#because I'm collecting the 3-in-1 editions to read the manga that way

[theyoungprinceling]

[Ling and co. chilling on the rooftops of Amestris on vol. 8's cover.]

[cosmicjoke]

hi this is the same anon about the acwnr ask! im glad i decided to resend the ask because i loved your insight and it made a lot of sense to me! so, thank you for answering <3 i also have another question, which i think you may have answered before in the past, but im not entirely sure so i apologize if you've answered this already. i saw a few asks you answered recently about erwin's role in acwnr and it really opened my eyes more to erwin as a character and his mindset. i also reread the manga recently and i remembered how differently erwin's speech at the end was handle in the anime and i wanted to know which you prefer/seems more like erwin. im not sure if isayama wrote acwnr or not so im not entirely sure which accurately depicts erwin during that moment.

No worries! I'm glad to answer any questions you might have!

The general consensus seems to be that Erwin's speech in the manga is the one that hues closest to Erwin's actual character. A lot of people criticize the OVA for making Erwin colder than he is in the manga, either the main one or the "No Regrets" one. Isayama didn't write "No Regrets", but I suspect he had input on the graphic novel, because Levi's characterization in particular is much better than it was in the visual novel that the manga was initially based on. Isayama also conducted an interview with the artist on the manga, which is included in the back of the collected edition of it. I really like the OVA, despite some people bad-mouthing it, lol. I thought it was really well done, and I really liked some of the additional scenes, like the one of Levi telling Furlan and Isabel that they aren't going on the first mission outside the walls and he grows visibly upset and frustrated when they fight him on it. That's very in character for Levi, to try and protect them as best he can. Most of the criticism seems to come from it's characterization of Erwin and from them having to cut several scenes due to probably time and budget constraints. Otherwise I think it's very well done, but Erwin definitely comes across much meaner and cold hearted in the OVA than he normally would. In certain scenes, he's downright dismissive toward Levi and seemingly not very sympathetic to his pain. I think in the manga, at the beginning, Erwin came across that way, but as the story progressed, he slowly became less cold toward Levi. So when discussing "No Regrets" in relation to actual canon, I always refer to the manga and nothing else.

I wrote a super long chapter by chapter analysis of "No Regrets", if you're interested in a more in depth examination of it, which you can read here:

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #34

Hello! a professor I worked with last semester on his fantasy genre class asked for a recommendation for a queer book recommendation because apparently he admires my knowledge of contemporary fantasy publishing. I gave him a novella that seemed like it's fit the themes he was looking at (Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh), and took the compliment instead of telling him that there are so many queer fantasy books my beloved tumblr mutuals are obsessed with but I haven't gotten to yet

Finished:

Invisible Kingdom, Vol. 1: Walking the Path and Vol. 2: Edge of Everything written by G. Willow WIlson, art by Christian Ward this was pitched to me as cool scifi with lesbian leads, but to be perfectly honest i am not getting the chemistry between them at all..... the first volume was cool but the second felt like a major let down. I'm interested to see where the final volume goes tho so I'll still give it a shot

Bloom Into You, Vol. 2-3 by Nakatani Nio, translated by Jenny McKeon on the other hand, the girls in lesbians in this manga are coming for my fucking throat. they are kind and caring but the Teenage Desire in this is strong and extremely messy (what is love? what does it mean to fall in love? what if you fall for each other at different speeds? is what you're doing with her right if you dont think you feel the same way?) reading it is like poking me in a bruise fucking WHAT

The Sprite and the Gardener by Rii Abrego and Joe Whitt gorgeous art, bland story

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden inter-generational lesbian friendship roadtrip in rural texas. the way the world gets progressively stranger is very well done. this is a comparison i haven't seen made yet, but maybe check it out if you like Alice Isn't Dead?

long day by kathkin on ao3

Maigret Bides His Time by Georges Simenon, translated by Alastair Hamilton just a short old mystery novel. fun time but in an outdated style

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, narrated by Michael Page Locke Lamora is... as you might say a Character Type that works for me very very often, to the point that I gender flipped it for a dnd character of mine. This was a great book with basically no misplaced or extraneous world building elements: it feels rich and lived in but everything snaps together perfectly. The book could maybe use more women, which maybe feels a bit greedy since there are a number of named interesting women characters, but none of them are leads and so those side characters just made me crave more. I just am also extremely OC-pilled and was kicking my feet imagining my girl Letha running around Camorr causing trouble.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 1 written by Kanehito Yamada, art by Tsukara Abe, translated by Misa "Japanese Ammo" fun and sweet, pretty straight forward in what it's doing so far

Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion, narrated by Kate Harper a thorough history of many assigned-female-at-birth people in the UK and the US who passed as men, often legally marrying women for desire or for gender passing reasons (though not all of the people discussed in this book did so). leaves open both lesbian/same-sex desire and transmasculine interpretations, while also being as specific as possible to the lives, circumstances, and testimonies of its subjects (including the ways we know about them, and that very few of them after being discovered as "women" were allowed to continue in male dress)

Sensor by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen hm. well, interested to hear the Shelved by Genre opinion on this.

Started/Ongoing:

The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty, narrated by Soneela Nankani finishing out the short vignette collection from this series

Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms edited by Sacchi Green a collection of semi erotic lesbian fairytales that I'm reading through. first one has an exiled princess cross dressing as a man and seducing a witch during her quest to slay a dragon

Homie by Danez Smith poetry book i picked up because my black queer lit prof from last year talked about the second poem in here, which i think lives up to his interpretation of it

Reading Plans:

tbh, my brain is coughing up dust right now. finish the stuff in the prior section. get ready for actually writing my thesis in the coming months.

OH I'm going to read A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood for my queer lit book club, and I guess check out whatever Shelved by Genre is reading next? gotta take a look at my Libby loans, and pull something from my book shelf

[riastarthe]

i kept starting this post and then kept realising that i needed to provide more context for basically everything about this, and now i've started a whole second post! jesus.

JJBA: The games

last autumn i secured a physical copy of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Heritage for the Future edition of CAPCOM Secret File. the secret files were a series of booklets, 27 in total and 12 pages each, published by CAPCOM between 1994-1999, about their various games. There's a list of them here.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, JoJo's Venture, JJBA: Heritage For The Future... these games are all called JJBA, but, they're all just part 3, Stardust Crusaders. i'm not sure how much i need to say about JJBA/Stardust Crusaders here, because you probably either know what it is or have (voluntarily or otherwise) absorbed information about it thru like, a collective unconscious or something.

why so many?? why do people like this so much?? well, at face value, Stardust Crusaders is appealing for a lot of reasons.

Part 1 - Phantom Blood is a period piece/vampire story set in the late 1880s, introducing us to the central Joestar family and their adopted son turned enemy, Dio Brando, along with the existence of magical/supernatural objects and abilities.

Part 2 - Battle Tendency is a more Indiana Jones/Sherlock-esque narrative set in the late 30s. continues with a new Joestar generation, new abilities, jokes, and tragedies.

both of these have a smaller central cast and there are early themes here that the manga author, Hirohiko Araki, didn't keep as he was fleshing out the story. so, unlike its predecessors, most of the themes and ideas Stardust Crusaders explores are carried throughout the rest of the parts.

Part 3 - Stardust Crusaders takes place in the late 1980s. this one is more of an ensemble with a very modern/popular shounen setup which makes it more familiar to people who've grown up with The Big 3 (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) and other popular series (Boku no hero Academia, Kimetsu no Yaiba) that all have more in common with this setup. A band of weirdos, a legacy, a taciturn protagonist, a big flamboyant villain with villainous friends, powers, monsters of the week, compelling emotional beats... it's got broad appeal and is the easiest entry point into the series. this part introduces more special powers, specifically Stands-- a sort of spirit or aura with a typically (but not always!) humanoid form that can make attacks or take damage for its host/user.

there are 8 parts in total, with plans for a 9th recently announced. and while all related, each part takes on different things-- different protagonists, with different lives, exploring different aspects and exceptions to what's been introduced already. a lot of fans might just stick to their favourite part and not continue with or have the same relationship to the other parts of the series, if they even read/watch them at all. the parts do, though, reference one another, sometimes in small ways, but typically plot-relevant ones, even tying up or bringing back plot points from much earlier, thereby expanding this immersive world. the scope is limited to the family, but their roles within and relationship to that family evolve and intensify in emotional complexity as the series continues. the series also shifts from shounen to seinen (switching too from Shonen to Ultra Jump) although it bridged this from the beginning, and even as a shonen, employed adult themes with older characters. in fact, if shounen is for "adolescent boys," a slim few of the characters themselves fit this description, never mind the makeup of the fanbase.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (1993)

the first JoJo's Bizarre Adventure game was developed for the Super Famicon/SNES system by WinkySoft and released in 1993 as part point-and-click, part side-scroller RPG.

here's a promotional video for the famicom release,

and if you've ever seen screencaps like these, that's where they're from:

JoJo's [Bizarre Ad]venture (1998)

in 1998, Capcom made the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game for the CP System III arcade boards and for the Playstation 1-- in the west, this game was simply known as JoJo's Venture. this was the final game made for the CP System III and the last proprietary system board Capcom produced before moving to the Sega Dreamcast-based Naomi platform (which, while an acronym-- or technically a backronym, because-- it was named after Naomi Campbell, apparently.)

in Jojo's Venture, there's also a mistranslation where Jotaro's mom refers to Joseph Joestar as her uncle, rather than her father/Jotaro's grandfather.

Re-release (1999)

in 1999, that game was further revised and re-released into arcades and onto the Dreamcast. if you're interested, here's someone comparing the Dreamcast experience to the PS1, although iirc they don't take into account elements like the loss of Story Mode.

when these games were brought to the US, they were at the time the only English-language JJBA material available, and so most people were primed for Stardust Crusaders before any other part of the series. as far as i've been able to confirm, the subbed and dubbed edition of the collected JJBA OVA would come later, in 2003-2005.

within this, i get a little lost about which assets belong to which edition, so forgive me. i only have a japanese version of the Dreamcast edition, but i've encountered the 1998 version of the game in the wild, at a dusty old arcade on the coast of Maine, USA. from what i understand, the first releases were both fairly simple , with major alterations made to the story in order to fit on these systems.

my favourite villain in Stardust Crusaders is N'doul, and that's the whole reason i got the Secret File.

why is he my wife? i don't fucking know it will take a million years to explain (and something i'll do gladly) because it's heavily based in context and framing, tonal shifts and such. it makes as much sense as anything else, which is none or a lot. this series is a circus and no matter who it is, your fave is the king clown.

essentially, what got me is that N'doul is the first enemy the group fights after arriving in Egypt, their ultimate destination, which marks a tonal shift in Stardust Crusaders (whether you're reading it, or watching it, or playing these linear games) that i find compelling. at the very least, he comes with implications of a shift, including in how each character reacts to the fight and the expanse of the fight itself in the desert, and what their enemies' fealty to Dio means. in the manga, in the OVA, in the anime, in the games, Jotaro reacts the same way: first horror, and then admiration.

here's N'doul in the booklet for the famicon release, along with some fellow freaks.

not only is he a honey, he's objectively a honey compared to his squad.

while only the Crusaders are playable in the 1993 version, many of the enemies are playable in the next versions, including Dio, Anubis-possessed Polnareff, young (Battle Tendency) Joseph Joestar, Matrix Mode Kakyoin, Hol Horse...

here's some shit that really cuts me up! N'doul, too, was originally planned as a playable character in Heritage for the Future, to the point of him having both sprites and artwork assets that are easily acquired via hacking, and concept art in the design files describing how he would fight.

in Stardust Crusaders, there's a stand user named Alessi who uses his powers to de-age his enemies, turning them into children. (it sucks mostly.) so basically anyone who might fight against Alessi gets a kid/younger version to match. in addition to the above concept art, there was also this

here are some of his game sprites, as ripped by Magma MK-II:

there's more information and opinions about this on The Cutting Room Floor:

Due to the fact that many of his stand's attacks are drawn with the reflection of the desert in it, it's likely that he was kept a sub-boss so that Capcom didn't need to redraw all of his stand's sprites.

you can see what the writer on TCRF meant by the added complexity in the water, potentially necessitating detailed edits that wouldn't be required for other stands.

here's someone's playthrough. as you can see, his water-based attacks are mostly at ground level-- you have to run/jump through the desert until you finally reach him, at which point you can kill him in one blow because he has only 5HP.

this should start at 1:00:27, but if it doesn't, that's where you need to be!

one fun fact is that in order to fight N'doul in story mode, you must play as Jotaro 😌 (in Oingo & Boingo's Gallery Mode, you can fight him as any of the characters.)

however, if this is Super Story mode, it seems to be missing some of the background assets, parts of the cutscenes, and/or may even be a censored version (the censored versions crop up a lot in the Western releases.) i know for a fact i've played a different version: as you move through this boss fight, you see a downed helicopter and the body of its pilot. this follows the manga and anime plotline, where N'doul uses his water to attack them. The pilot was wearing a wristwatch with an alarm, and when it starts beeping, N'doul reacts harshly to the sound and destroys it-- cutting off the man's hand in the process.

here's that moment in the manga,

and here's how that looks in the uncensored game,

hell yeah. really freak em out.

N'doul's theme in the game is also a straight up banger!!

the full soundtrack is available for download here.

Since then

in the mobile game JoJo Stardust Shooters (which ended in 2021) N'doul's skills formally classify him as a Sniper. he's a long-range stand user, patient, traveling from place to place in pursuit of his enemy, waiting for long periods of time until his prey is exactly where he needs them to be, and then takes the shot. then he will fall back, and because of the distance, the enemy (whether or not they can detect a fellow stand user) may not be able to track him. not all stand users can take advantage of distance; many stands are close-range only.

when we look at his stats, it's clear that sniper suits him perfectly and differentiates him from other characters, including their iterations as playable characters in video game format:

if i'm understanding correctly, we're meant to interpret the low precision this way: being blind, he can't 100% accurately choose his target through sight, only guessing at them through what he infers through sound. it's weird though, because in the manga and anime we basically only see him nail the right person, decimating the main team quickly, and in his very first appearance, catches fly mid-air. so idfk!!!

not everyone likes to play as a sniper, and it might be especially confusing in a fighting game that's so similar to the Street Fighter format-- where incorporating a distance aspect to each stage might not be appropriate, ultimately. in 2015, n'doul was included in the roster for the Bandai-Namco joint Eyes of Heaven, developed by CyberConnect2 fr the PS3/PS4.

[kinosternon]

I posted 71 times in 2022

That's 56 more posts than 2021!

20 posts created (28%)

51 posts reblogged (72%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@kinosternon

@bluejayblueskies

@natsume-ss

@dduane

@tanoraqui

I tagged 70 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#haruka nanase - 8 posts

#free! spoilers - 6 posts

#for my own reference - 5 posts

#writing advice - 5 posts

#free! the final stroke second part - 5 posts

#albert volandel - 4 posts

#ikuya kirishima - 4 posts

#rin matsuoka - 4 posts

#free! the final stroke - 4 posts

#about the writer - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#itll be /better/ with a single sentence saying 'and then time passed' than a long drawn out scene that fought you every step of the way

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Okay, I'm doing it.

I'm writing a summary for the last Free! movie.

12 notes - Posted April 30, 2022

#4

@demigardess

Hello, I was your secret santa for @natsume-ss this year! I really enjoyed your prompts, so I hope you can enjoy this fic as well ✨

Title: Peace of Mind Relationship: Gen, Natsume Takashi & Tanuma Kaname Prompts used: Gen fic, any kind of reveal fic

Summary:

He felt frozen, caught between two answers. The first, the easiest, was also one he could never say: It's fine. I'm already taking care of it. The second answer was the one that pertained to what they were really asking, he knew. And the answer was: I have no idea what to do for him right now.

read on AO3

13 notes - Posted December 27, 2022

#3

NaNo 2022: not writing exposition or dialogue but a secret third thing (epistolary novel)

14 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

#2

Official online Nabari Kuji!

Kamatani Yuhki announced recently on their Twitter that a new company is holding an online kuji (lottery) for official Nabari goods! It's rare to see something like this come out so long after a series ends, and I want as many people as possible to get the chance to participate. (According to the site's Q&A, you can register through a third-party company to have prizes shipped internationally, though I haven't tried this myself.)

All the prizes are random, and use official manga/promotional art—prints, badges, magnets, and so on—focusing on a variety of characters.

The kuji runs from today (August 19th, Japan time) through September 30th, 2022. You see what you've won right away after purchasing, but the items themselves won't be shipped till late December, and international shipping will probably cause further delays.

Link coming in reblog because I'd like this to show up in the tag.

17 notes - Posted August 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Walthrough: Reposting your old FFNet fics to Ao3

In light of recent rumors that FanFiction.Net might be receiving little/no ongoing support, and could suddenly disappear one day with very little warning, I wanted to offer a resource that might help preserve another fic or two. Just in case.

I'm already keeping a private collection of favorite fics from FFN that I can't bear to lose, but this tutorial isn't for saving other folks' fic. Instead, this tutorial is for people who might want to republish their own fic to Ao3 in a streamlined, relatively painless way.

Using these steps, I was able to upload an entire 16-chapter fic, with all the correct original formatting and without doing any fussy HTML editing, in about an hour. (And that was while making up the steps as I went along!)

What you'll need:

A link to your old FFNet account URL OR the those of the fics you want to save (no login necessary)

Access to a working Ao3 account

A web browser, permission to download zipped HTML files, and an unzipper (most computers have these by default)

How to save your fic for posterity:

Copy the link to the first chapter of the fic on FFN that you want to save. (Right-clicking the title of the fic on your profile and choosing "Copy Link" will do this.)

Go to https://fichub.net/ and paste in the URL. Press Export, then click "Download as zipped HTML." This saves your entire fic at once, no matter how many chapters, with formatting intact. Everyone thank the team who made this tool, because it's amazing.

Navigate to your downloads (or click on the pop-up that'll probably appear) and open the zipped HTML file. It will probably open in your default browser on its own, but you might need to tell it to open by right-clicking the unzipped file and choosing the desired browser. The resulting file should have all the chapters of the fic laid out one after another, with clear breaks between each chapter and the original HTML formatting (including section breaks).

Post a "New Work" in Ao3. (Can't import with FFNet, sadly, which is why this tutorial exists.) Add the title, relevant tags, and summary. (I used my FFNet summary with a note that the fic is crossposted.) Backdate the fic if desired by choosing a publishing date from around the time the fic was written.

Here's the magic part: Switch to Rich Text Mode in the "Work Text" field, then copy-paste the text from your first chapter into the Rich Text Mode window. (Note: You may see the stray space appear around italicized/bolded text, and an extra line break tends to appear between section breaks. Otherwise, though, the formatting is generally very well preserved.)

Optional detail: Hit "Preview," then "Save Draft," then "Add Chapter" to avoid posting any of your chapters till you have them all set up and ready to go.

Side note 1: Don't put an endnote on the end of your Chapter 1. Or if you do, go add a chapter 2 first, and then go back to add a chapter 1 endnote. Otherwise it'll end up at the end of your fic instead. It's a fixable outcome, but an annoying one.

Side note 2: If you use a pseud to post, you'll need to be careful to select the correct pseud for each chapter you upload, or you'll end up being listed as the author twice, once under each pseud you selected. If you notice this happening, it's because you've missed switching one in one or more chapters. This is fixable by checking the author listed under each chapter heading using the "Entire Work" button and keyword searching the username you're trying to get rid of.

While I didn't find a way to post all chapters at once, you can do it pretty quickly in the right order, without skipping, by doing the following steps in a loop:

Press "Entire work" at the top of the page.

Use your browser's "Find in page" function for the text "post chapter".

Hitting the "Post Chapter" button that appears.

Just continue the loop until there's no more "Post Chapter" buttons.

Once your chapters are all uploaded, you're done! Congratulations.

A final note

I know that this latest rumor might be blowing certain hints of FFNet's siterunners' inactivity out of proportion. I know that Ao3 isn't everyone's favorite (though I don't agree with most of those people). And I know, most of all, that some folks would rather some of their older fics not see the light of day anymore, for whatever reason.

But look. I'm a trans guy who used to be a teenage girl who (enthusiastically) wrote Twilight/Doctor Who crossover fanfic. I get it, and yet I'm still managing to stun the part of me that cringes long enough to preserve my stuff, because I think that fic should survive whenever possible.

There are options to help make the cringe factor more manageable. Use a pseud for your older stuff (like me), or to minimize any connection to your current account, you can use the Anonymous collection or the Orphan Work function as soon as you're done posting. Do whatever you need to feel comfortable.

But remember that every creative work is a victory just for existing. Please, if you can, find it in your heart (and your schedule) to preserve your work. Past!you worked hard on it, after all. And besides, you never know who might stumble across it someday exactly when they need it.

(PS: Please let me know about any other FFN preservation efforts, by the way! Hopefully this is all blown out of proportion, but you really can never be too careful.)

376 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

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