#during this time period seeing as such a great deal of Man-Thing comics are about ‘what makes a man???’

[theodore-sallis]

“A Question of Survival!” Fear (Vol. 1/1970), #18.

Writer: Steve Gerber; Penciler: Val Mayerik; Inker: Sal Trapani; Colorist: Linda Lessmann; Letterer: Artie Simek

[lonelywretchjervistetch]

My DCCU Interlude: The Legion of Super-Heroes (Part 1)

Prologue: Long Live the Legion

This year, I've decided to give into my unending nerd urges (...nerdges?), and have been writing essays on how I would create a DC cinematic universe, similar to how James Gunn and Peter Safran have been given to reins to do the same. Except, y'know, they're talented nerds with extensive filmmaking and writing careers, and I'm...a nerd. BUT nevertheless, I've been jumping in headfirst, and honestly, I've enjoyed it.

Up until now, I've finished a series on Superman. And that was a lot, but it's nowhere near the end. In fact, Superman is a lynchpin for a particular corner of my DCCU, focusing upon space and the cosmic (unsurprisingly). The other two lynchpins are Batman (for street crime and down-to-Earth stuff) and Wonder Woman (for magic and mysticism), which shouldn't be too surprising. But while they would each launch segments of my DCCU that would involve multiple other films and projects, television series would also be involved with each hero, ideally. James Gunn is, of course, doing the same, and Marvel's been doing this for years now. So, when I had to think about a series associated with the Man of Steel that I would want to see...well, there's only one choice, really.

I am a huge fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes. They've had a shit-ton of incarnations over the years, in comics and in other media, for good and for bad. But the Legion is one of the first DC hero groups I faithfully followed, starting with the 2005Waid/Kitson Reboot run, which I still remember fondly. And the Legion is, of course, inexorably linked with Superman, as their first appearance involved them recruiting a teenaged Superboy into the group from the 31st Century. So, naturally, this was the FIRST group I thought of when I thought about a TV series. After the animated series is one of the best adaptations of its time period, especially in the second season.

But why talk about this now? I mean, I'm in the middle of my Batman series, so why interrupt that? Well, it's Legion of Super-Heroes Appreciation Week here on the ol' hellsite, so for those people who are fellow fans of the Legion, and also want to read the desperate rambles of a midly-obsessive and frustrated nerd, why not take advantage? I would contribute art to this, but my time is weirdly limited. I have drawn my version of Saturn Girl, though, so feel free to check that out if you want to. Anyway, lemme get into the mini-series here. Starting with one question...why not a movie?

Chapter One: Soap and Space

Let me preface this by saying...I don't like the 2023 movie. At all. Don't get me wrong here. It looks great, voice acting is quite good, and some of the character designs are stellar. But goddamn it, for a Legion of Super-Heroes project, they dropped the ball SO goddamn hard, in a lot of ways. Also, Mon-El...what the fuck have you done to Mon-El? God, that movie pissed me off SO hard the entire time...but I digress. Jest because I didn't like that movie, that doesn't mean a film based on the Legion is impossible. But I also think that it...doesn't really work as well as a TV series would.

The reason for this, in my opinion, is because of what the Legion is at its best: a soap opera and a space opera combined. One of the best things about the Legion is its setting and its members. During its height, the Legion was a massive team brimming both with interpersonal conflict (because, after all, we're mostly dealing with teenagers at first), as well as set amongst a wider sociopolitical interplanetary conflict that these guys are supposed to navigate amongst. It's Teen Titans...IN SPACE. That rules. It rules so hard.

One of the things that makes the Legion so very compelling is simply the fact that you get to know the characters, and their personal struggles. And given that most of these guys are aliens, despite how human they often look, those interpersonal conflicts are made even more complicated, and even more interesting as a result. A movie honestly can't balance all of that in a way that feels authentic to the Legion. The animated series technically did this, but still steered away from a lot of the soap opera aspect in lieu of making it more of an action series. And obviously, it's gotta be an action series...but it could and should be much more than that.

OK, what about multiple movies? Again, for a group as large as the Legion is, even making a franchise isn't exactly guaranteed to work for all of these diverse characters. And, uh, that's assuming you'd be able to MAKE a franchise. How many times have we been comic book films made with a franchise in mind, only to perform so badly that the entire idea is scrapped? So, no, we're not relying on a possible set of sequels. Instead, let's plan a story over the course of seasons, with each season of this series acting as a discrete story (just in case it gets cancelled prematurely).

OK, what about medium? Should it be animated or live-action? Well...I actually vote for the latter, IF the budget it high enough. Let's not skimp on the budget for a wide-sweeping space opera, if we can help it. But the, if that's a problem, then animated is a viable option. After all, it's worked before, and it can work again. The only caveat here, for both, is that we're aiming for a platform like HBO, or at the very least not the CW or a more public network. Reasons for this are because more money is available from HBO and such, and also because...well, frankly, we want a mature show of actual good quality. CW quality ain't gonna cut it, sorry.

OK, so we have a mature-leaning series of good quality, packed full of drama in multiple facets, with a large cast that the audience can follow and latch onto. Lastly, because each season is meant to be insular to a certain degree, there's an overarching plot for each season, which concludes with the season finale. Commonplace, obviously, but important nonetheless. With all of that out of the way, we should now talk about a few things here, right? Those things are:

Setting: Where is our series set, and what are the day-to-day struggles associated with the setting? Where is the Legion within this setting, and how do they interact with it? What notable people or forces can be found here and drive everyday existence?

Cast: This is a huge potential cast, so who are we primarily following when the series starts? For that matter, how large is the Legion when the series begins, and will that number change over the course of the first season? Who are the major characters, and can the Legion be put into groups that can be followed? And finally, what are the backstories and interpersonal relationships amongst the primary cast of characters?

Story: What is the main conflict over the course of the season, and who are the major players? What are the stakes as we lead up to the season finale, and how will our characters resolve it? How will this conflict change our characters or the setting, whether or not the characters actually solve the problem? And what other problems or consequences will result from this resolution?

And all of those things, frankly, are super goddamn basic in terms of storytelling, but still important to keep in mind as we go through the planned season. For each season, we'll assume 12 episodes, which is a reasonable number of episodes to assume per season. And before I start plotting this whole thing out, I'm gonna put together a brief synopsis to sum up the season 1 plans. Once that's done, I'll be going through the above three points one at a time, then looking at a potential future for the series. And if people are interested in more, I may just oblige that request! So...what's this theoretical season one about?

The 31st Century is a peaceful utopia on a knife's edge. Building tensions are bringing the United Planets close to dissolution, if not to outright war. This strife has led to conflict, and a lack of faith in authority across the cosmos, especially on the famously rebellious planet Earth. And amongst all of this, forces are trying to widen the gulf between civilizations that much farther apart. A group of young heroes, inspired by legends a millennium past, have stepped up to the plate, calling themselves the Legion of Super-Heroes. Learning to work together under difficult circumstances, the young heroes must navigate many threats.

Leader of the group Rokk Krinn struggles both with his compatriots, and also the difficult role of leader thrust upon him, while struggling to balance a life amongst all of the stress placed upon him. The silent Imra Ardeen works against culture shock, while also feeling a deep and profound duty to her home world of Titan, and a palpable distance from her responsibilities to that moon of Saturn. Garth Ranzz comes from a planet in economic strife, on the brink of leaving the United Planets. With his older brother and twin sister on different sides of the conflict, he must navigate both family and political strife, while finding his own path amidst conflict with Rokk and burgeoning feelings for Imra.

Newcomers to the organization are now navigating this new environment. Chief amongst them is Lyle Norg, a superhero enthusiast and brilliant teenage scientist who has given himself powers of invisibility. Tinya Wazzo is a highly connected young woman with her own responsibilities, a mysterious demeanor, and an agenda of her own to pursue. Luornu Durgo is an exile from her home, which she talks about very little, but still seeks to return to with her good deeds. And Elgar Degep, who comes to the Legion on recommendation from a secretive benefactor, claims to be a descendant of ancient Earth heroes, but hides a much more insidious secret.

This small and young group of heroes has many opponents to their success. The Science Police of Metropolis are wary of their presence, and their extremely ambitious leaders are in constant conflict with the heroes they see as vigilantes. Behind the scenes, a cult named the Dark Circle seeks to take advantage of the strife, driving criminals across the United Planets to strike against the police and the Legion alike. And beneath it all, corruption within the United Planets itself seeks to set the Legion up for a fall, influenced by a greater power beyond their understanding.

A rough synopsis, but believe me...I have ideas. So very many ideas. But I'll go into that further in future essays. So, if you're interested, stay tuned for more of that! And if you actually read this mess...honestly, thank you, I appreciate it. Long like the Legion.

See you in Part Two!

[little-bloodied-angel]

So my birthday is this Friday, and:

-I'm sick as a dog currently, can't see my doctor until tomorrow, and it may be covid, which would mean I'd have to be in isolation.

-In no small part thanks to my mother, I haven't hit my weight gain goal. I feel guilty but also just look awful in general, and I'm weak and in pain

-I look even worse because I've been sick and depressed during the relapse, so I haven't kept my eyebrows up after my last professional appointment, which was really difficult to do at home without equipment anyway and being nearly blind. And the appointment was in July anyway. I also haven't gotten my hair done like I usually do around my birthday. And I couldn't replace my gel nails because my mother keeps putting it off because she's a cheapskate, same as the eyebrows, so now one is broken and the rest are overgrown (I got them done in late August). There's no time to fix any of it even if I could pay for it because there's no way I can get the appointments. Even if I could, I can't call for those appointments until I'm tested negative for covid, and seeing the first point that's going to take a while

-Because dealing with my BDD and ED isn't enough, I got my period and I'll still have it on Friday, so I'm going to be super dysphoric. And only able to wear black clothes in case of stains. And not being able to take a nice bath either (can't use insertion object type sanitary products).

-My uncle/godfather is completely ignoring me

-My father has basically disappeared and hasn't mentioned my birthday once

-My mother is a piece of shit as ever and now she's taken to leaving me completely alone to go to her father's house despite me being actively sick now and not "just" disabled. Which means that I'm coughing my lungs up and with such a high fever I see double, and I still have to at minimum take care of the dog and feed myself. The last time I was walking the dog I got so dizzy because of the fever and general weakness that I almost split my head on the edge of the sidewalk but when I told her about that all she did was yell about me not being careful enough. The only times my birthday has been mentioned in the house at all is whenever I bring it up and she complains that I want everything to be about me and "ridiculously expensive things" like the nails. Btw she's still living off the money she gets both from my dad and from the government for having a disabled child and living in my house without paying rent or mortgage. So even if I was really asking for expensive things, that's my money.

-My only irl best friend dipped on me because she mixed up the dates related to an event that features one of her comics.

-Most of my online friends aren't talking to me either

-Something else that I'm really upset about but that I can't mention in a public post for more than one reason.

There's more stuff going on but these are just the recent developments as of like last month. It's like some force of the universe heard me complain about not wanting to turn 29 and also about how difficult it was going to be to celebrate and decided to make it outright impossible. Most of my birthdays have been pretty sad and lonely, especially lately, but man I suspect this one is going to take the cake. The only one that probably can't be topped is the one where I planned my super special 18th birthday for months and then I died during the party (coded during a seizure) because my chronic illness finally had it with me and suffered a steady decline ever since then.

It's really looking fucking great. Alone, looking horrid, being depressed, no party, no presents and no special food. Of all the things I wanted I am going to have literally zero.

And of course if I ever do make mention of being sad about this my mother becomes even more emotionally abusive than usual.

What's the damn point anymore?

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I have always appreciated your thoughtful views on the defence of the British monarchy, and as a university historian it’s reassuring to see someone using history to make invalubale insights to a controversial institution. I wonder what are your own thoughts on the passing of Prince Philip and what his legacy might be? Was he a gaffe prone racist and a liability to the Queen?

I know you kindly got in touch and identified yourself when you felt I was ignoring your question. I’m glad we cleared that up via DM. The truth is as I said and I’m saying here is that I had to let some time pass before I felt I could reasonably answer this question. Simply because - as you know as someone who teaches history at university - distance is good to make a sober appraisal rather than knee jerk in the moment judgements.

Contrary to what some might think I’m not really a fan girl when it comes to the royal family. I don’t religiously follow their every movement or utterance especially as I live in Paris and therefore I don’t really care about tabloid tittle tattle. I only get to hear of anything to do with the royal family when I speak to my parents or my great aunts and uncles for whom the subject is closer to their heart because of the services my family has rendered over past generations to the monarchy and the older (and dying) tight knit social circles they travel in.

Like Walter Bagehot, I’m more interested in the monarchy as an institution and its constitutional place within the historical, social, and political fabric of Britain and its continued delicate stabilising importance to that effect. It was Walter Bagehot, the great constitutional scholar and editor the Economist magazine, who said, “The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.” In his view, a politically-inactive monarchy served the best interests of the United Kingdom; by abstaining from direct rule, the monarch levitated above the political fray with dignity, and remained a respected personage to whom all subjects could look to as a guiding light.

Even as a staunch monarchist I freely confess that there has always been this odd nature of the relationship between hereditary monarchy and a society increasingly ambivalent about the institution. To paraphrase Bagehot again, there has been too much ‘daylight’ shone onto the ‘magic’ of the monarchy because we are obsessed with personalities as celebrities.

Having said that I did feel saddened by the passing of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. After the Queen, he was my favourite royal. Anne, Princess Royal, would come next because she is very much like her father in temperament, humour, and character, so unlike her other brothers.

I have met the late Prince Philip when I was serving in the army in a few regimental meet-and-greet situations - which as you may know is pretty normal given that members of the royal family serve as honorary colonel-in-chiefs (patrons in effect) of all the British army regiments and corps.I also saw him at one or two social events such the annual charitable Royal Caledonian Ball (he’s an expert scottish reeler) and the Guards Polo Club where my older brothers played.

I’ll will freely confess that he was the one royal I could come close to identify with because his personal biography resonated with me a great deal.

Let’s be honest, the core Windsor family members, born to privilege, are conditioned and raised to be dull. Perhaps that’s a a tad harsh. I would prefer the term ‘anonymously self-effacing’, just another way of saying ‘for God’s sake don’t draw attention to yourself by saying or doing anything even mildly scandalous or political lest it invites public opprobrium and scrutiny’. The Queen magnificently succeeds in this but the others from Charles down just haven’t (with the exception of Princess Anne).

However, many people forget this obvious fact that it’s the incoming husbands and wives who marry into the Windsor family who are relied upon to bring colour and even liven things up a little. And long before Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle (very briefly), or Lady Diana Spencer, were the stars of ‘The Firm’- a phrase first coined by King George VI, Queen Elizabeth II's father who ruled from 1936 to 1952, who was thought to have wryly said, "British royals are 'not a family, we're a firm,” - it was Prince Philip who really livened things up and made the greater impact on the monarchy than any of them in the long term.  

Prince Philip’s passing belied the truth of a far more complex individual: a destitute and penniless refugee Greek-Danish prince with a heart breaking backstory that could have been penned by any 19th Century novelist, and also eagle eyed reformer who tried to drag the royal family into the 20th century. At the core of the man - lost scion of a lost European royal dynasty, a courageous war veteran, and Queen’s consort - were values in which he attempted to transform and yet maintain much older inherited traditions and attitudes. Due to his great longevity, Philip’s life came to span a period of social change that is almost unprecedented, and almost no one in history viewed such a transformation from the front row.

Prince Philip would seem to represent in an acute form the best of the values of that era, which in many ways jar with today’s. He had fought with great courage in the war as a dashing young naval officer; he was regularly rude to foreigners, which was obviously a bonus to all Brits. He liked to ride and sail and shoot things. He was unsentimental almost to a comic degree, which felt reassuring at a time when a new-found emotional incontinence made many feel uncomfortable. Outrageous to some but endearing to others, he was the sort of man you’d want to go for a pint with, perhaps the ultimate compliment that an Englishman can pay to another Englishman. This has its own delicious irony as he wasn’t really an Englishman.

There are 4 takeways I would suggest in my appraisal of Prince Philip that stand out for me. So let me go through each one.

1. Prince Philip’s Internationalism

It may seem odd for me to say that Prince Philip wasn’t English but he wasn’t an Englishman in any real sense. He was a wretch of the world - stateless, homeless, and penniless. That the Prince of Nowhere became the British Monarchy’s figurehead was more than fitting for a great age of migration and transition in which the Royal Family survived and even flourished. That he was able to transform himself into the quintessential Englishman is testimony not just to his personal determination but also to the powerful cultural pull of Britishness.

He was born on a kitchen table in Corfu in June 1921. A year later in 1922, Philip, as the the great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria and nephew of Constantine I of Greece, was forced to flee with his family after the abdication of Constantine. He grew up outside Paris speaking French; ethnically he was mostly German although he considered himself Danish, his family originating from the Schleswig border region. He was in effect, despite his demeanour of Royal Navy officer briskness, a citizen of nowhere in an age of movement. From a very young age he was a stateless person, nationally homeless. Indeed, Philip was an outsider in a way that even Meghan Markle could never be; at his wedding in 1947, his three surviving sisters and two brothers-in-law were not permitted to attend because they were literally Britain’s enemies, having fought for the Germans. A third brother-in-law had even been in the SS, working directly for Himmler, but had been killed in the conflict.

Even his religion was slightly exotic. He was Greek Orthodox until he converted to Anglicanism on marrying Elizabeth - what with his wife due to become supreme head of the Church and everything  - but his ties with eastern Christianity remained. His great-aunts Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine and Tsarina Alexandra are both martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church, having been murdered by the Bolsheviks; Philip’s mother went on to become an Orthodox nun and a “Righteous Among the Nations” for saving a Jewish family during the Nazi occupation of Greece, spending much of her time in squalid poverty.

His parents were part of the largely German extended aristocracy who ruled almost all of Europe before it all came crashing down in 1918. When he died, aged 99, it marked a near-century in which all the great ideological struggles had been and gone; he had been born before the Soviet Union but outlived the Cold War, the War on Terror and - almost - Covid-19.

The world that Philip was born into was a far more violent and dangerous place than ours. In the year he was born, Irish rebels were still fighting Black and Tans; over the course of 12 months the Spanish and Japanese prime ministers were assassinated, there was a coup in Portugal and race riots in the United States. Germany was rocked by violence from the far-Left and far-Right, while in Italy a brutal new political movement, the Fascists, secured 30 seats in parliament, led by a trashy journalist called Benito Mussolini.

The worst violence, however, took place in Greece and Turkey. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, what remained of Turkey was marked for permanent enfeeblement by the Allies. But much to everyone’s surprise the country’s force were roused by the brilliant officer Mustafa Kemal, who led the Turks to victory. Constantinople was lost to Christendom for good and thousands of years of Hellenic culture was put to the flames in Smyrna.

The Greek royal family, north German imports shipped in during the 19th century, bore much of the popular anger for this disaster. King Constantine fled to Italy, and his brother Andrew was arrested and only escaped execution through the intervention of his relative Britain’s George V. Andrew’s wife Alice, their four daughters and infant son Philip fled to France, completely impoverished but with the one possession that ensures that aristocrats are never truly poor: connections.

Philip had a traumatic childhood. He was forged by the turmoil of his first decade and then moulded by his schooling. His early years were spent wandering, as his place of birth ejected him, his family disintegrated and he moved from country to country, none of them ever his own. When he was just a year old, he and his family were scooped up by a British destroyer from his home on the Greek island of Corfu after his father had been condemned to death. They were deposited in Italy. One of Philip's first international journeys was spent crawling around on the floor of the train from an Italian port city, "the grubby child on the desolate train pulling out of the Brindisi night," as his older sister Sophia later described it.

In Paris, he lived in a house borrowed from a relative; but it was not destined to become a home. In just one year, while he was at boarding school in Britain, the mental health of his mother, Princess Alice, deteriorated and she went into an asylum; his father, Prince Andrew, went off to Monte Carlo to live with his mistress. "I don't think anybody thinks I had a father," he once said. Andrew would die during the war. Philip went to Monte Carlo to pick up his father's possessions after the Germans had been driven from France; there was almost nothing left, just a couple of clothes brushes and some cuff-links.

Philip’s four sisters were all much older, and were soon all married to German aristocrats (the youngest would soon die in an aeroplane crash, along with her husband and children). His sisters became ever more embroiled in the German regime. In Scotland going to Gordonstoun boarding school, Philip went the opposite direction, becoming ever more British. Following the death of his sister Cecilie in a plane crash in 1937, the gulf widened. As the clouds of conflict gathered, the family simply disintegrated. With a flash of the flinty stoicism that many would later interpret, with no little justification, as self-reliance to the point of dispassion, the prince explained: “It’s simply what happened. The family broke up… I just had to get on with it. You do. One does.”

In the space of 10 years he had gone from a prince of Greece to a wandering, homeless, and virtually penniless boy with no-one to care for him. He got through it by making a joke of everything, and by being practical.

By the time he went to Gordonstoun, a private boarding school on the north coast of Scotland, Philip was tough, independent and able to fend for himself; he'd had to be. Gordonstoun would channel those traits into the school's distinct philosophy of community service, teamwork, responsibility and respect for the individual. And it sparked one of the great passions of Philip's life - his love of the sea. It was Gordonstoun that nurtured that love through the maturation of his character.

Philip adored the school as much as his son Charles would despise it. Not just because the stress it put on physical as well as mental excellence - he was a great sportsman. But because of its ethos, laid down by its founder Kurt Hahn, a Jewish exile from Nazi Germany.

Hahn first met Philip as a boy in Nazi Germany. Through a connection via one of his sister’s husbands, Philip, the poor, lonely boy was first sent off to a new school - in Nazi Germany. Which was as fun as can be imagined. Schloss Salem had been co-founded by stern educator called Kurt Hahn, a tough, discipline-obsessed conservative nationalist who saw civilisation in inexorable decline. But by this stage Hahn, persecuted for being Jewish in Nazi Germany, had fled to Britain, and Philip did not spend long at the school either, where pressure from the authorities was already making things difficult for the teachers. Philip laughed at the Nazis at first, because their salute was the same gesture the boys at his previous school had to make when they wanted to go to the toilet, but within a year he was back in England, a refugee once again.

Philip happily attended Hahn’s new school, Gordonstoun, which the strict disciplinarian had set up in the Scottish Highlands. Inspired by Ancient Sparta, the boys (and then later girls) had to run around barefoot and endure cold showers, even in winter, the whole aim of which was to drive away the inevitable civilisational decay Hahn saw all around him. To 21st century ears it sounds like hell on earth, yet Philip enjoyed it, illustrating just what a totally alien world he came from.

That ethos became a significant, perhaps the significant, part of the way that Philip believed life should be lived. It shines through the speeches he gave later in his life. "The essence of freedom," he would say in Ghana in 1958, "is discipline and self-control." The comforts of the post-war era, he told the British Schools Exploring Society a year earlier, may be important "but it is much more important that the human spirit should not be stifled by easy living". And two years before that, he spoke to the boys of Ipswich School of the moral as well as material imperatives of life, with the "importance of the individual" as the "guiding principle of our society".

It was at Gordonstoun one of the great contradictions of Philip's fascinating life was born. The importance of the individual was what in Kurt Hahn's eyes differentiated Britain and liberal democracies from the kind of totalitarian dictatorship that he had fled. Philip put that centrality of the individual, and individual agency - the ability we have as humans to make our own moral and ethical decisions - at the heart of his philosophy.

At Dartmouth Naval College in 1939, the two great passions of his life would collide. He had learned to sail at Gordonstoun; he would learn to lead at Dartmouth. And his driving desire to achieve, and to win, would shine through. Despite entering the college far later than most other cadets, he would graduate top of his class in 1940. In further training at Portsmouth, he gained the top grade in four out of five sections of the exam. He became one of the youngest first lieutenants in the Royal Navy.

The navy ran deep in his family. His maternal grandfather had been the First Sea Lord, the commander of the Royal Navy; his uncle, "Dickie" Mountbatten, had command of a destroyer while Philip was in training. In war, he showed not only bravery but guile. It was his natural milieu. "Prince Philip", wrote Gordonstoun headmaster Kurt Hahn admiringly, "will make his mark in any profession where he will have to prove himself in a trial of strength".

2. Prince Philip and the modernisation of the monarchy

In his own words, the process of defining what it meant to be a royal consort was one of “trial and error.” Speaking with BBC One’s Fiona Bruce in 2011, Philip explained, “There was no precedent. If I asked somebody, 'What do you expect me to do?' they all looked blank. They had no bloody idea, nobody had much idea.” So he forged for himself a role as a moderniser of the monarchy.

He could not have had much idea back in 1939. Back then in Dartmouth in 1939, as war became ever more certain, the navy was his destiny. He had fallen in love with the sea itself. "It is an extraordinary master or mistress," he would say later, "it has such extraordinary moods." But a rival to the sea would come.

When King George VI toured Dartmouth Naval College, accompanied by Philip's uncle, he brought with him his daughter, Princess Elizabeth. Philip was asked to look after her. He showed off to her, vaulting the nets of the tennis court in the grounds of the college. He was confident, outgoing, strikingly handsome, of royal blood if without a throne. She was beautiful, a little sheltered, a little serious, and very smitten by Philip.

Did he know then that this was a collision of two great passions? That he could not have the sea and the beautiful young woman? For a time after their wedding in 1948, he did have both. As young newlyweds in Malta, he had what he so prized - command of a ship - and they had two idyllic years together. But the illness and then early death of King George VI brought it all to an end.

He knew what it meant, the moment he was told. Up in a lodge in Kenya, touring Africa, with Princess Elizabeth in place of the King, Philip was told first of the monarch's death in February 1952. He looked, said his equerry Mike Parker, "as if a ton of bricks had fallen on him". For some time he sat, slumped in a chair, a newspaper covering his head and chest. His princess had become the Queen. His world had changed irrevocably.

While the late Princess Diana was later to famously claim that there were “three people” in her marriage - herself, Prince Charles and Camilla - there were at least 55 million in Philip and Elizabeth’s. As Elizabeth dedicated her life to her people at Westminster Abbey at the Coronation on June 2, 1953, it sparked something of an existential crisis in Philip. Many people even after his death have never really understood this pivotal moment in Philip’s life. All his dreams of being a naval officer and a life at sea as well as being the primary provider and partner in his marriage were now sacrificed on the altar of duty and love.

With his career was now over, and he was now destined to become the spare part. Philip, very reasonably, asked that his future children and indeed his family be known by his name, Mountbatten. In effect he was asking to change the royal family’s name from the House of Windsor to the House of Mountbatten. But when Prime Minister Winston Churchill got wind of it as well as the more politically agile courtiers behind the Queen, a prolonged battle of wits ensued, and it was one Philip ultimately lost. It was only in 1957 that he accepted the title of “Prince.”

Even though he had almost lost everything dear to him and his role now undefined, he didn’t throw himself a pity party. He just got on with it. Philip tried to forge his own distinct role as second fiddle to the woman who had come to represent Great Britain. He designated himself the First Officer of the Good Ship Windsor. He set about dusting off some of the cobwebs off the throne and letting some daylight unto the workings of the monarchy by advocating reasonable amount of modernisation of the monarchy.

He had ideas about modernising the royal family that might be called “improving optics” today. But in his heart of hearts he didn’t want the monarchy to become a stuffy museum piece. He envisaged a less stuffy and more popular monarchy, relevant to the lives of ordinary people. Progress was always going to be incremental as he had sturdy opposition from the old guard who wanted to keep everything as it was, but nevertheless his stubborn energy resulted in significant changes.

When a commission chaired by Prince Philip proposed broadcasting the 1953 investiture ceremony that formally named Elizabeth II as queen on live television, Prime Minister Winston Churchill reacted with outright horror, declaring, “It would be unfitting that the whole ceremony should be presented as if it were a theatrical performance.” Though the queen had initially voiced similar concerns, she eventually came around to the idea, allowing the broadcast of all but one segment of the coronation. Ultimately, according to the BBC, more than 20 million people tuned in to the televised ceremony - a credit to the foresight of Philip.

Elizabeth’s coronation marked a watershed moment for a monarchy that has, historically, been very hands off, old-fashioned and slightly invisible. Over the following years, the royals continued to embrace television as a way of connecting with the British people: In 1957, the queen delivered her annual Christmas address during a live broadcast. Again, this was Philip’s doing when he cajoled the Queen to televise her message live. He even helped her in how to use the teleprompter to get over her nerves and be herself on screen.

Four years later, in 1961, Philip became the first family member to sit for a television interview. It is hard for us to imagine now but back then it was huge. For many it was a significant step in modernising the monarchy.

Though not everything went to plan. Toward the end of the decade, the Windsors even invited cameras into their home. A 1969 BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary, instigated by Philip to show life behind the scenes, turned into an unmitigated disaster: “The Windsors” revealed the royals to be a fairly normal, if very rich, British upper-class family who liked barbecues, ice cream, watching television and bickering. The mystery of royalty took a hit below the waterline from their own torpedo, a self-inflicted wound from which they took a long time to recover. Shown once, the documentary was never aired again. But it had an irreversible effect, and not just by revealing the royals to be ordinary. By allowing the cameras in, Philip opened the lid to the prying eyes of the paparazzi who could legitimately argue that since the Royals themselves had sanctioned exposure, anything went. From then on, minor members of the House of Windsor were picked off by the press, like helpless tethered animals on a hunting safari.

Prince Philip also took steps to reorganise and renovate the royal estates in Sandringham and Balmoral such as intercoms, modern dish washers,  generally sought to make the royal household and the monarchy less stuffy, not to have so much formality everywhere.

Philip helped modernised the monarchy in other ways to acknowledge that the monarchy could be responsive to changes in society. It was Prince Philip - much to the chagrin of the haughty Princess Margaret and other stuffy old courtiers - who persuaded the Queen to host informal lunches and garden parties designed to engage a broader swath of the British public. Conversely, Prince Philip heartily encouraged the Queen (she was all for it apparently but was still finding her feet as a new monarch) to end the traditional practice of presenting debutantes from aristocratic backgrounds at court in 1952. For Philip and others it felt antiquated and out of touch with society. I know in speaking to my grandmother and others in her generation the decision was received with disbelief at how this foreign penniless upstart could come and stomp on the dreams of mothers left to clutch their pearls at the prospect there would be no shop window for their daughter to attract a suitable gentleman for marriage. One of my great aunts was over the moon happy that she never would have to go through what she saw as a very silly ceremony because she preferred her muddy wellies to high heels. 

A former senior member of the royal household, who spent several years working as one of Prince Philip’s aides, and an old family friend, once told us around a family dinner table that the Duke of Edinburgh was undoubtedly given a sense of permanence by his marriage into the Royal Family that was missing from earlier years. But the royal aide would hastily add that Prince Philip, of course, would never see it that way.

Prince Philip’s attitude was to never brood on things or seek excuses. And he did indeed get on with the job in his own way  - there should be no doubt that when it came to building and strengthening the Royal Family it was a partnership of equals with the Queen. Indeed contrary to Netflix’s hugely popular series ‘The Crown’ and its depiction of the royal marriage with Philip’s resentment at playing second fiddle, the prince recognised that his “first duty was to serve the Queen in the best way I could,” as he told ITV in 2011. Though this role was somewhat ill-suited to his dynamic, driven, and outspoken temperament, Philip performed it with utter devotion.

3. Prince Philip’s legacy

One could argue rightly that modernising the monarchy was his lasting legacy achievement. But he also tried to modernise a spent and exhausted Britain as it emerged from a ruinous war. When peace came, and with it eventual economic recovery, Philip would throw himself into the construction of a better Britain, urging the country to adopt scientific methods, embracing the ideas of industrial design, planning, education and training. A decade before Harold Wilson talked of the "white heat of the technological revolution", Philip was urging modernity on the nation in speeches and interviews. He was on top of his reading of the latest scientific breakthroughs and well read in break out innovations.

This interest in modernisation was only matched by his love for nature. As the country and the world became richer and consumed ever more, Philip warned of the impact on the environment, well before it was even vaguely fashionable. As president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the UK for more than 20 years from 1961, he was one of the first high-profile advocates of the cause of conservation and biological diversity at a time when it was considered the preserve of an eccentric few.

For a generation of school children in Britain and the Commonwealth though, his most lasting legacy and achievement will be the Duke of Edinburgh Awards (DofE). He set up the Duke of Edinburgh award, a scheme aimed at getting young people out into nature in search of adventure or be of service to their communities. It was a scheme that could match the legacy of Baden Powell’s scouts movement. 

When Prince Philip first outlined his idea of a scheme to harness the values of his education at Gordonstoun by bringing character-building outdoor pursuits to the many rather than the fee-paying few, he received short shrift from the government of the day. The then minister of education, Sir David Eccles responded to the Duke’s proposal by saying: “I hear you’re trying to invent something like the Hitler Youth.” Undeterred he pushed on until it came to fruition.

I’m so glad that he did. I remember how proud I was for getting my DofE Awards while I was at boarding school. With the support of great mentors I managed to achieve my goals: collecting second-hand English books for a literacy programme for orphaned street children in Delhi, India with a close Indian school friend and her family; and completing a 350 mile hike following St. Olav’s Pilgrimmage Trail from Selånger, on the east coast of Sweden, and ending at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, on the west coast of Norway.

It continues to be an enduring legacy.  Since its launch in 1956, the Duke of Edinburgh awards have been bestowed upon some 2.5 million youngsters in Britain and some eight million worldwide. For a man who once referred to himself as a “Greek princeling of no consequence”, his pioneering tutelage of these two organisations (alongside some 778 other organisations of which he was either president or a patron) would be sufficient legacy for most.

4. Prince Philip’s character

It may surprise some but what I liked most about Prince Philip was the very thing that helped him achieve so much and leave a lasting legacy: his character.

It is unhelpful to the caricature of Prince Philip as an unwavering but pugnacious consort whose chief talent was a dizzying facility in off-colour one-liners that he was widely read and probably the cleverest member of his family.

His private library at Windsor consists of 11,000 tomes, among them 200 volumes of poetry. He was a fan of Jung, TS Eliot, Shakespeare and the cookery writer Elizabeth David. As well as a lifelong fascination with science, technology and sport, he spoke fairly fluent French, painted and wrote a well received book on birds. It’s maddening to think how many underestimated his genuine intellect and how cultured he was behind the crusty exterior.

He didn’t have an entourage to fawn around him. He was the first to own a computer at Buckingham Palace. He answered his own phone and wrote and responded to his own correspondence. By force of character he fought the old guard courtiers at every turn to modernise the monarchy  against their stubborn resistance.

Prince Philip was never given to self-analysis or reflection on the past. Various television interviewers tried without success to coerce him in to commenting on his legacy.But once when his guard was down he asked on the occasion of his 90th birthday what he was more proud of, he replied with characteristic bluntness: “I couldn’t care less. Who cares what I think about it, I mean it’s ridiculous.”

All of which neatly raises the profound aversion to fuss and the proclivity for tetchiness often expressed in withering put-downs that, for better or worse, will be the reflex memory for many of the Duke of Edinburgh. If character is a two edged sword so what of his gaffes? 

There is no doubt his cult status partly owed to his so-called legendary gaffes, of which there are enough to fill a book (indeed there is a book). But he was no racist. None of the Commonwealth people or foreign heads of state ever said this about him. Only leftist republicans with too much Twitter time on their hands screamed such a ridiculous accusation. They’re just overly sensitive snowflakes and being devoid of any humour they’re easily triggered.

There was the time that Philip accepted a gift from a local in Kenya, telling her she was a kind woman, and then adding: “You are a woman, aren’t you?” Or the occasion he remarked “You managed not to get eaten, then?” to a student trekking in Papua New Guinea. Then there was his World Wildlife Fund speech in 1986, when he said: “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.” Well, he wasn’t wrong.

Philip quickly developed a reputation for what he once defined, to the General Dental Council, as “dentopedology – the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it”. Clearly he could laugh at himself as he often did as an ice breaker to put others at ease.

His remarking to the president of Nigeria, who was wearing national dress, “You look like you’re ready for bed”, or advising British students in China not to stay too long or they would end up with “slitty eyes”, is probably best written off as ill-judged humour. Telling a photographer to “just take the fucking picture” or declaring “this thing open, whatever it is”, were expressions of exasperation or weariness with which anyone might sympathise.

Above all, he was also capable of genuine if earthy wit, saying of his horse-loving daughter Princess Anne: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay she isn’t interested.” Many people might have thought it but few dared say it. If Prince Philip’s famous gaffes provoked as much amusement as anger, it was precisely because they seem to give voice to the bewilderment and pent-up frustrations with which many people viewed the ever-changing modern world.

A former royal protection officer recounts how while on night duty guarding a visiting Queen and consort, he engaged in conversation with colleagues on a passing patrol. It was 2am and the officer had understood the royal couple to be staying elsewhere in the building until a window above his head was abruptly slammed open and an irate Prince Philip stuck his head out of the window to shout: “Would you fuck off!” Without another word, he then shut the window.

The Duke at least recognised from an early age that he was possessed of an abruptness that could all too easily cross the line from the refreshingly salty to crass effrontery.

One of his most perceptive biographers, Philip Eade, recounted how at the age of 21 the prince wrote a letter to a relation whose son had recently been killed in combat. He wrote: “I know you will never think much of me. I am rude and unmannerly and I say things out of turn which I realise afterwards must have hurt someone. Then I am filled with remorse and I try to put matters right.”

In the case of the royal protection officer, the Duke turned up in the room used by the police officers when off duty and said: “Terribly sorry about last night, wasn’t quite feeling myself.”

Aides have also ventured to explain away some of their employer’s more outlandish remarks - from asking Cayman islanders “You are descended from pirates aren’t you?” to enquiring of a female fashion writer if she was wearing mink knickers - as the price of his instinctive desire to prick the pomposity of his presence with a quip to put others at ease.

Indeed many people forget that his ‘gaffes’ were more typical of the clubbish humour of the British officer class – which of course would be less appreciated, sometimes even offensive, to other ears. It’s why he could relate so well to veterans who enjoyed his bonhomie company immensely.

But behind the irascibility, some have argued there also lay a darker nature, unpleasantly distilled in his flinty attitude to his eldest son. One anecdote tells of how, in the aftermath of the murder of the Duke’s uncle and surrogate father, Lord Mountbatten,  Philip lectured his son, who was also extremely fond of his “honorary grandfather”, that he was not to succumb to self-pity. Charles left the room in tears and when his father was asked why he had spoken to his son with so little compassion, the Duke replied: “Because if there’s any crying to be done I want it to happen within this house, in front of his family, not in public. He must be toughened up, right now.”

But here I would say that Prince Philip’s intentions were almost always sincere and in no way cruel. He has always tried to protect his family - even from their own worst selves or from those outside the family ‘firm’ who may not have their best interest at heart.

In 1937, a 16-year-old Prince Philip had walked behind his elder sister Cecile’s coffin after she was killed in a plane crash while heavily pregnant. The remains of newly-born infant found in the wreckage suggested the aircraft had perished as the pilot sought to make an emergency landing in fog as the mother entered childbirth. It was an excruciating taste of tragedy which would one day manifest itself in a very princely form of kindness that was deep down that defined Philip’s character.

When about 60 years later Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spin doctors in Downing Street tried to strong arm the Queen and the royal household over the the arrangements for the late Prince Diana’s funeral, it was Philip who stepped in front to protect his family. The Prime Minister and his media savvy spin doctors wanted the two young princes, William and Harry, to walk behind the coffin.

The infamous exchange was on the phone during a conference call between London and Balmoral, and the emotional Philip was reportedly backed by the Queen. The call was witnessed by Anji Hunter, who worked for Mr Blair. She said how surprised she was to hear Prince Philip’s emotion. ‘It’s about the boys,” he cried, “They’ve lost their mother”. Hunter thought to herself, “My God, there’s a bit of suffering going on up there”.’

Sky TV political commentator Adam Boulton (Anji Hunter’s husband) would write in his book Tony’s Ten Years: ‘The Queen relished the moment when Philip bellowed over the speakerphone from Balmoral, “Fuck off. We are talking about two boys who have just lost their mother”. Boulton goes on to say that Philip: ‘…was trying to remind everyone that human feelings were involved. No 10 were trying to help the Royals present things in the best way, but may have seemed insensitive.’

In the end the politicians almost didn’t get their way. Prince Philip stepped in to counsel his grandson, Prince William, after he had expressed a reluctance to follow his mother’s coffin after her death in Paris. Philip told the grieving child: “If you don’t walk, I think you’ll regret it later. If I walk, will you walk with me?”

It’s no wonder he was sought as a counsellor by other senior royals and especially close to his grandchildren, for whom he was a firm favourite. His relationship with Harry was said to have become strained, however, following the younger Prince’s decision to reject his royal inheritance for a life away from the public eye in America with his new American wife, Meghan Markle. For Prince Philip I am quite sure it went against all the elder Prince had lived his life by - self-sacrifice for the greater cause of royalty.

This is the key to Philip’s character and in understanding the man. The ingrained habits of a lifetime of duty and service in one form or another were never far away.

In conclusion then....

After more time passes I am sure historians will make a richer reassessment of Prince Philip’s life and legacy. Because Prince Philip was an extraordinary man who lived an extraordinary life; a life intimately connected with the sweeping changes of our turbulent 20th Century, a life of fascinating contrast and contradiction, of service and some degree of solitude. A complex, clever, eternally restless man that not even the suffocating protocols of royalty and tradition could bind him.

Although he fully accepted the limitations of public royal service, he did not see this as any reason for passive self-abnegation, but actively, if ironically, identified with his potentially undignified role. It is this bold and humorous embrace of fated restriction which many now find irksome: one is no longer supposed to mix public performance with private self-expression in quite this manner.

Yet such a mix is authentically Socratic: the proof that the doing of one’s duty can also be the way of self-fulfilment. The Duke’s sacrifice of career to romance and ceremonial office is all the more impressive for his not hiding some annoyance. The combination of his restless temperament and his deeply felt devotion to duty found fruitful expression; for instance, in the work of Saint George’s House Windsor - a centre and retreat that he created with Revd. Robin Woods - in exploring religious faith, philosophy, and contemporary issues.

Above all he developed a way to be male that was both traditional and modern. He served one woman with chivalric devotion as his main task in life while fulfilling his public engagements in a bold and active spirit. He eventually embraced the opportunity to read and contemplate more. And yet, he remained loyal to the imperatives of his mentor Kurt Hahn in seeking to combine imagination with action and religious devotion with practical involvement.

Prince Philip took more pride in the roles he had accidentally inherited than in the personal gifts which he was never able fully to develop. He put companionship before self-realisation and acceptance of a sacred symbolic destiny before the mere influencing of events. In all these respects he implicitly rebuked our prevailing meritocracy which over-values officially accredited attainment, and our prevailing narcissism which valorises the assertion of discrete identities.

Prince Philip was Britain’s longest-serving consort. He was steadfast, duty driven, and a necessary adjunct to the continuity and stability of the Queen and the monarchy. Of all the institutions that have lost the faith of the British public in this period - the Church, Parliament, the media, the police - the Monarchy itself has surprisingly done better than most at surviving, curiously well-adapted to a period of societal change and moral anarchy. The House of Hanover and later Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (changed to Windsor), since their arrival in this country in 1714, have been noted above all for their ability to adapt. And just as they survived the Victorian age by transforming themselves into the bourgeoise, domestic ideal, so they have survived the new Elizabethan era (Harry-Meghan saga is just a passing blip like the Edward-Wallis Simpson saga of the 1930s).

There was once a time when the Royal’s German blood was a punchline for crude and xenophobic satirists. Now it is the royals who are deeply British while the country itself is increasingly cosmopolitan and globalised. British society has seen a greater demographic change than the preceding four or five thousand years combined, the second Elizabethan age has been characterised more than anything by a transformational movement of people. Prince Philip, the Greek-born, Danish-German persecuted and destitute wanderer who came to become one of the Greatest Britons of the past century, perhaps epitomised that era better than anyone else. And he got through it by making a joke of everything, and by being practical.

I hope I don’t exaggerate when I say that in our troubled times over identity, and our place and purpose in the world, we need to heed his selfless example more than ever.

As Heraclitus wisely said,  Ήθος ανθρώπω δαίμων (Character is destiny.)

RIP Prince Philip. You were my prince. God damn you, I miss you already.

Thanks for your question.

[taggingtim]

Why I love Pre-Boot Tim Drake and why the Reboot has ruined him

I love Tim Drake.  He is my favorite comic book character of all time.  I’ve been really upset the past few days about what DC has been doing with him lately, and I thought it would be cathartic for me to write something up about it.  (No, this isn’t a rant about Tim being bi/gay; it’s a much larger problem than that. But I’ll get to that in a bit.) Bear with me for a bit of history, first.

When I was a kid I loved the Batman Animated Series.  I know this will lose me a lot of internet cred, but I always preferred the fourth season. In particular, I loved Tim Drake. He was fun and funny and I absolutely adored him.  I used to beg my mom to take me to the mall so I could buy issues of Gotham Adventures. For my birthday one year my parents got me a subscription to the comic, and I was blown away by the idea that I could have comics MAILED to my HOUSE.

Around middle school I started collecting Marvel comics, mostly X-men stuff.  I loved them, but when I started college I quit the hobby for financial reasons.

 Fast forward a few years, and I felt I was financially stable enough to start buying comics again. Rather than going back to Marvel, I decided to give Batman comics a chance.  I had no idea where to start, and when I found out my beloved Tim had his own comic series, I thought it was a perfect entry point into the Batman universe. I bought the complete series from a local comic shop and dove in.

 Tim’s Robin series was exactly what I was looking for in a comic.  He was very different from little Timmy Todd from BtAS, but I loved him. I built the rest of my comic collection around him, grabbing up every book that he was featured in, from Young Justice to Teen Titans to Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, Red Robin, and many others.  I have random books from series like The Demon just because Tim was in them.

 So why did I like Tim so much?  What about this character made me so excited for more?  I found in Tim something that I had never seen in a comic book before: character growth.  Somehow, though he was written by many different authors over many different years, Tim managed to have a character arc that is consistent and makes sense. Sure, there were a few small bumps along the way, but on the whole Tim has always stayed true to his character, and he’s developed in a way that the big name characters, like Batman, never can.

 When we’re first introduced to Tim, he’s a young teen who has been neglected by his parents growing up. He’s smart, healthy, and strong, but he lacks so much self confidence and has little sense of self worth.  Tim notices Bruce’s increasing violence as he grieves for the loss of his son, and Tim knows he needs to step in and help.  Batman needs a Robin.

 For most characters, this would be the part where Tim put himself forward for the job.  But he doesn’t.  He seeks out Dick Grayson and begs him to come home instead.  It’s only when Batman and Nightwing are in danger and there is literally no one else to help that Tim steps up and dons the cape. And once he does, he’s constantly plagued by self-doubt, terrified he will screw up and leave Batman worse than ever before.

 From there, Tim undergoes intense training.  He never begs to be in the spotlight, doesn’t push to go out on the streets before he’s ready.  His goal is to help Bruce as much as possible.

 Here’s where I started to fall in love with him.  All that self-doubt, the constant need to be useful?  That’s exactly what you would expect to see from a child whose parents had ignored and neglected him.  He finally has a parental figure who sees him, who values him, and Tim does everything he can to make himself worthy in the hopes that Bruce will keep him around.

 This is the first example of character consistency that we see with Tim.  And it continues.  When his mom dies and his dad is put in a coma, you see Tim struggle to come to terms with losing the people he loves, but never had a relationship with.  Tim almost never mentions his mom after her death, because she just wasn’t present in his life.  When his dad recovers and decides to stick around, Tim struggles to build a relationship with him.  He’s plagued with guilt because he’s finally found the father figure he needed in Bruce, but he thinks that he’s supposed to feel that way for Jack.  It’s a running undercurrent in their relationship that creates distance between them for years.

 This is already so long, so I’m going to try to summarize a bit more.  We get to watch Tim grow up.  We see his awkward relationship with his first girlfriend, Ariana.  He doesn’t know how to treat her; he’s never had the opportunity to observe a healthy relationship.  But he tries so, so hard.  All of Tim’s relationships are awkward, because he’s never had a model of a good one. Steph is a great match for him, because she’s very vocal about what she wants and needs, and she isn’t afraid to call Tim out when he messes up, which is exactly what Tim needs.

 Big things happen to Tim. He’s stuck with Jean-Paul Valley, who slowly goes insane, leaving Tim to try to keep the city in one piece.  He’s infected with the Clench, a plague that sweeps over Gotham and kills everyone it touches, and barely escapes with his life. His girlfriend is sexually assaulted, leaving him to deal with the fallout.  His family moves out of Gotham, and he has to sneak back in during No Man’s Land to help.  His relationship with his dad has intense ups and downs, resulting in him being sent to boarding school, punished in a variety of ways, and generally caused a lot of trouble in his life.

 Then people start dying. Over the course of about a year in his life, Tim loses his girlfriend, his dad, a close friend, and his best friend, each of whom dies under tragic conditions.  Tim’s grief is intense, and he is understandably traumatized by the losses. We see fundamental changes in his character.  He changes his costume from something bright and cheerful to something darker that reflects his emotional state.  He’s more subdued, his adventures a little more serious.

 When Bruce first tries to adopt him, Tim literally creates an uncle and hires an actor to play him, just to avoid dealing with the situation.  Bruce has viewed Tim as a son for years, so to him the adoption is an obvious step.  For Tim, it feels like a betrayal of his father, and it takes a while before he’s ready to accept Bruce’s love, home, and a place in his family.  

 When Damian shows up on the scene, Tim really struggles with him, and not just because early Damian is a horrid brat who tries to kill Tim on multiple occasions.  Tim has always felt the need to earn his place with Bruce, and Damian constantly throws all of Tim’s biggest fears in his face—he’s not wanted or needed now that the “real” son is here, he’s not worthy of a place in the family, he’s not good enough.

 Tim tries to clone Conner, his best friend.  He’s lost so many people, and he’s desperate to get them back.  Conner was cloned to begin with and fully matured over a very short period of time; the technology clearly exists, so why can’t Tim use it to get his best friend back?  And if he can get Conner back, why not the others he’s lost?  He eventually gives up, but when he eventually gets access to a Lazarus Pit, he immediately wants to incorporate the waters into his process so he can revive his loved ones.  With Dick’s help, Tim eventually decides to let it go, but it’s such a poignant moment for the character.

 Then Bruce dies, and Dick takes Robin away.  Tim switches to the Red Robin persona as he travels the world, alone, trying to prove that he was right.  He has to deal with the trauma of losing another father, finds out that his girlfriend never died but let him hurt so much for so long.  His brother and the only close friend he has left both think his grief has overwhelmed his sense and that he’s gone crazy.  He’s utterly alone.

 The Red Robin series is such a great culmination for Tim.  He finds a place for himself as a hero, as a CEO.  He gets parts of his family back—Bruce, Steph, Bart, Conner.  He finally figures out who he wants to be and creates a place for himself.

 This overarching character development is what I love about Tim.  His many, many traumas impact his decisions, and you can clearly see how he changes over time as a result of them.  I didn’t even go into his development as a leader from his early fumbling with Young Justice to his strong leadership of the Teen Titans, or how his relationships with Conner, Bart, and Cassie develop so fluidly and realistically over the years.

 This is why I love Tim. Characters like Batman are static; nothing that happens to them will ever have a lasting impact, because in the end the character always returns to what they were.  Tim, on the other hand, has changed and developed A LOT since his initial appearance.  His growth has always been consistent and logical.

 When the reboot happened, all of that character growth was lost.  Tim was replaced with a jerk who betrayed his friends and cheated on his girlfriend.  DC has basically retconned all of this and tried to turn Tim back into who he was, but by taking away all of the things that have happened to him over the years, Tim has lost SO MUCH.

 I keep looking for my Tim in recent comics, and I just can’t find him.  It breaks my heart, because I love him so much, and it feels like he’s lost to me forever.  The most recent Young Justice comic series actually gave me hope; I felt like maybe, finally, someone was going to write Tim correctly.  He had his primary friendships back, his relationship with Steph was developing (even if they seem to have completely dropped all the development around Steph’s decision to let Tim think she was dead).  The actual book itself wasn’t fantastic, but it felt like they were headed in the right direction.

 Over the last few days, I read the Batman: Urban Legends books.  I actually read the Batman/Red Hood story first, which was fantastic.  I was really excited to read Tim’s story (though I already knew how it ended).  Jason’s character was handled so well, and he seemed to actually have some character development that will hopefully last.  I anticipated the same for Tim.

 But Tim’s story was awful. The plot was all over the place—kids are being kidnapped, so Tim has to join a pain cult to get them back?  He’s somehow helping Oracle with computer issues while simultaneously questioning witnesses?  He’s broken up with Steph, off camera, shortly after telling her how much he loves her, but Steph somehow thinks that they should have a caring relationship where Tim tells her what he’s feeling?  Bernard has somehow become a good enough fighter to stand side by side with Robin?  Tim STILL doesn’t have a code name?  Why is everyone suddenly hounding him about what he wants to do with his life?

 It’s just such a mess of a story.  If it didn’t end with Tim agreeing to go on a date with Bernard, no one would ever have even mentioned it.  There’s nothing particularly re-readable or enjoyable about it.

 I actually liked that they brought Bernard back. I really enjoyed him in the original Robin series. It’s been a while since I read that part of the series (I’m actually working my way back through it now).  I know Bernard always read as gay to me, yet somehow I felt like he was out of character in these books.

 And then, the climax of the story.  Tim is bi, or gay, or has at least agreed to go on a date with a boy.

 If this had happened in the pre-boot, when Tim was Red Robin and had an actual character arc, I honestly wouldn’t have had an issue with it.  I do think it would have needed a LOT more build up than it was given here.  Tim has always been a very introspective character, and we’ve been party to so much of his internal monologue over the years.  It seems very strange to me that such a huge thing just sneaks up on him out of nowhere when he’s never even thought about it before.

 But more than that, this story just feels like the final death blow for the Tim I loved.  The whole arc is about how Tim doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be.  What will his hero name be?  Will he go to college?  What is he going to do with his life?  These are all great questions, and his answer to all of them is… date a boy?  

 Is this going to be his defining characteristic going forward?  From here will we just see Tim exploring and discovering his sexuality?  The Tim we have now doesn’t have a family, a team, a purpose, or even a code name.  Why was this the thing that DC decided to give us?  It feels like they wanted to make a gay Robin and decided it would be Tim because they didn’t know what else to do with him.

 It’s stupid, but I honestly feel like I’ve spent the past few days grieving the loss of a loved one. The Tim that DC is presenting now is just not the person that I knew.  Tim would never break up with Steph that abruptly for what he admits is no apparent reason.  He would never say “just call me Robin, since Damian’s out of town.”  Everything that I love about Tim seems to be gone, and in its place DC has given me a date with a boy.  

 Again, it’s not Tim being not-straight that I have an issue with.  I’ve never read the character that way, but it’s something I can live with. My issue is the way it was handled. Why not make Tim an actual person first, and then explore his sexuality?  Send him off to college!  He’s obviously thinking about it!  It’s the perfect opportunity to give him his own book.  He can move to a different city, choose a new name, and DC can introduce a whole new set of characters.  Figure out which parts of Tim’s backstory are still canon, and which have been dropped. Make him a person again, and then let him explore his sexuality.

 I know this post is all over the place, and I don’t have time right now to go back and edit it.  I just really needed an outlet for my frustration.  Right now it feels like there are so many people who are so excited about Tim being bi/gay, but they don’t know anything else about him.  I keep seeing people comment how DC has been “dropping hints for years!” with no evidence other than “he and Superboy were really close!”  I guess I’d just really like to have some dialogue with other people who are fans of Tim, rather than fans of Tim-as-bi/gay or fans of Tim-as-straight.

 Does anyone else feel this way?  I’d honestly like to have a dialogue about it with other long time fans.

[tamuramachi]

Yumi Tamura Long Interview from Da Vinci August 2020 Issue

Basic translations of the long interview with mangaka Yumi Tamura published in the Da Vinci magazine August 2020 issue. Translation notes appear at the end and correspond with the numbers enclosed in brackets that appear in the body of the post.

<<SPOILER ALERT to anyone who hasn't finished BASARA, and possibly 7SEEDS (though nothing major) if you haven't reached Volume 10/11, specifically the Ash chapter arc on Ryugu Shelter.>>

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This year marks the 38th anniversary of Yumi Tamura's debut.

Tomoe ga Yuku!, BASARA, and 7SEEDS are big hit series, and her current serialization, Mystery to Iu Nakare, is also attracting a great deal of attention. Throughout her illustrious career, just as her portrayed protagonists have always been "fighting people," she herself has always been a "fighting manga artist.” This is a precious long interview with Tamura that reveals the path she has taken as a manga artist!

The Budding Worldview Begins in a Manga Club

Yumi Tamura opened the door to the world of manga when she was in junior high and high school. It was during this time that she first made many friends who drew manga together.

“I formed a manga club. We weren’t allowed to have a manga club at my school, so I formed an independent one with kids from other schools. After school, we would gather at the house of a member and draw various things. But it's not like we were making proper manuscripts yet at that time. It was more like relay manga [1.], where we would draw with pencils in a notebook. We also made photocopy zines and went to events to sell them. I liked horror and suspense [genres], and now that I think about it, ensemble dramas [2.]. I was creating a single world and putting various characters in it, each with their own story. It was like playing with worlds and characters.”

It was in this manga club that Tamura began walking the path of becoming a professional. In high school, her friends told her they wanted to become manga artists, and in her sophomore year, Tamura, too, finished her first real manuscript and submitted it to Bessatsu Shoujo Comic. It was selected as an honorable mention for the monthly award, and an editor was already assigned to her after her second submission.

“A career as manga artist finally became a reality at this point. When I was deciding on a career path, I thought to myself that I didn’t want to draw manga only as a side job, so I had no choice but to become a manga artist. I entered a design school in Tokyo and worked as an assistant here and there while aiming to make my debut.”

I wanted to draw a hard-boiled suspense with a male protagonist.

For Tamura, the manga club was not only the beginning, but also an important place where the foundation of her career as a manga artist formed.

“The person who influenced me the most in becoming a manga artist was a friend of mine from the manga club. She was a very unique person and a good artist. She would draw pictures of an old Black man playing musical instruments in color. She would also draw stories about the environment from the perspective of a wolf. Seeing her, I realized that I’d be in trouble if I couldn’t draw men and women of all ages too. I started practicing drawing animals, mechanical objects, and with colors. As many of the contributors often say, you should put yourself in an environment where there are people who are clearly better than you. You'll definitely learn a lot that way. If I hadn't met that friend, I don't think I would have become a manga artist.”

Friction Between One's Own Worldview and the Required Worldview

However, after moving to Tokyo, Tamura continued her work in anguish for a brief period. She struggled with the friction between her own view of the world and the so-called shoujo-manga-like worldview.

“I wanted to create a hard-boiled type of story with a male protagonist and with a sense of suspense. But I assumed I couldn't do that for a 32-page piece, so I ended up not knowing what to actually draw for submission. After about two years, I decided that I couldn’t continue this way, so I finally started drawing what I wanted to draw. That was my debut work, Ore-tachi no Zettai Jikan.”

[Image caption: This is Billy, who could be called Tamura’s own fighting game character that she would choose to play. The actions of this rookie newspaper reporter are dazzling! (From Ore-tachi no Zettai Jikan)]

This work won an honorable mention in the Shogakukan Newcomer Comic Award, and was published in an additional issue of Bessatsu Shoujo Comic in 1983. The story begins when Billy, a rookie newspaper reporter, meets a mysterious man who is carrying a dead girl's body.

“Billy is one of the characters in the world that I was creating back in my manga club days. I tried to draw him the way I would like my own selected character [in a fighting video game]. I submitted the work without even showing it to my editor.”

In the 1980s, shoujo manga was in its golden age of school romantic comedies. It could be said that Tamura had begun acquiring her own unique style since the time of her debut.

“It's true that I'm often told that my work is not limited to the boundaries of shoujo manga. But I've never thought of shoujo manga as having any boundaries, and I naturally believe that it has a wide range where anything can be done. I mean I've been reading such stories for a long time. From the perspective of an otaku of my generation, the school romantic comedy genre that everyone often thinks of [and associates with shoujo] is something that came along relatively later.”

However, even after her debut, Tamura still ran into a wall with the worldview requested by the [Bessatsu Shoujo Comic] magazine. Her first serialization was Chotto Eiyuu (Hiirou) shite Mitai. It's a story about a high school girl who plays tennis.

“The person in charge told me that the main character needed to be a girl; that a mystery/suspense was not allowed; that since it’s action, it should be about sports. And that’s how the setting came to be. But because of that, this is a pretty heavy and somewhat bitter memory for me.”

Wanting a Protagonist Who Fights Alongside Men on Equal Footing

The first breakthrough in Tamura’s career came in 1987 with the serialization of Tomoe ga Yuku!. The main character is Tomoe, a delinquent girl who formerly rode roller skates down freeways. She meets Iori, the heir of a business conglomerate, and together they fight to protect him against various threats. With this work, Tamura solidified her position as a popular manga artist. But above all, Tomoe established the heroine image of the "fighting shoujo [girl]" that came to symbolize Tamura's work.

“Tomoe is by no means a strong girl. She is troubled by her own weakness, but she earnestly tries her best to be strong. In Tomoe, for the first time, I put in my own thoughts and problems that I’ve been carrying--the weaknesses, complexes, and worries I had inside me. Though I don't know if that’s an appropriate form for creative work like manga. I'm not a strong person at all, so I tried my best during this time in hopes of becoming strong too. Tomoe runs while crying. I was very happy that readers could relate to that. For the first time in this work, I thought it was fun to have a girl as the protagonist.”

“Thank you for loving me, I will make you happy too.”

We asked once more: In the end, isn't the so-called normal girl, a girl who is loved by a prince-like boy and becomes happy, the kind of protagonist that Tamura should be portraying?

“Of course, I want the protagonist to be loved and happy. But there's a part of me that thinks that she can't really be happy in the way you describe. She’s not an equal [to her partner] somehow, and I feel like sooner or later she’ll be looked down upon or despised as long as that remains the case. It's tiring to be at the mercy of others. For example, even if I do feel loved, I don't want to just be patted on the head; I want to pat your head in return as well. I want to be treated as an equal human being. Thus, I want her to be a girl who says, ‘Thank you for loving me, I will make you happy too.’ For some reason, this kind of awareness has always been with me. When I was a child, I loved tokusatsu [3.] and anime, especially the ones where the lone woman in a group plays the same active role as the men. For example, Françoise Arnoul in Cyborg 009 and Yōko Nogiwa in Key Hunter, though it’s a drama.”

Tomoe was also taken from Tomoe Gozen [4.].

“Tomoe Gozen is said to have charged alongside Kiso Yoshinaka [5.] on the battlefield. I very much admire that kind of relationship. I don't want to simply be told, ‘I'll protect you, so stay back.’ I want to fight together, hand in hand, raising each other up. Well, that's the ideal, but...I know it's difficult to achieve.”

The Idea for Sarasa Came from an Egyptian Queen Who Dressed Like a Man

In 1990, the same year that the serialization of Tomoe ga Yuku! ended, Tamura started serializing BASARA. Including the Gaiden [appendix; side story], the series ran until 1999 and won the 38th Shogakukan Manga Award. This is Tamura's legendary masterpiece that is still loved by many fans. The story takes place in Japan several hundred years after the collapse of civilization. Sarasa, a girl born in the village of Byakko, takes the place of her murdered twin brother, Tatara, and grows up to become the leader of a revolutionary army to save the people suffering under the king's oppressive rule.

[Image caption: This Okinawa edition is full of tropical flair! (From BASARA)]

“The idea started with a trip to Egypt. There, I learned about the female king, Hatshepsut, who ruled as a pharaoh while dressed as a man, and so I thought it would also be great to have a story about a girl fighting in the disguise of a man. There were already a lot of Egyptian-based stories, so I decided to make a Japanese one, but I thought it would be difficult to portray an actual historical figure since my mind would be wrapped up in historical facts. Thus, it became a fictional war story set in future Japan.”

One of the major attractions of BASARA is the fictional setting of the war. Centered on the imperial capital, Kyoto, Japan is divided into four provinces ruled by the Black King, the Blue King, the White King, and the Red King. There’s a large temple in Kumano and a prison, Abashiri, in the far north. Okinawa is an independent country with a presidential system. It is a world that is slightly connected to the real Japan, yet far more original.

“As usual, I kind of started before really deciding on the detailed setting. I immediately got stuck on what to do next (laughs), but I finally grasped the general idea of how to proceed around the time I put out the Kanmon Tunnel chapters. I realized then that this was indeed going to be a story about Sarasa’s journey around the actual islands of Japan. I guess this was partly due to the influence of role-playing games [6.]. So, as she travels around like that, some real places, such as Sakurajima, appear in the story, while there are other places that have completely changed. I tried to mix in settings that overlap a bit with historical facts and folklore, among trying other things, so it was a lot of fun to create.”

Not Wanting Just Strength; Kindness is Also Necessary

The heart of the story in BASARA is Sarasa’s internal conflict and love. While leading the Tatara army, Sarasa continues to question herself. “Why do I kill people on the battlefield when I want to create a country where people are not killed?” She also then falls deeply in love with the Red King, Shuri, not realizing that he is her own enemy. Sarasa, like Tomoe, is a "fighting girl," but she anguishes and struggles the more deeply she fights and loves.

“Sarasa is also a girl who knows she is weak and keeps struggling to be strong. But in the latter half of the story, she realizes that it’s not enough. Strength alone is not enough; you have to be kind.”

Sarasa reflects: “I thought all I wanted was strength, but every time I come in contact with someone's kindness, I wish I could be kind like them too, I wish I could be even more so; not just strong like Byakko.”

Tamura continues:

“Sarasa is not solely trying to be her brother, Tatara, nor a beautiful woman dressed as a man. She actually loved and lived as a girl. From the beginning of the story to the end, the protagonist has been extremely conscious of the fact that she is a girl. This was a work in which I myself kept thinking about what it meant be a girl.”

After fulfilling her goal of overthrowing the kingdom, Sarasa does not become the head of the new country. She, along with Shuri, disappears from everyone's sight. In the Gaiden, it is mentioned that they crossed over to Europe and established a company called Green Shokai [Green Trading Company].

“I had trouble with the conclusion through the very end. There is still a part of me that doesn't know if them leaving the country was a good choice or not. Maybe Sarasa should have ruled the country. But then, she would have never been able to be with Shuri. I was also very worried about whether or not Sarasa could really forgive Shuri, or if she should. In fact, my editor at one point told me that the two of them should die. But I didn't want to do that. I believed they should live on because they had persevered through so much and fought so hard all that time to be happy. If it had been a short story, I think the ending would have been different. But for this story, it's more meaningful for them to live than to gloriously die a noble death, and even if it's hard, the two of them should bear the burden of their responsibility. The readers called it a job change (laughs), but it’s another way of supporting their country as merchants. In the end, that's how their future together turned out.”

7SEEDS is a School Drama

Tamura's writing prowess continued to grow. In 2001 following BASARA, she launched her other masterpiece, 7SEEDS. The series ran for 16 years and won the Shogakukan Manga Award as well. In the story, five teams of seven people each—Team Spring, Summer A, Summer B, Autumn, and Winter—are put under cryogenic sleep and awaken in the future after the extinction of the human race.

[Image caption: Natsu and Hana in their school uniforms. It certainly looks like a school drama! (From 7SEEDS)]

“Again, I started this one in a hurry before I could really decide on anything (laughs), so I had a rather rough time until about volume 6. I wanted to take a good break for a moment, but it was hard to get one. But then in the chapter arc about Team Summer A at the institute, the story came to me all at once, right up to the final selection test. That was when I remembered the sensation of ‘manga is fun!’ for the first time in a long time.”

Even though the setup can be seen as a future survival story, 7SEEDS is a human drama all the way through.

“In my opinion, this work is a school drama. I'm not very good at school stories, so I've rarely written them, but here, there are only boys and girls of about high school-age, and they live together. In the end, it's not a survival know-how story, and of course it's not science fiction; it's a story about how people interact with each other and how they go on living.”

Natsu, who was bullied; Hana and Arashi, who were lovers; Aramaki, a former high school baseball player; and Ango, who carries trauma from his time at the institution. This is the ultimate ensemble drama, with each character having a life of their own to the point where it can be said that all the characters play a leading role.

"Whenever I draw manga, I always think that the supporting characters are not living for the sake of the main character. All of them are living for their own happiness. And it’s when they collide and overlap with each other that the story forms. Also, as is the case with BASARA, even if the young people are the main characters, it’s necessary to depict an adult society in the background—the ideas, expectations, and interests of adults. Only then can that world become one, but that’s the most challenging part.”

There is one chapter arc in 7SEEDS that Tamura herself loves. It's the "Ryugu" shelter, which portrays the time when humanity is on the verge of extinction.

“It seems that many readers are reminded of Ryugu shelter now with the occurrence of Corona [COVID-19 pandemic].”

In the Ryugu shelter, a singer, comedian, ramen chef, dairy farmer, and manga artist all fulfill their professional duties up until the moment of their deaths.

“What would we do if the end of humankind became a reality? I figured that in the end we would do the same thing as they did.”

Dissatisfaction with Gladiator is the Inspiration for Toraji?

One of the most notable aspects of Tamura's career is that while drawing long-running big hits without interruption since the time of Tomoe ga Yuku!, she has been constantly releasing new serialized work and one-shot short stories to the world. When BASARA was in serialization, she created a number of masterpieces, including the Ryuzaburou series featuring a 10-year-old boy, Kinezukan in which a group of senior citizens play an active role, and the horror work 4nin no Onna. And since the start of 7SEEDS, she has started two other series, Neko Mix Genkitan Toraji and Iromen—Juunin Toiro—.

Toraji is a fantasy story set in a world where humans and mice are at war with each other. Hero Pai’yan together along with half-human (mix) cat, Toraji, is searching for his son, who was kidnapped by the Magic Mouse. In Iromen, Aoki, Akagi, Midorikawa, and other men and women with colors in their names fixate on colors and engage in discussions over them at a company.

[Image caption: Color-obsessed Iromen [7.]. Tamura’s hobby-filled pieces of tidbits and jokes are entertaining! (From Iromen)]

“The times when I’m in good form are probably when I'm able to work simultaneously on things with slightly different flavors, such as a serious story for the main magazine and a comedy for another. Toraji was inspired by the movie Gladiator. At the beginning of the movie, the main character, a Roman army general, finds his wife and child murdered while he was away in battle. Consequently, the story is about that man fighting as a gladiator for revenge, and of course it’s a magnificent movie, but there was something that made me pause. His wife and child become a very beautiful memory for him; however, he was always away at war and basically neglected them. Isn’t it possible that they hated [him] or was angry with [him]? They weren’t dolls, they were human beings who had feelings and thought about things. But the main character doesn’t think about that even for a minute. I was a little dissatisfied with that, and thus, decided to create Toraji. That’s why Toraji is a story about a son and mother who wants to say to their neglectful father, ‘We are living people too.’”

On the other hand, as for Iromen ...

“It’s like a compilation of myself (laughs). Because I put in real life works like tokusatsu and anime, along with other real products; in other words, I included all the things I like. Moreover, since it was the first time in a long time that I was depicting the present-day real world, it was actually serving as a stepping stone to Mystery to Iu Nakare. After I started the Iromen series, I wrote down notes of proverbs, famous quotes, and anything related to colors. I’ve utilized colors [words, phrases, titles, names, etc.] in BASARA as well. I don’t know much about poetry or literature, but maybe I’m interested in words themselves—in the history of specific words and kanji. I feel like that fixation is gradually showing in my manga.”

Totonou’s Discussions are Something that I’ve Been Thinking About for a Long Time

Mystery to Iu Nakare, which is currently in serialization, also began as a one-shot that was drawn during the same time as 7SEEDS.

“To tell the truth, I had already decided on a different story for the new series. I’ve been wanting to do something a bit like an omnibus for a long time. But fortunately, I received great responses to the Mystery one-shot, so I decided to make it a series.”

Mystery to Iu Nakare has acquired a readership that extends beyond traditional manga fans, and last year it ranked second in the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2019 Onna Hen [Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2019 ranking for female readers] and the Manga Taisho 2019 award list. It is no exaggeration to say that it is one of the hottest manga right now. Perhaps the secret of its popularity stems from the fact that Mystery is packed with everything Tamura has ever done. For example, the main character is a university student named Totonou Kunou. Although he takes on the role of a detective, his true value lies not so much in solving mysteries, but rather, in his sincere point of view on the essence of society and people. He never stays silent when he thinks something is wrong. His inability to read the atmosphere and his reluctance to give up also make him a certain kind of “difficult person.” And Tamura has portrayed many undoubtedly “difficult people” in her works thus far.

[Image caption: Totonou, who is a difficult type of person, yet a beloved character. (From Mystery to Iu Nakare)]

“I’m the type of person who cannot speak up clearly even when frustrated, so maybe I admire people who don’t keep quiet. People who can think things through and put them into words. Like, ‘I’m not so sure that's the case’ to ‘I think this is wrong.’”

What strongly attracts readers is the numerous words from Totonou, who never remains silent. The gender inequality that still exists in society, the burden placed on mothers in raising children, what it means to love a child, and why it is wrong to kill people… for each of these topics, he gives his own well-thought-out response, addressing them to the people around him as well as to the readers.

“Originally, I didn't start this work with the intention of making it into a mystery, but rather, I was thinking of making it so that Totonou is just there having a conversation while the case is being solved on the side. I wasn’t thinking that he himself would be solving the case. That’s why I titled it with ‘Iu Nakare’ [‘Don’t Say It’ (is a Mystery)], and why the main focus is on his commentary. Everything he says is actually something I've always wondered and kept thinking about. Or, they’re unexpected facts that I learned, or something that surprised me. So, the questions and answers within me at the present moment have become Totonou’s words. Normally, it's not allowed in manga to include the author's thoughts or opinions as they are. However, since Mystery was a one-shot, I thought I’d experiment a bit.”

Among other aspects, Totonou’s strict “No” stance on gender inequality has garnered a great deal of attention.

“Of course, it's not that I want to talk about gender in particular. However, I want to depict what I can now about it too. I think the structure of the world as it exists today is something that was mostly constructed by a small portion of men. Languages, ideas, and systems of the world. Based on said men’s judgment and convenience at that time. That structure is passed down through generations as the natural order of things. I think it’s awfully difficult for women to live as equals with men in a world created in this way. It’s like a pentagon not fitting into a world that’s made for a triangle. In order to make life better for women, I think women need to be involved in the creation of things from the very beginning.”

In that moment, I firmly vowed in my heart: ‘I will become a manga artist!’

Tamura said that an old friend of hers recently pointed out that among all her main characters thus far, Totonou is the closest to Tamura herself. Tomoe, who wished to be strong so that she could fight alongside men; Sarasa, who found kindness before strength; and Totonou, who never averts his eyes from the true nature of society. It can be said that Tamura is a manga artist who is constantly thinking, and her manga is what derives from that. Well, to find out where that driving force to keep on thinking comes from, we finally asked her about it.

"Hmm, a driving force… it starts with the thought of ‘I want to draw this,’ or ‘This would be fun to draw,’ so it normally feels like that, but sometimes there’s an underlying ‘anger.’ There was a moment in high school when I really decided to become a manga artist. At the time, I was very confused about my career path, but there was this one teacher in training who had previously wanted to be a painter but instead chose to become a teacher for the sake of their family. So, I thought I’d try asking them for some advice. When I did, the teacher told me that I should quit if I had any doubts. I nodded my head in agreement, but then they added, ‘But you’re a girl, so you can do whatever you want, right? That’s not the case for men.’ I was both shocked and raging with anger. Angry by that kind of mindset which believes women will get married anyway, so they'll be provided for no matter what becomes of their career [i.e., it doesn’t matter what women do; women have it easy]. Is this something a person who is trying to become a teacher should say? I think on my way home as I rode my bicycle, fire was emitting from my entire body. In that moment, I firmly vowed in my heart: ‘I will become a manga artist!’ In a way, it’s thanks to that teacher…”

However, Tamura says that it doesn’t mean she wants people to agree with her way of thinking.

“I believe that everyone has their own way of thinking. It's also natural for people to think, ‘This seems different or wrong.’ So, it makes sense that the way we look at things changes depending on our situation and circumstances. Everyone has their own truth. That's why human relationships become so complicated.... It would be great if we could talk about that head-on with each other, but I don't think we've learned how to do that very well. It is up to readers to decide how they want to view what I’ve created, so I would be nothing but gratified if they could read my work as they please and enjoy it as reading material. However, there are times when readers tell me that they related to or sympathized with some part of a story, or that it somehow inspired them to think about many things, and that is another outcome that makes me deeply happy and most grateful.”

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Translation Notes

Relay manga: Manga drawn in relay by several people. For example, one person would draw a panel (without planning what would happen next) and then passes on to the next person to draw a continuation of the story, and this process would continue on until it reaches the last participant.

Ensemble dramas (“gunzougeki”): dramatic production with parallel storylines focusing on different characters; multi-protagonist story, film, etc.

Tokusatsu: genre of live-action film or television drama that makes heavy use of special effects, e.g. Godzilla

Tomoe Gozen: “A female warrior, who appeared in 14th century Japanese literature. According to lore, she served Minamoto no Yoshinaka during the Genpei War and was a part of the conflict that led to the first shogunate. Her family had strong affiliations with Yoshinaka. Although never proven to be a historical figure, her story influenced several generations of samurai. Tomoe is often celebrated in books, music, poems, films, historical novels and popular culture in general.” – Wikipedia

Kiso Yoshinaka: Kiso no Yoshinaka was a general of the late Heian period of Japanese history. – Wikipedia

Yumi Tamura was an avid player of role-playing video games.

‘Iromen’ means color men; a play on ‘ikemen,’ which means good-looking man/men.

DISCLAIMER: This is an unofficial (duh), amateur and very basic translation (with little creative interpretation). Apologies for any typos and sentences that don't make complete sense or are not smoothly constructed. Feel free to message me with any typos, corrections, and/or suggestions. I may get to them before an eternity passes. Thank you! :)

[pochiperpe90]

Beware of the thief

How do you become the longest-lived criminal in the history of Italian comics? For LUCA MARINELLI it all started as a child, at the zoo. Before the eyes of a panther

«The cold determination of a panther that silently approaches its prey: this is the expression I tried to instill in our Diabolik's gaze». When Luca Marinelli frowns and lights up the panther's eyes - the writer has had the opportunity to get a taste of it during the interview - the first instinct is to flee that look: too intense. It will be him, armed with a dagger and dressed in the famous tight black jumpsuit, with a hood that leaves only the icy eyes uncovered, to interpret the anti-hero born from the imagination of Angela and Luciana Giussani - the two sisters of Milan well known in history as the Queens of Terror - in the awaited cinematic adaptation of the comic directed by the Manetti Bros. (Ammore e malavita), in cinemas from December 31st.

«Fifty years in the homes of Italians. 150 million copies sold. Impressive numbers. Diabolik is an icon, it belongs to the IMAGINARY of hundreds of thousands of people"

During a walk along the Kreuzberg canal in Berlin, his adopted city since 2012, the Roman actor explains that the choice to be inspired by the feline for the interpretation of the character is not accidental. «Fans will know that Diabolik takes his name from a panther. Their meeting, which lasts a few moments, is significant: after a high-tension face-to-face, the feline decides to spare the boy, almost as if he had smelled a fellow in him. The panther was one of my favorite animals as a child. I remember like it was yesterday the day my parents took me to see it at the zoo, and my amazement in front of that creature, that night-black mantle, shiny and iridescent, with bluish reflections, and that deep, rhythmic breathing. Finally, particularly indelible in my mind is the feeling of sovereign calm that emanated from the animal». “From the beginning, I had a good feeling about this film,” continues the actor. «The first meeting with the Manettis, which I have been following with interest since the time of Zora the Vampire, took place in Rome, in the neighborhood where both Antonio and Marco and I grew up. They explained to me that they had a very specific vision of the character's personality, but that they would like to see what I could offer them. We auditioned together, which was very useful in igniting the spark of collaboration. I have a clear memory of that day and the subsequent exchange of emotions and thoughts. When I later found out that I was chosen for the part, I was very happy».

Luca Marinelli is certainly not new to acting challenges. From the dazed Mattia in ‘The solitude of prime numbers’ (2010), the character with whom he conquers notoriety, over the years he engages in roles that are not very easy, very different from each other ("The only thing they have in common is my nose", ironically, pointing to his face), showing great versatility and an extraordinary capacity for psychological identification. Among his most convincing interpretations, that of the Zingaro in ‘They call me Jeeg’ and that of Martin Eden in the homonymous film by Pietro Marcello, with which he won, respectively, the Silver Ribbon and a David di Donatello as best supporting actor and the Coppa Volpi as best actor. But dealing with a myth like Diabolik, the object of an almost sacred cult, is a new challenge.

«Fifty years in the homes of Italians. 150 million copies sold. Impressive numbers. Diabolik is an icon, and for this reason it belongs to the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people. If you think you can satisfy them all, you start off on the wrong foot: you risk that the final result is not what you really want to stage, but I'm sure the public will not be disappointed, or at least I hope. You will see how much love and respect there was in implementing this transposition", explains the actor, who speaks with full knowledge of the challenge of interpreting an icon: in 2018 he plays a true sacred monster, Fabrizio De André, in ‘Principe Libero’ by Luca Facchini. A friend told him: you're crazy to take this part. But he, careless, immerses himself in the biography of the singer-songwriter, ventures like a shrink into the maze of his psyche, and he returns to the man of that icon, receiving critical acclaim for that insidious role. The only flaw, some malevolent purists observe, is his Roman accent.

Despite being a comic book hero, to face Diabolik, the actor «decided to avoid any comic characterization of the character, trying to give a convincing representation from a human, psychological point of view. Who is this mysterious man, who with his criminal findings terrorizes the rich city of Clerville? What vicissitudes lead him to become a king of crime? Questions that have become the starting point of my research. For months and months, my flat was flooded with comics, scattered all over the place. And for every hundred I read, the Manettis - who I suspect know all the 800 and more numbers in the series - were ready to lend me as many». Day after day, Marinelli has thus sneaked into the lair of the King of Terror: he spied on his objects, opened his wardrobe, rummaged in his drawers. “I fell in love with him, unconditionally, without giving in to the temptation to express a condemnation or an acquittal. It is a precious lesson, which was passed on to me in the Academy: never judge your character. You risk that a distance will form between you and him which, I play hard, is negatively reflected in the quality of the interpretation».

The result is a film that is radically different from the first film adaptation, directed by Mario Bava, in 1968. "Among its strengths, there is a fascinating 1960s aesthetic, made up of machines, costumes, places and a thousand technological inventions of our Diabolik», he says. “To my great pleasure, I was involved in the discussion of the character's look right from the start. Particularly difficult was the development of the mask and the legendary black suit, designed by Diabolik himself and equipped with fantastic characteristics, not repeatable in reality. An almost impossible mission, but after weeks of attempts, thanks to the collaboration of all departments, we arrived at a result that was very satisfied: we did it by working together. I want to emphasize the all together. When you work with the Manetti Bros., this aspect is deeply tangible: everything takes place in an atmosphere of great exchange and collaboration. Many have known each other within the crew for years, and one almost has the impression of having been adopted by a large family, rather than working on a normal set ».

“Who is this mysterious man who terrorizes the rich city of Clerville? What led him to become what he is? For months these questions have been my RESEARCH"

The film - which the Manettis defined as "darkly romantic" - will also tell, to the delight of fans, the prodromes of the love story between Diabolik and his partner in crime, Eva Kant (Miriam Leone). "Two special, different people who first sniff each other with suspicion, only to recognize each other as soul mates," he explains. “I really like their level of complicity. Diabolik, however, is a very tough and reserved character, who rarely shows a feeling: this is certainly one of the differences, perhaps the clearest, between him and me. I am his opposite: as a good romantic and empathetic, I confess, I often cry. I think that doing so can be an important moment of openness, growth and awareness, which we should learn to actively seek. Are you feeling down? Play the saddest song you know and give yourself a treat: enjoy your tears, a friend once told me. Holy words: woe to keep everything inside. You run the risk of walling yourself up alive behind a senseless wall of hardness».

Although "very interesting", the actor prefers to gloss over future film projects out of luck. "At the moment my wife and I (the German actress Alissa Jung) are very busy with our association: we are about to open the headquarters of PenPaper-Peace in Italy, the association founded by Alissa in Germany, with which we built two schools in Haiti after the disastrous earthquake of 2010». As the actor launches into the memories of his first trip to the Caribbean island, the weeping willows of the Kreuzberg canal that framed the interview mentally give way, for a moment, to the lush vegetation of the Caribbean. «Indelible memories. Two years after the disastrous earthquake, I found a country on its knees, surrounded by rubble, pain and despair, but also many smiles and a contagious desire to live", he says. As the name of our association suggests, all you need is a sheet of paper and a pen, and you can give a child education, and with it a possibility, a future. And this not only in Haiti, but all over the world. At the moment we are focusing on a project in Italy that will support the boys and girls who are going through this difficult period of the pandemic».

GQ Italia

Just wanted to translate this interview for the non-italian’s fans ^^ (sorry for my English)  

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

I’m just gonna start tagging all my salt posts “marauders salt” because I have yet more to say, and I want to give people the option of skipping past my incessant whining.  (What’s that?  Stop whining?  No, friend, this is my place to vent.  But I really don’t want to drag other people down, so scroll by if you want something more positive.) 

But anyway, I was just thinking about the discussion that sebastianshaw, esteicy-blog, and others were having about Duggan’s use of “feminism” in Marauders, and how it is a very shallow, surface level feminism that seems to be “men bad, women good, especially beautiful, wealthy white women.”  And especially how Duggan prioritizes the female characters’ emotions, and tends to push aside and ignore the male characters’ emotions, especially anything other than anger.  That was most evident in the latest story, where Duggan invented abuse as part of the backstory of two female characters (Lourdes and Wilhelmina) where abuse hadn’t existed before, and completely ignored two male characters (Christian Frost and Shinobi Shaw) who actually had abuse as part of their canon backstories.  Even though Shinobi Shaw was canonically abused by the same man that abused Lourdes (in Duggan’s retcon), and whom Emma has been repeatedly beating down, Shinobi doesn’t get to be part of Emma’s revenge or Sebastian’s comeuppance in any meaningful way.  Because the real theme of the story is not “dealing with abuse,” it’s “women helping women against male abuse,” (done specifically in a way to prop Emma up as a character.)  

This also got me thinking again about Pyro and the Yellowjacket story, a story that I was okay with back when it happened, but keep getting angry about whenever I revisit it.

So, Pyro gets invaded by Yellowjacket for an unknown period of time (probably at least a few days).  Given how Duggan has been writing the characters, I’m willing to bet that this story would have been taken a lot more seriously if Yellowjacket had been inside Emma or Kate or Storm or Callisto, or one of the characters that Duggan actually cares about.  Then we might have actually looked at Yellowjacket’s actions as a violation of bodily autonomy and privacy, and pointed out how creepy it was that Pyro had one adult and 4 voyeuristic children watching a live-feed through his eyes while he was presumably doing things like showering, changing clothes, going to the bathroom, etc.  (I just KNOW that if it was Emma being spied on during her private moments, there would be a lot of focus on pervs wanting to look at her body, and the violation she feels because of it.)  Not to mention the sheer helplessness of having something inside his body that could kill him at any moment (and Yellowjacket proves that he is, indeed, willing to immediately kill Pyro if he is found out.)

But the situation isn’t taken seriously at all, instead we get jokes about Emma’s wardrobe, and Pyro watching Rick and Morty, and that ridiculous fantasy sequence.  Not only that, but Pyro’s very justifiable anger is treated as a joke.  He asks twice to kill Yellowjacket, and is brushed off by Magneto both times.  Obviously he can’t violate the laws of Krakoa, but Pyro doesn’t get to do anything at all to Yellowjacket, just has to let him go.  Pyro gets to psychically burn Verendi for a few seconds, then Emma drops the link, and again, quickly brushes him off. If anything, she seems somewhat disdainful towards him.  It seems like we are supposed to view Pyro’s desire to hurt Verendi as comically over the top.  There’s only one line that shows any real vulnerability from Pyro, the “You lot have humiliated me in front of my friends....I don’t really have a lot of friends....” and after that we go immediately into him laughing maniacally as he burns Verendi.

And there’s no follow-up after that, at no point does anyone on the crew check in with Pyro to see if he’s okay after that arguably traumatic experience.  Not even a pat on the shoulder and a “Hey man, that was messed up,” from Iceman or Bishop, who seem to be friendly with Pyro.  Or anyone telling Pyro, “Don’t feel bad about it, it wasn’t your fault, could have happened to any of us,” etc.  The only emotion Pyro is allowed to express is anger, and his desire for revenge is treated as a joke.

Compare this to Emma and Kate’s revenge on Shaw.  Emma and Kate also have very justifiable anger over what Sebastian did, and their vengeance is well-deserved.  But while Pyro’s anger is mostly dismissed and treated as “funny,” Emma and Kate’s anger is treated as something to be admired.  They are girlboss queens stepping all over a pathetic foe, and we are expected to cheer for them while they spend an entire issue beating Shaw, torturing him, poisoning him and ripping his eye out.  That’s not seen as “too much,” while Pyro’s desire for revenge apparently is.  Pyro is expected to just step back and accept the single bone that Emma has thrown him, while Emma gets to spend the next several issues continuing to twist the knife into Sebastian, and we’re apparently supposed to be on her side.    

And you could potentially argue that Emma has much great justification for revenge, since Sebastian has done horrible things to her in the past.  Yeah, that’s true, but Emma has already had significant revenge on Sebastian in the past, even killing him at one point.  You could also argue that Pyro needs to learn a lesson about violence and restraint, given his past, and indeed that seems to be the direction Duggan is going with him.  But if that’s the case, someone like Emma or Bishop could have turned the Yellowjacket incident into a teachable moment for Pyro, and actually talked with him about how it will serve their plans better to leave Yellowjacket/Verendi alive.  If nothing else, I would have liked to see a page or two of Emma bringing Pyro out of the dream and actually talking with him about what’s going on.  Maybe then we could have gotten some kind of serious discussion or reaction from Pyro.  But no, he just gets dismissed or ignored by pretty much everyone on the beach, aside from his one moment that Emma allows him.

So basically, Pyro has something bad happen to him, it’s treated like a joke, and his desire to hurt the people responsible is portrayed as over the top and disproportionate.  Kate has something bad happen to her (admittedly something much worse, since there was a chance she’d be perma-dead), and it’s a several issue tragedy, and she and Emma get to act as avenging Furies beating down the evil man responsible.  Their long, drawn-out revenge is righteous and good, Pyro gets a few seconds of psychic pain, and that is treated as too much as Emma quickly cuts him off. 

TL,DR - Duggan really tends to completely dismiss the feelings of male characters in this book, especially Iceman, Bishop, Pyro, Christian and Shinobi, in some kind poorly executed attempt at “Girl power” that isn’t actually very feminist at all.

Deliberately not tagging this as “Marauders,” I don’t want to interfere with the enjoyment of other people who are liking the book.

[maxwell-grant]

What would a spider man: life story look like for the shadow?

Now that I've actually read Spider-Man: Life Story I can give this one a response. I'm gonna obsess about this question for a while because man what a ride Life Story was.

To those not in the know, the premise of Spider-Man: Life Story is: "In 1962, in AMAZING FANTASY #15, 15-year-old Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became the Amazing Spider-Man! Fifty-seven years have passed in the real world since that event — so what would have happened if the same amount of time passed for Peter as well?" and basically it tells the story of Spider-Man as one continuous narrative spanning 57 years, from his beginnings to a potential future, allowing Peter Parker and his cast and world to age in real time and factor in elements from the character's major stories over the decades.

And it's got a lot into it that the premise doesn't convey and there is no way I can even begin tackling a project like this for the 90 goddamn years of The Shadow's history without seriously just writing an entirely different fanfic continuity (and I already have 5, plus multiverses, possibly more) and tipping off way too much about my own plans for the character. Even I have my limits.

So instead, what I'm gonna do is go over the broad strokes of The Shadow's history as it would look like if you could try and condense it all under a consistent narrative, if you could focus on each decade's highs and lows, what kind of story would arise if a deranged Shadow maniac like me were to try and build a basic skeleton for a The Shadow: Life Story story.

Basic rules first: I'm sticking to the idea of Life Story and spanning every decade from the beginning of the character's life to the end of it. The aging and death parts are important so I’m sticking to those. The character's canonical birth date is 1892, so he's not making it intact to the 2000s. We're capping this off in the 90s, although it doesn't mean no further stories can be told. I will avoid mentioning specific historical events like Vietnam and 9/11 for this post to instead focus on The Shadow's trajectory. I will also not be including other characters, only somewhat referencing whatever aspects I deem relevant. I'm not sticking to any continuity, I'm pulling literally everything I can for this one

And putting this one below the cut

The 1930s: The golden years. In 1930, after a long line of life experiences in the Great War and traveling around the world under dozens of names, the man formerly known as Kent Allard has taken to fighting crime in the Great Depression. This chapter would be more of a standard narrative showcasing the trajectory of The Shadow's 30s career, how he's started off as a urban myth fighting gangsters and then progressed to urban avenger with dozens of allies fighting spies and supervillains. Despite being in his home element, he is restless. Another war is on the horizon. We gotta know where he starts, to get a clue of where he's going.

The 1940s: Despite it being the "family friendly American hero" Shadow era, shit gets very, very chaotic in the 40s, way more so than The Shadow could have anticipated. The pulps were relatively tame for this period, by this point instead you have the radio with it's constantly rotating writers and sensibilities, and comics that had far less reservations about either being really boring or really wacky. Far more encounters with the supernatural than before and with supervillains like Devil Kyoti and Monstradamus and Solaris, plus Khan is still around. The Shadow is forced to spend a lot more time traveling the world to deal with the war, spending a prolonged period establishing headquarters in Japan to aid Japanese underground organizations opposing the military. The agents perform rescue missions on concentration camps, and this is the period where you could have the "real" Lamont Cranston start filling in for The Shadow a bit while he's overseas.

There's a particular blurb that got released during this period that explains The Shadow acquired the power to cloud men's minds not by training, but by journeying to Tibet in an unrecorded adventure that forced him to beg the monks to grant him assistance in saving the world. I have some very mixed feelings on this whole backstory but I think there's something to this idea. Some shit went down in the 40s that was way beyond what The Shadow could have anticipated, and to protect the world from it he had to tap into forces that perhaps should have been left untouched.

The 1950s: The Shadow has dissappeared from America alltogether. He gathered up his agents and announced he wouldn't return for at least a decade, and left them with enough money to last a lifetime and retire should they feel like it. Burbank and Cliff Marsland dissappeared with him, and this chapter would probably be told from the Agents's perspective as they face the 50s while we get snippets from Marsland on what The Shadow's been up to. Some of it involves The Shadow helping protect Tibet after Mao's takeover of China. The real Lamont Cranston doesn't put on the costume anymore and instead operates as a fairly regular detective, although he's training on the skills and powers he's picked up overseas. Whatever fantasy madness haunted the 1940s is all but gone.

The 50s had basically nothing in Shadow content other than the last legs of the radio show, which are 200 episodes from 1950 to 1954 that currently don't exist anymore outside of a few scripts. During this time, The Shadow's sole appearence in US content was a parody in MAD Magazine. Overseas however, there were original Shadow novels published in Norway (a story for another day), as well as a Mexican radio and film series, which also featured Cliff Marsland. I have little information on either.

The 1960s: The OG Shadow is still embroiled in conflicts overseas, but the rise of the criminal organization CYPHER forces him to mobilize Burbank and agents old and new alike to deflect CYPHER away from where he's at, although most of them have retired by now. He still cannot return, but he has been secretly instructing Lamont Cranston on furthering along his own latent abilities if he intends to take over in his stead, and Cranston's powers have grown and developed to a point that, although he is pushing 60, he is able to do things even the original Shadow could not. He also invests a lot in merchandising and costume changes, which...doesn't pan out. Nothing in this era really pans out. It's just a really, really frustrating period of bad luck and supervillains that the aging superpowered detective Cranston is able to stop. Lamont Cranston seems to die in this decade.

The 1970s: Inspired by The Shadow's DC series, and most importantly Michael Kaluta's spiffy redesign.

The original Shadow returns to a crime-torn America, intent on starting anew, and sets to rebuilding his network. But something is off about him. He's leaner, meaner, less compassionate and trusting. Just as what happened the first time he returned to America following years abroad, what happened in his sojourns overseas has fostered something inhuman in him, another sacrifice of his own identity for the sake of a world where the weed of crime has only proven more insidiuous. His powers have grown and so have his resources, but despite that, he's bordering on 80 years old by now, and cumulative trauma deep within his bones hampers his effectiveness. He's doing a lot better than he should, by any rights, but he can't keep this up and he knows it. And so, as before, he starts planning for it.

The 1980s: This was the decade where Walter Gibson died with his final Shadow story incomplete, all the movie plans from the 70s were canned, and Howard Chaykin happened, plus the other DC runs. It's the SHIT decade, basically, where everything goes to hell. Whatever plans The Shadow had blew up, dipshit copycats start ruining everything, his network crumbles, and this is probably the ideal decade to kill off Kent Allard.

But this is also the decade where something weird started happening outside of the story: The Ghost of Gay Street hauntings, where visitors on the hotel Gibson wrote the stories in repeteadly claimed to see a ghostly visitor looking exactly like Lamont Cranston, and Gibson himself claimed that to be a tulpa he created by accident.

Kent Allard may have died. But death can never claim The Shadow.

The 1990s-onwards: Somehow, The Shadow is still active. Still elderly, in a much more limited fashion, but still as sharp as ever if not more so. His powers have grown more so than ever before, even blossoming into a limited form of telekinesis. Is he a ghost? Did he somehow survive the events of the previous decade? Somehow, both Lamont Cranston and The Shadow linger on, but is it Kent Allard or Lamont Cranston? Is it someone else?

Who knows?

This is the decade in particular where he's going to be interacting with more prominently with a new generation, whether it's descendants of the original agents, or new heroes that have found themselves in his orbit. Inspired mainly by the Dark Horse Shadow comics, Ghost and The Shadow, and Peter Straub's Mystery and modern takes on the character like Batman x Shadow and the 2017 mini that play up the miserable immortal and ghost teacher aspects, also inspired by my recent realization that The Shadow's ideal future in-universe may be getting to age and mentor the next generation in some capacity.

Anything beyond that, only The Shadow Knows.

[mgsheadcanons]

could you do one for ocelot, kaz, and big boss when their ftm partner is on their period and having a bad day ? 🥺❤️

(It turnes out to be more gender neutral, I hope that’s ok! Anyway, hope you’re doing well! Have a great day, buddy😇😘)

Ocelot, Kaz and Big Boss with their ftm S\O who is on period and had a bad day:

Ocelot

- He will take a day off to spend it all with you. He has much work but will find someone to substitute him there

- He’s gonna make you a massage of the lower back if you say it will do any good

- He’ll bring DD with him just to cheer you up a little bit

- You can’t help but smile at that good boy when it tilts its head to one side and wiggles its tail playfully

- Does he know the name of your favorite candies? He will figure it out if not and bring them to you. Anything he can find on the Mother Base

- Ocelot hands you a bottle with hot water and a big soft blanket. You will spend some time wrapped in it, with hot chocolate or tea, and DD lying next to you on the one side and Ocelot cuddling you on the other

- If it makes you relax, he’s gonna read you your favorite book out loud or tell one of those odd stories from his past, where you hardly could say if it is true or not

Kaz

- He’s gonna be the sweetest guy you’ve ever met during the whole day

- Actually, he’s always nice with you but on these days he beats all records

- He’ll turn into a “Mother Kaz” and keep swirling around you asking million questions with that grumpy face

- It’s gonna make you giggle internally about how serious he is about taking care of you, like it was at least an A rank mission

- When he notices that, he'll put on another worried face asking if something was wrong or were you nervous

- But as soon as you tell him about your thoughts, he will relax, rub the bridge of his nose taking off glasses and chuckle at how comic he might be looking

- He’ll bring you some self made burgers with all your favorite ingredients added. Made with love, it’s one of most tasty snascks on the whole base

Big Boss

- When it comes to this sort of things, he’ll act quite pulled away at first, but of course he is not leaving you all alone

- Not that he didn’t believe you or enjoyed seeing you in pain, he just thinks that it’s something common you have used to it

- He probably won’t put aside his duties and affairs, but he will leave only the most important ones on his list in order to deal with them as quickly as possible to join you

- Without a second thought he’ll do his best to help you, whether he doesn’t understand you completely

- He’ll bring all supplies and food that you’ll ask for, but he’s new to that and may bring you wrong stuff for the first time. Don’t be tough with him, the man is trying

- He will ask you to show where the pain is and begin awkwardly and clumsily rubbing that place, only for you to stop him by carefully grabbing his hands. Rough soldiers hands are not the best ones for delicate caring

- He is not a big talker and not that affectionate so he will keep silent for some time providing you his emotional and moral support by simply staying by your side

(pictures are not mine / found on Google)

[nightwingmyboi]

Pt 1) Rebirth didn't have to nerf Dick and Roy's friendship to have Roy and Jason be friends but they did it anyway and I'm fucking pissed. Roy not wanting to tell Dick he was involved in some serious drug busts??? Dick would have been the first person he went to! Roy saying he knows who his "true friends" are and then cutting contact with Dick??? Uh??? Did we read the same fucking comics pre reboot? Dick was going to force Roy into rehab, Roy forced Dick to sleep and eat

Pt 2) Roy and Dick saw each other as brothers! Lian called Dick uncle dick! I!! Hate!! What!! They!! Did!! And considering Nightwing 2016 showed Dick and Jay patrolling together, it didn't even need to happen. You want Roy to be on a team with Jason? Why not team up Roy, Jason, and Dick?? It would be a cool ass dynamic?? And the fact that they went out of their way to make Dick look like a prick??? "Guess Dick has more morals than I thought" uh what??? The fuck???

Pt 3) Roy Harper knows Dick has morals?? Where the fuck did this come from??? Roy fucking defended Dick withholding information from the Titans in the comics from the 80s and 90s but here he is acting like Dick is actually a terrible person??? Like??????? I was genuinely enjoying the Rebirth Titans comics, but then they pulled all this shit with Roy and Dick just because they wanted Roy to be back in RHATO, and I'm so pissed.

Amen to all of this. I agree with you 100%...I can’t even read RHATO cause it makes me so freaking mad. The idea that Roy doesn’t trust Dick is laughable. Forget some “serious” drug bust, Roy literally trusted Dick to help him deal with Cheshire and find his daughter, Lian:

Action Comics #613

He needs help on something so incredibly personal, and the first person he turns to is Dick. He doesn’t even trust the other Titans on this one (not even Donna). And just to emphasize that this was a huge deal for him: 

Action Comics #617

And Dick was the one to fight off Cheshire, save Roy, and rescue Lian. He was the reason that Roy was able to be with his daughter. Afterwards, Roy admits how much he has always envied and admired Dick: 

Action Comics #618

Up until this point, Roy was convinced that he’d done nothing but screw things up. He listed some of it above, but his life was kind of a mess. He got into drugs, was kicked out by Green Arrow, left the Titans, fell for an assassin and knocked her up all by the age of 19. Yikes. And Dick supports him and tells him that he’s not a failure--that he’s a good man. This may seem like a simple thing, but for Roy it was huge!! 

This is the point where Roy was really able to turn things around. Roy found a reason to keep moving forward, Lian, and was finally coming to terms with his insecurities. And Roy has Dick to thank for that and he knows it. So yeah, Roy admires Dick so much. He was jealous of Dick when they first met, but that envy soon morphed into admiration. To Roy, Dick is amazing. Period. When Roy gets into tough situations, he thinks back to things Dick has said or has taught him to get out of them. 

Not to say that this isn’t a two way street. They both trust and respect each other so freaking much: 

Their relationship was so good. One of the things that always stands out to me about them is how often they held each other accountable and pushed each other to be better. Their relationship was all about respect and tough love. I know that fanon likes to see Dick as this big softie/pushover, but when he feels he needs to be, Dick is stubborn as hell and super confrontational (like, this man does not care about stepping on a few toes to get the job done). And Roy was one of the few people that was able to meet Dick head to head and get through to him when he was being stupid. And vice versa. 

God, remember when Dick was super depressed about Donna’s death and Roy was calling Dick constantly (even though Dick couldn’t bring himself to answer)? And then Roy started the Outsiders specifically so that Dick wouldn’t self-destruct all by himself? Pretty much the only times that Dick smiles during this period of time where Donna is dead are because of Roy. You can see he’s trying so hard to cheer Dick up here and get him out of his funk: 

Outsiders (2003) #1

These two had such great history. They were so good for each other. And sure, I’d be fine with Roy being friends with Jason also, but they basically performed character assassination for that to happen lmao. Like I said, I haven’t read a lot of the RHATO comics, but from what I’ve seen they’ve made regressed Roy to an extent that is pretty pitiful and spits in the face of decades of character development. Honestly, Roy is from Dick’s generation and has soooo much experience as a hero, he should not be made into Jason’s lackey (more thoughts on that here). Roy’s a much more compelling character to me when he is with the Titans, where he seems like his own person with his own motivations. I don’t need him to be a prop for Jason Todd! I have no idea why they have to destroy Roy’s relationship with Dick to make him BFFs with Jason either. I feel like all the characters involved suffer for it, even Jason. 

So yeah, “Uncle Dick” is right. These two were family. It's kind of heartbreaking to see DC destroy that. 

Thanks for the ask anon! You’re very right, and you gave me a great excuse to rant about how much I love these two. 

[felicia-cat-hardy]

20 TV Shows &amp; Movies That Are Almost Too Dirty To Be On Netflix

One of the wonders of Netflix is its expansive content offering. It's a place you can go to relive the joys of your youth, and to find some seriously sexy content (probably not in the same movie or TV show, but you get it). If you’re looking for the latter, sifting through the mass of titles can be a challenge; it’s sometimes easy to get lost in the silly or serious pieces of content without ever discovering the many raunchy movies and shows available — and what a pity that is, because there are plenty of shows and movies that are almost too dirty to be on Netflix out there for you to watch.

The site's dirtier fare ranges from art house foreign films to Netflix-produced shows, and they definitely give a new meaning to "Netflix and chill." Netflix obviously isn't a porn site, but there are a number of movies and shows that will make you wonder how — and why — they passed the site's censors. Actually, on second thought, you probably won't be questioning why so much because, as the old adage goes, it's best to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Whether you're watching these shows and movies to turn up the heat with your partner, or just to broaden your streaming horizons, these are bound to make you think, "I wonder what this is doing to my algorithm preferences..."

‘Duck Butter’

Two women meet and decide to condense a relationship into 24 hours — by having sex every 60 minutes. The movie creators wanted to show a funny and tender film with “lesbians as far as the eye could see,” and the chemistry between the two women is also on fire.

Watch On Netflix

‘Altered Carbon’

In the future, human consciousness can be transferred to available human bodies, called “sleeves.” And boy do we see a lot of those (very naked) sleeves, as well as a bunch of sex.

Watch On Netflix

'Orange Is The New Black'

The popular Netflix original goes where most network TV's explicitness-parameters cannot. Naturally, if you lock a bunch of people up in an enclosed space with not much to do, naughtiness is gonna ensue.

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'Y Tu Mamá También'

This movie has everything. Sex in cars, sex in beds, sex in twos, sex in threes. Everything else in between is pretty great, too. Subtitles optional.

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‘Sense8’

The tragically cancelled Sense8 from the Wachowski sisters (The Matrix) introduced a plethora of beautiful, complex LGBTQ characters, and a ton of very sexy sex. Yes, this is the series with that orgy scene you’ve heard so much about.

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'Amar'

Amar is a Spanish dramedy all about sex and relationships. Literally everyone is doing it (or talking about it) all the time. And the creators aren’t shy about showing all this sexiness onscreen — a very, very good thing.

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‘Ride Or Die’

This edgy Japanese film is about two childhood BFFs: one of them (Rei) is in love with the other (Nanae), who’s stuck in an abusive marriage. Nanae asks Rei to kill her husband — and violence (and sexiness) ensues.

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'Newness'

Newness is a serious movie about Tinder and dating apps — which also happens to be quite steamy. Two people meet through a hookup app, and despite the odds, start to fall for one another. But can it last?

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‘365 Days’

Caveat: this movie has been widely criticized for depicting what starts out as a non-consensual relationship (a woman is kidnapped and given 365 days to fall in love with her abductor). But it’s still managed to gain notoriety for its sex scenes, which are insanely hot — so if you’re curious about the buzz and haven’t watched yet, consider tuning in for those scenes alone.

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‘Outlander’

Before Bridgerton, there was this sex-filled period piece. Still going strong and entering its sixth season, this (sometimes literally) bodice-ripping drama sees a woman on her honeymoon accidentally time travel from 1945 to 1743 — and subsequently meet the love of her life.

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‘Bridgerton’

But, while we’re on the subject, why haven’t you watched Bridgerton? Or, if you have, why haven’t you watched it again? This is Jane Austen romance, plus glorious mansions, plus a mountain of sex — and it’s sure to have your television exploding from the hotness.

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‘Sex Education’

I mean...the title says it all, doesn’t it? Otis is a shy teenager who just so happens to know a ton about sex (the theory at least, less so the practice), thanks to his sex therapist mom. His crush Maeve uses Otis’ skillset for a brilliant concept: a sex therapy consulting business for high schoolers. Oh, and because they’re all teens, lots of sex is happening.

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'Elisa & Marcela'

This drama about forbidden love is set in 1885, making it ideal for those who like corsets with their steamy love scenes. It's about two women who fall in love with each other but have to keep it secret — until one of them poses as a man in order to get married. It's also based on a true story, which makes it educational and hot.

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‘MILF’

Again, this one’s pretty self-explanatory: three French women in their 40s are dealing with life and heartbreak. The trio of friends go after — and land — much, much younger guys on vacation. Age-related hilarity (and tons more sex) ensues.

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‘Riverdale’

Who knew that a redux of the Archie comic books could be so dark and twisty? Also, so adult: the series is known for its (many) sex scenes involving the characters in a wide variety of couplings. The genius of the show is you’ll end up rooting for certain pairs, but cheering for a lot of the sex.

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'Easy'

Easy features a series of vignettes about various people's sex lives. It's voyeurism at its finest — and it also offers honest insights about how people navigate intimacy.

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'Shameless'

Shameless is very NSFW. If you're going to watch TV at work (perhaps not advisable in any scenario, but no judgement), you should probably steer away from Shameless in case a co-worker happens to sneak a peek during one of its many sex scenes. It could cost you a trip to HR.

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'Blue Is The Warmest Color'

Its sex scenes have been deemed unrealistic by many LGBTQ viewers, but Blue is the Warmest Color is still pretty steamy, and it also features a sweet story of a woman coming out into the world.

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'Weeds'

I could rave about Weeds for many reasons — its writing, its acting, and its soundtrack — but we're here to talk dirty, so I'll just say this: Weeds has some of the hottest sex scenes ever to grace Netflix. The fact that so much of its plot revolves around taboos and scandals makes for a great deal of naughtiness.

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'Concussion'

This is as hot as it gets. Concussion tells the story of a bored suburban housewife who starts seeing female sex workers for pleasure. Eventually, she decides to become one herself.

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Ducktales Reviews: The Town Where Everyone Was Nice! or Scrooge Is the Lindburgh Baby

Saludos Amigos! The Ride of the Three Cablleros has at long last come to the last stop before it’s final phase. It’s been a hell of a ride so far: Our boys have tried to woo some ladies, performed some black magic, had some sort of drug trip, dealt with Donald’s ego, helped goofy ungoofy himself...

“SEASONS CHANGE, TIMES CHANGE BUT UNGOOFY IS FOREVER AND ALWAYS HE IS ALWAYS THERE” ... I created this magificent stalion.. kinda I think he came out of a styigan hole in the universe from the darkest dark in the dark of the dark... I can’t be sure. Our heroes fought an arrogant prince, found a lost city and helped donald get his smile back. All culminating in our heroes going to Spain for some reason, soundtracking Goofy’s win against Horace in Flamico Dancing, somehow that wasn’t a Covid induced fever dream I had but the actual premise of the episode, and then played some soccer with Daisy’s cousin and Pancho Pete. All in all we’ve had some good times getting here and I feel acomplished having made it this far. While I’ve still got quite a ways to go, getting this far means I really made something.. and not just the 80 something dollars it took to comission all of this. And I genuinely just want to thank all of you for reading these as these have easily been some of my most popular reviews and @weirdkev27​ for comissioning all of this. It’s been easily one of my faviorite projects so far and I look forward to the final leg of it soon. For now though we have one last adventure before the biggest one starts.  But before we can dive into it you probably have a few questions, and since I don’t really need to give Ducktales 2017 a lavish introduction as unlike most stuff so far this show is well and familiar: it’s what got me started reviewing animation on this blog, it’s what got me into the duck community as a full member, and it’s what caught Kev’s attention leading to this entire series. So I have time to answer the questions your probably asking and if your not.. well here’s the answers anyway Wait aren’t you going to cover Louie’s Eleven?: Nope. While I love that episode, I already did a full review of it earlier this year.  I saw no reason to completely and utterly redo the entire thing when my opinions toward the episode haven’t really changed. That being said since I didn’t touch on the boys characterizations in that one too much and since I do want this retrospective to be comprehensive, I will talk about Panchito And Jose’s characterization there briefly during this review at the right time as a compromise. 

Wait why isn’t THIS the last stop since it came out AFTER Legend of the Three Cablleros: Simple.. it felt unsatsfying to both me and kev to end on this one. While their apperance here IS a good one and a big deal... it’s also ANOTHER guest apperance. It’s something I didn’t quite realize for now but outside of the movie.. every apperance after is them guest starring in another series. Their aperances in Don Rosa’s Duck Comics, while awesome and treating them with proper respect, were still them showing up to shake up Donald’s stories and formulas. They were LITERAL guest stars in House of Mouse, and Roadster Racers was entirely just “let’s shove them in there because we can”. Legend.. is their story. Their moment in the sun after too damn long with all three as main characters and while being a lead is normal for donald, Jose and Panchito really HAVEN’T had that shot outside of their home countries. To be the hero of their own fully realized epic adventure. So it just fits best to have the road lead there instead of have all that happen.. then go back to yet another guest appearance. The other major factor.. is that while Legend came out around the same time as ducktales, to the point many compared and contrast both shows treatment of Donald, this episode is what most non-latin american audiences saw first as it took Disney WAY too damn long to air the series over here.. i.e. until Disney Plus launched, finding it somewhere online was the only option despite the series being produced in america with some really big american names voice acting wise. Point is this came first to some people, so i’m using that as a flimsy excuse to put it ahead so we get a better finale. 

Now all that’s settled, let’s dive into “The Town Where Everyone Was Nice!” and see what one of the best duck propeties period makes of our boys. 

We open in a remote town in Brazil. It’s the Festival of the Flower.. which is a bit off to me. While it DOES kind of make plot sense.. the problem is the lure was written to Panchito and Jose.. Jose whose a brazil native and could’ve possibly been supscious that a tourist invintation wasn’t in Brazilian Portugese, the countries national language and something I specifically researched just to see what it’d be called. For the record it’d be O Festival da Flor acording to google translate, which still sounds neat, Webby could’ve still said it means festival of the flower. It just feels like a missed opportunity from a creative team that’s taken such pains to make the series feel as authentic as possible and clearly put a lot of hard work and research into making each location feel like it’s real world counterpart.  But it’s a minor thing and we soon get our two plots for the episode: Our B Plot.. is that Dewey can’t stay the fuck off his phone and is taking pictures rather than actually getting experiences with Louie enabling him, while Webby gets increasingly frustrated at Dewey not actually botherting to experince this unique and obscure culture. We’ll get back to this in a bit. 

Our main plot naturally concerns the reason our heroes are here: Donald is reuniting with The Cabs, who in this continuity are his old College friends who Scrooge hates due to having to listen to them practice constnatly and tells the kids they’d hate it worse than his playing the bagpipes. 

Bagpipes are objectively the worst insterument on earth. They are loud, unharmonic and generally just obnoxious. I do respect how important they are to Scotland, home of David Tennant, Grant Morrision and .. Alan Cumming and James Macavoy? Wait what? that’s awesome! Point is Scotland is great but I do not like the bagpipes except when Bugs Bunnny is murdering them. Honestly Donald’s college band was probably more like this. Nothing bad at all just mildly pathetic and mildly pathetic is what got Donald a girlfriend, so it’s not a  bad look

That brings me to another point: Scrooge is pretty obnoxious in this episode. It seems like his sole reason for coming was to bitch about Donald’s old college band. He could’ve just sent them a stern letter like the pros at being a cranky old geezer do. 

I do GET why he’s here as there are some REALLY damn funny bits with him in the a-plot, it just feels like they could’ve justified it better. But on to better things as Jose and Panchito enter the scene after Scrooge claims they “weren’t so cool”.. with Panchito diving from a plane and drifting down on his umbrella

And Panchito shows up dramatically playing the guitar. A truly awesome and worthy intro to our boys. So let’s talk about them in this series. Honestly the two really aren’t that diffrent from usual, though Jose’s lady chasing is given to Panchito, his footloose world traveling lifestyle remains in tact as does his genuine charm while Panchito remains the peppy one, just with his outbursts gone as his guns are replaced with cell phones.. 

Yeah while I do get replacing the pistols because let’s face it the mexican of the group being a gun nut was pretty damn unfortunate, though Don Rosa toned it down and justifed it well, and frankly guns are a hard no for family shows these days unless their laser guns so replacing them I get. But instead of I dunno giving him knives or turning his holsters into pouches carrying his stuff.. he just has two Cell Phones. It’s weird. It dosen’t really make sense other than for him putting on a big shot act and even big stars probably don’t have two phones on them at all times. It’s just a VERY weird update that makes not a whole lot of logical sense and I belivie is thankfully gone by the next ep. The only real issue I have is the two just sorta blend together personality wise instead of being distinct like usual, but that’s also happened in other apperances, so it’s not exactly a new or unique problem, and the two’s voice actors do a great job making both feel like they should. 

Speaking of which let’s just go ahead and discuss that elephant in the room: The Cabs were recast for the first time in ages, which didn’t sit well with friends of legend as Eric Bauza, who’d replaced rob Paulsen, was himself replaced by Arturo Del Puerto and Bernado Del Paulo replaced Jamie Camil and Carlos Aquazi as Panchito. And I have mixed opinons on this one: Replacing Eric was a no brainer: while he’s a terrific voice actor.. he’s not brazilian and the crew of Ducktales 2017 perfer to cast actors who match their characters backgrounds, which again adds to the authenicty of it’s globetrotting and scope. They don’t ALWAYS, Cree Summer isn’t, as far as I know, Egyptian and Catherine Tate, while wonderful, isn’t italian. But for the most part it adds a nice flavor to things and frankly I personally prefer it when Jose is voiced by an actual brazilian man. So that change i’m fine with. Not using Camil though... I do not get. Jamie Camil is a throughly talented voice actor, having done TONS of great work lately , vocing Globgor for star vs and not getting nearly enough screen time as the loveable demon dad, and stealing the show as Don Carnage earlier in the series. While that episode is one of the series weakest, he’s still easily the best part of it and I hope Carnage shows up one last time before the finale. 

So it really makes.. no sense to me to replace him. Not only is camil a bigger named actor, but he was already on the show and even the defense of “well they don’t want actors playing multiple rolls” ended up utterly destroyed by the end of the season, as Christ Dimatopolus not only reprised Storkules, but went on to play Drake and Melon, and picked up a FOURTH role in season 3 as Hades. My point is the show has no real issue with doubling up on voice rolls, so I scratch my head as to why Camil wasn’t given this part too despite being the obvious choice. Del Paulo isn’t a bad actor and is great in the role.. I just scratch my head why he was needed when a perfect actor for the part was right there and already had experince with the character. 

I do think Puerto and Paulo are terrific and do the characters justice, issues with Paulo being there at all aside, and they do a great job and more than earned the roles and I don’t think the mass critcisim of this version of the characters is entirely warranted.. for this episode. This episode while they can meld into each other... that happens in most of their apperances anyway, so it’s not unusual or unique to this series. I will say however that the way their written in their next apperance is utter garbage: they aren’t really given any chances to be distinct, are basically written as one person even worse .. and that one person is a greedy asshole who takes advantage of their friend and never apologizes. I do get why people did not like them in that episode. I do think it has no baring on this one and people should stop bashing these versions as a whole for one terrible episode, especially when Louie has been written pretty badly for the bulk of season 3, yet is still not a bad character. It’s unfair to paint the series as painting them soley as selfish jackasses when it didn’t at first and hopefully wont’ again when they presumibly show up for the finale’s big avengers endgame sequence I hope is coming. For now they aren’t bad and the colors are crisp and the animation nice and bouncy on our boys. 

Since we have two plots here, I’m just going to go ahead and split em since honestly, the b plot dosen’t really impact the a-plot until really the last minute and is basically happening right along side it and in concert with it. Sooooo... 

The Trite B-Plot: As you can probably gather I didn’t really like this one. It’s basically 5-7 minutes of me wanting to punch a child in the face. Or rather Webby wanting to have fun experinces and actually take in the culture while in town, while Dewey just wants to take pictures of everything, make it seem like he did stuff, and generally is obnoxious to webby while Louie supports him wholeheartdly. That last part is really one of the few good parts of the plot as it’s nice for one of the brothers plots to NOT be about them being in conflict or squabbling but just hanging out and having some fun, doubly so since i’ve had to spend a season watching Louie , outside of a few good exceptions be an absolute dick to Huey and also Dewey once. It’s nice to just see him and Dewey bond over a shared intrest: posting shit online and getting good photos. 

And it’s not without GOOD gags: Dewey’s obnoxious captions at one point while Webby continually looses her shit, Louie continually saying “that’s so wise” at Dewey’s bullshit philosphies, Webby’s continued annoyance is delivered great by Kate as always, and the best bit is Webby, utterly pissed at Dewey for refusing to eat Local Cuisine, wolfing down the entire fucking plate, all the dumplings in her mouth at once while Dewey, naturally, takes a picture. Otherwise this is just.. grating. It’s utterly grating to watch Webby GENUINELY try hard to absorb the local culture and really enjoy a once in a life time experince.. while Dewey jackasses about and basically acts like she’s wrong for it and treats his best friend like garbage. Just because i’ts nice it’s not Louie this time doesen’t make one of the kids being a dick without any nuance or character stuff suddenly great. It’s just tiresome. 

And SOMEHOW , despite already not liking it the first time watching the episode.. it’s even WORSE now afterlast years. No not because I watched it while having to put up with Coronoavirus induced Chills, but because another show did this plot 100 times better: Close Enough. One of the best new shows of the year, Close Enough had a plot where exes Bridget and Alex, aka yet aother great set of Kimiko Glenn and Jason Mantzokus characters, went on vacation together, but their attempts to have some ex sex fell flat due to longstanding issues we found about through this plot: Bridget has a bad habit of doing what Dewey did, focusing way more on her social than actually enjoying her vacatoin while Alex has a bad habit of befreinding random weirdos who agree with his worldview. Keep in mind this is the same worldview that spent an afternoon connecting garfield to jesus while pissing in a jug for some reason. Point instead of a character just being a smug dick, it ties into actual character flaws that helped us not only learn more about them but lead to a really heartwarming scene where the two admit they jsut can’t sleep together casually with allt heir baggage, and that they still have a lot to sort out. Before given the show their on having their friends show up from the a plot and all of them getting kidnapped by a robot because Josh skipped a bunch of ads and a 5 year old has to solve some issues and prove she’s not dumb to blow up said robot. What i’m saying is it’s even more insufferable watching this after seeing it done a thousand times better, and fucking watch Close Enough. Thankfully unlike Inifnity Train it’s not reliant on you to get a second season as it’s been renewed proving that even in a cluster fuck like 2020 miracles can happen, but it’d still be nice for it to get more fans during the presumably long wait for Season 2. Let’s move past this, i’ll get to the plot relevant bit for the climax when we get to the climax, and onto the reason your all here. 

The Main Event: A Life Not Wasted

Okay onto the actual plot. Rewinding quite a bit, the boys meet our boys, and we get some good bits. The boys cool new handshake leaves Huey wanting one only for Louie to simply lick his hand. See this is Louie dickery I can get behind because what did Huey expect? I do take comfort in the fact he has actual friends now who will likely do a handshake, fenton very much included. I’m sure Gyro didn’t want one either so he’s had plenty of time to workshop. We also find out one of the boys was dropped as an egg and well.. given Dewey opens and closes his eyes one at a time for this one moment, the ohter triplets just sorta.. silently agre it’s Dewey. IT does explain why he thought Champ Popular would get over..that and Santa Claus is Going to Highschool being his favorite movie. 

So both Jose and Panchito claim to be sucessful: Jose being a sucessful jetsetter and trendsetter, and Panchito being a world famous pop star, never stop stopping. So Donald being donald panics and runs into a alley where Scrooge and Huey join him.  Donald is fully convinced he’s wasted his life and has nothing to show for it. Huey rightfully points out he raised three wonderful children and isn’t that enough? Naturally given Donald clearly has some issues related to this subject and Scrooge has develoved into old man yells at cloud, he agrees it’s not important as money. So Huey decides to help his uncle because he’s the good son.. and because the two are easily the most alike out of Donald and his Kids. It’s something I haven’t really been able to bring up before so I was delighted to realize i could now: Besides the obvious people bring up constnatly, I.e. Huey having inhereted the most of the family rage out of his brothers, there’s the fact both are kind of obessive, both tend ot spiral into panic when a situation goes wrong, both are awkward with women, both are frequently ignored or taken for granted by those around them, and both are awkward adorable dorks who I will give my life to protect. It’s why I think Huey has the best relationship with his uncle of the bunch: He’s the only one who at least TRIES to empahtize with him and support him. While the other two do love him, and Webby of course likely has an insanne and horrifying shrine of him, and scrooge and probably della now in her closet.. and of course lena but that’s less out of hero worship and more out of her insane, over the top, very webby version of love. Point is, he’s the one who genuinely sees his uncle as a person who needs help and love. This was best demonstrated in the scene at the bank back in “Who Is Gizmoduck” as Huey tries to get his uncle a loan using the guidebook and is there soley to help the guy and taking time out of his day to visit the bank. Let’s face it though this is huey: he probably loves visiting the bank. They just got new pens! So Huey decides to put his improv badge to good use... so far the only use he’s gotten is Louie laughing at the fact he actually earned an improv badge and urges donald to simply ACT like he’s sucessful. Scrooge balks at this, because as Wonder Woman 1984 taught us nothing good comes from lies.. or from  banging your ghost boyfriend while he’s possessing someone’s body without said body’s consent and plan to fully live out the rest of your lives togehter without ever considering how fucked up this is. I will..deal with that movie ... soon. But he soon changes his turn and agrees to go along with it to avoid Jose getting upset and them having to pay for everything. 

So Huey suggest Donald keep the lie small, but belivable. Given the law of sitcoms when it comes to anyone saying that and the fact this is Donald, he instead panics and lies that he’s taken over McDuck industries and scrooge has gone full abe simpson in the other direction. 

Which is why i’m not enitrely annoyed by Scrooge’s presence: while they don’t even handwave him being here, Scrooge putting on an old man act, and sometimes getting back at donald for it is solid gold the whole damn time and some of David Tennat’s best comedic acting on the show, so it makes up for him being a grumpus.  And while i’m not usually not a fan of liar revealed plots, this one works for me.. mostly because it’s rooted in character. Here Donald is lying.. but because of deep seated neurosis he’s yet to fully tackle. While he loves his boys and is proud of htem every day... it’s very clear Donald hates his life and how it turned out. We got bits of this back in House of the Lucky Gander, with Donald’s first thought upon thinking he’s about to die is “I wasted my life” and feeling entirely like a looser. This episode brillinatly builds on that: it shows a Donald who simply feels.. he acomplished nothing. It’s easy to see why as his parents were happy and sucessful at whatever they did from the looks of it and how well taken care of the kids were, his uncle is the richest duck in the world and it’s greatest hero and explorer, his sister is the only one who could rival that record, and his cousin constnatly gets riches and fame handed to him. Donald.. by comparison.. is just a normal guy whose house is in his rich uncle’s pool, who has no job, no partner, and only really the love of his family. He spent his life on adventures he didn’t want to have living int he shadow of someone he grew to resent before the Spear of Selene incident blew things up for a decade. And then when he was free instead of becoming a big sucess... he blew the rest of it being overprotective of his boys and bouncing from dead end job to dead end job. It’s easy to see why he sees himself as a failure despite having lived a good life: compared to everyone else, even his sister who mooned herself, in his life.. he feelsd far behind. And as someone whose felt they were far behind countless times and only now is realizing they haven’t and it’s a marathoon ot a sprint I naturally relate. So his wanting to play big shot for just ONE day, to be the big hero like scrooge, teo be a sucess for five minutes with his best friends.. it’s understandable and relatable. 

So Donald continues the ruse, leading to a great bit where the cabs all try to avoid picking up the check “WE can’t all keep whistling nonchalantly” before Scrooge is forced to give Donald the money to in the best joke of the episode.. and I mean FORCED. He and donald get into a fight with their hands under the table and Huey eventually gets fed up with that and has to BITE his uncle’s hand just to get him to do what he shoudl’ve done ruse or no given he’s the richest person there. The reason I take special offense to this.. is that my fairly wealthy grandpa and grandma, my mom’s dad and his wife for the record, would buy us dinner EVERY TIME they were near town, a nice steak dinner with whatever we wanted to most of the time. They knew we couldn’t afford such luxury half the time and wanted to treat us and spend time with us. Since my grandpa’s passing, my Grandma and her New Husband have continued the tradition since then, if obviously not this year for damn obvious reasons, thought hey sent us a really nice dinner to cook for christmas in the same spirit. What i’m saying is when you know your relatives arne’t as stacked as you , you pay for the fucking meal especially since i’ts a special occasion, and even for someone as stingy as scrooge, it comes off as a dick move. 

We then get the best scene with the episode, just inching out the climax as the three simply talk, remince on old times, have a good rib like old friends would. It feels natural and wonderful to watch and gets even better when the three hear the radio and end up having an impromptu dance and musical number. Also Jose’s umbrella is also a flute somehow. 

Point is the boys have a good time and Donald gets carried away, with the boys planning a world tour. Huey, while happy to endulge his uncle in a badly needded ego boost, isn’t happy to endulge this and scrooge is unwilling ot pay, more resonably this time. Huey eventually talks him out of being a moron and tells him he has to tell the honest truth and while that dosen’t work this does. 

So as Donald goes to face the music, we have come to our climax. Phrasing. 

The Finale: Ay Carumba

So we come to our finale. Backing up a scene or too to the B-Plot, webby is interviewing a local about the festival when she gets stuck in a loop. So far in the episode we’ve had hints something is up with the people as they go all yellow eyed.. and webby finds out why as she notices the “person” she was interviewing is, in a hilarious and disturbing review.. a horrignly realistic hand puppet.. and upon stealing Louie’s phone, she points out there’s no shots of anyone’s feet.. and the reason why is that the giant flower the feast is about is a mean green mother from outer space and he’s bad. And Webby finding that out’s got him fighting mad.  Webby and the boys naturally run to warn the remaning boy and scrooge and they all run out only to get blocked out of town and captured. Dewey looses his phone inside the plant monster.

In a great joke, Scrooge ended up actually throwing his back out with the old man act, so our heroes are all captured and it’s up to our stars to save the day.  So while his family is in peril, Donald finally comes clean with Jose and Panchito naturally being upset.. for a second before Jose admits he lied to and an irate panchito.. is forced to admit he also lied. Jose is a flight attendant, hopefully he’ll get his own mini series where he accidently murders a dude on disney plus, which is a nice update of his globe trotting ways, as it’s a resonable way for someone with no money to get around the world these days and Panchito is a birthday party muscian. They all however chuckle over this realizing they haven’t come as far as they thought.. and they still have each other. It’s a nice way of modernizing Rosa’s jobs for them and their hard luck lives he set up and I love this. IJt’s just a sweet emotoinal scene that makes donald, and his friends, realize they aren’t faliures and life isn’t just about reaching some arbitrarity goal.. just like Soul taught me aka the actually great movie I watched on Christmas Day.  But since Donald’s family is in peril Jose suggests theys till play the gig.. just like they did ion acapulco thus we get the second best scene of the episode and another worthy rendition of The Three Caballeros as our heroes beat the shit out of the plant, free the kids and the plant straighens out scrooges back. 

It’s beautiful, psycadelic, and utterly awesome. Seroiusly the bright boldend colors are awesome and so’s this sequence. Easily one of the show’s best.. and it’s a show that contiains the greatest scene in television history

So that masterclass concludes with Donald signing.. badly.. and blowing the plant hte fuck up. Our heroes win and head off in the sunchaser. No idea what Launchpad is up to, probably has another ex in the area. Point is our heroes win, Dewey deletes his photos because “If there was no pics it didn’t happen” (So wise) and Donald decides to get the band back together, prompting scrooge to do an animal house on Panchito’s guitar... you.. you know you have to pay for that right? you aren’t a loveable frat man and he wasn’t ‘singing and I gave my love a cherry. Your obligated to get him a new guitar. You know that right?

So with that the episode wraps. This is a pretty good episode. While the subplot is bad and it should feel bad the main plot is emotional, well done and really adds more depth to Donald’s character while giving us a hell of a show with the cabs. The College Band background gives the boys a unique flavor this time around, not musically but in how they know each other and helps set it apart from the countless other reunions. It’s a truly bright, colorful and fun episode with some great gags and great performances. As I said Puerto and Paulo really knock it out of the park as the boys and while I would’ve preferred Jamie Camil, Paulo was still utterly excellent, though Puerto was the clear standout of the two. While their second apparence would be disapointing characterization wise, overall this was a fun introduction to two of disney’s best into it’s best universe and one of Season 2′s Standouts. 

Next Time on the Ride of the Three Cablleros: we begin our massive finale look at The Legend of the Three Cablleros. Donald gets dumped by a nightmare of a person and finds an inhertance, new friends, and some sort of hot adventure god in his new cabana. Good times. Until then goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. 

[traincat]

im pretty new to spider-man comics so i was wondering if their are any comics focused/centered on harry osborn or gwen stacy? or both of them? and if there is what are some of your favorites?

Hi anon! Welcome to Spider-Man comics. I have a Gwen Stacy reading list here. It’s relatively straightforward reading Spider-Man comics for Gwen -- unfortunately she’s alive for such a brief period of the canon that you can cover it fairly easily. I thought I had a reading list for Harry, but I can’t find it, and the one I’ve used before that was made by someone else appears to be gone now. So a quick Harry Osborn reading list! 

Harry, like Gwen, first appears in Amazing Spider-Man #31 -- they knew each other before the start of the series and were friends in high school. While there’s a pretty immediate push and pull between Peter and Gwen, Peter and Harry’s relationship isn’t immediately magnetic. He and Peter first begin to become friends in Amazing Spider-Man #39. In Amazing Spider-Man #40, Norman rants about his relationship with Harry to a captured Peter, with Norman’s words clearly contrasted against flashbacks: Norman claims he was a great father to Harry where the flashbacks show he was, at best, emotionally neglectful. In ASM #46, Harry asks Peter to move in with him while they attend college and Peter accepts. In ASM #74, Harry debuts a horrible mustache. I wouldn’t necessarily count this as important-important, but it’s just something everyone needs to see.

The mustache is very short lived. In ASM #96-98, cracks in Harry and Mary Jane’s relationship begin to show and Harry’s drug use increases, leading Peter to beat up his dealers, while Norman Osborn’s buried memories of the Green Goblin begin to reassert themselves. In ASM #119-122, Harry relapses, unwittingly setting in motion the events that would lead to Gwen’s death at the hands of Norman Osborn. Harry is in the throws of an overdose when Peter confronts him while searching for Norman immediately after Gwen’s death. The stress caused by Norman and Gwen’s deaths is evident in Harry in ASM #125. In ASM #135-137, Harry discovers Peter’s Spider-Man costume and plots his revenge, believing that Spider-Man killed his father. This is the first appearance of Harry’s own Green Goblin persona, and he’s institutionalized following a confrontation with Spider-Man.

Harry next appears in ASM #151, appearing to have lost or repressed all his memories related to Peter being Spider-Man. He first meets Liz Allan, his future wife and Peter’s former classmate, in ASM #156, at Betty Brant and Ned Leeds’ wedding. He and Liz start seeing each other in ASM #157 and announce their engagement in ASM #166. In ASM #172-180, Liz is arrested following the reappearance of her stepbrother, Mark “the Molten Man” Raxton. She subsequently breaks up with Harry and Harry goes a little off the rails before he and Liz reunite. Not too long after this point, Harry and Liz get married off page and move to New Jersey. In Spectacular Spider-Man #63, Mark Raxton returns and threatens the Allan-Osborn home. In Spectacular Spider-Man #85, Harry and Liz announce they’re expecting a child.

In ASM #249-251, while Peter is attending a party at Liz and Harry’s place, Harry receives a disturbing letter attempting to blackmail him for his father’s crimes. This story is a big step towards Harry accepting what his father did as the Green Goblin. In ASM #260-261, Liz and Mary Jane are taken hostage and Harry unsuccessfully attempts to rescue them, leading to one of my favorite Harry moments which I think showcases that, deep down inside, Harry is an extraordinarily gentle person -- and that this tendency towards gentleness hurts him as much as it is an admirable quality. I think it’s an important trait when comparing him to Peter, that Harry is essentially a weak person, and that that weakness isn’t inherently negative -- it might even, in different circumstances, make Harry a more admirable, definitely a more inherently gentle person than Peter, but that it doesn’t serve Harry in their circumstances and leads him to unfairly and unfavorably compare himself to Peter, much to his own detriment.

In ASM #263, Harry and Liz’s son Norman “Normie” Osborn Jr. is born. Things are quiet for Harry for a bit, until Marvel’s Inferno event begins. (It’s a good event, don’t worry. It’s primarily an X-Men event and I recommend the whole thing. Daredevil fights a vacuum cleaner in it.) The relevant Spider-Man issues for the whole event are ASM #311-313, Spectacular Spidey #146-148, and Web of Spider-Man #47-48. If your primary focus is Harry, you can stick to the relevant Spectacular and Web of issues -- this is an important moment in Harry’s history, where Norman’s influence and memories of the Green Goblin begin to reassert themselves on Harry, and at one point an Oscorp building is the scene of the Inferno action. In ASM #321, while helping Liz and Harry move into a new New York home, Harry invites Peter and Mary Jane, currently without a permanent address, to move into the top floor of the building. Liz’s brother the Molten Man makes a reappearance in Web of Spider-Man #62, where Harry offers him a job with Oscorp. In Web of Spider-Man #66-67, Harry dons the Green Goblin costume again, this time to try and be a hero before Spider-Man intervenes. 

Things at this point go downhill for Harry very quickly: he begins, depending on your interpretation, either hallucinating his father or having visions of his ghost in Spectacular Spider-Man #178-183, in a storyline called The Child Within. 

This is in my opinion one of the strongest Spider-Man stories ever written and a very critical storyline for Harry in particular, but as a warning it deals fairly explicitly with childhood sexual abuse of a minor character who is, I would say, deliberately paralleled against Harry and Harry’s experiences in childhood. It’s amazingly done -- J.M. DeMatteis wrote it and he’s one of my favorite Spider-Man writers -- but it is very, very intense. This leads to a confrontation between Peter and Harry, during which the apparition of Norman urges Harry to kill Peter, but Harry cannot. In all honesty, I would recommend reading from The Child Within straight through to Spectacular Spider-Man #200, which is Harry’s death. Harry’s not present in every issue, but he lingers over every page like a threat, and it’s some seriously well done comic book storytelling. But if you just want the issues where Harry is present: Spectacular Spider-Man #184, #188, #189, #190, #199. But whatever you do, don’t miss Spectacular Spider-Man #200. It’s hands down my favorite single issue of Spider-Man.

So at this point Harry’s dead. You’d think there wouldn’t be very much to read between this point and his resurrection in Amazing Spider-Man’s Brand New Day but there’s still a few points to hit: Harry’s video will is read in Spectacular Spider-Man #204, and there’s some elaborate Osborn family flashbacks in Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #14. Harry also arranged, although it was carried out posthumously, for the whole Robot Richard and Mary Parker debacle, which you can read using this guide from the Complete Marvel Chronology Order + Amazing Spider-Man #390. 

Harry returns to the pages of Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #545, following the erasure of Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage that came with Peter’s deal with Mephisto in the wake of Civil War. Recently returned from Europe, Peter and Harry spend a lot of time together as Harry does his socialite thing and engages in a relationship with Lily Hollister, the daughter of a New York mayoral candidate. Relevant issues are ASM #546-549, #552, #554, #557-561, #565, #567-569, #571-573, #581-588. Amazing Spider-Man #595-599 is one of my favorite Harry Osborn stories, American Son. A rare can’t miss where Brand New Day is concerned. With Dark Reign in full swing, Norman Osborn is on top of the world and in charge of a new Avengers team -- and he wants Harry to come work for him. (Not to be confused with the three issue limited series called Amazing Spider-Man Presents: American Son, which Harry is in, but which I don’t necessarily recommend.)

Amazing Spider-Man Extra! #3′s “Nice Things” focuses on Harry’s childhood and on Harry in the wake of American Son. Harry also appears in ASM #602-605 (enjoy the plotline where he dates Peter’s hot cousin), #609-610, #621-622, #630, #642-647 -- which details the birth of Harry’s second child, Stanley Osborn. Harry disappears from the pages of Spider-Man for a bit at this point as everything goes completely to hell with the Superior Spider-Man plot, where Doc Ock steals Peter’s body. Harry makes a reappearance when Peter, who has taken back his body, is left to deal with the aftermath of Doc Ock’s actions, finding himself the CEO of a huge tech company. Harry goes to work for him. I don’t think any of this is particularly worth reading for Harry, certainly not in comparison to any of the previous comics mentioned, but Harry is present for Amazing Spider-Man (2015) #3, #7, #10-15, #25-28, ASM #789-791, and #797-800. Some of this is event territory, and a lot of it is just not very good. The one part of it I would recommend is ASM #789′s Harry scenes, which are about him and Liz getting back together. And that’s where we stand currently for Harry! Thanks a lot to Spencer’s run for neglecting him for like fifty whole issues now.

My other Harry and Gwen rec would be for the current Gwen Stacy series, written by Christos Gage and illustrated by Todd Nauck. This is my current favorite Spider-Man book on the shelves, even though we’ve only gotten two issues of it so far. It’s set during Gwen and Harry’s high school days, before they meet Peter, and fits perfectly into the Spider-Man canon of the time. The two issues released have had a big focus on Gwen and Harry’s relationship, with Gwen running for class president and Harry as her campaign manager/hype man. 

Please return to the shelves, Gwen Stacy solo.

[bard-llama]

WiP List

This is gonna be looooong (like, REALLY long), so I’mma go ahead and give you a cut here. But if you’re interested in what i’m working on, take a look!

Order purely based on the order my tabs are in. I’m only counting WiPs that actually have more than a paragraph written, because if I didn’t, this list would be even longer. Also, pls don’t judge me but what I name my WiPs 😂

Post-Coital Smoke

Kinda what it sounds like tbh. I just wanted Iorveth getting high and admiring Roche’s body and then Roche decided to be a tease. At some point, I assume there will be sex.

Angst: Sex object Roche

Iorveth’s POV of realizing that Roche hurts himself whenever he flirts at Iorveth. Premise is that Roche has been groomed (intentionally or not) by Foltest to be his. So when he feels attraction towards Iorveth, he needs to be punished. And obviously Iorveth helps him learn that no, that’s not okay and idk recovery???

Midwinter Feast

This idea was 100% spawned by me trying to write holiday fics, but Foltest hosts a Midwinter Feast where they close the city for 12 days, leaving Roche to get along with the Nonhuman/Scoia’tael(ish) delegation during that time. Also, Foltest might be using the feast as a delaying tactic to resupply his army. I legit have no idea where this is going, I just thought the idea of Roche and Iorveth stuck at a feast for 12 days was funny.

Solstice Feast aka To Birth a Verdant Future

This was actually an xmas gift for @lutes-and-dandelions, but I havent finished it yet 😓 But the premise is similar to the former in that it’s another solstice feast. But it’s set post-W3 with Emhyr as Emperor throwing a party in the new conquered capital of Vizima. Roche broods a lot about Foltest’s memory and how he hates Emhyr and decides to distract himself by hanging out with Iorveth and suggesting they follow an old elven tradition. And that’s all I’ll say. XD

Next Year (Solstice Feast sequel)

Literally set the next year. This time they merge their lives by merging their people’s traditions.

Lily Preserved in Amber

Okay, haven’t gotten very far in this, but I decided it was an elven rite of passage to go searching through the forest for a sign of your future. And Iorveth finds a piece of amber with a lily preserved inside. I haven’t decided if it purely means Roche or if it means his whole family with Roche and Boussy and Anais and all. So far, he hasn’t even found the amber yet lmao. But he did just discover music!

Character taking control of the other and Character B just letting go and enjoying themselves

Under the subheading “Porn Snips”, so uh, yeah. Starts with Roche and Iorveth fighting to decide who gets to top, involves Roche getting choked, and Iorveth ripping Roche’s pants off. Oh, also, they’re currently at a fancy party hiding somewhere in the garden lmao

Based on @moonlights-ordinance‘s art

Moonlight’s working on an adorable piece where Roche leans his forehead against Iorveth’s back between his shoulderblades. I decided to make it post-W3 with both of them working as paper pushers/administrators under Emhyr’s Temeria. And Nilfgaard does not believe in chairs with backs (or, really, Emhyr wanted to see how long Roche’s pride would make him suffer. It’s a long time). The idea is to show development over time as they slowly get more comfortable with touch and start using each other as backrests. And then the sweet scene Moonlight is drawing.

Eliza for @useless-empty-brain aka Can’t We All Just Get Oolong?

Next is Iorveth’s POV, but I legit cannot figure out where to start. But we’re gonna see some of his thoughts (like how Eliza volunteered him to stay in Vizima for an unspecified period of time and he said yes even though he can’t and now has to commute regularly because he doesn’t want to miss tea with Roche but also doesn’t want Roche’s spies to catch on lmao) and his curiosity about Roche and Foltest and what Roche’s mission is (which I... totally know.)

Roche’s Scars

@moonlights-ordinance sent me a great pic of a mod for Roche where he had some pretty vicious scarring/mutilation. So of course I decided I needed to tell the story of each one. But really, it’s a story about the stages of acceptance with scars. Both Iorveth and Roche start out hiding theirs, but eventually come to reveal them comfortably in public.

Vernon Roche of the Scoia’tael aka The Value of a Man

Does my title give it away? Oops? So, this is a found family fic where Roche is captured by the Scoia’tael and the elves and dwarves slowly come to see him as - well, I was gonna say human, but as a person, I guess. And start feeling really, really guilty, especially when some not great things happen to Roche. 

Oh also, Foltest is a giant dick and uh, SPOILERS he does not try to get Roche back. Which leads to a whole subplot that will end with a found family for EVERYONE, because they all deserve to be happy dammit.

All of that was just one document lmao. I have 24 documents, some of which have quite a few WiPs in them. 😱

Kiss Prompts

24. Deep kisses where they have their hands tangled in each other’s hair to pull them closer. AKA How to Fluster an Elf

When I got the idea for How to Fluster an Elf, I decided it was gonna fill the prompt dammit. And then it really, really expanded on me.

33. An unexpected kiss that shocks the one receiving it.

Roche dreams occasionally that Iorveth visits him and watches over him and sometimes speaks, but he can’t understand Elder Speech, so he assumes it’s all gibberish.

Then he finds out it’s not and suddenly he’s not so certain it’s a dream

16. One person pouting, only to have it removed by a kiss from the other person.

Okay, I literally just need to buckle down and write some good kissing. This is set in (Im)Perfect Strangers and Iorveth is pouting about them leaving the gardens, so Roche makes it up to him.

25. Wet kisses after finding refuge from the rain.

This one won’t actually be published with the kisses ‘cause it’s porn and the rest are T-rated lol. Buuuut Roche and Iorveth are trying to have a secret liaison in the forest when the rain starts. Featuring nature magic, tentacles, and Iorveth getting filled.

Scenes from Another World (aka AU premise)

Old Men in Vergen

Set during Witcher 3, but with an established relationship. Roche comes to visit Iorveth in Vergen to ask for advice on leading an insurgency. Iorveth just wants to feed Roche while he can now that he’s not the one starving in the woods.

Language Aphasia/Deal with the Devil

I wanted to write Gaunter! So I decided that Gaunter is in a mood for some mischief (he calls it being generous) and comes upon a traveling Vernon Roche who wishes that he could be understand Iorveth. Then Iorveth’s Scoia’tael find a passed out Roche in the woods and bring him to Iorveth for judgement. Only somehow, Roche only understands Elder Speech now. He can’t understand Common at all. The Scoia’tael find this very offensive and Iorveth is mostly freaked out that someone who can do THAT was wandering around his forest.

Bunk Beds: The Portrait of Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon

Based on a silly comic, Ciri convinces Iorveth and Roche to try to help her destroy the portrait. Geralt gets pissed and sends them to Bunk Bed Exile. Shenanigans ensue and somehow they start to get along.

Iorveth’s Scoia’tael Giving Him Shit For His Taste in Men aka The Lovestruck Fox

Right now, working on a piece from the POV of a new Scoia’tael recruit who is discovering that Iorveth’s Scoia’tael roast the fuck out of him over his crush on Roche. 

Speaking of, anyone have suggestions on prime roast material? I am not this creative.

Let’s Torture Roche!

No, really. This one is pretty dark. And told in kind of a different style than my usual, because I felt like it. So, premise is that Iorveth and Roche were a thing in the past, but then Roche was recalled to Foltest’s side and he went. So Iorveth is understandably pretty hurt and pissed (this was decided for a prompt of someone breaking down as soon as they’re behind closed doors). Buuut what he doesn’t know is that Roche is not with Foltest of his own volition. Hostages, blackmail, and torture are all involved and Foltest is a pretty horrible guy. But of course we need a happy ending, so eventually, Iorveth will rescue Roche and they get to recover together.

Life Debt aka Iorveth is an Asshole

The concept for this was that Roche saved Iorveth’s life and now that they were no longer enemies (set during Witcher 3), his honor demands that he follow Roche around until he can repay the favor. Featuring Iorveth being a trolling asshole, correcting the new Temerian Loyalist’s fighting abilities, and Roche being very, very tired. 

In application, it’s mostly angst so far, ‘cause I had to set up HOW Roche saved Iorveth’s life. And then I decided to really hurt Iorveth. But tbh I will probably skip ahead after establishing this stuff, because I just want shenanigans.

King and Country

I’ve got several WiPs for this one, including the Stripes’ recruitment, their decision to change sides, the Stripes being double agents, and of course, Iorveth and Roche’s developing relationship. But hey, I’ve skipped ahead to writing their wedding already, so... you know it ends happily ever after?

Friday Fight Night for Jan 29 (which I did not make oops)

So, this actually turned into a long piece that’s gonna be part of my Chronic Pain series. Basically, King Foltest is treating with the leaders of the Scoia’tael in Temeria and Iorveth is one of them. Unfortunately, he’s having a REALLY BAD pain day, but he’s also determined to be there to represent his people. Roche helps him see sense. Possibly forcefully.

Exhaustion Prompts

“If we’re both in this state, we both really screwed up somewhere huh?”

Iorveth and Roche are trapped in a dream and I got a little stuck creating the creature that trapped them there. But pretty sure Saskia is gonna interrupt their flirting by saving them.

“You were almost dead from pushing it too far!”

In which Roche has a heart attack from too much coffee. Yeah. He’s okay, though! But PT is about to blow a gasket and coffee will very much be disallowed.

Found Family Prompts

Taking Out the Trash for @useless-empty-brain

Literally a story about taking out the trash lmao. We’re gonna see if I can make this intersting.

Touch Starved for @mochii-girl

Honestly, haven’t gotten much done on this yet, but I’m thinking puppy pile cuddles in Corvo Bianco

Coffeeshop AU aka Brewing Romance and Dissent

Ooof I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of this written, but nothing quite finished, except for the moment when things change from “we flirt as I order coffee” to “I make you special drinks and invite you to come visit me after hours”. Writing a canon coffeeshop au when I know shit all about coffee is HARD.

Curse Breaking

Omg this is one of the first WiPs I started for Iorveth/Roche, no joke. STILL WORKING ON IT! The premise is that Roche finds a feverish and dying Iorveth in an empty Scoia’tael camp, saves him with the power of True Love’s Kiss The Power of Strong Emotions, Like That Which You Might Have For Your Enemy. Then they team up to go save Iorveth’s Scoia’tael from a big bad mage and Roche invites Triss along for the ride, which totally doesn’t make Iorveth jealous. I kinda stalled out at the part where they reach the mage’s hideout and see the results of the mages failed experiments. On Iorveth’s people. It’s gonna hurt. A lot. But afterwards, there might be makeouts. And some sort of implication that they’re all down to do this (minus the horrible, traumatic parts) again.

Roche POV bloodplay

Roche’s POV starting from before his first encounter with Iorveth. Then he has a weirdly sexually arousing encounter with the elf, and tbh, that’s as far as I got. But Iorveth draws blood from Roche’s neck, presses his thumb to it, and then licks it off his thumb. Next, Iorveth was gonna be the one getting Uncomfortably Aroused, but I haven’t gotten that far. No idea where this is going overall.

Iorveth Investigates Roche

This kinda isn’t a real WiP in that idk if I’ll ever finish it. I mostly started it to do some worldbuilding about what public information there would be about Roche. 

Voyeurism AKA Eye on You

Yeah, I don’t have much for the next chapter yet, tbh. So premise is that Iorveth accidentally ends up watching Roche get off at the brothel and finds it really, really hot. Hot enough to get curious and go back for more. Next one is going to involve thigh fucking and Iorveth might possibly get pegged by Daph??? idk

Fake Relationship

Poor @lutes-and-dandelions has been waiting forever for this one and I can’t even find a place to end the scene and post what I have so far. Premise is that Iorveth and Roche are both investigating their missing men and the trail takes them to the Murivel Resort for Couples. So they go undercover. Featuring Roche’s POV of being doubtful, Iorveth using the excuse to flirt outrageously, strip gwent, and a magic amulet that hids Iorveth’s scar and that Roche hates.

Competitive Makeouts AKA The Chase

This was kissing practice and it turned into a casefic! Which is awesome because I love casefics even though I haven’t published any yet. So in this one, as Iorveth and Roche sneak off to makeout, they also end up investigating a conspiracy in the Temerian military. 

Iorveth/Roche(/Kayran) + Roche/Foltest aka Every Kiss Begins with Kayran

In which Roche accidentally walks in on Iorveth’s monthly fuck date with the Kayran and gets invited to join in. Then, somehow,  it starts to turn into a relationship. With an elf and a tentacle monster. And yet, somehow, this relationship is healthier than the one with Foltest. The contrast opens Roche’s eyes.

Pining and Poignards

In which Iorveth stabs Roche with his favorite knife and wants it back and is also maybe pining a lil bit. Meanwhile Roche is rather pissed, but also curious and begins to teach himself Elder Speech to try to read the inscription on Iorveth’s knife. I stalled out in the scene where Iorveth accidentally watches Roche masturbate in the bath.

Iorveth tittyfucking Roche

Look, it’s what it says on the tin. Roche’s POV of Iorveth’s fascination with his chest and how it makes him feel and then there is sex.

Dirty Gremlin Man

Iorveth gets off on Roche being a sweaty, stinky human. Roche pins Iorveth in a fight and Iorveth gets very distracted watching a drop of sweat trail down Roche’s face. So distracted, in fact, that he doesn’t think twice before stretching out his neck and licking it. Then, of course, he remembers where he is. Featuring a very confused Roche, a smidge of jealousy, and Iorveth stealing Roche’s sweaty clothing to do unspeakable things to it. And somehow they get together.

Want me to sit in your lap?

Geralt LEGIT says this to Roche like 5 mins into the Witcher 2 and it’s GREAT. So of course, I had to write a scene where he actually got to. This is set post Witcher 2 while Geralt, Triss, Roche, and Ves are headed back to Temeria. Triss offers Geralt a little stress relief - which involves warming Roche’s cock and watching Triss and Ves get to know one another.

Red is the Rose

So, Chapter 4 is set post-Witcher 2 and Iorveth is obsessing over the fact that the Rose of Remembrance still has not wilted. He wonders what might be possible, so when he hears a rumor that a certain Temerian Commander was taken captive by Dethmold...

Dethmold most definitely dies. But unfortunately, that doesn’t save Roche from the curses he cast. So they go looking for Geralt to find out how to fix it.

This has only been 9 of my documents, y’all. I think I have a problem.

De-Aged Fic aka The language of friendship is not words but meanings

Ugh, I lost my momentum on this one, which sucks, ‘cause the next chapter is so close to done. Iorveth just needs to do a little freaking out first. But then they will both be back to adults and have to DEAL with the fact that they made good friends and would kinda like that again. I think this fic is gonna be purely friendship for them, but they’re gonna get there.

Glory Hole

A fic for the @sugar-and-spice-witcher-bingo where Roche hears a rumor that some Scoia’tael go to this brothel on the outskirts of town and hey, he may as well check it out, right? By going undercover and working the glory hole, of course. He never ACTUALLY expected Iorveth would come, but his legendary mouth was enticing enough to draw the Scoia’tael commander out.

Snuggling

Thirteen “accidentally” handcuffs Iorveth and Roche together when they capture Iorveth. This leads to them lying on the cot in the Stripes’ holding cell, spooning. There is banter and tickling and escapes not attempted and also maybe some sex with Inexperience Iorveth (i say maybe because I already started the sex, but idk if it will fit in). 

Petals and Stripes

A weed is but an unloved flower

Okay, the Stripes are going to attempt to woo Iorveth during a battle. Also, there is a stabbing. And then a kidnapping. And then, miracle of miracles, someone actually tries talking!

One person's weed is another person's wildflower

Ves’s POV! She cleans up the mess her idiots make and terrifies the life out of one elven suitor, but first she’s gotta deal with her own conflicted feelings about her Boss, the guy she relies on to show her the shades of grey in the world, loving the elf she’s supposed to kill. 

After that, I’ve got 2 more fics planned in this ‘verse. One is gonna be a fluffy and/or sexy date after Iorveth and Roche have gotten together. The other is a Scoia’tael side story, featuring lots of gossip about the humans sending their Commander love letters.

Love Shack

The Better Part of Valor

Ugh, I’m stuck on the sex again. Roche is having a really shitty day, so he goes to the cabin and signals Iorveth that he wants a round. Iorveth offers gentle (for them) sex and praise. And at the end, there’s a very significant scene where Iorveth removes his bandana. Roche buries his fingers in Iorveth’s hair, but doesn’t actually see his face, as he’s laying on his stomach with Iorveth on top of him.

Medicine

The morning after! Roche wakes up to find Iorveth in the bath, facing away from him, and notices a new scar. Iorveth has to deal with actually revealing his scars in daylight and they discuss the significant differences in elven and human medicine. Hint: I turned my own medical procedures into elven medicine, so it’s pretty fucking good.

PWP Ovi

Set ambiguously late, maybe after Thou Art More Lovely and More Temperate. Iorveth and Roche explore what Roche can take. We start with overstimulation, go into consensual somnophilia, come inflation, breeding kink, and oviposition. Because elves reproduce by laying eggs, which is not at all the case purely because I started this WiP ages ago and was horny.

The Picture Says It All

There’s going to be 5 more pictures that Rinn draws for Iorveth. Next is Roche hard at work, hunched over a desk. Then we’re getting some shirtless Roche, for “research”, of course. Then Roche cuddling with PT and the rest of the team, about which Iorveth is not at all jealous. Then a face study of Roche during a fight and uh, Iorveth is uncomfortably turned on. And finally, a drawing of their cabin with a silhouette in the window. She knows.

Roche & Rinn: The Haunting of Barrack 8B

Oh man, I really want to finish the next chapter, because I already have the one after that done. But first, we get introduced to Adda! This ‘verse is going to feature Adda the White a lot more than any of my others have done so far and I’m very excited. Also, Silas continues to be terrified of the ghost and the ghost and Adda become girlfriends buddies.

Roche builds Iorveth a home

Set late in the ‘verse, after Roche knows his feelings, but they haven’t said them yet (not out loud, anyway). Iorveth takes a trip to go meet Saskia do things off screen and Roche ends up turning to his old hobby, carpentry, to keep himself from pining too obviously. So obviously he ends up builing Iorveth a solarium. And a pillow nest. And a scaffold so that flowers that blossom in the moonlight cover the glass and give them privacy.

I got stuck here because Rinn needs to give Roche a hint to get him to build the pillow nest, but I hadn’t developed Rinn and Roche’s relationship yet, so had to go back and do that. But eventually Iorveth returns and they have wonderful I’m-not-saying-it-but-i-love-you sex in the new pillow nest.

Foltest (WiP): Long Live the King

This is actually the last fic in the ‘verse, so I don’t want to give too much away. But actually, I haven’t figured out what the next chapter is, BUT I have the chapter after that started and it is GOOD, just you wait!! I’m very excited.

Don’t Cry For Me, Temeria

This ‘verse alone, I have 14 WiPs and a dozen more unwritten ideas.

(Im)Perfect Strangers

I am frustratingly stuck on this chapter. Theoreatically, we are going to have a check in on how the mountain and the rest of our cast is doing and then Roche launches his Wooing TM plan (aka dinner, gift, and dancing).

Between Two Fools

Yeah, Roche and Iorveth have very different understandings of what their gifts represent. There is some soft happiness and then a swift rug pulled out from under Iorveth’s feet, I’m afraid. BUT we are almost to the part where the two idiots sit down and actually talk properly.

Unlucky Number Thirteen

Not only do I have more of Thirteen’s story planned, but I have ideas for ALL the Stripes to have stories. We’ll see how that goes. But for now, Thirteen starts spying for Roche. A lot of still-nebulous stuff happens, including Thirteen’s first time, for which he asks Roche to help. Additionally, once we reach the (Im)Perfect Strangers timeline, Thirteen has a special story all his own. It involves learning to read and a secret I shall not yet reveal.

Silas

Like I said, all the Stripes are hopefully getting stories. But Silas’s is coming along nicely. He starts a new life as “Silas”, as a man, and joins the army. Boot camp is rough and awful and he’s not very good at any of it, but one day, Roche comes looking for a recruit. He needs a codebreaker to decipher Thirteen’s scouting reports (another one for pictures). So Silas joins the Stripes, but he’s still terrified that they’ll fnd out and think he’s been lying to them. Fortunately, they’ll be putting his fears to rest.

Stripes Sex aka Earning Your Stripes: The First Time

PT’s POV! The Stripes (pre-Silas) are all still getting comfortable with each other as a team. But Thirteen has known Roche the longest and in a specific capacity. So one evening when he needs to get out of his head, Thirteen asks Roche to dom him. PT is confused and scandalized and then jealous, but he gets to join in soon too. Meanwhile, Finch and Ves have fun with their bratty arsonist and Fenn is loving it.

break (v /brāk/): to destroy someone's resistance

This is very long and entirely build up to porn. And then lots of porn. A question during a random conversation leads Roche to make Iorveth ask him to take Iorveth utterly apart in a consensual non-consent fantasy set when they were still enemies in the forest.

Bath House

This was supposed to be a simple PWP where Roche talks dirty to Iorveth under his breath while the two of them are at the bathhouse with Boussy (who LOVES baths and brought them to the fancy bath house), Anais, and Thirteen (who HATE baths and react to water much like a cat). They kinda took over the story and there has been no dirty talk yet oops.

Iorveth POV: Tutti

Iorveth begins to reclaim his love for music and lets himself improvise and compose again. And he ends up writing a song that is the story of his and Roche’s romance.

Daggers, Dumplings, and Dresses

The Elihal/Hattori side story! Though we haven’t actually met Hattori yet. So far, Elihal is expounding on his past and his relationship with Iorveth (he used to make all of Iorveth’s fancy gowns for concerts). Elihal and Hattori won’t play a HUGE role in (Im)Perfect Strangers, but they will be appearing!

Ves and Ciaran aka The First Rule of Fight Club

Ves is stuck walking a very long way back to Vergen with the memory of Ciaran’s skin against her teeth. And even though elves lie like breathing, she can’t help thinking about what he said about Roche not being worth her loyalty. Slowly, she begins to work some things out.

Sex with Saskia/Dragonfucking

Yeah, it’s what it sounds like. Iorveth tells Roche that Saskia agreed to a threesome and where to meet, but he neglected to mention the rather large dragon that was currently rimming his ass. Roche gets distracted from his confusion by the hotness and watches Iorveth get fucked by a dragon (with 2 dicks to fit 2 holes, of course).

Come Inflation + Piss Play

Um. Yeah, it’s a PWP where Roche asks Triss for a potion that will make him come a lot. And then Iorveth wants more. No idea where it’s going, tbh.

Stripes vs Scoia’tael: Water Balloon Fight

Literally a water balloon fight. For morale.

Baby Mama

Uh, the title is a bit telling here oops. But let’s just say Iorveth and Roche go on vacation to the cabin on top of the mountain again when Iorveth is hit with the sudden extreme urge to breed. Roche is down, but at some point, they do actually need to talk.

King Roche aka fics where Roche is in charge and hates it. Some are more in line with this than others.

Post W3 Becoming Terrorists Together

Ah yes, the murder husbands fic. Literally, Roche gets stuck leading Temeria under Emhyr’s orders and he’s good at it, but he HATES it. Enter Iorveth, who both points out security flaws, joins Roche for a surprisingly unawkward bath, and proposes that they go hunting down war criminals on their own time. How can Roche say no?

Pre-W2 Ambassadorial AU

Different first meeting AU! In this one, Iorveth is sent as the elven ambassador to Temeria and it’s about as much fun as one might expect. Triss and Roche, the other outcasts amongst Temerian court, decide to befriend him. Well, try to anyway. idk where this is going, but it’s been fun. Also, Iorveth wears a fancy braid over his eye, because I said so. Also, I might be planning an OT3 porn scene at some point, because it turns out, elves are VERY sensitive to magic XD

Leap of Faith

Okay, yeah, this has nothing to do with King Roche, but it’s the doc I was working in when I got the idea. In this one, a mage captures Iorveth for Foltest and starts torturing him. Roche, without really thinking about it, decides the mage goes too far, so he kills them. Leaving him with an elven prisoner and a castle full of people who will consider him a traitor for that. They escape the city, but now Iorveth has gotta convince Roche that no, the King really won’t forget that whole murder and prisoner escape thing. 

The whole point of this fic was for me to write them jumping off a cliff lmao. When am I gonna get to that? Probably like last or second to last chapter, tbh. Which should be... after the next one? No, I lied, it’s next chapter! I need to get on that!

An ill-favour’d thing, sir, but mine own aka Possessive Sex

Piss Fic

Um. Yeah. Roche is really horny when Iorveth gets home and is on him immediately, which is great, but Iorveth has gotta piss. Which becomes less urgent as Roche is determined to have his face fucks, but after he comes all over Roche’s face, it’s VERY urgent and Roche is a fucking brat and won’t move out of the way. So obviously the response to this is to piss on Roche’s crotch - which Roche is apparently more than okay with.

Cum Dumpster Roche

Yeah, this one doesn’t have much yet, I literally just wanted Roche getting railed and claimed and L O V I N G it. 

Possessiveness

Iorveth spends a lot of time thinking about his enemy, his nemesis. He’s researched Roche extensively, spent hours thinking up tactics and strategies to outwit his nemesis. He literally knows what Roche named his stupid weapons, but he’s never actually met Roche.

But he’s dreamt about it. The Roche in reality doesn’t look like the assumptions he made in his dreams, but who cares about looks? Because Roche is his, and certainly not some dh’oine king’s.

Tentacles + Breeding

Gods, this one is SO CLOSE to being done dammit, I just gotta finish it!! But it’s a fun one. Iorveth and Roche are fighting, when Iorveth suddenly starts fighting plants, which are fighting back. Then the plants notice Roche and suddenly he’s tied up with vines and his clothes are getting torn off and uh, he’s not supposed to find this hot, is he? But he really kinda does. And then Iorveth goes and claims him and tries to protect him from a nearly-extinct non-sentient plant that sensed a warm spot to lay its eggs until someone else could come along and fertilize them. Iorveth is delighted to be that person.

Dream: Pleasure Slave

Yeah, Roche really likes getting claimed in these. In this one, he has a favorite dream setting where Iorveth rules some grand elven kingdom and Roche’s only role is to bring him pleasure. Not to deal with politics or nobles or policy, but just to make Iorveth feel good. So far, this features cock warming, come inflation, a leather cock cage (so to speak), prostate milking, and a very nice silver chalice that Iorveth expects Roche to fill before they’re done.

Roche wears a collar

This was gonna be a simple lil thing based on me creating Roche in heroforge and giving him a lil hidden collar. But then Iorveth decided to get really sappy and had to design and create the perfect collar for his enemy. And then, much to his surprise, he gets the opportunity to PUT his collar on Roche. Which is great, except the sight distracts him so much that Roche manages to escape.

But the next time they meet, Roche is still wearing that collar, hidden under his chaperon and armor. Iorveth has feelings about that.

Standalone

Crones fic aka And Ghosts Did Shriek and Shrill

So this is the angsty fic that started from a crack premise. Er, one of them. I seem to do that a lot. But in this one, Roche goes to the Ladies of the Woods and asks for his men back. The Ladies agree, in exchange for 6 lifetimes of service. But no creature can reverse death. Which leads to the Stripes coming back to “life” as ghosts - only Roche is the only one who can see them. Ves can’t (not at first). 

Believe it or not, the whole idea behind this was the Stripes roasting Roche as he tries to flirt (terribly) with Iorveth. But uh... somehow it turned pretty dark. Like, it’ll have a happy ending for sure, but it’s gonna be a lot about processing trauma and grief and building families and also curing a plague, because that’s the first assignment from the Ladies.

Stripes fics

Cuddles with the Commander

This is intended to be a sequel to The Pride of Temeria, but I kinda got stuck figuring out exactly how Roche should react. Tbh, I don’t have much of this written yet, but the goal is for Roche to approve cuddles with everyone lmao.

Fire Breating

Okay, this one started as crack purely because I love fire, but it’s actually been really fun. So, Iorveth and Roche are established and Iorveth has been invited to a family night with the Stripes, which is kinda a lil awkward. So they decide to showcase some of their talents - which includes Roche singing musicals and PT breathing fire.

Iorveth is horrified that humans have harnessed this skill.

Iorveth’s missing eye

This is really short and idk if I’ll continue it, but the idea was for Roche to really wonder what was up with the bandana over half of Iorveth’s face was about. And then, of course, to find out.

Iorveth Gangbang

Why is this under Stripes fics, you might ask? Well, I have great news for you. Guess who the gang is?

In which Iorveth and Roche are in an established relationship and Iorveth gets tied up in the middle of the Stripes’ camp while Roche orders his men to take him apart. Iorveth very much enjoys himself, and then when the Stripes are tapped out, Roche shows ‘em how it’s done.

Kink Bingo fics aka that event that I totally failed, but hey, prompts are prompts.

Age Kink

In this fic, Iorveth and Roche both end up captured by unknown forces and end up imprisoned together. I think the Stripes and Scoia’tael are probably working together to find them and save them, but in the meantime, Iorveth and Roche decide to get to know each other a bit better. Featuring muscle spasms, blow jobs, and pain kink.

Eskel/Lambert (okay, a little out of place here, but eh, it’s in the doc and I am still working on it)

Started for a prompt on tumblr, Eskel and Lambert end up fighting and, trying to keep the peace, Eskel casts axii on Lambert. Which leads to Lambert confessing that he bit Eskel because it’s the only way he could get his mouth on him. This leads to some dodged confessions, some frottage, and some snarky banter, because of course it does. 

Tempt Not a Desperate Man aka the Fuck or Die series that started with Devour What’s Truly Yours

Fisting

The next part of the series, where Roche struggles with the fact that he’s been high key horny ever since the encounter in the woods with Iorveth and nothing is satisfying him. Iorveth, on the other hand, is jealous and annoyed that Roche keeps going to the whorehouse.

Then Roche decides to make a potentially suicidal move and enters the forest to try to find the clearing from last time. And, as you might guess from my heading, fisting will be happening. 

Iorveth POV: The Chaperon

Okay, I don’t actually have much of this written, but it’s really cute so - Roche keeps using his chaperon as a cum rag, so Iorveth knits and/or sews him a new one.

“Human Bootlicker”

PWP where Iorveth jokingly suggestions Roche should surrender on his knees - and then Roche does. And asks Iorveth to take his prize. Featuring Roche coming all over Iorveth’s boots from getting his face fucked, then leaning down and licking up the mess while Iorveth watches and then comes over his face.

One Accidental Proposal and Five Attempts At Accepting

So one of the themes of this ‘verse is gonna be the Elven Baths where the Roses of Remembrance grow. As in, they decide to make the elven baths a place they meet up. This is the first time Iorveth takes Roche there, and Roche does not know what significance the roses have. But he DOES know that Iorveth blushes cutely when he tucks a rose behind Iorveth’s ear, so...

Iorveth would like to accept, only Roche doesn’t know WHAT he’s trying to accept.

The Legend

So in the game, there is a legend around the statue of elven lovers above the elven baths. “Legend has it the lover’s sighs are enchanted within these very stones, though only those in love can hear them.” 

Iorveth overhears his Scoia’tael gossiping about the legend and comes to an abrupt realization that Roche and him were the ones they were hearing. Oops?

Standalone Fics

Letters

This is kind of a bittersweet WiP that I mostly wrote in one go and then went to sleep and kinda lost the will for it. BUT the premise is that post-Witcher 3 Roche is in charge of Temeria and his brooding is interrupted when he receives a letter sealed with a forget me not pressed into wax. Iorveth continues to send letters describing his life as a “civilian” in Nilfgaard and how much he hates it and Roche relates a little bit too much. Then Iorveth decides to run away and live on the streets as a musician and he might inspire Roche to start learning the cello and presumably at some point, they meet.

Identity Porn

Iorveth and Roche have a meet cute in Flotsam’s tavern while the elf is listening in for local gossip and Roche is passing through on his way to meet with the other northern kings to get support in fighting against the new emerging threat of the Scoia’tael. Neither knows who the other is, but that doesn’t stop them from starting a relationship where they meet every time Roche passes through Flotsam. But their house of cards can only last so long, and at some point, they will meet as enemies. Who knows what happens then? idk, not me.

Gwent pinup calendar aka Cards Out for Your Country

Hahaha, so I started this series in response to some WONDERFUL art of Roche with his Tits Out For Temeria. And obviously we need more of that, so I created a list of 24 characters who are asked to pose for some pinup art, all in the name of Gwent. So far, I’ve only finished Dandelion’s pose/the introduction, but I do plan to do as many of them as I physically can.

Gwent Game in Corvo Bianco

Wow, I didn’t even remember this WiP, so uh... clearly I haven’t worked on it in a while. But it’s Iorveth’s POV of how surprisingly comfortable he is in Corvo Bianco and Iorveth and Geralt get drunk and play gwent.

Zoltan/Jaskier/Priscilla

A giftfic for Wibbly that involves Zoltan being sappy about his bards and then Priscilla dominates them. Featuring all my headcanons about dwarven genitalia (two holes, one with a retractible dick).

Dijkstra fics

Noticing Roche’s Fucked Up Relationship

Anyone else randomly finding themselves shipping Dijkstra/Roche? No? Ah well. For this one Dijkstra observes Roche and sees a few too many reminders of himself with Vizimir, except Foltest is no Vizimir, and Roche clearly hasn’t learned to set up boundaries. Dijkstra feels weirdly compelled to help him figure that out before Foltest destroys him.

Developing Respect Fic

Also known as “let’s torture Roche 1.0!” This fic switches between the present, where Roche has woken up in a cell somewhere unknown and it brings back far too many memories for him to be entirely sure of what is happening when. In the past, he was captured by Redania while on a mission for Foltest, long before he was anyone notable. Dijkstra comes to visit, curious about this prisoner who refuses to break, to even tell them his name or confirm his country (but he has a Temerian tramp stamp, so they know lmao). So Dijkstra decides that this is not a man who will be broken through torture and decides to try conversation instead. The idea is to show them slowly gaining respect for each other, but like, obviously Roche is still a prisoner. Eventually, he’s returned to Temeria in a prisoner exchange, but meanwhile, in the present, Roche is all alone, with not even guards around and no way to free himself.

and that’s all!! I am... legitimately scared to count, tbh. This post is so fucking long, the number cannot be good for my heart. But, that said, please come talk to me about any ideas you find interesting!! Or anything you have questions about! 

And if you made it this far down the list... wow. Thank you, you rock.

[thedeaditeslayer]

Bruce Campbell talks ‘Evil Dead,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘Xena’

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The first time Bruce Campbell came across Sam Raimi, they were students at Michigan’s West Maple Junior High School.

“Sam was a year younger than me,” Campbell recalls, “and I remember him dressed as Sherlock Holmes playing with dolls in the middle of the floor. And I remember going way around him. And I found out later that it was Sam Raimi. We didn’t really come into contact until we got until high school.”

What a connection they made. After bonding over D.I.Y. filmmaking, Campbell and Raimi went on to do 1978 shoestring horror-short “Within the Woods” together, which they evolved into 1981 demonic thriller “Evil Dead.”

Campbell would periodically reprise signature “Evil Dead” character Ash Williams in various sequels and offshoots. And appear in Raimi-produced “Xena: Warrior Princess,” portraying slippery “king of thieves” Autolycus on that ’90s-iconic TV fantasy epic.

And then there’s Campbell’s memorable cameos in Raimi’s blockbuster, Tobey Maguire-starring “Spider-Man” film trilogy: the ring announced in the first, 2002 film, “snooty usher” in the 2004 sequel and a maître d’ in 2007′s “Spider-Man 3.”

Of course, Campbell’s made a mark outside that dynamic duo. He drew raves for his portrayal of a nursing-home-bound Elvis Presley in 2002 indie comedy-horror gem, “Bubba Ho-Tep.” Then there’s his role of Sam Axe on USA Network spy drama “Burn Notice.” Not to mention numerous other film, TV, voice acting and even video-game work.

The cult-fave actor will make his first ever trip to Huntsville this week, for Oct. 24 events at Von Braun Center’s Mark C. Smith Concert Hall featuring “Evil Dead” screenings followed by a Campbell-led chat about the film, his life as an actor and beyond. Tickets for these 3 and 7:30 p.m. events start at $32, via ticketmaster.com.

His upcoming projects include a comedy album with actor Ted Raimi, Sam’s brother, called “The Lost Recordings.” Campbell also is readying a book of essays called “The Cool Side of My Pillow,” which finds him riffing on subjects ranging from noise to the environment. He hopes to have both released by the end of this year. More info at bruce-campbell.com. On a recent afternoon, Campbell checked in from his Oregon home for a phone interview. Edited excerpts are below.

Bruce, when you do an “Evil Dead” screening event, do your discussions turn up new things about the film or that you haven’t thought of in a long time?

Every show turns up something new because it puts you on the spot. Someone will say something that will then trigger something that you had forgot. I just sat down the other day before one of these shows with my guy who is my frontman and I was like, “OK, l’m just going to tell the story of making this movie.” It’s not for questions I’m just going to tell you basically what you’re about to see. But yeah, every show triggers some new thing. I’ve seen the movie. I know how it ends. But that is the challenge, finding some new, weird tidbits.

Back in high school how did you and Sam Raimi first bond? Did you share a class or something?

Basically I got into typing class, that’s what started it. I could not believe I was stuck in this stupid class where everyone around me seemed to know how to type. I’m like, “How do you know this?” It was very frustrating. So I went to a counselor for the first time ever – I’d never gone to try to get out of anything.

So I go there and I say, “Hey can I drop this dumb typing class?” She goes, "Yeah, what do you want? I go, “What do you got?” So she comes up with “radio speech.” And I’m like, “Radio speech? Wait they do the morning announcements (at school) and stuff?” and I’m like yeah let me get all over that.

So I got into a class and Sam Raimi was also in the class. And the guy who taught radio speech also directed all the plays. We didn’t know how critical that was. The first year I couldn’t get in anything in my high school. I was auditioning for everything but I didn’t have a class with this guy. By the next year I had a class with him, and then me and Sam were in basically all the plays after that. We found out how the deal worked.

So I met him in radio speech and we’d do the morning announcements together and got to talking about what we do in our neighborhoods. I was making little regular-8 (millimeter film) movies and Sam was making Super-8 movies. So we started to join forces during the course of that high school run, that two or three years in there.

We were very productive. We didn’t really get into trouble because we were too busy like filming parties. We wouldn’t go to the parties we’d film the parties and use them in some way in our little films so it was a great guerrilla filmmaking period.

A celeb or well-known person you were surprised to learn they’re an “Evil Dead” fan?

I heard Charlie Sheen, one of his favorite things was to smoke a doobie and watch “Evil Dead 2,” and Alice Cooper’s favorite horror movie is “Evil Dead.”

If it’s good enough for Alice Cooper it’s good enough for me. You host the quiz show “Last Fan Standing.” What do you make of the mainstreaming of nerd-culture?

Every generation has its deal. In the ’40s most moviegoers were in their 40s and so the actors were in their 40s. Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy and all the guys were in their 40s. You didn’t have to be 21. And then as the audience got younger the actors got younger and the people who run the companies get younger and so they’re really just catering to what’s popular.

Comic books have always been popular but now they’re really popular. Not really sure what that’s all about but yeah social media has certainly helped but I think it’s another form of escapism. Whenever times get weird, people want escapism. During The Depression they did the Busby Berkeley splashy musicals where everyone was happy all the time, when life was really miserable. And some decades where we’re really doing okay, the movies turned introspective and we go after ourselves and figure out why we’re like this and like that. And so I think we’re in a phase where we just want to be taken away to another galaxy and Marvel is very happy to help.

And you’ve been a part of that. In Sam’s “Spider-Man” trilogy, which of your cameos did you have the most fun with?

Well I don’t know it’s hard to lineate because they’re so critical. The first one I named Spider-Man. If I wasn’t in the movie a billion dollar franchise would be called The Human Spider. He wants to get in the theater in the second one, past the snooty usher who won’t let him in because he’s late, because it will spoil the illusion, so I think I’m technically the only character who’s ever defeated Spider-Man. And in part three, a superhero comes to a mortal for help. He wants me to help him propose to his girlfriend so it’s sort of a landmark case where a superhero goes to a mortal for help which is pretty rare. So I can’t delineate because they’re all critical to the “Spider-Man” universe.

Do you have any cool mementos from "Evil Dead or elsewhere from your career? Maybe something like the chainsaw from “Evil Dead 2”?

You know, it’s weird I’m not a hoarder, I’m not a collector. My brother, he has the shotgun from “Evil Dead,” but not because he loves movie trivia, he just likes guns. My brother also has I think the set of keys to the original cabin. That’s a pretty good one. Not sure how he got that one.

I have weirder ones. Like I have a prop from a 1989 movie called “Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat.” I have Van Helsing’s holy bottle where he shakes the holy water at them. And I have what I call my tchotchke shelf, where most people would look at it and they couldn’t identify what importance each item is, but there’s a story for each one.

Some of your favorite actors outside the horror genre?

Oh, I l love a lot of the old time actors. William Holden, he starred in “Bridge on The River Kwai” one of my favorite movies. I like the guys who had to work a lot. In the old days and actor would finish a job on Friday he was under contract, he took two weeks off and started a new movie a couple weeks later. Actors kind of just do one or two movies a year if they’re lucky these days and it doesn’t help them refine their craft.

I feel like the guys who worked a lot got good because they got really used to the process. I’m a fan of the studio system. Not all movies were good and not every actor was happy under the studio system, but I think a busy actor’s a good actor.

For your role in “Bubba Ho-Tep,” what was your process for tapping into Elvis’s vibe?

What guy doesn’t want to be Elvis, you know? So I worked with an Elvis impersonator for about a half an hour and then he gave up on me. He goes, “Look, man, you’re never going to get it.” I’m like, “Wow either I suck or you suck as a teacher but somebody here sucks.”

No, but I watched a bunch of footage and documentaries. There’s a good one, all his Memphis Mafia who worked with him, a filmmaker basically got them all drunk one night and interviewed them all and that’s where the good stories are. You learn a little more of the human side of him. But that’s pretty much it. I’ve never been a stage performer so mercifully there wasn’t that much of it, just in quick flashbacks.

And there’s a part of me, in the back of my mind, I want to know that Elvis' descendants, somebody, a daughter, niece, somebody has watched that movie and approved. We’ll see.

I thought it was a cool creative take on that whole Elvis thing.

I agree. That’s why I did it. It was one of the weirdest scripts I’ve ever read But yet it wraps up though. It has a weird premise but it has a really interesting theme of what do you do with old people. Do we forget these old people? And are they still useful in society, old people? And I thought it had a sweet ending, that these two old guys they kind of rally themselves one more time.

What’s a well-known role you’ve turned down?

Turned down? I don’t have a lot of those. I don’t operate in that rarified air of saying, “Oh I turned ‘Titanic’ down.” I tried to get a part in a studio movie called “The Phantom” and Billy Zane wound up getting the part." And it was down to me and Billy, I was number two for the job, but I didn’t really enjoy the process very much because it seemed more political than actually acting. It was amazing how many people you had to audition for, and you had to go up the ranks and each time it got a little more tense as you move up. So I’m good doing these weirdo little movies.

I read the budget for “Within the Woods,” the predecessor of “Evil Dead,” was a princely 1,600 bucks. What was the most expensive line item, you think?

Food and probably fake blood. Tom Sullivan, who did the special effects, probably needed to mold a few things, so he probably spent a couple hundred bucks on molds. A lot of it was footage because Sam Raimi likes to shoot footage, so we probably bought a lot of rolls of film. And we did go to a cabin to shoot it, so had to get in the car and travel so maybe a little gas money in there too. That’s about it.

What can you tell us about the status of the next installment of the “Evil Dead” franchise?

We’re honing-in, circling the building now trying to lock in a partner. We have a couple of bidders and we’re trying to just find the correct suitor and we have a script written and a director picked. Sam Raimi hand -picked a guy named Lee Cronin, who’s a very good Irish filmmaker. And it’s got a very good modern tale. It’s a modern-day urban “Evil Dead,” it’s called “Evil Dead Rise.” And we’re hoping to do that next year.

You were a producer on 2013 “Evil Dead” remake. What’s the key to making a reboot effective?

Well rebooting can be very confusing and frustrating and not always successful. Reboot, sequel, remake we have all these crazy terms. What we’re doing now is we’re saying," Look, this is another ‘Evil Dead’ movie and that book gets around, a lot of people run into it and it’s another story." The main key with “Evil Dead” is they’re just regular people who are battling what seems to be a very unstoppable evil, and so that’s where the horror comes from. It’s not someone who’s skilled. They’re not fighting a soldier. They’re not fighting a scientist. They’re not fighting anybody more than your average neighbor. This one is going to be a similar thing. We’re going to have a heroine, a woman in charge, and she’s going to try and save her family.

Speaking of a female protagonist, when you’re at a con or meet fans somewhere, who has the most passionate superfans: “Evil Dead” or “Xena”?

“Xena” hits them at an emotional level. Like, they’ll come up to me and Lucy Lawless (the actor who played the show’s title role) and just burst into tears, because her character helped them get through a difficult time. “Xena” is more representative of overcoming your struggles in life. “Evil Dead” fans are pretty fervent but they don’t cry as much.