#and thus he's constantly suffering. And I find that to be the most hilarious thing ever.

[villain-in-love]

Jamil has you feeling things, hasn't he? 👀

This is magic, I'm telling you. This fucker has put me under a love spell, because I'll be climbing walls over there.

Or maybe Yana Toboso is stalking me, because how could someone create a character that so perfectly fits all of my tastes by combining so many seemingly contrasting traits?

For example, I love how Jamil is both a mom friend and a snake. A genius schemer whose plans just keep blowing up in his face. He's so serious that he just circles back to being overdramatic. Do you see where I'm going?

Also he's pretty like a girl and has long hair, which has always been a sure way to get my undivided attention. By the way, this was one of the first images I've encountered of him:

And it's not hard to imagine the effect this art had on me. From the moment I set my eyes on him, I was done for. He looks so cute when flustered, I'm going to eat him alive.

Jamil was also the first character who got his birthday card in the history of this game, and the new round of birthday cards starts with him every year (and I am... strangely proud of this fact).

[tangent101]

What I find hilarious is that everyone is "Team Wildemount had such a great time!" but the entire time they were there, they had no idea that their three missing friends were still alive. It was only on the last day that Deanna used Scry to find their friends. Meanwhile, on the second day, Laudna, Orym, and Ashton had a Scrying show them that their friends were alive and where they were headed.

Yes, Fearne had a threesome with Deanna and Chetney. Sure, FCG ended up in a relationship with FRIDA. Imogen meanwhile was our good little failgirl who was constantly wondering about Laudna and wanting to head back to Jrusar, hoping to find the others there. And it was far longer for Imogen and crew than Team Issylra. Not only did Team Issylra learn that their friends were alive after not even two days, but they reunited with their friends just a few days afterward, rather than traveling for a couple weeks without knowing.

Bor'dor fucked with Team Issylra. It was bad. But you know? Team Issylra also freed a town from a temple full of colonists, and were appreciated for their efforts. Orym got to dance with faeries or spirits or the like. They found and excavated a skeletal Githyanki or Githzeri! They did not have a miserable time every moment of their trip.

Team Wildemount had some fascinating adventures. They saved a Celestial Bull and thus were rewarded for their efforts, and learned a little bit about Ludinus. They also ran into frost giants that tried to murder them, a huge murdertoad or something along with twisted fey, multiple abominations that hunted them, the knowledge that FRIDA was just as suicidal as FCG, and then after all was said and done, their efforts to get home fucked up, sent them through time and to some unknown locale, where FCG barely avoided going berserk (most likely having made a Wisdom Save to prevent the berserk status). But Team Wildemount doesn't talk about the bad shit that happened because of Bor'dor. So they hide it. They pretend the fear wasn't there. They handwave away going for nearly two weeks without knowing their friends were alive.

Bor'dor has kind of fucked up all of the Hells... even those who never met him. Because trust me, Imogen isn't having the time of her life dealing with the downward spiral of Laudna, caused by Bor'dor. FCG felt considerable guilt because his time wasn't pure suffering (despite the fact that, again, Team Issylra wasn't pure suffering as well - hell, look at how they talk about Deni$e, they love Deni$e). Chetney might hide a lot of how he feels but... I suspect he's been watching all three of his friends and worrying about them and the scars Bor'dor left in all of them. And Fearne. Dear sweet Fearne has watched her best friend just withdraw into himself, cutting pieces off to become a Good Little Soldier... until this incident with Laudna which served as a wake up call. It reminded him that there's more important things than The Mission. And she didn't know what to do. She didn't want to confront Orym because she doesn't want to cause conflict. But you know it's likely hurting her.

Who leaned out the window and extended her hand to Laudna, urging her to come back in?

Fearne.

She's also been hurt by Bor'dor, without meeting him. Because of the scars he left on Orym, on Ashton, and on Laudna. They all have been.

I just realized. Usually, after something so intense like c3 episode 51, the party gets to huddle up and lick wounds. Bells Hells got split up. Some people joined, then left. More importantly, fucking Bor'dor happened.

I can't believe I forgot about that. Imogen, Fearne, Chetney, and FCG freed a celestial bull or something. There was pvp but no one died, and the resolution was romance.

Orym, Laudna, and Ashton were deceived by someone who appeared to be a friend but turned out to be malicious. Followers of gods were doing bad things, too. Laudna looked to Orym, he nodded for the kill, and Laudna went one step further to suck the life out of Bor'dor for trying to kill them.

The party split actually explains so much about the current Bells Hells dynamic. Orym wants desperately to trust but believes he can't and shouldn't, not completely. Laudna thinks the world is trying to kill her, which is flawed but not preposterous.

Ashton admittedly is more guilty than self-destructive after he nearly killed himself, but has recently gotten confirmation through FCG's sacrifice that they couldn't save a self-destructive friend. It's a mindfuck. (I mean at least Ashton doesn't think they will be abandoned anymore?)

Orym tried to give up his life and freedom to guarantee their party's survival, and he didn't tell anyone. Laudna, without pausing to discuss Delilah's plans with anyone, actively initiated inter-party conflict. Ashton didn't reveal a potentially life-threatening plan to anyone except Fearne, and distressed a lot of people.

Bor'dor fucked them up real bad. Bor'dor messed with their heads. I mean they were already messed up, but they got worse because of Bor'dor. Bor'dor is like a shadow over their narrative. Like Ashton said, Bor'dor was the worst.

[mevekagvain]

Chapter 274 - Rael just stabbed a teen boy and nobody cared... poor Kalvin ily :( Like damn Regis can't you sympathise at least? And damn trio, can't you guys care about a kid?

- Telling a Kertia that they can't match your speed,,, hilarious

- At least the assassination squad doesn't constantly complain about honour and wanting to fight one on one. Makes sense since their priority is whatever Crombel assigns them to but still.

- He's just a kid! Lay off of him! And he looks scared and 😭

-Lol Zarga complimenting Frankenstein even though he finds him infuriating.

- Urokai! Fuck I want to start pre-emptively crying but for right now I'm just so happy to see him. Like he arrives thinking the three Elders sent would have succeeded in dealing with the enemy already so like he's obviously not here for helping out. Probably came to hang out with Zarga and mock whatever Lukedonian noble was the enemy and I 🥺 I just adore him

Chapter 275 - Back to Rael not caring about humans and only helping out when Seira and Raizel are mentioned. Ugh poor Kalvin though.

- The fact that Kalvin is abandoned and knows that since he's on his deathbed he at least wants to complete his mission but Rael just kills a child in cold blood and ugh. Just I can at least kind of ignore all the other deaths but he's a child.

- And Urokai saying he just thought it would be fun to watch like yeah he came to mock some random Lukedonian nobles,,, god and how he's actually pretty calm and collected? He doesn't freak out seeing Frankenstein and instead speaks normally despite how he's obviously filled with bubbling hatred since he's been searching for Frankenstein for all this time and fuck I just love him so much.

And how he politely asks Lunark to let him face Frankenstein when the latter insults him? Like yeah he ignores her and goes full crazy later but he does ask. Also both he and Zarga are quiet for a moment after said insult which is Frankenstein saying he didn't want to enter Eternal Sleep with the lord out of fear so he ran away and I have so many opinions about this like.

First the insult itself is such a disgusting one because the idea that not wanting to die is cowardice is archaic and barbaric. To die because the one who commands you is dead is an extremely backwards practice and even if it wasn't, Ashoka wouldn't have ever held the traitors not entering Eternal Sleep with him against them. He was understanding, he was happy they visited Raizel, he likely thought it was a good thing since then Raizel would have people he knew and cared for deeply to welcome him back. To hold that against them and mock them for it when the very lord they were supposed to die for wouldn't? It makes me viscerally upset in ways I can't describe. There are things they can be insulted for like their betrayal, their abandonment of Lukedonia, their presence in the Union despite their distaste for humans that they displayed when Frankenstein was present, but instead he picks something that anybody with common sense and basic critical thinking skills would be horrified by.

Then the momentary silence. I don't think Urokai's means too much. He hates Frankenstein and likely is trying to calm himself. It's Zarga's that interests me more. It could be just because he's a fellow traitor noble and thus shown but combined with Seira using the same insult prior and the fact that he's constantly with Urokai? I'd say he's probably aware of Urokai's reaction and watching what he'll do much more closely than others because he cares for his friend. He's aware of how it affects Urokai and knows that since he himself found that insulting, Urokai, dear darling Urokai who's so much wilder angrier crazier, Urokai who's been the most volatile of them, will take it much more personally.

- Urokai not caring about something like honour in fighting also makes me so very happy. No he doesn't care if Frankenstein is injured. Why should he? All he wants is to see him suffer. Something like honour, dignity, shame... none of that matters here. And how he laughs maniacally when Frankenstein says to go ahead... Urokai likely doesn't hide his volatile nature the way he did in Lukedonia.

- Unlike Lunark and 8th, the Urokai and Zarga aren't surprised by Frankenstein letting Dark Spear take over because they've seen this before. They know what it's like, and it makes me happy because you only really realise the exact reason why when rereading because you're aware of future flashbacks where Urokai fights Frankenstein and all of the details.

- Zarga has had Lontrick still summoned during all his time at the sidelines and I really appreciate that. He hasn't let his guard down even though he isn't fighting at the moment. Also his hair isn't coloured in lol.

- Raizel wakes up. Whatever.

Chapter 276 - He's very pretty, wish I was one of those readers who mistook him for a woman.

- Rajak doesn't understand Urokai and Zarga at all. The two are very obviously attuned to each other and were about to work together in battle against Frankenstein considering the panels and their attitudes. Instead he insults them because they aren't fighting one-on-one even though that isn't even a pure noble ideal considering Central Knights fight together to eliminate strong enemies. It's the same concept here and yet there's constant belittlement. There's also the insult to not entering Eternal Sleep with Ashoka again and I hate it every time. In addition to all of that, Zarga's started being even more quiet ever since Urokai arrived, like he knows he doesn't have to speak since there's someone who'll understand him regardless. That's just my wishful interpretation in a way since he doesn't talk much in the first place and often keeps quiet when mocked but i do think it does truly seem as if it could be seen in that way.

- God he looks so evil with his expression but it's framed so beautifully with the flowing cloak and Dragus in the foreground.

- Urokai is so consumed with hatred and revenge and pain that even after participating in a plan to kill the person he admired most, he spent the next 820 years hunting for Frankenstein, the one who essentially caused everything Urokai hates. It's sad really, no matter who it is. Ashoka waited hoping that against all odds, Raizel would be alive and return. He didn't know if he would, and yet he still left messages that he knew may have never triggered if he was truly gone because he wanted Raizel to be alive. Frankenstein desperately searched and and carved out every aspect of his life so that there would be a space in which Raizel could find joy even though he didn't know when they'd meet again. Just in case that they'd reunite the next day, he dedicated his life to seeking him out and building things that would give Raizel a peaceful life. Because surely Ye Ran wasn't the first place he built for him. And Urokai. Urokai whose sole reason for betrayal is Raizel. Even after getting rid of him he goes after Frankenstein because Raizel chose this man over him. Because god forbid there be someone who Raizel cared for in the world when he didn't care for Urokai. His hatred for Frankenstein never truly stemmed from Frankenstein himself after all. It was simply because he was given the attention that Urokai craved from Raizel. 820 years, and still Urokai can't get over Raizel so he hunts for Frankenstein.

- Urokai can spin Dragus really fucking fast. That spinning a pencil with your fingers trick except it's a glaive and using both hands...

- I really love how the fight between Urokai and Frankenstein seems like one between an ancient evil monster and a gleaming hero because of just how untrue that is and yet how fitting. Untrue because obviously the Union is corrupt, because Urokai is cruel and simply wants to eliminate them for his own selfish desires, because Frankenstein despite being morally dubious is kind and helps people. But it's fitting because the Union believes itself to be a greater good going against evils, with said evil being anyone against them, and their white and gold shows that. Also because Urokai sees himself being in the right, getting rid of just another terrible being such as with Raizel who went against their people.

- Truly, Lunark getting angry at Urokai for interfering even though Frankenstein attacked them to the point that even Zarga was going to join is annoying. I wish they'd kept just how battle hungry she is because I feel that, once again, that depth is what made her interesting. It's such a fascinating flaw for a woman to have too, being so blood thristy that she gets angry even though she shouldn't be and does actually require help, but nah she got watered down. Then there's Urokai who literally grits his teeth but backs down, even being civil about it, all the while planning to truly interfere when the time is right. His sneakiness and planning ability is especially obvious when he doesn't do anything except avoid the immediate attack from Frankenstein after he backs down.

- It's obvious and shouldn't be any other way ofc but I do find it interesting just how strong Lunark is shown to be and that the other Elders all know and respect that she's extremely powerful. I may find the werewolves subpar with how their fur is distributed after transformation and how the women still aren't as extreme as the men but I do enjoy the fact that she is the strongest non-modified werewolf in present day.

- You know what, I actually do think that Lunark would fall in love with Raskreia because of her strength if they sparred. Raskreia is the strongest of all beings (with proper training) but it's still possible to win against her unlike with Raizel because from what I understand Lords simply aren't capable of outputting as much power as the Noblesse in a singular moment since the Noblesse can theoretically just take all their lifespan and use it for one attack if truly required and in that case don't even mention the Lord, the entire Earth would likely be doomed. So the strongest being who's still realistically beatable as long as you train? Obviously she's also going to be the hottest to someone like Lunark who gets the hots for someone because she's fighting them. And obviously the moment she faces someone stronger she'll forget the previous person but with Raskreia that won't happen since who's gonna come around that's stronger than her? However I do think that the loses hots thing won't apply if she's in an established relationship with her being deeply in love.

- Urokai maniacally laughing after he threw Dragus my lord. It's just something how deeply consumed he is. I really can't get over how Frankenstein is the one actually consumed by Dark Spear right now but it's Urokai whose depravity is on full display and this ties in with the imagery of a hero vs a monster once again.

Chapter 277 - You also see the hypocrisy here. When Frankenstein backstabs enemies or takes advantage of them we're supposed to cheer because he's the hero, but when Urokai or any other villain of the week does it it's portrayed as being some evil unjustifiable act that means that they're deplorable. It's not as deep as I'm making it out to be, yes, but it does tie in beautifully with the imagery. Monsters are of human(oid) flesh, and perhaps that still holds true. After all Frankenstein doesn't pull such 'shameful' moves when consumed by Dark Spear does he? And as much as Dark Spear is made out to be this evil thing, it's more pitiful than anything. Always lashing out, always hungry, always vengeful.

- I think there's something to be said about how Urokai has indirectly helped Frankenstein repeatedly. Here in the battle the surprise attack causes him to snap out of it before Dark Spear consumes him. In the past their fight is what lets him learn about Raizel and leads to the making of their bond. There's also something to be said about how it's Urokai's enraged actions that lead to things that only make him suffer more. If he hadn't gone to the extremes he did, if instead he had distanced himself from Raizel instead of trying to put more effort into someone who didn't return the sentiment... perhaps he would never have suffered as much. Though it's true Raizel could have done more, so much of Urokai's pain was self inflicted. Misery loves company.

- Urokai being lighthearted as he gives ingenuine apologies truly does make his interactions with Lunark seem like they're friends to some degree tbh. Just big "aww come on it's not that big a deal" to ppl you're close to vibes.

- The fact that Urokai does actually laugh before getting angry... he really is losing it but has enough sense somewhere in his mind to know that Frankenstein's attitude is funny. Same energy as when Zarga laughs because of how easily Frankenstein angers all of them in a flashback

- No see I don't understand why Lunark is surprised. None of the Elders are good people, and Urokai enjoying torturing someone who he hates doesn't stand out at all among them . She does specifically say 'among the noble clan leaders' though which is even more amusing because Urokai doesn't even compare to Gradeus. Still, she should have expected that a noble chosen as a Union Elder wouldn't be the greatest person around. I also find it satisfying that Urokai doesn't care about honour because like I've said a million times, I don't understand why that's relevant when fighting unless it's sports or decided on in length before the fight.

- Oh my fucking god, just shut up about Eternal Sleep? I genuinely hate it. I enjoy the fact that even the 'good guys' are deeply flawed but I don't enjoy how some of these flaws aren't on purpose. Joining the lord in eternal sleep is actively held up as this symbol of goodness when let's be real, it's not. Committing suicide because the king is isn't in anyway good and the fact that they think it's okay to mock people for not wanting to die? I just... can't. So what if they didn't want to die? That's normal. Nobody who isn't highly depressed wants to die! I really do wish that there was just one clan leader from the previous generation that wasn't a traitor and wasn't asked by Ashoka to stay who didn't enter Eternal Sleep specifically due to fear of death.

- Pretty

- Urokai called Seira's father stupid... Gonna ignore that and pretend it's because obviously he can't show his grief for his beloved cousin being dead so like Zarga he just plays the villain <3 Well, more than he already is lol. Anyway I guess canon Urokai helped Zarga out in the masscre, or more likely he just went to watch the same way he planned to watch what happened here.

- Urokai you and Zarga literally have linked synergy and work together flawlessly why are you making fun of Rajak for preventing you from killing Seira 😭 Though ig it is warranted since Rajak was the one constantly going on about honour and saying the traitors shouldn't be working together in fights first lol. Keep to your words and let Seira die king 😔 Obviously don't let her die but huh Urokai saying this makes more sense since he and Zarga haven't actually worked together yet ajjsjsjsj. Yanno I'm just gonna assume Urokai is mocking Rajak like this specifically because he heard everything that was said before and got mad on Zarga's behalf but also because yeah this is extremely hypocritical since literally everyone else has been saying what he just did first.

- And Raizel's here.

[ancientstone]

Hi! Rambly anon again! Sorry if I’m bothering you, I just am so in love with this AU! It’s one of my favorite TUA AUs already and it has constantly been on my mind ever since it was spawned! That song really fits Dolores and Five in the apocalypse! It made me think of if there might be other demons interested in Five’s soul. I mean, all that suffering must be pretty juicy. Also five’s initial reaction to Sebastian. That must’ve been a sight to see. It also must have helped with the loneliness to have someone there, even if that someone was a demon. Does Sebastian even need to eat? If not, it must have been really helpful to five to have someone in the apocalypse basically at his beck and call and who doesn’t need to eat. I wonder what Dolores thinks of Sebastian. I know she’s fives inner thoughts, but it’d be interesting to know. Also would the commission pick them up sooner? Plus, would five be able to complete his equations faster with the extra help from Sebastian? Since five might not have to focus that much on survival now that he has a demon to help? I don’t think Sebastian ages, but five does so that’d be pretty suspicious for the commission. Unless they chalked that up as part of Sebastian’s powers. Would the commission even know about demons? Excluding the reapers of course, but people like the handler? Oof. I also see some parallels between the commission contract and demon contract, but that may be just because they’re contracts.... five made both to help his siblings and thus put himself at the mercy of two powerful individuals. One he broke and the other he literally can’t break (unless he finds a loophole like vanya will cause the apocalypse if five leaves/five’s existence is what prevents the apocalypse....). Oh, does Grelle still have a crush on Sebby? Those interactions would be hilarious. Sorry for rambling and asking a bunch of questions again, I just really really love this AU! Any route you take with this AU would be so interesting to explore! Thank you so much for sharing it!

Sorry this took my a hot minute to answer, but I wanted to put up that little ficlet first! Thank you so much for enjoying this au as much as you are!! It’s making it really fun to think about, and you’re not bothering me at all!

Also I’m glad you think the song fits! I heard it again for the first time in years and had a moment of 👀

Like I said in the drabble, news takes ages to reach all the demons, and time passes differently for them, but I still think Five got extremely lucky that he went unnoticed for so long. When he was noticed, however, when he broke, it was a bit of a mad scramble for Sebastian to get there first, because Five’s call caught a lot of attention, hence why Sebby was so hasty in making the deal and didn’t pay much notice to what the situation exactly was. 

Further down the line Five will totally tease him for that, the little shit.

Sebastian must have been a real turning point for Five: Suddenly he has a being who doesn’t need food or water, who can lift up heavy objects, who doesn’t need to sleep, and who can travel large distances in hours, at his disposal, ready to do anything Five asks. This, I think, is when he goes from just surviving in the apocalypse to living.

Not forgetting, as well, that Sebastian can just summon any manner of things at will (I rewatched Book of the Atlantic today, and in it Sebastian produces a whole table of food in a blink of an eye), meaning for the first time in decades (I picture Five being in his late 40s perhaps when he summons Sebby) Five gets a proper meal and actual nutrition.

Sweet lord, can you imagine what that must be like? To spend vast years of your life on expired canned food and cockroaches, only to then have a gourmet meal dropped on his lap?? He probably cried. And Sebastian had years under Ciel’s contract to learn how to cook for humans that’s actually edible.

As for Five’s equations......

Yeah, he still gets scooped out of the apocalypse by the Commission.

Even with Sebastian’s help, if the base math is flawed (and it took Five literally being turned into a teenager to realise he’d made a typo possibly decades ago), then it’s going to keep failing, not to forget as well that Five would have to adjust everything he’d worked on to accommodate for a passenger now. 

I also don’t picture Sebastian being a huge amount of help with the math either. While he’s very good at most things, he still has to look things up and research (when Ciel reveals he has asthma, Sebastian says he’ll read up on it) and the type of math Five is dealing with is a bit more out there than helping an earl run his estate.

Dolores takes one look at Sebastian and goes: Nope. Don’t like this. Do not trust.

She probably also spends a lot of time scolding Five for what he did. If we work on the theory that she’s his inner voice which Five uses to encourage himself into doing things and self-comfort when isolated and lone, then every doubt Five has is probably voiced by her. Ouch.

If the Commission is a separate branch of the same company as the reapers, then I’d imagine they’d know Sebby is a demon, but as he’s currently chained and not about to go rampaging off in search for souls, they let it slide. He gets a lot of dirty looks though.

Not from Grell. Grell just flirts incessantly with Sebastian.

The one time he tries it with old man Five, Five just tells him that he’s “already married.”

OOF THAT DOUBLE CONTRACT THING YOU’RE RIGHT

One is a contract that makes him a cold-blooded killer, an assassin with no code and no morals.

The other is a contract for his life, given in exchange for saving the world and his siblings.

Technically, they both bargain for his soul.

[englishgiraffe]

My Love For The Eighth Doctor Books

Disclaimer: This essay is awfully long, the structure is terrible, and it probably shouldn’t have been over 4000 words, but hopefully, you’ll enjoy my insight of the Eighth Doctor Books.

Introduction

Trying to create a character around a brand new Doctor is tricky and Paul McGann’s incarnation is perhaps the biggest example for this. After 1996, he never had a TV appearance to fully flesh out the Eighth Doctor and remember: Big Finish didn’t use the Eighth Doctor until 2001. So writers in 1997 had a difficult task, especially when the Virgin Books lost the rights to the DW IP and were back in the BBC’s rights. Some Virgin New Adventure writers like Kate Orman, Justin Richards, Paul Leonard had come to write for the EDA’s, but new talent had to come in as well. They all had to intricately look at like, what, 40 minutes of McGann’s screentime in the TV Movie, half of which was the Doctor trying to figure himself out from amnesia and the other half is him being thrust into the plot without any way to truly develop his character. So… yeah, I actually can’t blame the writers finding their feet, at least with the VNA’s developing the 7th Doctor, he had 12 stories. Also, trying to pick up from the massive popularity of the VNA’s, and oh my God, I feel so bad for the writers. But, there could be a slither of a chance, maybe the magic they could have brought from the VNA’s can be replicated again. So, did it work? Hell yeah, it did!... just not under the guise of Uncle Terry Dicks. Just…screw everything about The Eight Doctors, it’s the worst possible starting point. But after that blip, yeah, it’s my favourite era of the Doctor Who IP, bar none.

Exciting Ideas

I’ll start off listing the sci-fi elements first before getting into character work. Much like the VNA’s, perhaps even more so, the EDA’s are not afraid to bring bold, extravagant ideas that TV Who could never do, perhaps not even what Big Finish could do, because of the novel format that allows descriptions and characters to fully grow. The Books are able to describe how a planet looks, feels, sounds, even down to taste so effortlessly, and a part of it is how unique, so bizarre, so beautiful these planets are, so… intimate. Could Doctor Who ever do planets like Albert (a planet entirely made out of Grimm’s fairy tales), Hitchemus (a colony world thriving on music and inhabited by intelligent tigers), The Crooked World (much like the Land of Fiction, except all the inhabitants and settings are cartoon-based). Not even Big Finish pulls off such weird and surreal settings and that’s because of the prose style allowing time and dedication to flesh out the multiple planets, without feeling clunky in its description and dialogue, which could plague early BF stories at times. But it’s not just the variety in the settings that make it great, there are also fascinating new ways to tell these stories with different formats. Narratives can be told in a Pulp Fiction-esque, out of order style (The Last Resort), told backwards (Festival of Death), books where the Doctor is barely in it but his presence is booming (Sleep of Reason), books told from the first person POV (The Turing Test, Frontier Worlds, Banquo Legacy), a narrative told from a non-fiction documentary perspective (Adventuress of Henrietta Street), a narrative told in a essay format (History 101), and that’s only a handful of the formats. There’s multiple pastiches and parodies; Trading Futures does Doctor Who crossed with James Bond harder than the Pertwee era, The Tomorrow Windows replicates Douglas Adams’ style down to a T, The Crooked World is basically Doctor Who crossed with Hanna Barbara Cartoons and many more. God, everything is so unique and wacky in this book range.

The Tone and Theming

As for the Books’ tone, it’s certainly interesting. In the VNA’s, because a lot of new talent, and a lack of the BBC reigning things in as well as major inspiration from 90s cyberpunk media such as Judge Dredd, a lot of the books, especially in its first half, were extremely grimdark and gratuitous in order to show shock value for its audience (Timewryn Genesys had Ace sexually assaulted and The Doctor told her to just shrug it off and claim that it was part of the times they’re in and Warlock had unconsented bestiality and detailed animal murder). It was too far in my eyes, despite me saying that DW can be more than a franchise that is just whirling around in a magic police box. However, in the EDA’s, yes there is more sexual content, swearing like bastard, bitch and shit is still a thing, and there can be gory violence. But here’s where the EDA’s success at compared to VNA’s; it attempts to earn it’s adult elements. With the VNA’s, the grimdark nature was so constant to the point of normalisation, with hardly any degree of wonder or wit, especially from its regulars (thank God for Bernice Summerfield bringing some happiness at least). It does address and deconstruct the grimdark nature near the end, but God, even as a depressing cynical man, the likes of Blood Heat, Parasite, Warlock were just too dour for me to truly enjoy. But here, there is moderation and it feels contextual to the overall story. It enhances the story, not pollute it. The Spanish Civil War of 1936 (History 101) is written maturely and handles its mature themes in a thoughtful manner, Suicide and Depression is handled with sensitivity and intimacy (The Sleep of Reason), and when gratituous violence is used, it is detailed certainly but never glamorised and often times extremely terrifying instead of gore for the sake of gore (Eater of Wasps). Hell, even the most comical story, The Crooked World, has introspective themes of free will, the concept of death, existentialism and the value of a soul. But, it’s not all bleak, as said, The Crooked World is perhaps the most comical story since The Romans, anything involved with Iris Wildthyme as well as being weird abstract, is just laugh-out-loud hilarious, Jonathan Morris’ The Tomorrow Windows is pure Douglas Adams wacky humour, and Lance Parkin’s Trading Futures is majorly inspired by Roger Moore James Bond movies. The way the Books tackle true adult themes like Morality, Honour, Sexuality, Gender, Trauma, Redemption, the Philosophy of Nature and Identity, whilst being imaginative, humorous and endearing is… just poignant and beautiful.

 The Regulars-Sam Jones

So… the regulars. Well, I’ll save the main two (The Eighth Doctor and Fitz) for last, because they will be the longest. So starting with Sam Jones (and yes, they do the ‘Smith and Jones’ shtick about a decade prior to Series 3), and off the bat, she’s easily the weakest EDA Companion and a bit of a inconsistency. She often suffered from writers who wanted to write her as the worst extremes of ‘Vegetarian Political Activist’, who constantly bitches and moans towards everything without any proper tact. And I don’t mind characters who don’t believe in tact, Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel is one of my favourite characters, but when Sam gives her opinions on everything in a pessimistic attitude without a degree of optimism… yeah my enthusiasm starts to drain really quickly. Doesn’t help that she’ll flip-flop between being a lovesick puppydog for 8, cynical activist or just… woman. But I will say that when she’s written under the likes of Kate Orman/Jonathan Blum, Paul Leonard and Paul Magrs, I absolutely love her character. She’s perceptive yet bright, naïve but willing to grow, cynical but willing to bring in entertainment. And I will say that her backstory is a fascinating deconstruction of the ‘Perfect Companion’ trope that Moffat loved to overemphasise. She had been manipulated, used as a pawn and twisted by the Doctor (although this is accidental) from the events of the TV Movie, and the real/correct one is just a junkie that couldn’t wait to stick a Heroin needle if it was given in front of her. It’s tragic, especially considering that when The Doctor fixes all his companions’ timeline much later down the line, Correct Sam becomes the correct version and it’s revealed that this version never travelled with the Doctor and died of an overdose, despite Fitz knowing her experiences they had together. I also love her exit story in Interference, she had become more enjoyable near the end and the story is able to show her resources. Unfortunately, the inconsistency up until Fitz joins just left me too much having a cold taste in my mouth for me to love her.

The Regulars-Compassion

Next up, the human-TARDIS hybrid and Ice Cold Queen, Compassion. This is a character that I definitely appreciated way more after a first reading. The first time, I thought Compassion was too cold and aloof but on a reread, while she’s never going to be high on my list for favourite companions and I find her the hardest to analyse, I find that she works great as a hard-edged character, her dynamic with The Doctor and Fitz remind me a lot of 2/Jamie/Zoe, only if Zoe was way more upfront about her intelligence and rudeness. Her dynamic with Fitz as well is interesting as at first, they clearly despise each other for their clashing personalities and find each other untrustworthy but overtime, Compassion learns to enjoy Fitz’s goofiness and even learns to apologise. She can be destructive and violent with no emotion put behind it. That said, she becomes a more interesting character once she becomes the first Human-TARDIS hybrid, with the Doctor and Fitz forced to rely on her, but because of her cold hubris and after The Doctor forces a Randomiser thus violating her body, Compassion can become terrifying to The Doctor and Fitz. She does get brilliant material in The Banquo Legacy as well, with her possessing one person and her personality conflicting with the possessed person���s. And she has a decent farewell as well. Overall, I enjoy Compassion, it’s just really hard to analyse her considering that she only has 12 stories with the combination of perhaps a too subtle character arc.

 The Regulars- Anji Kapoor

Now onto Anji Kapoor. If it isn’t for another companion that I’ll mention later, then Anji is certainly a close second in my rankings of 8th Doctor companions. And I also say with high praise that the 8th Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor team is my definitive TARDIS team… ever. You wouldn’t get that impression with her first story, as she has the trappings of an RTD Companion that you can pretty much guess a mile off. Stale relationship, life is going nowhere, working class, dead end job, jeez, I heard it all with Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara, Bill. The fact that she works in the stock market, an occupation I swear 98% of the population can barely figure out, and I felt like I was never going to like Anji. But Dang… Dang!!! The biggest glow-up happens in her very next story, and it practically sticks until her exit. I always felt that companions inbetween that period of Leela (arguably Tegan) and Anji never really basked in the pure absurdity of what world they were travelling in and never really gave any thought. The combination of new experiences around the universe and her haunting memories of her dead boyfriend was a lot to take in for her, to the point that she never really moved on (in Earthworld, she keeps writing emails to Dave, despite him being dead, and in Hope, she gives the secrets of the TARDIS over to the inhabitants on the exchange that they clone her boyfriend). She fell from grace multiple times, but with the Doctor and Fitz’s help, she was able to pick herself back up before spiralling down. What I love about Anji is despite her caring for The Doctor, she’s very distrustful to him because of his calculating and alien nature and both conflict with each other, their arguments almost feel too real. Anji often considers the options and is usually independent with her financial skills and intelligence. Over the 25 Books she’s in, she has become consistently enjoyable and a delight to read. Witty, clever, full of instinct, and humane, I did feel a proper sense of loss when she left.

The Regulars- Trix Macmillan

On the last companion, Trix Macmillan. She’s probably have the least amount of books in comparison to other EDA Companions (Sam had 25, Fitz had 51, Compassion has 12 and Anji had 25), with her only having 9 Books. Certainly not a lot of time to flesh out her character in comparison, but somehow the writers did it. What I love about Trix and what makes her a stark contrast to the first EDA Companion, Sam, is that Trix doesn’t want to be popular or well-liked. She’s logical, calculating, often devious, and often pretty tactless. She’s the kind of person who would steal a dead person’s identity and money. She treats The Doctor and Fitz not as friends, only acquaintances. But not just that, she can be (intentionally) a walking contradiction. Much like a showbiz actress, depending on what environment, time and crowd she’s working with, she’ll immediately change her personality. To the point that Trix doesn’t even know her true personality, and she is scared that she wants to know what she used to be. She likes being anyone but herself, wanting to become inconspicuous around the Doctor. Her relationship with the Doctor is interesting as well, he is judgemental towards her hobby as a conwoman, believing that she’s only with him and Fitz because she’ll steal whatever she can get. But as time goes on, he learns about her contradictory personality (most likely relates because of his own contradictory personality), and sees her, the real her. And despite her trying to detach herself from The Doctor, she slowly, but surely, opens herself more to The Doctor and Fitz, to the point that she feels hurt when The Doctor accuses her. Even with the short runtime, I found her relationship with Fitz to be really touching, and shows that Fitz’s open loyalty works in tandem with Trix’s cold secrecy. We don’t get much information about her past, but in a way I enjoy the lack of answers, whether she’s just a conartist or perhaps a chameleonic alien, what her relationship was like with her father. And maybe that’s the point, with her shape-shifting and unpredictable personality, she’s meant to be an enigma. At the very least, with 9 books, she had become a fascinating character that was wonderful to read and analyse.

The Regulars-Fitzgerald Kreiner

Now, my favourite companion in all of Doctor Who media, Fitz Kreiner. Better than the likes of Jamie, Donna, Sarah Jane, Ace and Evelyn. Before with Sam and The Doctor, the books were of varying quality, but as soon as he was introduced, even with a bit of a terrible debut story, he brought such humour that made the story just about bearable. He’s a bit of a goofball with some addiction for cigarettes and alcohol, but he starts becoming one of the most complex and special characters in the franchise. He begins as a bit of a James Bond-esque ‘Lady’s Man’, often trying to flirt and womanise, but by his third Book, Revolution Man, the development truly begins. He gets kidnapped, tortured and brainwashed under the influence of alien drugs and forced into shooting a man, with the Doctor forced to finish the job off for Fitz. He’s obviously going to have lasting effects that will damage him in the long run. But Damn, it doesn’t stop there, Interference leaves him in the absolute gutter with him being trapped in a membrane for 600 years, and resents the Doctor for failing to rescue him, and joins up to 8’s longlives enemy, Faction Paradox, and is converted to be a monster, becoming Father Kreiner. And it’s tragic, given his PTSD shown from Revolution Man. But that Fitz is gone, and what stays with the Doctor until the end is a clone of him, with full memories and everything. So thankfully, the loveable oaf never truly went away and only gets better from here. Much like how the 2nd Doctor was perfect for Jamie, or how Ian and Barbara are integral for the 1st Doctor, Fitz is ideal for 8. During the period with Compassion, he wants to prove that he’s the real Fitz, but can’t, because he isn’t. He may have the OG Fitz’s memories, but he can’t dream and thinks that some memories are missing. Even some aspects of his personality are different, like his skills of hiding and blending in easier. He may be a doofus, and hard to catch on certain things, but much like Jamie, he’s street-smart, and is able to spot simple situations that The Doctor wouldn’t give a second notice because of his desire for over-complicated situations. Even with him not being as bright, he’s able to hold off on his own from the Doctor, as in Trading Futures, he’s able to defeat Time Lord-wannabe Space Rhinos (no, not those kind of Space Rhinos) on his own without any of the Doctor’s help or knowledge by impersonating the Doctor, even willing to sacrifice himself. He’s the flame behind the EDA’s for me, the one who is willing to sacrifice everything he has to save whoever he considers family, and the bond that the Doctor and Fitz have together is inspired. He is fiercely loyal to the Doctor, even when he is kept in the dark. They both have a connection towards each other, like a mix between 2/Jamie and early 8/Charley, with Fitz even willing to hold the heavy memories of what 8 did to Gallifrey, even when The Doctor threatens to break every bone in Fitz’s body.  He was the best friend that 8 could ever have, I loved their kindred relationship and it was totally worth it having Fitz for 51 Books to become such a developed character. My favourite companion, bar none.

The Regulars-The Eighth Doctor

And now, finally the Eighth Doctor. Before, I used to cite the Eighth Doctor from Big Finish as the definitive incarnation. And don’t get me wrong, I still love him in the Charley, Lucie and even the Doom Coalition era. He has brilliant gravitas in showing intelligence (arguably the most intelligence since the 4th Doctor), dry morbid humour, the right amount of patronising, and enthusiasm, often excelled by McGann’s excellent performance and Shakespearean voice. But, as time goes on, the era becomes more… how do I say… schizophrenic and uneven. Big Finish sort of starts off creating arcs for 8, but then… sort of wander off and never pick up on arcs they’ve created, like the 800 year maroon in Orbis, the angst in Dark Eyes, then finally culminating with Moffat’s Night of the Doctor, not picking up on his hatred for the Daleks after Lucie Miller’s death, and making him too naïve to the Time War, making it as if his journey from BF didn’t even matter.

Then came my experiences with the books. And discarding the first novel, The Eight Doctors, and jumping straight to Vampire Science, Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman immediately gave 8 more nuance than 75% of 8th Doctor material in BF. I should preface by saying this as well: despite my grievances from the Virgin New Adventures, I still think that the character of 7, Time’s Champion and its character work are still crucial to the EDA’s and how it conflicts/supplements 8’s character. 8 is no longer Death’s pet, stuck to the chains of fate, but much like 7, in the eyes of others, he is simultaneously whimsical, dangerous and manipulative, albeit more flawed than 7. When 7 manipulates, it’s more out of logic, thinking about the bigger scope, while with 8, it’s out of passion and love. He often uses his good looks and often childlike grin as a front to scheme, as evidenced in Genocide. But unlike the 7th Doctor, it’s never constant to the point of predictability, and sometimes, even his manipulation messes up due to his conflict with his passion and childlike personality. I’d argue that 8 is the most anti-hero incarnation of all the Doctors, even more than the 7th Doctor, often obliviously selfish, privileged and at times very toxic and callous. He often doesn’t let other people in on his schemes (him faking his own death to his companions in The Banquo Legacy), often clings onto people out of fear of losing them (Sam in Interference), pulls strings for his selfish needs (uses Alan Turing’s sexuality as blackmail to make Turing help him help aliens but on the basis that the Doctor just escapes Earth in The Turing Test), puts others on the brink of death (orders a possessed wasp-human hybrid to kill one of his closest patients to test if his true personality is still there in Eater of Wasps), often be cold-blooded and violent (throws a medic against the wall head-first and then stuffs him in a cupboard in Vanishing Point). In the second half of the Book range, he had lost his memory from his battle and destruction/erasure of Gallifrey, but here’s why this memory erasure works as opposed to other ones, like in Big Finish. For Big Finish 90% of the time it’s used, it’s often to create false tension. At times, it’s fine, but when it’s used constantly to pad out the runtime, my enthusiasm starts to wane out quickly. But Justin Richards as Book Script Editor brings something interesting. For the first time, the Doctor isn’t bitching about where his memory is, but rather, he’s a mirrored version of the 1st Doctor (my second favourite incarnation): full of rage, irritative, deceptive, arrogant and willing to fill his hands full of blood. The difference is there is no Ian or Barbara to hold him back, to make him grow, 8 must be the one to grow and develop himself, he has to make the work into becoming The Doctor. That’s another reason why I adore the 8/Fitz/Anji team so much; they are all broken, damaged people with flaws, and call each other out. But they are also a trio of friendship, love, can bring unity towards each other and most importantly, feel like a family, in fact probably the most family-like team since arguably 2/Jamie/Victoria or even since 1/Ian/Barbara/Vicki. 8/Fitz/Anji have truly descended into tough times (Fitz especially), but this team shows that you can pull yourself back from the depths of hell when you have the right support going for you.

Writers like Lance Parkin, Paul Leonard, Lloyd Rose, Kate Orman, Steve Lyons, Mags L Halliday, Martin Day, Lawrence Miles live and breathe the 8th Doctor, a true Bryon Romantic, poetic and literal with words. He’s a diplomat, rather than a conqueror. He may be brutal, manipulative, and cold-blooded, but it’s equally mirrored with empathy, mischievous humour akin to the 2nd Doctor, and a lust for the unpredictability of humanity. Yet unlike how Modern Big Finish and Moffat’s Night of the Doctor made 8 into an ineffectual pacifist buffoon, Book 8 is certainly an optimist, but he’s also a realist. In Reckless Engineering, he was given the choice between saving the correct timeline in the universe but at the cost of his friends or let the universe collapse… he actually chooses the universe. It’s a shocking moment (especially for Fitz, considering how long he’s been with the Doctor), but even he knows that, but has a responsibility to save the right reality. And with some introspection, nearing the end, he realises that, because there’s a gorgeous insight in The Sleep of Reason, about focusing too much on the bigger picture and the few things is equally as important. To see 8’s goals come to fruition, he brings it to himself that his mission of helping even just one individual can be seen as the greatest thing in the universe. He doesn’t want to remember the events of Gallifrey near the end because at the end of the day, he’s a man who strives for the present and future, not the past. He may not be a good person, he may not be right sometimes, and he may not have a happily ever after with destroying Evil for good, but he’ll still keep going on just to make a difference. That’s why I adore the ambiguous ending to The Gallifrey Chronicles, we never get a confirmation as to whether the Doctor survives his plan against the Vore, we never get what his plan is supposed to be and whatever happens after the battle (besides a song from Fitz closing off the book). I prefer Doctor Who to have an ambiguous non-conclusive ending than what Marc Platt did for Lungbarrow or Colin Meek for Death Comes to Time. This version of Eight has now become the definitive incarnation of The Doctor for me, I adore this character so much.

Conclusion

To me, The Eighth Doctor Books, especially in the second half, truly encapsulates everything that I love about the franchise: superb prose, introspective themes, emotional moments, pushing the boundaries of what Doctor Who could truly do but never accomplish. The writers made something special, and made the range one of the most suspenseful, sombre, intimate, and beautiful pieces of fiction I’ve ever experienced. I love them, and to me, they are my Doctor Who.

[unwiltingblossom]

Wow!! You love isekai too!! Here are some I think you'll like Moshi Fan Ren, Master of Ragnarock, Hataage! Kemono Michi, Gun x Sword, Citrus, My Sweet Sugar Life, Overlord, Magic Knight, Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Chaos Dragon, Arifureta, Mr Love Queens Choice, Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. What animes do you like ? °.·~°·*.· ~ . *

Hello!

Lemme take a look at your list~!

As for Moshi Fanren, I’m not that much of a fan of zombies (I love post apocalypse for watching a world rebuild, but not much for zombies themselves)

I’ve actually already watched Master of Ragnarok - I remember there being a plot where his love from his life ends up getting isekai’d much later in the story, right? There was also a completely ridiculous and hilarious moment where a girl’s boob somehow just...came alive and knocked a piece of fruit off a platter she was holding. I don’t understand. it was surreal.

Kemono Michi was fun, though a bit strange.

I haven’t seen Gun x Sword before, but it reminds me of Trigun somehow from the description, I’ll give it a look when I get the chance!

As for Citrus and My Sweet Sugar Life, I probably wouldn’t enjoy them, as I’m not into yuri (or yaoi, I prefer gxb if it’s gonna be a romance anime) - that, and in the latter case I’m picky on thrillers

I really enjoyed Overlord season 1 and also 2, but season 3 really turned me off from the show, as Ains has started losing control of his villainous persona and starts doing harm to his own (human) followers. I do like Jircniv though.

If you mean Magic Knight Rayearth I really enjoyed that manga. It’s a classical isekai kind of format and I loved it. I never finished part 2, but that’s because my library didn’t have the rest. Anyone who likes isekai should try reading that, as it’s a precursor to modern isekai format

As for Recovery of an MMO Junkie - I absolutely adored that anime. I ship Moriko and Sakurai to death. They’re adorable, and I love Sakurai. Such a cutie. I really hope we get more of the anime.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Chaos Dragon before? I’ll have to give it a look.

As for Arifureta, I liked it at first, but his relationship with Yue speeds though at such a ridiculous pace it left be dizzy and completely disengaged with it, which is a problem because the rest of his relationships are dependent on the fact that his and Yue’s relationship is the most epic of epic. Also, Hajime is just a capital J jerk. It reminded me of Shield Hero if people weren’t constantly being like ‘Naofumi stop being a dick for five seconds pls’

I actually play Mr. Love Queen’s Choice! I’m caught up with the english release of the game and I know some stuff that happens in the future. Currently I’m trying to ease my father into watching the anime, since the story is so good but I won’t be convincing him to play a girl game any time soon, lol

I’ve never heard of Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint before but the power sounds really cool, so I’ll look into it and see if I can find it, even though the genre isn’t really my favorite.

As for anime I already like, hm...well I might forget some but off the top of my head some of my favorites are:

Dragon ball (all of them except GT, which had potential but really squandered it hard. Super has its issues, but it’s still ongoing and hasn’t started randomly throwing away characters, nor given Vegeta a buzz cut)

Fushigi Yuugi - the manga, the anime wasn’t done very well honestly. I actually hate the primary romance and Miaka’s just...almost unbearable, but I love the whole concept and world and the characters so much that it’s one of my all time favorites anyway. I of course read all of Genbu Kaiden and am reading Byakko Ibun too.

Video Girl Ai - There’s an anime running now called Rent-a-Girlfriend, but Video Girl Ai did this already, first, and way better. Just not the anime. The anime only covers the first three graphic novels of like...10?

Naruto is a given, obviously, it’s probably one of the best battle shounen anime there are, especially at accomplishing things other ones fail to do properly.

I also enjoy Black Clover and I kind of liked Fairy Tail but it’s a little silly, and I don’t like Natsu. If you don’t like the protagonist of a shounen anime that’s gonna be a problem. Though to be fair I read literally two panels of Asta and went “Wow, I hate him.” but he almost immediately gets better, and is one of the smarter shounen leads.

Other anime I enjoy...hmm. Tenchi, of course - not Tenchi in Tokyo - Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2 though I never finished either. I really wish I still had the PSX Inuyasha game where you could pick who Kagome dated, boohoo. Seven Deadly Sins, though the latest season has been boring, My Hero Academia though probably not as much as most people would, Rage of Bahamut was great and Favaro needs to get back with Amira already. Fate Stay Night, naturally, though I don’t care for heaven’s feel. I need more of Kuromukuro to be made, so the samurai and his girlfriend can finally be reunited again. Despite its weird ending, I also liked Chobits

I also liked Orange, CLANNAD, Steins;Gate (and 0) and SukaSuka/WorldEnd because I guess I like suffering. I was there for when .hack//SIGN was starting out, so I’m always going to be a fan of that bizarre, convoluted mess of a mystery.

I started Fruits Basket but dropped it as soon as I realized who Tohru would end up with, because I hate a love triangle where I already know the result from the beginning. I just don’t like love triangles at all, honestly, partly because I never prefer the canon ending. (and thus if I can tell it’s a triangle but not who will win - which is rare - I still don’t enjoy it due to anxiousness). I liked Free! but the fandom is so annoying I got tired of the show and dropped it. I enjoy Bleach, but I feel like it peaked in the Soul Society arc, and the filler kills me.

I’m sure I’m missing some, but it’s what I can think of right off.

[moonstone-blues]

Fallout 4 AU: October 24th

If you guys remember, a while ago I quickly sketched up an idea of a modern/what if the bombs didn't drop Fallout AU for FOCCA (I'll get round to finishing the rest of the submissions eventually.)

Well, I've been doing some thinking and just wanted to share my notes on how the story would go. (This is my own personal interpretation.) 

For now, the name is October 24th. Although the main story takes place after that, the name is supposed to symbolise that we're after the day of reckoning and everything is fine… mostly.

Be warned: This is a long one. 

Story:

Okay so the story starts on the Morning of October 23 2077. Everything is the same as in game. River and Jack do their thing, joking around and making sure they look good. Shaun in this story is older, being around eight years old. (This is because I wanted to keep the 10 year old Shaun element and he can't be an old man in this version.) The television continues playing the usual news and… The bombs never fall. Not a single detonation. The McConnell family continue on with their day and attend the event at the Veteran's Hall. 

When they go home, that night as they're sleeping, Kellogg breaks in and attempts to kidnap Shaun. In the struggle, Jack is shot dead and River is attacked, being knocked into a coma. This coma lasts a year with nearly another year of physical and mental therapy to go through before she returns home. Upon realising they never found Shaun or Jack's killer, she sets up on her own, trying to find her son and avenge her husband. The story beats are obviously very similar but adapted to be more modern. Synths are now clones because I felt like synths would be too Sci fi for this story. 

Factions:

The Minutemen - A kind of neighbourhood watch organisation. Funded by the army, they were supposed to try and keep the peace, without using violence. Thus made sure the military had all of their soldiers back so they could fight. However, after some fighting within the organisation and the military suddenly cutting off funding, things quickly went downhill from there. 

The BOS - This is simply the army. After the shut down of the Minutemen, a new group was made, the Brotherhood of Steel. These were soldiers sent by the military to patrol Boston, much like how they did before the Minutemen. However, since the threat of war is now gone, they have the soldiers to spare and want to show off their muscle to intimidate the people. 

The Institute - I'm still not entirely sure about the synths being clones instead things so this one is really up for debate. My thoughts so far are that the Institute still kidnaps people. They harvest their organs and make a clone to send off to replace the original person. I know, not the best idea. But I was thinking about what they would do with the kidnapped people that seemed justified in their minds? Well, they still have the same belief that humanity is doomed with the way it's going. Rioting, corrupt governments and the rest. They replace people with clones of themselves, engineered to behave. And they kill and harvest the organs of the original person and send them to hospitals for people who can't get organ donations because they're too low on the list. In their minds, they're getting rid of corrupt people, replacing them with people who they see as being better for society and giving people who may not have one a chance at life. They're technically doing good, but they are killing people. They still work out of the CIT but in secret laboratories.

The Railroad - Very similar to their in game selves. A secretive organisation dedicated to setting clones free and stopping the Institute. 

Characters:

Dogmeat - A stray dog that kept turning up on River's doorsteps during the first couple of weeks she stays at home. She eventually takes him in, being reminded of her other dog that ran away. She calls him Biscuit. 

Codsworth - Mostly the same. A faithful robot butler mourning the loss of two of his masters and constantly worrying over River. He makes sure she takes all of her medicine and never let's her miss an appointment. 

Preston - An ex Minuteman who spends most of his free time handing out fliers that promote it and tries to get people to sign a petition to bring the Minutemen back. His efforts are mostly in vain until he meets River after being attacked in an alleyway. 

Piper - The same noisy reporter working for the Boston Bugle. Known for her sometimes controversial articles and her willingness to do anything for a story. She's very interested in River since the kidnapping of her son seemed to be the beginning of all of what she believes to be the Institute's kidnappings. At first River wants to stay away from her as Piper is particularly intruding in her life but accepts her help. 

Nick - After the original Nick Valentine went for his brain scan, he was disposed of. The new Nick was made with Nick's DNA but due to the fact that the cloning technology had only just started being put to use, it wasn't perfect. He wasn't a complete copy of the original Nick and he was more than aware that he wasn't actually the original. At first he was loved up, the scientists not knowing what to do with him, but eventually Nick was broken out with the help of DIMA. He tried explaining that to 'his' boss and coworkers but they said he was mad. Eventually, Nick quit the police, feeling like he hadn't deserved to be there in the first place. After all, a man was murdered so he could live. He roamed the streets, no clue of what to do. He eventually found his way at the original Nick's home, still covered in evidence against Eddie Winters. Eventually, people started knocking on his door. They knew Nick Valentine was a great cop and did his job damn well. So when the police started ignoring missing person cases they came to him. Nick would've refused but without a job, he had no money to live. He begrudgingly accepted a job from someone in high power. (The same missing person case he dealt with in the original game but without the hilarious beeping part.) When he succeeded, he was overcome with a passion to help people. He stopped feeling sorry for himself and officially turned his place into Valentine Detective Agency. With the knowledge of his big case, people came to him from all over for help and he continued to give it to them. He had his lower right arm, some of his face, some parts generally all over damaged when one of Eddie Winter's men planted a bomb in his mailbox. He only placed his hand in so it wasn't as bad as it could've been. He did need everything below his left elbow removed and he now has a prophetic arm and eye. River Meets Nick when she rescues him from Mafia boss, Skinny Malone. 

Hancock - John and his brother came from a poor family. Honest but poor. Living in a bad part of town, their parents tried to instill good values into them despite their circumstances. Unfortunately, neither really took it to heart. They were still a happy family, doing the best they could, even taking trips to museums as a treat. As they grew up, John found himself in a lot of trouble. Joining gangs, drinking, doing chems. However, his brother was going places. He worked hard, eventually becoming assistant to the mayor. However, once it was found out the mayor was using taxpayer's money to build his own luxurious vault, he was kicked out of office. With a position to fill, Hancock's brother worked hard. His campaign was brutal. His major promise was to move the poor people to the opposite side of Boston so they couldn't bother the more wealthy. This also meant they would be receiving less help from tax payers and left to fend for themselves. The people, after having plenty of money taken off them for years, loved this plan. He won at a landslide. John was furious. He thought with their situation, his brother wouldn't dream to hurt those who could barely afford to live. But his brother still carried it out. He left the promise of a cushy life with his brother and decided to live with the less fortunate. It wasn't the best situation but anywhere would've been better than with his brother. The particular section of Boston was horrible. Mostly lawless, police not even wanting to go near the place. It was a dog eat dog kind of town. Eventually, a mob boss named Vic overtook the town, making himself the leader. Forcing people to pay for protection or they would be beat. John watched every day. Despite wanting nothing to do with him, the mayor still gave John protection. He hated it. Being treated better than everyone else who was suffering. He got insanely wasted one night, feeling horrible for the protection he got and the way he ignored Vic's actions. He needed things to change. He couldn't stand the man he saw in the mirror. He poured his remaining bear over himself and set himself on fire. Most of the damage was on the left side of his body, mostly burning his face so that he was hardly recognisable. After putting the flames out, he broke into one of the museums he loved so much as a kid. He remembered learning about the men that built America. It was when he looked up at the coat of John Hancock that he decided enough was enough. After a very long trip to the ER with a very expensive medical bill his brother paid off, he went back to the town with a crew who hated Vic and challenged him directly. He managed to kill Vic, albeit not as barbaric as he does in the game, and took over the town. Vic's old crew feared John's strength and left the people alone. Hancock stepped up to be the leader, officially naming the town Goodneighbor. He even changed his name to John Hancock, fully separating himself from his brother and becoming his own person. He runs it mostly the same as he does in the game. River meets him after going into Goodneighbor with Nick following a lead on her case. 

MacCready - Grew up in an orphanage in DC. He was roped into criminal activity at a young age. When he met his wife, Lucy, he claimed he was military being deployed in many places when he was off committing crimes. When his son was a few years old, Lucy was killed by a pack of rabid wolves when he didn't check out a camping spot. Duncan eventually became sick so MacCready moved to Boston with him after hearing that Med Tek was working on a cure. Unfortunately, that meant that Duncan had to live in the Facility and the cost to keep him safe and quarantined was high. MacCready works odd jobs, even stooping to criminal activity to help his son. He meets River after she hires him to help with doing some shady things since he knows his way around a lock and he's good protection. 

Curie - Curie's 'father' Kenneth Collins works as a scientist in the CIT. While he isn't aware of the Institute, he had a friend in it who he confided in about how he was sad he could never have a child since he was alone and old. This friend wanted to surprise him one day and using his connections, managed to get the Institute to create a clone for him. They created an amalgamation of personalities, most intelligent and scientific and put it in a young woman. This became Curie. Collins quickly figured out that his friend must've been part of the Institute. After all, the rumours were largely spread around the CIT building. He kept Curie a secret, knowing how suspicious it would be for a random woman with no records of anything suddenly popping up. She stayed in mostly total isolation, learning everything she could about everything to do with science. While she did very rarely step outside her home only under the supervision of her father, she still didn't understand a lot and yearned to be outside to explore and study. Eventually, the Institute found out that their 'property' had been given away. Kenneth was killed and Curie remained trapped, locked in her room. River meets her after walking past her house, hearing her bang on her window. She eventually gets her out of the house and with nowhere else to go and no clue of what the outside world is like, River offers her guidance. 

Danse - A Brotherhood member who is very patriotic and eager to defend the people and his country. However, despite his love for his country, he hates how the country is run. Despite the threat of nuclear war disappearing, Danse believes that America has become too relaxed and lazy, expecting everyone else to do the work. He believes the military are the only people pulling their weight and the American people need to wake up. He was replaced with a clone shortly after being deployed in Boston. River meets him when she comes across a small riot going on in the street between Danse's small squad and some members of the Minutemen. She steps in and resolves the situation. Danse is, of course, mistrustful since they were her people and he doesn't know if the Minutemen are a threat yet. However, River offers her help, guilty that Minutemen were involved in riots and Danse finds her to be quite useful for his mission. 

Deacon - He was always a con man, weaseling his way into situations for his own benefit. However, he was also very troubled by the growing tensions between America and China. He joined a group that were against the Chinese and harassed any they met, even lynching a young man. Deacon left the group after this, being disgusted by his involvement and soon met the love of his life, Barbara. A Chinese-American woman. Despite some lingering feelings of fear and hatred, he eventually came to love her, growing out of his previous beliefs. They were happy together, even wanting to have a child together, however, before they had the chance, his old group found out about the pair and reported Barbara to be a Chinese spy, taking her away forever to what Deacon assumed to be her death for sure. Using his skills as a master of disguise and a con man, he managed to ruin every single one of their lives. The least someone got was being put in prison for life. He felt empty after he had his revenge. He didn't know what to do with himself. That's when he heard about the Railroad. A group dedicated to helping people. Deacon found his new cause. He may not be able to protect everyone but he could at least try to protect some. River meets him when she finds the Railroad, looking for their help. However, Deacon has had his eye on her for much longer than that. 

Cait - Her parents abused her much like in the game. After she turned 18, her parents made her work on the streets to get money for their drinking, drugs and debts. Cait was isolated most of her life with the abuse and didn't know what she could've done to escape. Eventually her parents revealed their debt was too great to be paid off by Cait being on the street. So, as part of a deal she wasn't aware of, she was forced into an underground cage fighting ring. The owner of the ring itself was Tommy who was sympathetic towards Cait but the real people in control were the gang that took over, the people Cait's parents owed money too. She was forced to stay there under a contract, her only option to fight. River Meets her accidently when she wanders into a bad part of town and uses her legal knowledge to get Cait out of her contract. 

Strong - Armstrong was the youngest out of six brothers. With his parents dying too young for him to remember, he was raised by his brothers, being abused and neglected by them. He was looked in his room most days and given the scraps of food. His brothers would fight them, knowing he was a weak target. Armstrong became stronger this way. Eventually, he escaped from his home. However, due to his lack of socialisation and education, he couldn't find work. Fortunately, he eventually found a free education program for adults. There, he was taught by radio personality Rex Goodman about literature. Macbeth stuck with him especially. Rex offered him work in his studio, hauling equipment but Armstrong still doesn't have the best socialisation and Rex doesn't get to spend as much time with him to teach him. River Meets Armstrong after she is invited on Rex's radio show to talk about her son. River feels bad for Armstrong and after some explanation about his life from Rex, River offers to help Armstrong and educate him in her free time. 

X6-88 - A clone working as security for the Institute scientists. During the times the Institute scientists are not working, he works as a security guard at the CIT. He also brings in any clones who figure out they're clones. River first meets him when she enters the CIT looking for answers after she gets clues that the CIT is where the Institute is.

DiMA - Dima was the Institute's first attempt at creating life without the use of cloning. He was put with Nick who was the first attempt at creating life with the use of cloning and the two formed a bond with their imprisonment. They even considered themselves brothers. However, with Dima's lack of an imported personality, he tended to be quite unemotional, something the Institute would take advantage of when making their security. However, Dima could tell how much Nick was suffering and wanted to freeze him. He himself wanted to be free too, of course, but he wanted his brother to be happy more than anything. He eventually helped him escape but something happened. Nick was injured in the escape, causing him to lose most of his memory of the Institute and Dima. Dima was scared, especially since his brother didn't recognise him anymore so he fled. He hoped to see him again some day but he would wait for Nick to find him. 

Obviously there's more characters and stuff but this is what I've thought of so far.

Feel free to ask questions or request something about this! 

[prolapsarian]

Notes to Sean Bonney (1969-2019)

The great ruse of our political epoch: Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, and their crows in press, scorched a set of oppositions in the minds of the people. The whole of society encapsulated in an image of “workers versus shirkers”, “strivers versus skivers.” The great tragedy of our political epoch: the Labour movement, the left, and the social democrats took the bait of these laminated ghouls. They responded simply by saying that there were no skivers: instead there was a worthy working class, labouring away ever harder, and getting ever poorer. They said the whole thing was a myth, that the shirkers were a phantom, a chimera, a scapegoat, an image invented by evil overlords to turn the working class against itself, leaving it prone to the ideologies of reaction. The labour movement talked instead only about the working poor, or the unemployed who wanted always to get back to a good job, on a good wage, forever and ever.

Few resisted the ruse, but Sean Bonney was one of them. Perhaps it was because Sean himself was a skiver, a drunk, a scoundrel, a villain, an addict, a down-and-out, a fuck up. More likely it was because of his deep political intuition and understanding. For him, the politics of class warfare was never about worthiness; it was never about what the working class deserve at the end of a hard day’s work, but instead its crucible was the hatred of the social conditions that pummelled people, silenced them, boxed them in, boxed them up, oppressed them, made them suffer. This politics was uncompromising because it understood that any compromise was a failure: there is no weekend that redeems the week, no pension that makes good on the life wrecked by the conformity and unfreedom of work.

I like to think of Sean as the thing that terrified those Tories most, as one of those beautiful creatures who so absolutely threatened them that they had to transfigure him into a phantom. His poetry too was one with this politics in this. Every line is written in solidarity with the shirking class, a class whose underground history crawls and stretches backwards, a perpetual dance, an unending squall, as anonymous as it is enormous. If Sean was a skiver he was also always hard at work, undertaking an immense labour of compression, in order to make that history heard. And this furious labour was quick and angular, because it always came with some sense that history was, already, ending. As a singular voice that resisted the ruse, his writing is one of the most important political efforts of our time.

o scroungers, o gasoline there’s a home for you here there’s a room for your things me, I like pills / o hell.

*** Since hearing of Sean’s death I have been thinking a lot about what I learnt from him. Learning is maybe a strange way to look at it. Because Sean’s poetry was not really so complicated. He stated unambiguous truths that we all knew and understood. Just like Brecht’s dictum in praise of communism: “It’s reasonable, and everyone understands it, it’s easy […] it is the simplicity, that’s hard to achieve.” This was the plane on which we met. All of us, Sean’s friends, comrades, loves, beloveds, others we did not know who all were invited, all in this common place where we know how simple these truths are, even if none of us were able to express them with such concision as Sean – even if we were all somehow less rehearsed, less prepared, less audacious. And suddenly I know it was a common place he made, wretched and hilarious.

*** So communism is simple. But running beneath all of Sean’s work was an unassuming argument, from which I have learned so much. Although argument was not his mode – his poems were always doing something, accusing but never prosecuting – an argument is there, even if it was exposed as a thesis in its own right. It is something so simple, easy, and so obvious that it barely seems worth saying. Sean’s poems made an argument for the enduring power of French symbolism – for a power that surged through history in the spirit of that movement. No surprise for a poet who rewrote Baudelaire and Rimbaud. But constantly a surprise to a world that thought that mode already dead, a world no longer animated by the literary symbol, nor transfixed by the resurrection any such symbols could herald. His writing followed the traces of this hyperhistory that wrapped around the world and back, from the high culture of decolonial revolutionism back in to cosmopolitan centre where bourgeois savages feast greedily on expropriated wares; into the dark sociality of the prison, and out again into every antisocial moment that we call “society”; sometimes making the earth small within a frozen cosmos ringing out noise as signal to nobody and everyone; sometimes bringing the whole cosmos in crystalline shape (sometimes perfect, sometimes fractured) as the sharpest interruption within the world - every poem charting a history stretched taut between uprisings and revolts. He knew the rites of symbols, the continuing practices with which their political power could be leveraged.

Sean was one of the few untimely symbolists of our time. His poems are full of these things: bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc - never quite concepts, never quite images, never quite objects, but pieces of the world to be taken up and arranged, half exploded, into accusations; treasured as partial and made for us to take as our own, a heritage of our own destruction, at once ready at hand, and scattered to the peripheries on a map of the universe, persistently spiralling, in points, back to the centre, some no place.

But if Sean was a symbolist, if he was attentive to its fugitive history, a slick and secret tradition of the oppressed, then this was also a symbolism without any luxuriant illusion. It is a symbolism in which all knowingness has been supplanted with fury and its movements. Sean’s poems are spleen without ideal. They have nothing of the pointed, almost screaming, eternal sarcasm of Baudelaire when he ever again finds the body of his beautiful muse as white and lifeless cold marble, utterly indifferent to the desirous gaze. There is no such muse, no callous petrified grimace, half terrified half laughing, ancient enough to unseat Hellenism itself - although there is beauty still but it exists otherwise, amid a crowd, darkened and lively. When I think of Sean’s monumental work I imagine an enormous bas-relief of black polished marble jutting out from some monstrously disproportioned body, angled between buildings. This great slab flashing black in the white noise of the city. This great slab as populous as the world. Flashing black and seen with the upturned gaze. There is no oppression without this terrified vision that sees in ever new sharpness the oppressor.

When you go to sleep, my gloomy beauty, below a black marble monument, when from alcove and manor you are reduced to damp vault and hollow grave; when the stone—pressing on your timorous chest and sides already lulled by a charmed indifference—halts your heart from beating, from willing, your feet from their bold adventuring, when the tomb, confidant to my infinite dream (since the tomb understands the poet always), through those long nights in which slumber is banished, will say to you: "What does it profit you, imperfect courtisan, not to have known what the dead weep for?" —And the worm will gnaw at your hide like remorse.

*** I haven’t explained what I learnt. I ask the question, What does it mean to find the late nineteenth century stillborn into the twenty-first? Why should these febrile years, from 1848 to the Commune have been so important? What was Sean leveraging when he recast our world with this moment of literary and political history? And what was he leveraging it against? I have a sense that what was important to Sean was a sense of mixedness. There were those who would read these years, after the defeat of revolution, as a dreadful winter of the world. There were those who saw only society in decline. “Jeremiads are the fashion”, Blanqui would say while counselling civil war. And then there were those for whom arcades first provided an extravagant ecstacy of distraction and glitz. These were the years of monstrocity, from Maldoror to Das Kapital. These years of the great machines that chewed up humans and spat out their remains across the city, of great humans who chewed up machines and made language anew. These years in which the fury of defeat burnt hot. These years of illumination. These years where gruesome metallic grinding and factory fire met the dandy. Few eras have been so mixed, so utterly undecided. No era so perfect to carve out the truly Dickensian physiognomy of Iain Duncan Smith. This was neither the stage of tragedy nor comedy, but of frivolous wickedness and hilarious turpitude. The world made into a barb, and no-one quite knowing who is caught on it. The great progress. The great stupidity. Street life. The symbol belonging to this undecided realm.

Marx was famously dismissive of that “social scum” the Lumpenproletariat, who he described at the beginning of this period as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.” Marx saw in these figures, in their Bonapartist, reactionary form, a bourgeois consciousness ripped from its class interest and thus nourished by purest political ideology. But if he could excoriate the drunkenness of beggars, Marx failed to appreciate its complement: the intoxication of sobriety of the working classes, the stupefaction in methodism, their imagined glory in progress. Wine, as the beggars already knew, was the only salve to the social anaesthetic of worthiness and the idiotic faith in work.

If Sean were here I’d want to talk to him about this learning in relation to a fragment by Benjamin, which he wrote as he thought about the world of Baudelaire; this world of mixedness of the city constructed and exploded, and the people within it subject to the same motion:

During the Baroque, a formerly incidental component of allegory, the emblem, undergoes extravagant development. If, for the materialist historian, the medieval origin of allegory still needs elucidation, Marx himself furnishes a clue for understanding its Baroque form. He writes in Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1922), vol. 1, p. 344: "The collective machine ... becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one — that is, the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected not only by the hand of man but by the machinery itself. In manufacture, the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labor, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative." Here may be found the key to the Baroque procedure whereby meanings are conferred on the set of fragments, on the pieces into which not so much the whole as the process of its production has disintegrated. Baroque emblems may be conceived as half finished products which, from the phases of a production process, have been converted into monuments to the process of destruction. During the Thirty Years' War, which, now at one point and now at another, immobilized production, the "interruption" that, according to Marx, characterizes each particular stage of this labor process could be protracted almost indefinitely. But the real triumph of the Baroque emblematic, the chief exhibit of which becomes the death's head, is the integration of man himself into the operation. The death's head of Baroque allegory is a half-finished product of the history of salvation, that process interrupted — so far as this is given him to realize — by Satan.

I won’t pretend to know all of what Benjamin means here but I have some idea. And those last sentences terrify me. Modernity begins with a war that is a strike, one that repeats through history. And the shape of this strike, this war, this repetition, is the shape of detritus of production interrupted. We shift perspective and the machine is revealed as other than it was once imagined: it is not some factory churning out commodities, but a world theatre of soteriology. An exchange takes place: the half-finished product for the half-destroyed body. Although what is created (albeit as a “monument to the process of destruction”) is some monstrous combination of the two. One and the same seen with two different perspectives, and the two perspectives separated by the distance between the promise that production will be interrupted, in rhythmic repetition, and the force of the machine that completes the product, kills the body into it, sealing death perfectly within the commodity, as its catastrophe. This distance, a tropic on the edge of the end of the world, is Hell.

This is a lot. But maybe it gets close to what I learnt. That all those bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc were for Sean the emblemata of our political times. These are the monsters, half-finished, half-human, half-machine, the bird interrupting itself with a scream a silent as the cosmos once seemed. I don’t know if they are to be taken up as weapons in the battle for salvation, or as mere co-ordinates on the map of hell. But they are certainly potent, and set here in commitment to redemption, for the work of raising the dead. Sean’s writing was always ready for this task, in constant preparation, and in constant interruption. Its angles quickly pacing between the two.

This has become theologically ornate. But perhaps something of the point is clear: that in the symbolic realm of Sean’s language are staked the great theological and materialist battles of our age. He had to deep dig into our time for that, furrow and dig so deep that he found the nineteenth century still there, crawling everywhere, right up to us. And all of this was set, furiously, against a more everyday view that production has all but disappeared from sight: society fully administered slips across screens with nothing but a sense of speed and gloss. His poetry decries, digs into, a laminated world with which we are supposed to play but in which we are never supposed to participate, never mind to get drunk, see the truth, raise the dead, even now as they slip away ever further through the mediatized glare.

*** Are we not surrounded by those who cast spells? Sorcery is the fashion, if only for the blighted, the meek, the poor, the oppressed. And it would be easy to mistake what Sean was writing for just another piece of subaltern superstition; promising mighty power for as long as it remains utterly powerless and otherworldly. But this is not right. Seans symbols are not just any old sign, or signal, or sigil. They are not arcana, but materials taken to hand out of the dereliction of the present. They are certainly magic, just as Sean was certainly a seer. But this is a materialist magic, a fury, a joy. They are not drawn from some other mystical world, but from this one. And his magic was to suspend them between this world and the next, between law made in the mouths of a class who hated him, and justice. He saw more deeply than most of us dare, and invited us along. Invited everyone along, including the dead who will rise, even if we have to dig and dig and drag them out of the ground and through the streets, to show the world what streets are really for. Here in this common place, between buildings, together. This is the place of magic, for riots, for burning cars; here a wall, there a blazing comet. Let his poetry dance on, and we will dance on too.

[shions-heart]

okay strap in boyos cuz i’ve finished my glass of wine and i’m about to go full ham on this post featuring the one and only tendou satori in my being human ‘verse

a refresher on the years/ages: at Shiratorizawa you enroll at age 13 and you are in year 1; you graduate and receive your license after your 10th year, when most are 22-23, unless you’ve been moved up due to impressive growth in your power and abilities

Ushijima graduated at age 17 and is 23 at the start of the fic. Since it takes place in/around early September, and taking into account the official birth dates, the others ages/years are as follows: Tendou, 23 (year 10); Semi, 22 (year 10); Leon, 22 (year 10); Yamagata, 21 (year 10); Shirabu, 20 (year 10); Kawanishi, 20 (year 8); Goshiki, 18 (year 8). Both Shirabu and Goshiki moved up two years due to their impressive magical growth, power, and abilities.

because i believe it is relevant to their interests, i’m tagging @pulveremcomedesligulas @emerald-psyche @akaashisstar @semdere and @xevikan15

(spoilers for The Awakening under the cut y’all know the drill)

(looooong post, tw for child abuse and neglect, PTSD, and bullying)

okay so some backstory first: we got glimpses of it in the fic but the main run down of it is

Tendou’s mom was already pregnant with him when she did her Hinokoku trial at 18. She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time and went through some really harrowing stuff that ended up breaking her mind. She passed the trial but her PTSD was so bad afterwards she could barely function. That’s when she realized she was pregnant.

She kept the baby secret as long as she could, started isolating herself when she couldn’t hide it anymore, and generally did not do well. The amount of flashbacks she had started to twist her reality to the point where she became convinced that she conceived Tendou in Hinokoku and he was, in fact, a demon spawn.

After he was born and looked human, she tried to convince herself that everything was fine, he was fine, they were both fine, but she only got worse, and the House of the White Rose were no help. When Tendou was about three years old, she petitioned the House of the White Swan to take her and her son into their coven, so she could avoid Tendou facing the Hinokoku trials. The House of the White Swan coven council agreed when they saw how desperate she was, somewhat afraid what she might do to herself or the child if they refused.

So then Tendou and his mom lived in hiding, constantly moving to avoid detection from the House of the White Rose (the punishment for defecting is losing your magic); meanwhile, Tendou’s mother grew worse. He did his best to care for her himself, but she would have days where she would call him a monster and try to attack him, convinced once more that he was demon spawn. These episodes could last a few minutes or days. Tendou became quite good at recognizing and managing her mood swings, staying upbeat and cheerful for her sake, even though her words cut through him each time. 

(This is also when he became really good at Defensive Magic and wards. He had to be. His mother often threw things at him or cast spells at him when she was in this state. He had to know how to recognize the signs of an incoming attack, “guess” at where they’d be coming from and what type of attacks they’d be, and throw up wards quickly enough to block them.)

Finally, he was thirteen and old enough to enroll at Shiratorizawa. Not wanting to leave his mother on her own, he convinced her to check herself into an institution. It was one of the hardest decisions he ever made, but he knew it was for the best.

His first day at Shiratorizawa did not go well. He unwittingly sat in a seat the class bully always sat in, and didn’t move when the kid told him to (not seeing why he should when there were plenty of other seats available). The bully got angry and Tendou, “guessing” that he’d was about to be attacked, threw up a ward. The bully’s hex hit it and backfired, giving him the ears, nose, and tail of a pig. Tendou thought this was hilarious and burst out laughing his loud, unnatural cackle, which put everyone on edge. They didn’t think Tendou should’ve been able to predict an attack or put up a powerful ward so quickly. That’s when the taunts and gossip started around him being a “monster.”

It hurt, because Shiratorizawa was supposed to be a place for him to make a new start. To finally be safe in one place and make friends. But Tendou, always one to bury his true feelings behind a smile and a joke, seemed to take it in stride. He didn’t retaliate but he gave up on trying to find any friends.

That’s when he met Ushijima. The quiet boy was strong and studious and didn’t seem aware of the bully incident at all. He was so absorbed in his homework he seemed to miss a lot of what was going on around him. That made him the perfect person for Tendou to befriend, it seemed. So he did. He sat next to Ushijima and chatted at him about anything and everything. Ushijima didn’t offer much back by way of conversation, but he also didn’t treat Tendou like a monster or someone to avoid.

At least, until Ushijima moved up a year, and then another, leaving Tendou behind and not ever seeking him out or trying to contact him. Tendou was pretty sure he’d just lost his best friend, if Ushijima had ever really been his friend at all, and that hurt pretty badly too.

Enter Semi Eita.

Tendou’s entire world lit up with his arrival. Semi had always been there, of course, but had hung back, not wanting to intrude on Tendou and Ushijima’s friendship, just glad to see Tendou had made a friend because after the bully incident, Semi thought the others’ treatment of Tendou was really unfair but was unnerved enough himself to hesitate to bridge that gap.

But once he saw Tendou sitting alone again, he mustered up his courage and went to sit with him. Tendou was stunned, honestly. He already thought Semi Eita was the prettiest boy he’d ever seen, and here he was sitting with him. Talking to him. Not treating him like a monster at all! Tendou clung to that, to Semi, and even though Semi would call him annoying sometimes, he never really tried to get away from him, so Tendou knew he liked him. They were friends. And when they became roommates a couple years later, Tendou was fricking thrilled, already well on his way to falling in love with Semi.

Having Semi around gave him the courage to start reaching out to the other loners. Leon was next. Being half-black made him a target for some of the more racist students, so Tendou dragged Semi over to meet him and all three of them hit it off really well. Yamagata came after this. The poor boy was a spazz, always misplacing his things, and rather flamboyantly gay. Thus, a target. So, into the group he went!

A couple years passed before Kawanishi and Shirabu arrived. Kawanishi got put in Yamagata’s room, so naturally Yamagata brought him to their lunch table. Tendou found his deadpan humor hilarious and took his aloof nature as a challenge. He went out of his way to include Kawanishi in things and surprisingly, Kawanishi went along with it. He never became a target because they all accepted him immediately, so he didn’t have time to become a loner.

Shirabu was a tougher cookie. He wasn’t a loner because others picked on him. He isolated himself intentionally. It reminded Tendou a lot of Ushijima, actually. The others were skeptical about bringing him in because of this, but Tendou insisted that he was perfect for their group. (“what’s wrong with weird?”) He reached out to Shirabu and got cold rebuffs in return, but he never gave up on him, and after a few months Shirabu seemed to warm up to them a bit more. Tendou found out about the nightmare incident from Semi, and felt himself somewhat akin to Shirabu. He, too, suffered from nightmares for a long time. It was only after he started rooming with Semi that they became less frequent before stopping altogether (so he totally understands Shirabu’s attachment to Semi). He did everything he could to make sure Shirabu felt included and wanted and cared for, knowing first hand how awful it feels when the circumstances are the opposite.

Goshiki came two years after Shirabu and Kawanishi. He became a target because of his outburst his first day of class (declaring he’d be the best, strongest Demon Hunter ever). Tendou found his enthusiasm endearing and basically thought he was the cutest thing ever, so he wasted no time in including him in the group.

And thus his little family was complete! For six years, nobody dared to say anything to his face. He finally had a group of people around him who loved him, wanted him, cared about him. He invested a lot of time into them, individually and as a whole, coming up with ideas for hang outs, outings, “parties,” etc. He was finally happy.

Then the attacks started, and the rumor mill did as well. People grew bold again, lashing out at Tendou as they were all convinced he was the perpetrator. The word “monster” got tossed around again, and Tendou desperately tried to not let it bother him. It didn’t matter, because his friends, his family, believed in him. For a while he succeeded in suppressing those bad thoughts and feelings. He concentrated on encouraging Goshiki’s growth, on watching Yamagata’s hopeless crush on Kawanishi unfold, on wooing Semi Eita through unconventional methods, never quite bold enough to come out and say that he was in love with him (especially because he wasn’t sure if Semi would even return his feelings).

Then Ushijima came back into his life.

Now, Tendou had been following Ushijima’s career. Of course he had. He was proud of his former friend. He was inspiring and powerful; someone to look up to and emulate, at least in his Demon Hunter career. Tendou wasn’t set on becoming a Demon Hunter, but he saw the way his friends looked up to the Great Ushijima Wakatoshi and he was glad for it.

Then Ushijima arrived at the school and Tendou ran into him by chance. There he was, in the flesh: tall, strong, unbelievably handsome. Tendou was starstruck. And then he realized Ushijima didn’t recognize him. It hurt, a lot more than Tendou was expecting, and he played it off like he was just meeting him for the first time. Then of course came his scheme to help out with the investigation and get to know him again, to make up for lost time, to maybe get his friend back. And as all those warm feelings from the past came back, paired with the admiration he already had, plus the fact that Ushijima became damn attractive, it led to deeper feelings, as well.

Let me tell you, Tendou Satori suffered a lot during the events of The Awakening. Being accused of being a demon, or a half-demon, brought back a lot of terrible memories from his past with his mother. (That was why he tried to protect Shirabu once he figured out about him.) But you know? I don’t think he would go back to change a thing. Because despite all that pain and hardship, it led him to Shiratorizawa. It led him to his family.

[mazojo]

Favorite Sohma’s

Hi yes, uh, I needed a space to rant about fruits basket because I am still very broken so yea

Disclaimer that this is just my opinion and I still love them all very much, just needed to get this out of my system ayee. Also I will include a song that reminds me of them because I am that invested in this so yeaaaa

14- Kagura Sohma

Boy by Little Mix - “I know what you’re worth girl, you know what you got”

I rank Kagura as my least favorite just for the fact that I cant really relate to her I guess? I mean, she is okay, I think she is cute and all but I don't think violence is the way to go about her struggles and she is so much more worth than she gives herself credits for. In the end, I dont think I full understood her big struggle as much as the other characters and thats why she is at number 14, although I want her to be happy and full of love and support like the others ;w;

13- Akito Sohma

My Eyes by Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day - “But it’s plain to see, Evil inside of me is on the rise”

Akito is a complicated one for me man. Of course, in the beginning and throughout the manga you learn to really dislike her because she did some terrible things, specially to my baby boi Yuki and eye-.... But then when we learn more about her and everything she has gone through we start sympathizing with her but i..... cant just forget everything she did. I get she was traumatized since she was little, she became dependent on the zodiacs because of her father’s words and mother’s behaviour thus becoming a broken person with this big responsibility she didn't ask for. It really ticks me however, how much pain the others underwent through her, and even though its a healing process, the traumas and everything they suffered is still there which is why I cant place her higher. I do not hate her by any means, but she isnt my favorite person on this list either. I do ship her with Shigure and I think they help each other out, and they grow from the other.

12- Shigure Sohma

Used to the Darkness by Des Rocs - “Now would you pray before you twist the knife? Yeah, would you take my hand and take a life?”

*big sigh* Shigure is also a complicated one for me. It may be my big dumb energies showing but I didnt fully get a grasp on his character? I know he was doing everything for Akito’s sake to liberate from the curse and be with her so she is finally a “woman” but he always acted a bit shady xD?? I would have love to know more about his backstory, we dont get much from his motivations and character other than the perverted aspect and that he loves Akito lmaoo. I do think he is hilarious and I love the dynamic he has with Hatori and Ayame lol

11- Ayame Sohma

Starships by Nicky Minaj - “Starships were menat to fly, Hands up and touch the sky “

To be honest I am pretty neutral about Ayame’s character. He is hilarious and I love how Yuki insults him every tike he gets the chance lolll. I like how throughout the story he tries to change to become a better brother to Yuki and person even though he is pretty extra most of the time about it. He has a good heart and even though he made some mistakes he owns up to them which in my opinion, makes him a good character <33 I love his friendship with Hatori lmaooo they balance each other out sooo well

10- Kureno Sohma

Taking Chances by Celine Dion - “Never knowing if there's solid ground below, Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay”

I really like Kureno! He has gone through quite a bit and he needs a hug. I am sad thinking how most of his life he lead it pretty similarly to Yuki’s, apart from everyone and super enclosed to his relationship with Akito due to him breaking the curse and feeling bad about it. I do wish we would have gotten to know more about his personality and story, if we did I would have definitely ranked him higher! He really reminds me of Tohru’s father and I think Uotani is perfect for him <33 would have love to see more about the two of them and hopefully they expand upon it in the anime

9- Ritsu Sohma

Waving Through a Window by Ben Platt - “On the outside, always looking in, Will I ever be more than I've always been?”

Okay okay so I have a lot of thoughts on Ritsu. Manga Ritsu is okay, I really dont have much of an opinion on him due to him appearing only in a few chapters, I feel like from the Sohma’s, he is the one we get the least information about. But then the anime episode came out where they presented Ritsu and I thought they gave him so much more life and rounded personality where, I get to relate a lot to him? I am someone who is constantly apologizing for absolutely no reason and seeing him be all anxious and stressed about others interactions is big relate to me and I stan. I also think the whole dressing as a woman plot line is better dealt with in the anime and I hope we get to see more about his insecurities and troubles in the future because he is truly a very interesting character! I stan my one (1) anxious monkey.

8- Kisa Sohma

Mean by Taylor Swift - “But you can take me down with just one single blow, But you don't know what you don't know”

Cinnammon rooooooolll. Kisa is such a cutie. I dont have much to say other than my mood every time I think about Kisa is hugging her like Tohru does because she is babyyyy. Also her bullying story is one I think many viewers and readers can relate a lot to and such an important topic I think they covered pretty well and I loveee. Also her and Hiro are one of my favorite ships because they work so well and asdfgh in this household Kisa is a queennn.

7- Isuzu Sohma

Take me Home by Jess Glynne - “Came to you with a broken faith, Gave me more than a hand to hold”

I really like Isuzu!! I am pretty bummed we wont get to meet her in season 1 of the Anime reboot but hopefully in the nest season! She is quite a complex character that I didnt really understand at the beginning but once we see how much she loves Haru and all that she does in order to protect and keep him save she really went up my list. She has gone through so much, from her shattered reality from her parents, Akito threatening Haru, her being locked up withour given any food.... Isuzu is so strong and one of the best build characters in the series and I am super excited to see her in the anime!

6- Hiro Sohma

Time to be a Man by The Airborne Toxic Event - “And it’s time to be a man, Tell me how does that go?”

My bastard childdd <33 He is such an asshole and such a sweetie at the same time. His whole inner struggle of not feeling like a good enough man for Kisa is so heartwhelming and I think it really makes sense to the type of person he is. The flashbacks of him telling Akito how he loves Kisa and the feeling of uncertainty and impotency when seeing the girl he loves being hurt by his actions and wanting to be good enough for her even though he is more than enough sdfghjasd. I am also a softie for older brothers who love their families *cough cough* spoiler alert: Momiji *cough cough* that I love me one angry boi

5- Hatsuharu Sohma

4 Seasons by Rex Orange County - “I saw myself as less and you so high above me”

Cow boil! apart from the fact that I love love loveeee Haru’s design, I think he is also such a well build character! He is not only supportive of everyone (aka the loves of his life, Rin and Yuki xDD) but he is so interesting! His split personalities give him a cool trait (even though dark Haru doesnt appear much in the end of the manga) and I love how he helps everyone and makes sure those he loves are protected at all cost and happy. He is Rin and Yuki’s fan club stan leader and I am co-leader so we been stanning aye

4- Hatori Sohma

Fireflies by Owl City - “I'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes, I got misty eyes as they said farewell”

Boooooy the next four to come are my absolute favorties and I would die for their happiness and love so *takes big breathe* I LoVE hAtORi sOhMAAa. To be honest when we first meet him I didnt like him much. I thought he was your usual dark deep character who doesnt talk much because he is too cool for everyone (which, he is) and that was that. But boi was I in for a riDE. His story about having to erase the memories from the woman he loves is one of the ones I cried through the most. I put myself in his shoes and wonder if I had to erase the memory of the person I loved the most, make them forget they ever met me, all our happy times, sad times, angry times.... No matter what its one of the most saddening moments and the whole scene is heartbreaking, which makes me love Hatori even more for the fact of how strong he is and selfless. He puts himself before others and he need to know he also deserves happiness and I am glad in the end he got it because homeboy needed a break ;w;. I also adore Ayame’s relationship with him xDD, he is like his idol and big same.

3- Kyo Sohma 

This song saved my Life by Simple Plan - “Sometimes it feels like nobody gets me, Trapped in a world where everyone hates me”

Top three babyyyy. We have now my angry cat boi™. I mentioned it before but going into the reboot firsthand without reading the manga nor watching the first anime, I thought Kyo was going to be my absolute favorite character. I knew he would be the angry boi who was soft inside and probably had a tragic backstory™ that made him act the way he did and I am a sucker for those types of characters. And I love Kyo, I really do, specially when we find out more about his struggles and past. The exclusion he felt throughout his life for being the cat, the abandonment, feeling like he had no one and was ready to die because he didn't have any source of genuine happiness (well, apart from Kazuma ya know but stillll). Then he finds Tohru, the girl he promised to protect, the one that reminded him of the woman that helped him out all those years ago and I just.... poetic cinema at its finest. Kyo and Tohru make one of my favorite couples and I love how flustered and In absolute l o v e he is with her and Kyo is great man....

2- Yuki Sohma

Nandemonaiya by RADWIMPS - “Crying even when you're happy, Smiling even when you're feeling lonely”

THIS WAS ONE OF THE HARDEST DECISIONS OF MA ENTIRE WEEB CAREER SO EXCUSE WHILE I SCREAM. Yuki Sohma won my heart and entire soul throughout the series. I liked him from the start but he wasn't my favorite favorite at the beginning you know? I thought he was isolated and thats why he didn't have much friends and he was perfect and what not but boi was I wrong and happy about it. I think one of the reasons Yuki is one of my favorite characters in fruits basket is how much I can see myself in him. Having the constant need of perfection while also wanting to connect with others but finding it hard is something I personally struggle with and every time we learned a little bit about his backstory my heart broke. Everything Yuki had to go through, the rejection, the isolation, understanding that you are loved and not a burden, falling in love with someone, finding that figure of a mother/friend he always yearned for.... The complexity of Yuki’s character is astounding and I love my rat boi so so much.... When he joins the student council, finding his little group of friends and opening up to a more carefree and true Yuki, forgiving those around him and going and eye- YuKI IS MY BABY RAT BOI AND STAN HIM OR PERISH FROM HERE ;w;

1- Momiji Sohma 

Eine Kleine by Rachie - “If I were to go through life living just to take somebody else's place, Then I would rather have been born as a pebble, living out my peaceful days “

*Clears throat* *trumpets sounds intensify* *stands on podium* I LOVE MOMIJI SOHMA WITH ALL MY HEART AND HE MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS. Thats it. Thats what I want you to get out of this post. I don't know if this is maybe an unpopular opinion-ish but Momiji’s backstory of his mother rejecting him, saying awful things, him having to accept being forgotten by his mother and sister whom he loved, not even being able to live with his family, is one of the most heartbreaking ones of fruits basket. Maybe its like what I said with Hiro and I am a sucker for big brothers that love their families, the sad smile of Momiji, my baby, angel, perfection when he sees his family and not being able to be with them, him loving Tohru but letting her go and be with Kyo because its her happiness that matters to him and I am-..... The selflessness of Momiji and how much of a sweetheart he is, his heart of gold and always being there for those around him, that moment where Akito was looking for Tohru and he got hurt trying to defend her.... Momiji is one of my all time favorite characters. He is a precious bean and I will never not shut up about my love for ma boi <333

Anyways that was long and ramble but I just needed to shout this somewhere because I've been missing they //rip

[thecarteradministration]

Road to nowhere. || October 3rd, 2019.

He didn’t know why but something told him the right idea was to not make the cross country flight back home and instead, opt for staying in the west coast. Cousin Benny’s house had always been open to him if he wanted to go there to spend a few days and in reality, it was what Ethan needed. Bringing himself in Encinitas was honestly the best idea he could’ve come up with because there was one simple truth that he was trying his best not to acknowledge:

He needed to get away.

What was he getting away from? Everyone. Everything and everyone that was around him. It wasn’t a “get my ass off the grid” deal; more so it was him needing that hard system reset and trying to find some form of outlet for him to do that. The benefit of Smackdown moving to Friday allowed him the opportunity of just sneaking away like a thief in the night to Southern California before any obligations he had to fulfill. Provided he was going to actually be used at Smackdown as opposed to just being another body.

Which is why when he was asked by his cousin if his “tall babe that looks like she could behead me without using her hands” was coming with him, Ethan tersely responded with “nope” and kept it moving. Why? Because he wasn’t going to get grilled by a family member about any of this. Nor did he want to in the first place. Wasn’t really something he wanted to have hanging over his head given...well, everything else that was hanging over his head.

The first day was, like most, a breeze. He was able to just lay around, do nothing even though he was freezing his ass off. The second day, however, was when most of his intrusive thoughts started creeping in and at the worst possible time—seemed like a true pattern in his life: having shit timing when it came to his thoughts and feelings and actions.

At what was going to seemingly be a new renaissance for the world of professional wrestling with everyone feeling as though they were going to finally have a chance at making something of themselves and grabbing that much talked about but never seen “brass ring”, Ethan found himself in a consistent purgatory that made him question everything about his life and career. And it had been that way dating back to January, maybe even earlier if he was pressed on it. For several months straight, he felt his will to be the good little soldier the company needed him to be deteriorate. The needing to eat shit and learn to like it being lost on him because of some perceived slight that was being held against him by the higher ups (wow, does that sound fucking familiar).

He was hollow. Numb. If this was a television show, he’d be standing in a hall while the entire world went by him in fast motion while he was at regular speed. And he fucking hated that. As someone who prided himself on being the best, it stung him to not be in the pack with people who were ascending. It hurt his ego that he was told constantly that he was at the bottom and was meant to stay there until God knows when. But worst of all, it hurt him to feel like he couldn’t possibly share any of this with people. Even his closest and dearest friends.

They say in the world of standup comedy that the funnier and more outgoing a comedian is, the more they’re suffering in silence behind closed doors. Their need to make people laugh and smile comes from a place of shutting off that part of their brain that tells them they’re a constant failure and that the world would be better off if they were obsolete. Similarly, no one is going to listen to the guy who has everything when he says he’s suffering. No ones going to take him seriously. At least that’s how Ethan felt.

He had the looks, the body, the cars, the big house in the nice neighborhood, the bank account that made people drool, the gorgeous wife that everyone most likely still believes he doesn’t deserve. All of that—it doesn’t buy him any currency with people when it comes to stripping the veil and saying “hey, I’m fucking emotionally drowning over here and I need a life preserver”. To him, he didn’t want to burden anyone with his problems given they all have more important shit to deal with in their lives than him bellyaching about his. So he sucked it all up and internalized it—that nasty little habit he found himself returning to after abandoning it for some time.

And that was partly why he felt he needed to spend a few days physically away from everything and everyone. The internalizing was bringing up feelings toward people he didn’t want. And thus, he just needed to find a way to shake them loose. Which is why he found himself at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. Whenever he was staying in Encinitas, he always found time to hike along the trail, it was therapeutic in many respects.

Throughout the hike he kept thinking about everything he was feeling. How he couldn’t help but feel personally slighted by the fact that everyone he was called up with had, at some point or another, been able to dig their hands into something tangible during their time on the main roster while he did nothing. Even Lars, whose sordid history was constantly shoved in your face whenever you saw his ugly mug grace your television screen, made some sort of impact before the God decided to make his knee explode. Either way, Ethan uttered the sentiment “fucking Lars” seemingly as an exasperated expression as to how he felt.

He thought about the guys who had been called up after, the fabled NXT 4 of Johnny, Tommaso, Ricochet and Aleister. How they were all given the ball and ability to call their own plays it seemed to much acclaim and success. Or how Nikki and Alexa’s blossoming friendship paid off in their once unlikely pairing turned into Tag Title success. Or how his own best friend, Drake “Rockstar Spud” Maverick took the 24/7 Title and turned it into his ultimate goal, providing people with laughs and moments they could fondly look back on. And how all of that twisted the knife deeper and deeper within him, the competitive side of him outweighing the compassionate side, aided by a little thing called bitterness and resentment, which reared its ugly head worst of all when it came to the most unlikely of target.

But he knew it wasn’t totally fair to anyone for him to feel this way. It wasn’t fair to Johnny, poor innocent Johnny, that Ethan felt the way he did at the man’s cult-like success. It wasn’t fair to Nikki and Alexa for him to feel subtle acrimony as he watched them ascend to success. It wasn’t fair to Spud for Ethan to feel slighted by him due to the fact that he took the ball and ran with it in the most hilarious of ways. And the kicker, it wasn’t fair to Allysin for Ethan to have a twinge of  jealousy and resentment whenever he saw news of her success.

That last one stuck with him. That last one fucked with him. He wasn’t supposed to feel that way about his wife, the woman he swore to love, honor and cherish. To be fair to him, he was immensely happy and proud of her for everything she has done over the last year since returning from such an injury that put her career in doubt. So much so that he admired her success. But that resentment and jealousy he felt was more a product of his own failures and shortcomings. He wanted to rule the world beside his girl, two people taking over and being unbridled tyrants draped in gold, and for him to not hold up his end of the bargain felt like he was letting her down. Showing that the man she loved was a failure and in some respects, holding her back. And it sucked.

It sucked that he was plagued with such feelings toward the people he would consider as friends. It sucked that he couldn’t revel in his best friend’s star turn within the company. It sucked that part of him felt bitterness toward his own wife’s success, no matter how brief that feeling lasted within him. And all of it was why he needed to physically not be around people for the last number of days.

And as he reached the area overlooking the vast portion of the trail, he paused for a moment to take it all in. There was a calming effect, the air seemed crisper, a cool breeze wafted over him. It provided him with a moment to take in everything before him and just free his mind.

He thought everything was going to be different this time around. That the years away from the company would’ve at least aided him in squashing any of the previous preconceived notions about himself that were evident during his first go ‘round with the company. That everything that he did in the five years prior to his return would translate into something good upon the return. He didn’t think it would lead to this; his desire to continue on fighting being literally beaten out of him and filling him with a kind of morose feeling every time he got on the plane to leave for the next loop.

Pulling his phone from his pocket, he stared at his lock screen for a few seconds before it vanished, a picture of himself and Allysin from their vacation last year in Punta Cana, where he wished he was now than mentally trying to prepare himself for another seemingly unfulfilling day at TV. He let out a deep sigh, lowering his head as he felt the sun beating on his back, acting as yet another thing he had to shoulder—he was use to it. If Impact taught him anything, it was that all the ills of the world were easy for him to carry even if it wasn’t the healthiest of things to do.

Thumbs flying by quickly, he pulled up his text messages and made a B-line to the conversation thread for himself and Allysin. Everything he attempted to type, be it benign or meaty enough to spark a deeper dive by his wife’s sniper-like scope and intuition, was quickly erased. He’s been known the say “the best text messages are the ones I don’t send”. Rather than bring up any suspicion or go in for a conversation he’d rather have face to face, he opted for a quick “I’ll be home Tuesday, I love you” before hitting send and shoving his phone back in his pocket.

Clearly, he needed to talk to someone rather than bottling up everything within him. Maybe his therapist would be in by the time he got home next week. Maybe he could pester Spud to stop his ongoing search for the 24/7 Title and have a talk with him. Maybe he’ll talk to one of his friends or even have Allysin play motivational speaker and snap him out of it. Maybe one day he’ll actually have that meaningful conversation with someone about his issues.

...but as he went down the trail, he knew that today just wasn’t going to be that day.

[umino-miyuki]

some thoughts on Miyuki and Choko from Happy, with comparisons to Monster because I still find it hilarious that they were running at the same time.

Umino Miyuki vs. Kenzo Tenma

I’ve always thought there were a lot of similarities between Miyuki and Tenma. black-haired protagonists who are constantly persecuted but persevere nonetheless. this post includes a chart drawn by Urasawa comparing his protagonists based on selfishness and innate genius. both Miyuki and Tenma are described as geniuses, though apparently Miyuki is even more naturally perfect at tennis than Tenma is at doctoring.

both characters suffer from “more talented younger sibling” issues, though looking at family relationships is where the comparisons between the two begin to fall apart a bit. according to Another Monster, Tenma was favored by his father over his older brother for his talent, while it seems like Miyuki’s brother simply felt insecure because of her skill. Miyuki’s parents are portrayed as 100% caring and supportive, while Tenma’s mother was harsh and critical and his father mercenary. 

Miyuki’s brother’s get rich quick schemes led to the death of her parents, causing her to blame herself and quit tennis. on the other hand, Tenma’s father pressured him into taking over his business, which would have been an insult to his brother. rather than follow through with this, Tenma chose to move to Germany and remain estranged from his family, despite his brother’s attempts to reconcile him with their father. 

this brings up an interesting difference between Tenma and Miyuki. both characters have magnetic personalities, influence those around them, and end up gathering somewhat of a following. however, Tenma leaves people behind--his family, Eva, Dieter, Nina, etc.--while Miyuki runs after people, no matter what they’ve done to her.

despite both of them preferring to carry their burdens alone, they end up inspiring altruism in others. but their actual goals are quite different, as Miyuki is specifically fighting for the sake of her family, while Tenma feels it’s his responsibility to kill Johan. this may be why Miyuki is ranked as far more selfless than Tenma. 

another difference is that I think Tenma is a lot more passive as a character than Miyuki. while they both suffer constantly, Tenma takes everything without protest, at least after a certain point. he’s described as a martyr several times, but I think of him more as an atoner--he feels as though everything that happens in the story is his fault, and thus the bad that comes to him is something he has to accept.

on the other hand, Miyuki stands up for herself just as much as she stands up for others. she argues with the ref when he makes a bad call, refuses to take insults, and never allows herself to be bought. in this way, she’s arguably more of an active protagonist than Tenma.

Ryugasaki Choko vs. Johan Liebert

then we have our manipulative blond antagonists. beyond those attributes, however, Choko and Johan don’t have too much in common.

while Johan was shaped by extreme deprivation, Choko’s villainy is rooted in privilege. both Johan and Choko may view others as worthless, but Choko goes a step further and views herself as superior, stemming from her wealthy upbringing. unlike Monster which focuses on how trauma can lead to violence and suffering, in Happy, the source of bad behavior is entitlement. Johan is a very complex case psychologically, but Choko is a textbook example of a narcissist. in her mind, she’s deserving of the best, and she’ll do whatever it takes to get her way.

Johan manipulates by understanding others, feeding on their needs, while Choko is adept at manipulating public image, boosting her own reputation and running smear campaigns against those she wants to destroy. both characters have a tendency to target specific victims, but in very different ways. Johan doesn’t hate Tenma or Nina--in fact, they’re some of the only people he seems to have positive feelings towards. on the other hand, Choko hates Miyuki from the very beginning. 

I’ve argued before that Johan doesn’t lack empathy at all, but in my opinion, Choko does. she can’t understand why people like Miyuki, and it drives her crazy. Johan understands altruism and helping behavior perfectly well, and can exploit it to his advantage, but Choko can only think of it as inexplicable and stupid. 

when Choko believes Miyuki prostituted herself to get money, she admits defeat, because doing anything for money is something she can understand. it’s only when Miyuki perseveres despite torment and fights for what she thinks is right that Choko is enraged. near the beginning of the story, Miyuki doesn’t recognize Choko, and Choko assumes she pretended not to know her as an insult--assigning Miyuki her own motives. in fact, almost all the things Choko spreads as rumors about Miyuki are things she herself did. 

this is standard behavior for narcissistic people. they believe themselves to be perfect, can’t understand those who are different from themselves, and therefore believe that difference is a sign of that something is wrong or lesser. further, narcissistic people have huge but unstable egos--they have to put others down in order to feel good about themselves and avoid facing their own flaws by projecting them on to others. in contrast, Johan totally lacks an ego, leaving him with nothing to do but act out the programming others put into him. 

beyond looking down on Miyuki for being poor, Choko is also motivated by jealousy, which brings us to her other main victim, Keiichiro. 

while Johan sees Nina as a reflection of himself, Choko views Keiichiro as property. she enjoys tormenting him almost as much as Miyuki, but for different reasons. she wants to stamp Miyuki into the ground, but with Keiichiro, she’s trying to control him. 

despite her mother’s wishes, Choko is interested in him as a romantic partner. she thinks she wants him because he’s rich and handsome, but as the story goes on, this motive is complicated. as villains, both Choko and Johan are set up as totally uncaring, but it’s ultimately revealed that both are capable of having attachments to others.

after Keiichiro fails to become a professional tennis player, Choko decides to dump him and look for other prospects, a very common behavior for narcissists known as “discarding.” however, she continues to manipulate him and attempt to get sole power over him. 

she isolates him from everyone and tells him that he’ll always have her, in a move common to abusive people. near the end of the story, his lack of reciprocation begins to bother her more and more, and she eventually realizes she’s actually in love with him. 

I find it interesting how Choko was totally unaware of her feelings, even though from the beginning, her hatred of Miyuki was rooted in the fact that Keiichiro cared about her--not just that she was getting in the way of a potentially lucrative relationship. unlike Tenma and Miyuki, who are fairly in touch with themselves, Johan and Choko are both lashing out without being aware of their own motivations. 

Story Trajectory

I find both Happy and Monster interesting for their hero/villain dynamics and for how they’re ultimately resolved. Johan is set up as a monster who has to be killed, and Choko is so utterly horrid that the reader is on the edge of their seat, waiting for her to face repercussions. in both cases, Urasawa subverts expectations by moving the goal away from punishing the villain. 

just as Johan ultimately moves on with his life, Choko decides to stop being a malignant narcissist. her character development is really interesting when considering what narcissistic people are like. most of the damage they do isn’t from their egos--it’s from the way they cover up their actions and true personalities. Choko being openly rude and petty is far less dangerous than when she spent all her time pretending to be something she wasn’t. 

in both stories, Urasawa gives both his heroes and villains arcs, and in fact, allows his villains to change more than his heroes. Johan and Choko try to change their protagonists, and so Tenma and Miyuki’s refusal to give up who they are is the point of their heroic journey. no matter what Johan tries, he can’t turn Tenma into a killer, and no matter what Miyuki goes through, she always finds a way to be happy. and their steadfastness is what sparks the change in the antagonists. 

Postscript: Umino Miyuki vs. Nina Fortner

Tenma is a character who doesn’t seem to care what happens to himself in the end, but Miyuki is someone who fights for her own happiness to the bitter end. in this way, she’s more similar to Nina Fortner than Tenma. in Another Monster, Lipsky describes Nina as someone who despite being hurt, “still believed in the possibility of happiness in her life. She never gave up; she kept seeking it. She really knew, instinctually, that her life had to have a happy ending.” this could just as easily have been said about Miyuki, and their character designs are almost exactly the same except for their hair. I just love how many crossovers there are between both works!

[scrawnydutchman]

Paradise P.D: Animated Series Review

I’ve reviewed a lot of animated - and live action - shows and movies on my blog. Nearly everything I’ve felt the need to comment on has been seen in a positive light. I don’t shy away from harsh criticism nor do I actively avoid notably poor content; it just so happens that the things I’m most interested in discussing are things I have mainly positive comments on. Paradise PD has come along to break the mold. The genuine disgust I have for this series is a first for me. I hate this show. This is quite possibly the worst show I’ve ever given a complete watch. The characters are either heinously cruel or insultingly generic. The premise is cookie cutter and derivative as hell. The humor is forced, predictable and just depressing more often than funny. The animation . . . . oh God, the animation. I’ve had non flavored rice cakes with more taste than this show. It’s like anti-creativity. Even as I’m typing this Ii’m getting riled up just thinking about it again. Alright, let me calm down. Let’s break this show down piece by piece, starting with the writing.

Writing

*ugh, the animation in these gifs is terrible. I’ll get to it when I get to it.*

Synopsis: Kevin Crawford is an aspiring young police officer who is determined to prove himself to his dad, Chief Randall Crawford of the Paradise PD. Chief Crawford has a hard time trusting his son because of a firearms accident that occurred when Kevin was very young (the less details you know about that the better) but his ex wife mayor Karen Crawford forces Randall to bring Kevin into the department anyway. Kevin thus joins a motley crew of  . . .ahem . . . “”””hilarious””””” cops including Gina; the badass uber violent super cop who’s both the sex appeal of the show and has a fetish for morbidly obese men (yes, seriously), Gerald Fitzgerald; the Cleveland Brown of this show who’s basically just a well mannered  token black guy, Dusty Marlow; the morbidly obese innocent cop whom Gina constantly harasses sexually (and yet when male characters harass her on the show she threatens to beaten them for pervy comments, so . . . hypocrite), Stanley Hopson; an elderly officer whose whole schtick is being senile and doing gross shit . .  and finally Brian Griffin-I mean Bullet; the canine unit who’s also a drug addict . . . and being a drug addict is basically his whole shtick. They get into a bunch of wacky shenanigans, a lot of gross stuff ensues, yadda yadda yadda

So admittedly, this isn’t a bad premise for a show of this style. If Brooklyn 99 has proven anything it’s that a police department is a great and refreshing setting for a sitcom with tons of potential for jokes as well as diverse characters having great chemistry with each other. Plus it’s an archetype I don’t see very much of (I’d like to point out that I consider this different from the “buddy cop” archetype which is literally everywhere, because rather than focus on two cops it involves an entire precinct). This show is kind of like if Seth Macfarlane made a Family Guy spinoff centered around Joe Swanson (except that sounds a million times more amazing). But while Paradise PD sounds like a good concept for a show on paper, it’s execution is poorer than poor. Ironically for being such an off-the-beaten-path premise for a sitcom the show doesn’t take very much advantage of it. It’s not like the case in every episode is particularly interesting and it’s certainly not like Archer or Brooklyn 99 where the humor comes from the mundane nature of the job that nobody really talks about (filing a lot of paper work and performing basic job duties). Instead it’s premises about banging police cars that have AIs that behave like abusive girlfriends . . .which is a premise we’ve seen before. Or it’s about a father not understanding his child’s hobbies . . .which is a premise we’ve seen before. Or it’s about a fighter being overly confident in the ring only for his cohorts to discover he’s rigged to lose in the next fight . . . which is a premise we’ve seen before. Here lies the biggest problem of this show: it’s so rinse and repeat it’s insulting. For every episode this series has at the moment I guarantee the Simpson’s  has done it and has done it better. Or Bob’s Burgers has done it. Or Archer has done it. Or Brooklyn 99 has done it. Hell, Family Guy and American Dad are the most comparable shows to this besides Brickleberry for obvious reasons and as much as I have distaste for those shows even they do these recycled premises more justice than Paradise PD does. Basically the only thing giving this show a real identity is it’s intense gross out visuals which, given this shows shockingly limited animation style, gets stale very quickly. But what is Paradise PD missing that all those shows have in common (besides maybe Family Guy/American Dad)? The answer of course is likable characters.

Characters

*it’s worth mentioning that the intro is the only bit of decent animation this show has. In fact it’s deceivingly good. Be patient . . . I’m getting there.*

If the synopsis I gave at the beginning is any indication it’s that every character suffers from one of two problems; they’re either intensely unlikable or are bland overly used archetypes . . . sometimes both. Gerald Fitzgerald, Dusty Harlow, Stanley Hopson and Bullet are all archetypes you can find in every animated sitcom ever made. It’s the token black guy, the morbidly obese dumbass, the senile old man and the drug addict/self centered misogynist. They all have one joke and one joke only dedicated to each of them. They are walking talking punchlines. So is every character in this show, though everyone else to a lesser extent. Gina is my favorite because her backstory episode is the only one where I felt even a little bit intrigued about how one of these assholes came to be. Our leading man Kevin is a bland standin. He’s just an overly naive, wide eyed kid with a dream. He’s an empty husk for literally any kind of viewer to step in (except for women when it comes to the love interest stuff). The chief is an angry, pompous asshole. In fact every character is just a horrible human being. Even characters that are either overly innocent or are meant to be good natured like Kevin or Dusty are constantly selfish or arrogant in some way. I get that that’s just the way the show is written comedically and in truth all comedy is rooted in the flawed. It’s why a lot of sitcom scenarios are written around characters acting selfishly or stupidly. But there’s being flawed and then there’s . . . being relentlessly cruel. It makes it hard to root for any of these characters in the end, especially since the show also occasionally tries to have a moral center and because . . .well . . . y’know . . . everyone is bland as shit.

Cast Performance

So this is by far the best aspect of the show and the number one thing it has going for it. Why? Because the show has a cast that’s .  . . depressingly a bunch of all stars. Tom Kenny, Spongebob himself, voices the chief and he does a great angry authoritative father. Grey Griffin, the actress behind such favorites as Daphne from Scooby Doo, Frankie from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Vicki from Fairly Odd Parents and Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender, is the mayor and also turns in a great performance for what she has to portray. Not to mention the occasional guest like John Dimaggio and Tara Strong. If you’re any fan of voice acting chances are you’ll find a favorite of yours in this cast if not a handful of them. I say this is depressing because all of these people could do so much better. I get it, a paycheck is a paycheck, but . . . . imagine the immensely creative and stunning projects they could have been a part of instead. If a contract with Netflix is what you want, hit up Alex Hirsch! He’s signed on with them now and I bet he’s got something worthwhile! There’s not a whole lot to say about the rest of the performances, mainly because again, it’s hard to care about any of these characters.

Visuals (Animation, Design, Composition, Visual Storytelling, ETC.)

sigh . . . .okay . . . let’s talk about the animation. Before I go into it I just want to be real and sentimental for a second. I’m an animator. I just recently broke into the industry by working with Copernicus Studios . . . and it’s been nothing but a sincere pleasure. I’ve learned more about animation and Toon Boom in 4 months than I ever learned in 4 years of freelancing. It put into perspective just how much thought and effort goes into even the most minimal of shows. It’s a popular trend to shit on professionally animated content for looking such a way or moving in such a way but if those people only knew the countless hours and passion that goes into even just a couple of seconds of footage they’d never talk shit about these shows ever again. Not only that, but I’m an admin for an animation study group on Facebook with thousands of members from all over the world. Animators from every country and every skill level share their work for constructive feedback. Through this I’ve met many people who work in the industry . . .including someone who worked on Paradise PD. And I know them to be among the most skilled and masterful animators on the page. For all of these reasons, I will NEVER call animators lazy or unskilled if they produced a show like this. It’s typically the result of a certain type of direction or method of moving the production pipeline along. I have no doubt on my mind that every animator who worked on this show is wonderfully skilled and will do well in their careers going forward.

But this show does not demonstrate that. Far from it. This show goes out of it’s way to be lazy. It cuts so many corners they’ve made a perfect circle of hell. Just take a look at most of the gifs I’ve posted in this review. Notice the popping of proportions and lines in moving pieces. Notice certain features like noses or eyes that move around for no damn reason at all. Look at features like eyebrows where there’s no easing or seamless transition or any basic understanding of the 12 principles of animation aside from perhaps arcs. Just watch a couple of seconds of this show and count how little frames are in every motion. If you told me this show was made in Go! Animate I would believe you. This makes Family Guy look like Studio Ghibli. Maybe this show could have been more pleasant to look at if it had vouched for motion keyframes instead of what appears to be the occasional stop motion keyframe (users of Toon Boom or Flash will know what I mean) but even then there’s nothing to look at really. Add to that the eyesore of a colour scheme, the uninspired character designs that if I put them in silhouette you would not be able to tell what show it’s from, the absolutely barebones backgrounds that look like early 2000s Newgrounds cartoon sets and the unimaginitive shot composition that consists almost entirely of wide shots and medium wide shots and you have what can hardly even be defined as animation by mainstream televisions standards. The last show I reviewed was Matt Groening’s Disenchantment and while I had my issues with that shows animation, at least they were only errors a trained eye could see in a show that was otherwise appealing. Paradise PD is just a tragedy. The only positive comment I can make about the animation is that the FX department did a great job animating the blood and the boogers and any type of nasty body liquid . . . .and I am depressed that that is my one positive comment.

Audio (Soundtrack, Sound Mixing, Sound FX, ETC.)

*In case you thought I was joking about one of the episode summaries I gave earlier*

Like most of the stuff I review, the audio isn’t particularly notable in this show. There’s no memorable soundtracks to speak of. The sound mixing is fine. That’s really all there is to say. I’ll be honest; I’ll talk about remarkable soundtracks in this section or clever/bad sound mixing when I can, but I mainly just include this section so I can score what i’m reviewing in a way that adds to a 10.

Conclusion

Paradise PD is the worst show I have ever given a review for and quite possible the worst show I’ve ever made an effort to sit down and watch. Almost nothing is redeemable about it. It’s the lowest common denominator for animation and it unsuccessfully trades any hint of originality for unfunny shock humor. It fails not because of missteps, but because of a refusal to make the necessary steps in the first place.

Writing - 0.5/2- Below Average

Characters - 0.5/2- Below Average

Cast Performance - 1.5/2 - Above Average

Visuals - 0.5/2 - Below Average

Audio - 1/2 - Average

4 out of 10 - My most hated show thus far.

[katzirrart]

Art Growth Compilation

I really enjoy doing posts about improvement in art.

It makes me feel better about my work, especially with how busy I am these days.

I wanted to compile all the comparisons I’ve made over the years and kinda discuss the posts, for myself or others.

I thought it’d be funny to start with comparing how I first drew on a tablet, using dodge and burn tools, to how I do now which is using layers and actually painting. It’s funny to look back on that, you know?

I linked the post I made, compiling all the month to month memes from 2003-2017 that I try and do yearly. And everything else is under a cut ;w;’‘/

Most artists have done a drawing of themselves and a few Pokemon, or their team. I did that in 2010, and was dissatisfied with my work...

I took a crack again in 2013 after I’d learned to draw more animals and not be so Edgy(tm) I really liked the results. I still didn’t use references though, because I was lazy. I just didn’t want to. I still was on that boat feeling like I was CHEATING. I wasn’t being CREATIVE if I looked at references.

Artists get stuck on using reference and it’s AWFUL. USE THEM. USE TWENTY. LEARN!! It’s so HELPFUL, I wish I had started sooner.

In 2014 though -

I tried again.

I had gotten better at anatomy, but most of all, I started to work off references more. I started to really focus on not stylizing so much, but to work on actually making things look like things. I started to work on caring about COMPARISON sizes. Composition!!

While Pokemon reference sizes are -wiggle hands- and while my team changed up, I was satisfied that I could draw Arbok ACTUALLY like a cobra now, Meowth is easy given it’s just a noseless cat so to speak, Haunter is literally a triangle cloud - I was satisfied having drawn that team.

My secondary team in the new games? I was excited to draw them. It was fresh and new and FUN and it turned out PRECIOUS.

I learned better how to proportion things in an image for layout, and just... making characters feel COHESIVE in the same space.

It was a nice thing to keep visiting. I have a sketch in the works for an update even hopefully.

These pieces are kind of interesting to me too, because they’re towards the end of my era of THIN lineart?

My lineart has gone from this, and THIS,  to this.

Literally I use to not believe in line weight, I can still do thin work of course, but I’m not a fan of trying to FORCE it like I use to? Even the second link, I went from the SMALLEST brush in Sai, to using a marker brush that had barely ANY give, to a custom brush on Sai that acts like a Paint Chat brush I use to use with friends online!

That’s what I mean about style too, like you may reserve yourself about things - like not coloring black in and outlining with white, or certain ways you do things. But the growth and changing and figuring FUN ways to color that black etc is where the fun of art comes in, to me??

Learn. EXPERIMENT. PUSH!

A few months ago, I did my first redraw. Of this piece from 2012.

Six years difference.

This was interesting for a number of reasons. There’s aspects I like more in the old one, but not many. I really like the pose a bit better, but I like the casual closeness that I did in the new one because that’s more my Shepard.

But technically speaking, it’s worlds better because I took time. I paid attention to details. I did fun things instead of rushing. I took time with my coloring and didn’t SMEAR it around. I had a friend who use to complain I drew so fast and they felt so SLOW, but I love what that taught me. I started taking more time on my art, and enjoying it more since I caught more mistakes and vastly improved. By leaps and bounds.

It’s amazing what a difference six years makes in not only style, which is often a FOCUS of these things? My style has come awkwardly and naturally to me over the years of critically picking certain things apart? but I really love where it’s gotten.

I have things I want to get back to, but I love... where it is, and CAN be?

But it’s wild to me how much change happens in technical handling? It’s a hand in hand thing, you can’t focus on one or the other only, or the other suffers.

Honestly this has been my favorite improvement to notice though?

Kisame was a character I felt I should be able to draw EASILY? Not so much. Itachi? ALSO EASY. Not so much??

Kisame has weird eyes to grasp how to draw? Thus focusing on them kept making them wonky to me!! On top of that, he’s everything I’ve been use to drawing for AGES because he has a muscular body, with a smaller waist? ... that was something I was use to drawing? I still was awkward getting back into the swing of that... Drawing HIS HAIR though? NOT SO EASY....

But like, Itachi should have been easy, but I have a thing about him appearing too feminine as he gets drawn because his eyelashes, and I’ve really found a nice... medium at this point?

But even still like my face styles and eye styles are finally to a comfortable point for me? I have stopped focusing on some weird things with Itachi’s hair and just... DO IT? But even still like...

The improvement here is literally just if I don’t know how to do something, or I’m not satisfied with how I do it? I just keep at it.

It’s a theme of this post honestly... repetition, persistence.

Keep drawing it. Keep trying to figure out what it is that’s catching you off about how you do it. Don’t like how you do eyes or how they fit on the face? Look at facial structures and references and figure it out. Draw them separate and figure out how to apply them to what you are.

Remember there’s a skull in there. I draw the holes in the skull like the eye sockets, and the nose area to help my proportions for SURE.

I’ve also gotten to a nice marriage in my lineart? The piece before the recent one, those lines feel HARDER or HEAVIER? The newest piece seems...softer? Like I’m lighter handed again?

I really like critiquing my own growth on what is good or working better for me? Older pieces it looks like I’m putting lineweight for SAKE of it versus where it goes now?

INTERESTING.

Like this lineup -

My style shifts so RAPIDLY, it still is noticeably MY style to people, but parts shift so VIOLENTLY because I’m constantly picking at what I don’t LIKE.

It’s funny too in the case of Kisame and Itachi because consistently I’m drawing the SAME character over and over - can make you REALIZE how you’re doing something wrong?

Like, here’s a difference of eight years, and it’s all the brush I use now, and it REALLY shows how my style has changed - in the aspect of one point of reference?

I have a childhood favorite character too, of Daisuke, and I use to be bad at drawing boys, and I use to be SUPER bad at drawing fluffy hair?

It was something I specifically started to learn to do? And I started to draw Daisuke every few months or years for a while. Especially when I started to first REALIZE I didn’t like my style that much?

But the middle one was July 2009, top left is less than 6 months later, and the last one is about a year later. DRASTIC DIFFERENCE. But next -

This one was in 2012, when I started to do more with teeth, or first dipping my toes into anatomy. I started to focus more on HANDS too, I was super bad at them. Overall I started to focus more on making my art have...ages? Like a boy versus a man. Facial features being DIFFERENT.

I can look at this boring little bust and see that he comes off more of a teenage boy to me now. I need to work more on figuring how to draw asian features especially the eyes. Sometimes I hit the mark, other times I don’t.

but between this and 2012? Not too much has changed. I do hair fluffier now, and I angle the eyes better. The teeth not being outlined doesn’t give that weird effect where I might give him TOO MANY TEETH....

People do that and it’s easy but whoof.

So there’s still learning and adapting to do in QUICK drawings, you know? but I can still see there’s good things. That took me like 5 minutes to draw? Not bad honestly.

In it’s own bracket is original characters though too?? But also divergent of STYLE shifts because like...

OKAY. Nightmare Syndicate’s story.. started for me in 7th or 8th grade, that was when I was...14? 15? I’ve been fleshing it out for like 13 years, that’s wild haha!! I love my kids and all.

But okay so SIALI. She’s still fairly similar but I restructured her face for SURE. She’s gotten less edgy, she’s.... a teenage girl.

FELIX?? CHRIST. He’s been such a long journey!! More on that later?

Rot and even Cor?? Rot and Cor are a shorter span of development, but Rot started in Highschool so almost 10 years ago, and Cor has been fairly solid - but even just DRAWING him over three years? Go look at how much he changes.. I’m not married to concepts easily. haha!

People act like making a character you’re STUCK with it. Like Oh boy, I better make this character good, from the get go!!

I only worry about that with small potatoes like my Pillar(Gods) designs I just made for the comic?? Even still, small things will change with them I’m sure.

But not only has Felix and Siali changed, but they’ve GROWN with my style and DEFINED it even. I’ve had to adjust my style to support Felix’s look honestly a LOT. Bend my rules. Break my anatomy stickler attitude - and honestly, that’s the thing.

You have to learn the rules and anatomy BEFORE you can break them. A style built upon broken anatomy will fail you down the road if you just excuse everything with style.

Learn to draw the hands. Learn to draw the feet. Figure out the face. Bones exist. You can break the FUCK out of it once you learn how to do it, you know? Like I’ve seen so many styles I LOVE who are cartoony and BROKEN AS FUCK, but there’s still some STRUCTURE to it. Most of those people can still structure a face just fine, and the reason exaggeration works so well is because there’s like unwritten rules for what works and doesn’t based on that?

Idk.

Felix has a very elongated torso, he’s like 7′ or 8′ tall so I mean?? He’s... broken anatomy, but he’s... lanky - but his muscle is LITHE and stretched. It makes contextual sense. That’s the important part.

But even designs, it’s important to understand designs YOU make, or like... to understand they’ll CHANGE and that’s growth within your art too?

Like okay, example. Felix has a millipede inspired monster form. But with designing that? I still have to know how millipedes and SNAKES work because there's bones and vertebrae in there??

But there’s also the difference of like... CONCEPT, versus execution. You can design a fucking badass character, but understanding your own concept is SOMETHING.

I had no idea how this would play out, until I was mapping out his ‘midsection’ spikes? and man. MY STYLE WAS MADE FOR THIS CHALLENGE NOW. Which is so interesting how smooth my style has always been? Felix has defined ANGLES in it, and it’s hilarious tbh?

But even too, I’ve had to work with Felix’s monster form FACE, to break the rules to make it WORK the way I need it too?

On the anatomy subject too, like when I first got into Marvel comics 6 years ago or so? I had no idea how to do muscle structures?? I was so BAD at it.

I can look at this left image and CRINGE so badly at how NONE of those are muscles?? THOSE ARE THINGS I PERCEIVE AS MUSCLES. Like...

A course I took taught me to draw what I see, not what I know. That’s the whole point of that post that goes around about drawing a shrimp. Look it up. It’s hilarious and cute.

But it’s like, asking an artist to draw a bike, you can tell who uses reference and who WINGS it. It’s funny, but like it’s what you know versus what you see.

I started to study anatomy like crazy and was seeing improvements days at a time. The right image was done like... a month later? already I can see the muscles under the pectorals? those look normal now. the abs aren’t dough lumps under the skin in a perfect 6 pack, they’re the actual plane shapes.

I was trying to find a good reference for myself of learning to make men ‘thicker’ too in terms of the waist etc since the left is really...thin.... but...

A bit better, but even still, comparing these two - they’re 2 months apart? and I can see understanding more about arms and how they connect to the body, where the planes ACTUALLY lay for the chest and obliques and such?

I can see improvements from July 2012 up there, to - WHOOPS. I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE YEAR LMAO... TO FEBRUARY 2013...omg

I mean, I could go on and on about improvements I see, when I go through my art though? Gosh.

Like I’m seeing so SO many bad hands and feet in my old stuff, and just CRINGING because tricks I learned for myself by now?

I give so many pointers and streams and screenshares on discord still to help people with art and it cracks me up?? Like...

I dunno. I’m pretty mediocre tbh, but god damn.

[mermaidsirennikita]

April 2018 Book Roundup

In April, I read silly books and I read books that were deadly (literally) serious.  It’s possible that the most well-written book I read was Madeline Miller’s Circe, which I loved and found much more satisfying than Song of Achilles.  But the most enjoyable book?  It was Laura Thalassa’s Pestilence, the romance novel about a girl, an apocalypse, and a sexy horseman who spreads disease.  What more could you want?

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa.  4/5.  When the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up, all technology fails, sending the world into chaos.  Then they disappear.  Five years later, Pestilence has reappeared, and wherever he goes a plague kills everyone in his path.  Sara, an ex-firefighter, has been sent to kill him.  When that fails?  She becomes his prisoner--with Pestilence claiming that he’s keeping her alive to make her suffer.  Of course, that’s not what’s really going on, and yes, this is a full-blown romance novel.  It’s also one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read all year thus far.  Sara and Pestilence’s romance is ridiculous, engrossing, hilarious, and yes, pretty sexy.  One thing I loved about this book is that while Pestilence is in his very nature a conqueror and pretty much a living plague--he’s also very boyish and inexperienced and the book makes that inexperience very sexy.  Because Sara’s experienced.  Sara is sarcastic, foul-mouthed, and pretty sexual; and very rarely do you come across a romance novel that lacks a serious alpha male.  Like, yes, Pestilence has his dominant moments, but overall he’s more like... sorta hapless.  I mean, spoiler alert, they have sex, what a shocker, and when Sara is annoyed that he’s not being more chill about it he’s like “I GAVE YOU MY ESSENCE SARA~~~~”.  It’s one of those books.  I loved it.

I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon.  3/5.  Anna Anderson was famous for pretending to be famous--after an attempted suicide, she claimed to be Anastasia Romanov, and was so convincing that people who met and were related to the grand duchess backed her.  “I Was Anastasia” explores Anna’s life--backwards.  Meanwhile, the story of Anastasia Romanov is told moving forward.  Somewhere, they meet in the middle, as does the truth.  In a basic way, this is a good historical fiction novel.  It doesn’t reinvent the wheel.  The thing is that if you know anything about Anastasia, you know about Anna; there aren’t any twists to be had.  What kept this from being a four-star read, aside from the fact that it was a bit expected, was one thing concerning the grand duchesses that is pretty debatable from what I understand, and--I’m not sure it was necessary.  But if you’re into the Romanovs, you may want to check this out.

Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer.  4/5.  A collection of write-ups on female serial killers.  What sets this book apart is that, aside from Erszebet Bathory and Nannie Doss (as well as the Benders, vaguely) I really hadn’t heard about most of these women.  Telfer steered clear of discussing extremely obvious women like Aileen Wuornos, instead focusing on cases that largely took place before the second half of the twentieth century, with one murderess dating back to the thirteenth century.  Of course, this means that there was often more speculation and less hard evidence, but for most of these women I think there was a pretty good case to be made that SOMETHING was going on, even if it wasn’t as salacious as some might believe.  And Telfer doesn’t just stick to typical American and European women, either--she touches about the Egyptian sisters Raya and Sakina, famous for killing a remarkable number of women, and Oum El-Hassen, a Moroccan murderess whose motives remain a mystery to this day.  More than a profiling of these individuals, however, I’d call this book an analysis of how we interpret female serial killers culturally.  Why don’t we take them as seriously as we do male serial killers?  Why do paint them, often, as more sexual than truly frightening?  Telfer doesn’t shy away from the gory details and while you might feel some empathy for these women, she doesn’t hesitate to report that some were very likely psychopaths, with no remorse--but then, that doesn’t take away from the fact that some were poor, some were abused, and some didn’t really see any better options for themselves.  The Angel Makers of Nagyrev--not one murderess but a group of Hungarian village women who, over fifteen years, killed around 300 people for a variety of reasons--were particularly interesting and kind of heartbreaking.  Highly recommend.

Tangerine by Christine Mangan.  2/5.  In 1956, Alice goes to Tangiers with her new husband--a man she barely knows--John.  Haunted by an event that happened while she was at school--an event she barely remembers--Alice struggles with anxiety and paranoia, and can’t adjust to the strange world of Morocco.  However, her past catches up to her in the form of Lucy, her old school friend.  This is essentially a 40s/50s film noir/psychological thriller movie a la Hitchcock in book form. Unfortunately, while I feel it would have worked as a movie of that style and era, the writing wasn’t attention-grabbing.  Pretty, but a bit dull.  I couldn’t tell much of a difference between the voices of Lucy and Alice, though they alternated, and the “twist”...  I don’t need a twist in my thrillers--a real one, that is--but if there is going to be one it should be decent.  This was fairly pedestrian.  A missed opportunity, especially painful because the authorb describes Morocco so well.

Indecent by Corrine Sullivan.  3/5.  Imogene has always envied the rich kids who went to elite boarding schools.  Now a grown woman, she becomes a teacher’s assistant of sorts at a fancy prep school for boys--only to find herself attracted to one of the students.  This is not an easy read.  If anyone reads it and believes that Imogene’s victim--because horny seventeen year old boy or not, he is that--was the bad person here, nah.  I don’t think Sullivan intends it that way at all.  Imogene is a study of a predator who became that way through insecurity and arrested development.  She thinks like a teenager.  She constantly critiques herself--her body, her relative lack of sexual experience.  She compares herself to teenage girls, for God’s sake, and is all impressed by a seventeen year old boy’s “experience” and “charisma”.  By being in Imogene’s mind...  You get how a predator becomes a predator.  Some aren’t born that way, and the line between a woman in her early twenties and a boy in his late teens COULD conceivably get blurred--but it’s always the adult’s fault, and this book doesn’t shy away from that.  I wouldn’t say it was a fun read, but it was interesting.

The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean.  3/5.  Malcolm, the Duke of Haven (yes) has a problem.  He needs an heir--but to have an heir, he first needs a wife.  Actually, he has one; but Seraphina, the title-chaser who “trapped” him into marriage left nearly three years ago.  Now she’s shown up asking for a divorce, which isn’t all that easy to get.  Malcolm makes her a deal: if she helps choose his next wife, he’ll grant her the divorce.  Of course, Malcolm would far rather keep Seraphina around than have her select her replacement...  so his real plan is to woo her into staying with him.  This was a pleasant, enjoyable read that varied from the typical romance novel in that the hero has done a genuinely bad thing--not just a mildly upsetting thing--and there are very strong problems in the marriage.  Malcolm and Sera are both pretty wounded by what they’ve done to each other and one major thing neither one of them could have really helped.  The angst was real.  And the sex scenes were good--lots of emphasis on female gratification in this one.  But parts of the story were kind of like... too much comic relief for a novel with the kind of backstory this one has.  I’m not saying it had to be a serious story AT ALL, but Sera has this chorus of sisters and I liked them at first but it become... too much.  However, I’d still call it a solid historical romance.

Circe by Madeline Miller.  5/5.  Known as the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs before capitulating to his charms and will, Circe is a character who was present for or linked to some of the most interesting parts of Greek mythology.  Here she gets her own epic, beginning with her birth as the nymph-goddess daughter of Helios.  Eventually exiled to an island, far from the other gods, Circe encounters everything from sailors to fellow witches and kings, and even monsters.  This is a literary fantasy, the writing as beautiful as it was in Song of Achilles, but dealing with a story much more dynamic and interesting.  Circe is a character who is at times deeply caring while not losing her selfish and destructive streaks.  She has reasons for her behavior, but she isn’t declawed in the least.  Miller tells the more horrifying parts of her story with taste, and at times, humor; but you never lose the sense of the epic in this novel.

The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton.  4/5.  As the king of Innis Lear ages, his obsession with the stars and prophecy leave his kingdom in a perilous position.  Drawing together his three daughters--the warlike Gaela, manipulative and child-starved Regan, and the favorite, Elia--Lear promises that he will name his heir.  But no matter who he chooses, the sisters are prepared to go to war for the crown, and for the fate of Innis Lear.  Obviously, this is a retelling of King Lear--Gratton evidently found the initial portrayal of Lear’s daughters lacking, and really takes that to task here.  And to be sure, Gaela, Regan, and Elia have far more depths than the women in the original play.  But the fact is that I could have done with more of them, and less of the perspective of others.  When the story is with the sisters, it’s enthralling.  But often, there’s the perspective of Ban, a pivotal character--an embittered bastard with remarkable power--but perhaps not the most compelling voice.  Then there’s the fool’s daughter Aefa, Ban’s mother Brona, the sisters’ uncle, and more.  Gratton also often delves into the past, revealing plot points but more than that developing the characters.  Which is good.  None of what is in this book is bad, really, but it’s held back from being as good as it could be by too much of the less important stuff.  For example--Gaela and Regan have a very compelling, codependent relationship.  Gaela is driven to be king, and Regan has sworn to support her no matter what and have children that will be Gaela’s heirs.  The problem being, of course, that despite the fact that she’s the only one of the sisters in a loving relationship, Regan seems incapable of bearing a living child.  The differing struggles of Gaela and Regan are amazing, and deserved more pagetime.  With that being said, this is a super compelling story, and worth checking out.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara.  4/5.  Michelle McNamara, as many know, died in the middle of writing her exhaustive book on the Golden State Killer--a title she coined.  Obviously, the killer has since been caught, but he wasn’t when Michelle was researching.  The result is a gripping, incredibly well-done book on a monster.  It reminds me somewhat of In Cold Blood, but without the closeness to the killer--less sympathy, more drive to find and punish him.  McNamara was up front about her own flaws, with the book itself highlighting her obsessive nature.  But ultimately, the only thing I can really critique about her work is beyond her control; it is somewhat disjointed, as friends had to piece the book together after she died.  However, it’s a remarkable example of true crime lit.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #186: Nights of Wundagore!

August, 1979

And yet this issue features exactly zero Wundagore Knights. Missed opportunity is all I’m saying.

Also, we’re back to faces of varying degrees of pissed off and indifferent on the cover.

AND. WE LOST MINI-VISION WHO WAS ALWAYS IN THE LOGO! I didn’t notice but last issue didn’t have mini-Vision! Whether standing and pouting or phasing through the A and also pouting he’s been with us since... ISSUE 93!

CHANGE IS BAD!

Also bad is Wanda’s expression on the cover. This is nitpicky but the terror gape doesn’t work for her. I accept that she’ll end up in distress quite a lot and some of that distress will be for dumb reasons like Sentinels wanting to use her womb to kill all life on Earth.

But I think an expression like ‘fuck you and your wi-fi shirt’ would be more fitting. Its certainly more fitting to how she handles it within the comic. Which we’ll get to. As soon as I stop complaining.

...

So last time: after a mentally dubious old man entered their lives and tried to kidnap them by stuffing their souls into puppets, Wanda and Pietro (aka Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) decided to willingly go with this attempted kidnapper back to Europe to find out if he’s their real dad or whatever. They thought their real dad was the Whizzer but if your dad called himself the Whizzer wouldn’t you entertain possibilities?

Shortly after arriving, Wanda was convinced by Modred, the Wi-Fi Wizard (not his real title) to come with him up a spooky mountain. He offered no reason for this so she followed him anyway. Inevitably, it turned out he had sinister motives and shot her in the back.

The following morning, Quicksilver went looking for Wanda but then fell down a mountain after bonking off an energy shield. It was, perhaps unintentionally, hilarious. He was rescued by Bova, the cow-woman nursemaid who helped birth him.

On the Avengers side of this Avengers book, through a sequence of events that were partially but not entirely Hawkeye’s fault, the Avengers lost their special government privileges and times were tough for a while. They finally managed to get them back but in exchange had to suffer the SJW agenda of Agent Henry Peter Gyrich who thinks that the Avengers should have an African-American on the roster. THE FIEND. The takeaway from this is that the Avengers are under the thumb of Gyrich and also Falcon is on the team. Yay, Falcon!

And now: “The most bizarre Avengers epic ever told!”

Which. I’m just going to go right ahead and state for the record. Unless it has someone marry a tree, second-place is the best it can get. I don’t care how much baby fraud is involved.

So. Quicksilver wakes up in the cabin of Bova who makes him some milk soup to help restore his strength.

I don’t want to know the level of making it involved. And damn you Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant, and David Michelinie for specifically making it milk soup, thus raising the question.

Anyway. Some hot soup. He’ll need it to endure THREE PAGES OF EXPOSITION AND RETCON.

Bova is dropping some backstory truth bombs.

Starting with her own backstory. She was once a simple cow but then the High Evolutionary turned her into a cow woman because he was going to make a lot of genetically engineered animal human babies and as a busy science guy he wasn’t going to be raising these babies himself.

During a period while he was busy making anthropomorphic animals and perhaps causing Jessica Drew’s origin story, a pregnant refugee named Magda came to Wundagore.

She was fleeing a megalomaniac husband with strange powers and dreams of world conquest. Afraid that his madness would corrupt the children, she fled before he even found out she was pregnant.

Oh and lets not be vague, although the comic is.

MAGNETO MASTER OF MAGNET is Quicksilver’s new daddy.

Although since Bova herself never found that out neither does Quicksilver here.

Anyway, since Bova was in charge of all babies she made an executive decision to extend asylum to Magda. The High Evolutionary was busy doing science stuff with Jonathan Drew in the towers of Wundagore. He won’t mind.

Bova and Magda became close over the weeks so that when it came time to cow midwife for Magda “it was more privilege than duty.”

Weirdly, Wanda was a glowing baby, thus heralding the beginning of Quirks and the hero society!

No, no.

But it was a weird portent. Baby Wanda glowed just as the mountain was doing so. That probably bodes.

Oh, and then Magda died.

Not in childbirth, as you might suspect. No, she just packed up and wandered off into the snow to die some days after giving birth.

Because if she were alive Magneto might find her and find out that he had children.

Wait a damn minute.

Two kids. Evil dad. Mom dies. ... Did George Lucas rip off this story when making Revenge of the Sith?

I don’t think we can prove he didn’t.

Anyway. I GUESS Magda just assumed that Bova would take care of her children forever?

Joke’s on her.

Bova immediately goes to the High Evolutionary like ‘I have these two extra babies, what do?’

(Also weird bit of continuity here: the High Evolutionary is remarked as looking weary from some great conflict at this point in the story. Apparently during Magda’s stay in Wundagore, the High Evolutionary had been busy battling the demon Chthon alongside his Knights of Wundagore, eventually banishing the demon with the power of SCIENCE and ABOMINATIONS AGAINST NATURE. Of course this all happened because some jerk werewolf who killed Jessica Drew’s mom tried to use the Darkhold to cure his lycanthropy. What a jerk.)

Anyway, despite being tired from kicking demon ass, the High Evolutionary decided to help deal with all these extra babies. As long as he can do it in the laziest way possible that doesn’t involve child-endangerment.

So the High Evolutionary summoned Robert and Madeline Frank (the Whizzer and Miss America) who were visiting Transia while Madeline was pregnant.

Transia has unexpectedly high traffic for such a tiny Balkan nation.

The plan was that Bova would just sort of. Give the Franks two extra babies after Madeline gave birth. And. Hope she didn’t notice that two of these babies are several days old instead of newborns and also don’t question giving birth to triplets.

This is a good plan.

Unfortunately, radiation makes fools of us all. Remember how that was a thing that Madeline had accidentally been exposed to a ludicrous amount of radiation?

Her baby was born deformed and stillborn. And Madeline herself died shortly after birth.

Bova tried to make lemonade out of the situation by offering two healthy suspiciously not newborn babies to Robert Frank but as discussed in the previous and now fake origin for Wanda and Pietro, Robert Frank (aka the Whizzer) is really bad at dealing with grief.

He ran the fuck away, leaving behind two babies with a bemused cow-woman midwife.

So the High Evolutionary decided to get EVEN LAZIER (but still with zero child endangerment).

Forget shenanigans and baby shell games.

The High Evolutionary just went to a Roma (and no, not the word used) tribe camped nearby, went up to Django and Marya Maximoff and yelled HEY DO YOU WANT SOME FREE BABIES??

Since the Maximoffs had recently lost their own children Ana and Mateo they responded most logically to this floating, glowing, shouting pink armor man and accepted these free babies.

And that is the completely straightforward and completely accurate backstory for Wanda and Pietro that explains why they had memories of growing up in a Roma tribe, why the Whizzer thought that they were his kids, and why their secret parentage is much more exploitable for drama.

And now that everything is straight I’m sure this story will never change again or get more complicated.

Despite how simple this explanation is, Pietro finds it all hard to remember. Bova attributes that to the trauma of loss, believing his foster parents had died. Then again, the multiple concussions he must have suffered in the course of his superheroic career constantly running headfirst into stuff may have played a part.

Quicksilver brings up that despite all this explanation he still doesn’t know who his dad is.

Bova: “Then take my word that you know enough! Please!”

More importantly, Bova tells him to get his sister and then get the hell away from Wundagore. There’s danger afoot. Ahoof? No, she has hands and apparently feet. Afoot.

But when she learns that Wanda had disappeared, Bova fears that its already too late.

AND FINALLY after all that exposition and retcons (which don’t get me wrong, I loved. I don’t think its good storytelling, I think its a spaghetti nonsense, but its entertaining nonsense and that’s what matters to me) we finally get back to what Wanda is up to.

She was on the cover for pete’s sake!

Anyway, she’s jesusing over the altar and Darkhold, just as is suggested on the cover.

Modred, the Wi-Fi Wizard, reveals some choice deets about his own motivation and backstory.

Apparently he used to combat the Darkhold’s efforts to hold sway over the Earth but after battling Chthon in Marvel Chillers #2, Modred realized that the demon was an agent of destiny and dangit it was Modred’s destiny to help him achieve a new world order!

Modred, you suggestible fool, thinks Wanda, more or less.

Idiot or no, Modred’s magic is far stronger than Wanda’s barely trained efforts. She couldn’t even weaken his Bind Person spell with her level.

But she can cheat.

She uses her mutant probability altering powers to just sorta create a probability where the Hold Person spell just turns off.

To Modred’s irritation, she jumps off the floating Darkhold as she escapes the spell. Rude, Wanda.

Even though ‘the master’ has said she is not to be killed, nobody said anything about “the administration of discipline!” Which thankfully takes the form of magic bolts.

Wanda is able to hold him off with her own magic bolts but he’s still far stronger than her. That didn’t change just because I hit enter several times.

Even using her mutant power to create a sphere to repulse his bolts is for naught.

As her defenses fall, she begs Modred to stop.

Scarlet Witch: “A-all right! I believe you! J-just stop! Please -- stop!”

Modred: “Thou dost... yield? Verily, I be disappointed. I would have thought thou to be a more determined opponent.”

Scarlet Witch: “I am, Modred. I just realized that I can’t fight you on your level. But there are other levels. Like, for instance, what the mortals of this world call -- a roundhouse left!”

PAWNCH!

I gotta say. I love the trope of someone winning a magic duel by decking the other person in the face.

Unfortunately (for Wanda’s own peace of mind), she’s too good at punching. And punched Modred right off the damn mountain.

She laments having killed a person, even if millions of lives were saved by foiling the plans of Modred’s master.

And then Modred shoots her in the back. AGAIN.

He’s such a dick.

Modred rants at the unconscious witch that she was chosen at birth to be a vessel for his master’s second coming and the time of that rising is now.

Dammit Modred!

Later and also elsewhere, Quicksilver prepares to set back out.

He thanks Bova for the truth bombs and for fixing his costume. But now he must find Wanda before-

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

GIANT SKY FACE

Ahem. Wanda is now an angry sky face. Or perhaps the entity now piloting Wanda.

She says she should kill him but she still has some human compassion from the previous owner.

So instead Possessed!Wanda just fires some warning eye lighting at Quicksilver telling him to gtfo or die.

Quicksilver wants to or die but Bova convinces him to go get outside help instead. Reluctantly, Quicksilver bows down to this ‘bovine logic.’

And yes the comic actually calls it that. How does bovine logic differ from people logic? Well in this case, the cow is smarter than the Quicksilver. Less impetuous anyway.

So Quicksilver runs down the mountain which is a lot less painful than falling down it but unexpectedly runs into Django Maximoff, the possibly dementia suffering old man who is Quicksilver’s foster father and really more of a father than Magneto ever was.

Honestly, its been changed so much that I don’t actually care about the Maximoff’s parentage. I’ve enjoyed Dadneto material, like him showing up for the most awkward thanksgiving dinner ever in the Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries (the very same one where she gets magic pregnant). Him confessing to Finesse in Avengers Academy that the murder robots he used to send to murder Quicksilver for training reasons were actually programmed to take it easy on him. There’s good Dadneto material. I do get annoyed that Django gets brushed aside.

He’s the one who actually raised the twins but he’s not considered their ‘real’ dad because he doesn’t share DNA with them except I think the most recent retcon made it that he was the biological father but my point still stands.

Dadneto is fine. But remember Django Maximoff who did the hard parenting work that Magneto didn’t.

And let’s also remember Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, and Bail Organa. Who raised another set of important twins from a big, menacing villain.

But I digress.

Anyway, Django went looking for Quicksilver but decided to tarry in the forest. He’s always loved this forest. Its where he fled to when those villagers burned down his camp. He’s always felt safe here.

Cue the irony.

As the forest becomes animate almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Evil Dead, and captures Quicksilver and Django.

Quicksilver does the thing that speedsters do when bound. Vibrates super fast until the binding breaks.

He then runs around in a circle punching wood until Django is free, although the old man does complain that Quicksilver shouldn’t harm the wood. “It’s special! And it was so friendly before I... I don’t understand.”

Quicksilver ignores this and NYOOMS away with Django in his arms.

And then nature loses its shit. Or maybe Possessed!Wanda loses her shit on nature’s behalf.

There’s suddenly

STORMS. With LIGHTNING and a rain of fire and rocks and is Wundagore actually a volcano how does it just rain fire and rocks??

Oh there’s also earthquakes that open chasms that try to swallow up Quicksilver but he NYOOMS through all these dangers to arrive back at the village.

The post office has the only phone in town so Quicksilver pamb pambs on the door and asks to use it to make an emergency call to--

THE AVENGERS!

Remember, this is an Avengers book. Guest-starring the Avengers.

Broodmeister Vision is on monitor duty so he intercepts the call.

Elsewhere in the mansion, the Avengers are eating dinner and talking about Iron Man while he’s not there.

Demon in a Bottle is still concurrent and we’ve reached the part of the story where an armor malfunction caused Iron Man to accidentally manslaughter a foreign ambassador.

Needless to say, this caused a big stink and he’s currently under investigation until it can be proven that it was a malfunction.

While he’s gone, Captain America is acting chairman.

That’s why he gets to sit at the head of the table. Being chairman comes with perks.

Also, a sort of weird details is that if they have them, the Avengers take off their gloves to eat. I don’t know if that is weird. I don’t wear gloves constantly. But it looks weird. Without her gloves, Ms Marvel looks even more like she’s just wearing a swimsuit everywhere.

Anyway, Vision ghosts through the wall and tells them to belay that meal, there’s grave danger ahoof!

Vision: “Quicksilver just called, saying that Wanda has been possessed by some preternatural power -- causing her to wreak elemental destruction over an area of miles!”

Captain America orders everyone to doubletime to the Quinjet hanger but he gets countermanded.

By Agent Henry Peter Gyrich.

Who offers the reasons that 1) Quicksilver is not an active Avenger so they’re not obligated to give him the time of day, 2) there’s no proof that whatever is going on in Bulgaria is a threat to US security, and 3) come on guys, don’t just be flying where you like we don’t need another international incident like the one Iron Man caused. No, not killing the ambassador. ANOTHER international incident. The man is rolling in them.

Cap has had enough and stalks off to make a phone call.

And just one panel of Beast making implied threats towards Gyrich later, the agent receives a phone call.

He yells into the receiver that he’s not to be disturbed but WHOOPS just yelled at his boss.

Agent Henry Peter Gyrich: “That was the *ahem* Commander-in-Chief. He’s requested that the Avengers leave on a, uh, ‘good-will tour’ or Bulgaria. Right away. you can wipe that smirk off your face now, captain.”

It is quite an impressive smirk.

And wow. To think that Cap could just go over Gyrich’s head like that by calling Jimmy Carter.

I can only speculate that he didn’t do it until now because Gyrich was an asshole but had a point.

Anyway, Gyrich is still an asshole.

Out of spite or assholishness or spiteful assholishness, he demands that Vision stay at the mansion.

Because he is on the duty roster for monitor duty and per regulations someone must be on monitor duty at all times.

(I refuse to believe that this regulation is ever actually obeyed. The Avengers almost never leave someone at home)

Vision takes issue with this and offers to introduce Gyrich to punches but Cap stops him.

One punch and they could lose all those privileges that they’ve worked so hard off-panel to get back! And apparently Cap only has so many favors to call in with Jimmy Carter!

But he promises that the Avengers will find Wanda and take care of her.

Vision agrees but darkly promises that this matter will be settled.

And then he tries to take over the world. Well, not for years and under the influence of an alien supercomputer and probably not directly related to this. But I imagine that once he had taken over the government, he would have had Gyrich reassigned to Antarctica.

Meanwhile, six time zones away in Transia, Quicksilver worries that due to a bad connection the Avengers may not have understood his message.

And then he explodes.

Because Possessed!Wanda has found them.

Chthon!Wanda: “No, you old fool! For at least, I’ve purged this vessel of its last taint of humanity, it’s last wisp of soul! There is no Ana Maximoff! There is not Wanda Frank! Now, there is only... CHTHON!”

And Wanda has a new evil and thus sexy costume. Its actually kind of stylish.

Although one must wonder why a being like Chthon would even dress his host body up in an evil, sexy outfit. Maybe even demons are bound by the tropes of the genre.

Also, dammit Chthon! Bova just sewed up Quicksilver’s outfit and here you are blowing it to tatters again!

Have you no respect for the bovine logic of the cow-woman midwife!

You truly are heinous!

Next time: The call of the mountain THING!

Damn. That’s a great title.

Follow @essential-avengers. Its the dedicated sideblog for this series. Its... eventually going to be caught up.