense, Drakken stormed toward it, his livid glare locked on the single figure onboard.

The top popped and rose with a hiss to reveal the pilot, whose hands were held up in peace for a moment to give the henchmen pause before the intruder pulled off the helmet and mask. The aloof subordinate stood up in the cockpit, shook out her hair, and shot an outrageously smug smirk to Dr. Drakken.

++X++

Shego slid down from the body of the aircraft and didn’t have a chance to appreciate solid ground or even utter a greeting before Dr. Drakken reached her, and she could only stare in a surprised stupor as he raised a hand at her.

Next she was wide-eyed in shock and reaching up for the sting across her cheek. It hadn’t hurt, but it didn’t change the fact he’d slapped her. She was taken aback for a moment. “What was that?” she blurted, turning a sneer back to him. “You hit like a baby!” Honestly, her baby brothers had whopped her worse than that.

And what was that he’d said about the next man to lay a hand on her?

She could get him back later, she decided, because she was pleased to be back regardless of his indiscernible sputtering and tantrum. Though she couldn’t pretend to understand what had his panties in a twist. She’d kept her word, hadn’t she?

What she could do was chortle when the fuming man made a grab for her before he could calm down enough to think twice. It was hard to hold him at fault when he was a villain and had likely conditioned himself to act out, assuming he wasn’t already violent by nature, but she wouldn’t hesitate to teach him not to take out that temper on her if he pushed his luck any further.

Curious if he would however, she let him catch her roughly by the arm. But Drakken faltered once he had her – it was clear he hadn’t expected it to be that easy, or maybe some sense caught up to him – and his moment of surprise made it easy for her to pull her arm away.

Catching him off guard, she slipped behind his back. Her hands snuck up his suit jacket to find the back pockets of his trousers, making him jump. His yelp wasn’t particularly masculine.

“Yoink,” she chirped, making off with his wallet as the startled man swung around.

Shego impishly remained two steps ahead of Dr. Drakken in pursuit of her, purely for the sake of egging him on although he was clearly riled up enough. She stole a gander at his driver’s license as she shuffled backwards. “Andrew?” she snorted. He sputtered something with a note of embarrassment and lunged for it. She jumped back, plucked a twenty from the wallet, and finally surrendered it.

Drakken roughly snatched his wallet back from her outstretched hand, still practically shaking in his tantrum, a funny shade of purple creeping over his face. The indignant doctor barked her name furiously and lurched toward her again, but she leapt back out of reach for good measure.

“Missed me, missed me,” she sang childishly, skipping back and smiling wryly at the hotheaded man.

He wasn’t calming down, none too pleased to be played with. Before she could knock it off on her own accord, Dr. Drakken gnashed his teeth and finally exploded something coherent, “SEIZE HER!”

To which Shego cocked a brow, and before she knew it, she was being restrained and shoved to her knees by a pair of henchmen, her arms twisted and secured behind her back. She knew she could still get the better of them, but she chose not to fight it as she watched suspiciously, once again curious to see just what Dr. Drakken thought he was going to do. She was done playing now though. Did he really think she would accept being slapped and manhandled, just like that? With him glaring as harshly as he was, she had half a mind to spit plasma at him when he stalked up to her.

The mad scientist opened his mouth and raised a finger to lay into her verbally when she sighed heavily and relaxed against the henchmen’s clutches. “Okay,” she began. “So I lost your car, but I got the jet, didn’t I?”

Drakken’s purple-faced humiliation and anger ebbed as he threw a glance back, and his rigid shoulders slumped. She could see his temper cooling he studied the aircraft parked in his garage. She’d stayed true to her word, but it seemed like he was only just now registering that she had in fact brought him a jet.

“Where did you get it?” he quizzed suspiciously as he turned back to eyeball her. Just about anyone else would have received plasma to the face for eyeing her body, but Shego had the funny feeling he was looking less at her figure and more at her pristine new uniform she’d stolen from the Go Tower – although the nature of his stare made it only slightly less unnerving.

“Just something from home,” she said flippantly, fixing a wry smile on her face.

“You stole tech from Global Justice,” he uttered.

“Not really, I mean – it was a gift,” she grumbled, casting her eyes down. That didn’t change the fact that big brother monitored its usage.

Drakken must have realized that, because his eyes shot wide in dismay an instant before the anger from moments ago boiled back to the surface. “They can track it here!” he gasped in alarm as he whirled on the threat in his lair.

Shego, on the other hand, lacked the same fear. The fact she remained unbothered seemed to enough to distress him.

“Cool the engines, Dr. D,” she called nonchalantly before he could fret over how to get a beacon out of his lair. “I squashed a few bugs, snipped a few wires. Give me some credit. I’m not just another stupid thug here.” He looked back to her as she nodded back to the henchmen holding her to make a point, but it hardly calmed him.

She tried to add a smile and a cheery on top, “Oh, and – it can hover. It’s a hover jet. Far out, right?” She was really quite proud of herself, and couldn’t help beaming as she patiently waited to be commended. An order for her release would be nice, at least.

Dr. Drakken stepped back from her and ran a hand down his face. He held it over his mouth and stifled a whine, and Shego noticed he looked almost pained as he glanced back to the stolen mass of technology. “Release her,” he grunted to his men with a dismissive wave, and stalked away to go inspect the aircraft. As Shego crept up carefully behind him, she heard him muttering incredulously to himself, “I can use this. I can really use this.”

“So, uh,” she started, and he flashed a glower back at her over his shoulder. She smiled sheepishly. “Does this make up for taking off and losing your car?” She decided, maybe, he didn’t need to know yet that she’s driven it off a pier and sank it in the ocean in the heat of the moment whilst fleeing the police earlier. She hoped there hadn’t been anything important in it.

Dr. Drakken surveyed her, his brow creased and his expression that of indecision as he considered the loss of his car in return for the multi-million-dollar aircraft. He settled for giving Shego’s shoulder a ginger pat. “I think I’ll keep you,” he said finally.

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 5/28/20

Dr. STONE, Vol. 11 | By Riichiro Inagaki and Boichi | Viz Media – Balloons! Yes, Dr. STONE is taking it upon itself to do something it does best, which is show off the gorgeous vistas of this not-really-that-explored future Japan it takes place in. And that means hot air balloons. It also means speedboats! But alas, just because Senku is a scientist does not mean he can cook. So they use some of the last remaining fluid to un-stone a butler-cum-chef-cum-everything, Francois, who is flamboyant and also a lot of fun. There’s actually some really good humor in this volume as well, be it the reporter getting her camera and its undercutting right afterwards, or Senku’s Einstein impersonation. This remains one of the essential Jump titles. – Sean Gaffney

Dungeon Builder: The Demon King’s Labyrinth Is a Modern City!, Vol. 2 | By Rui Tsukiyo and Hideaki Yoshikawa | Seven Seas – After wrapping up the cliffhanger from the first volume (he names his first monster girl, which gives her the power-up (and bust expansion) she needs to win), the cast gets down to the nitty-gritty of what he wants to do: build a city, not a dungeon, which feeds on positive emotions. Of course, there are a few problems. Location, labor costs, the neighboring demon lords, and of course Marcho’s impending death, which she seems to have accepted more than Procel has. This remains sort of mid-tier manga—not interesting enough to stand out, but the pages turn easily, and you could do worse. Also, brilliant pun for the back-cover blurb. – Sean Gaffney

Éclair Blanche: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart | By Various Artists | Yen Press – The second of the Éclair anthologies to come out over here, this one seems to focus more attention on love that is already in bloom when the story begins than love that we see the start of. There’s a nice mix of funny, heartwarming, sad, and generally melancholic. Some highlights are “Azalea Corner,” about a minion’s crush on the arrogant ojou she follows; “The Unemployed Woman and the High School Girl,” which should be awful but is by Canno so is cute instead; and “That Summer Won’t Come Again,” about a girl trapped in her sister’s past who bonds with a senpai and learns to swim again. There’s good and not-so-good here, but overall well worth buying. – Sean Gaffney

Éclair Blanche: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart | By Various Artists | Yen Press – This is the second Éclair anthology, but aside from two continuations, all the stories here are new. The quality varies, and it seems the better stories are in the front. The first story, Fly’s “Flowers in a Storm,” sets the tone for bittersweet, ambiguous endings with the tale of a first kiss that comes too late. There are also several stories about unrequited love for a friend who loves someone else, be it another girl, an idol, or a guy. Kabocha’s “Though Summer Won’t Come Again” is a standout, about a girl who assumes the senpai she’s developed feelings for prefers her older sister, as everyone else seems to. Unfortunately, I found the stories toward the end of the volume to be less enjoyable, particularly the final one, which includes the most awkward teacher-student embrace I have ever seen. Still, I will read the next installment when it comes out! – Michelle Smith

I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love | By Minta Suzumaru | Futekiya (digital only) – Yoshino Kiritani is a beautiful 30-year-old salaryman who happens to be both gay and a virgin. With no relationship prospects on the horizon and wanting to finally have sex, he goes to a gay bar, meets a charismatic college student named Rou, and sleeps with him. The back-and-forth that follows between these two guys is so well done. Rou is a notorious playboy with a hot-and-cold routine he has employed many times to manipulate his conquests into falling for him and confessing their feelings. He tries this on Yoshino, even though he’s actually serious about him, but it doesn’t work. Self-effacing Yoshino genuinely thinks Rou wants nothing more to do with him, forcing Rou to face the seriously scary prospect of rejection by declaring his feelings first. There are a few explicit scenes, but they serve the characters and story well. Highly recommended! – Michelle Smith

Love Me, Love Me Not, Vol. 2 | By Io Sakisaka | Viz Media – First of all, a word of advice to the author: don’t sink people’s ships in your author’s notes, OK? Secondly, this continues to have the strengths of Io Sakisaka titles—it gets teenage love in a good way, has characters who are likeable but clearly flawed, shows gradual character growth, and has clean, easy-to-follow art. She’s still trying to balance out the idealistic girl with the realistic girl, though it may be leaning towards the former. Sadly, it also contains what’s always been one of this author’s big weaknesses to me—I like her series but never love them. Each volume is fun to read and I’d call it good, but it’s never going to be tops in my favorite shoujo manga lists. It’s not life-changing the way a Yona of the Dawn is. – Sean Gaffney

Ping Pong, Vol. 1 | By Taiyo Matsumoto | Viz Media – Ever since Matsumoto was a guest at TCAF in 2013 and spoke in depth about the series, its development, and how it fit into his overall career, I’ve been desperately wanting to read Ping Pong in English. When the excellent anime adaptation came and went soon after and the original manga still hadn’t been licensed, I didn’t expect that we’d ever see it translated. But it is actually here! The first of two beautifully designed omnibus volumes. And I am absolutely in love with Matsumoto’s Ping Pong. Ostensibly a high school sports manga, Ping Pong spends very little time explaining the ins and outs of the game even though table tennis is essentially omnipresent; instead, the series devotes its attention almost entirely to the characters themselves. With strong psychological elements, in part the work’s themes explore talent, motivation, and self-determination, all supported by Matsumoto’s distinctive and spectacularly dynamic and expressive artwork. – Ash Brown

Prince Freya, Vol. 1 | By Keiko Ishihara | VIZ Media – The land of Tyr is threatened by Sigurd, the empire to the north. Our “wimpy and weak” heroine, Freya, happens to be the spitting image of Prince Edvard, who’s just been poisoned by Sigurd, and so takes on the role of impersonating him to protect her country. Alas, Freya’s performance as Edvard (and characterization in general) is inconsistent and in a way that doesn’t seem intentional on the mangaka’s part. Sometimes she boldly and capably takes action, sometimes she just cries. In my notes I wrote, “This ain’t no Basara,” prompted by a panel in which Freya is making an extremely insipid face because of something sappy her love interest has just said, but then something super dramatic and unexpected occurs and… well, now I’m cautiously on board. It may turn out to be fluffier than I would like, but I will at least give it a couple more volumes. – Michelle Smith

The Quintessential Quintuplets, Vol. 9 | By Negi Haruba | Kodansha Comics – There’s less swapping in this one, but the one time there is a swap it blows the reader out of the water. I suspect Ichika’s popularity took a nosedive after this volume, as her ideal of “all’s fair in love and war” is taken to a somewhat cruel conclusion. She’s not even the thirstiest of the quints, as both Nino and Miku are trying to make their feelings for Futaro as clear to him as possible. Meanwhile, Yotsuba is trying the opposite tactic, saying that she’ll support whichever sister that isn’t her he picks, showing off a core of self-deprecation that we’ve seen before, but never to this level. And then there’s Itsuki, who seems to have forgotten she was supposed to be first girl. Great harem antics. – Sean Gaffney

Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts, Vol. 9 | By Yu Tomofuji | Yen Press – I missed reviewing the eighth volume of this, for some reason; I’m not sure why. It continues to be quietly sweet, with a heroine who perhaps leans a little too much towards “can save everyone by the sheer power of being really nice.” That said, nice can only go so far, and when she discovers a country that’s being blackmailed into slavery, nice becomes determined and fierce. There’s also some tortured romance at the start—the king’s chief bodyguard and the princess’s attendant clearly are headed towards each other, but there are a few steps back here before we can move forward once more. I admit that I’d likely enjoy this more without its central conceit of animal people, but oh well. – Sean Gaffney

Snow White with the Red Hair, Vol. 7 | By Sorata Akiduki | Viz Media – I admit I was a bit more surprised than Shirayuki was at the identity of the leader of the Lions of the Mountain. That said, it does remind us that Shirayuki is another one of those great “shoujo heroines who underreacts to everything,” which can be quite amusing when done right. That said, this volume is when the series transitioned from the quarterly DX to the main LaLa magazine, and as such much of the middle part is taken up with introducing new readers to the main cast and the situation. This includes an amusing “personality reversal” chapter where Mitsuhide starts acting like a chivalrous knight. the book ends with the implication that their love is going public. How will that go? Great shoujo. – Sean Gaffney

Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina, Vol. 1 | By Jougi Shiraishi, Itsuki Nanao, and Azure | Square Enix – This is a manga adaptation of the first fourth or so of the light novel, and it’s a very good adaptation. I will admit that Elaina is a lot more expressive than I was expecting… her delivery in the novels is somewhat cool… but it makes sense given the manga’s visual medium, and she’s cute. This volume shows off what we’re going to get from now on: some cute fluffy stories, some melancholic stories with deaths, some stories of Elaina having to extricate herself from a situation, and some backstory showing how she came to be wandering. The final story was one of my favorites in the book, and it’s the best one here too. A nice adaptation. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown