#earth is a ripoff

[hearmiioutblogg]

Can the aliens just take over I’m tired of this bitchass government

……..

Did I miss a hashtag?

[blushinggoku]

Been watching some dbs related videos and I'm sosoo glad I gave up on that anime because oh my god the story gets worse with every arc. Wtf are they even doing anymore

[mumpsetc]

supercomputer for the pony design thing.. >:]

Princess of Being the Fucking Worst

[guinevereslancelot]

imagine a supergirl story but good and original....dc get on this

[probably-unreliable]

Sketching some Yu-shan Gate idea

[wonderjanga]

We Thought You Died?!

Billy became a hero in 1959, and he was a hit. He was extremely popular. Captain Marvel was a beloved hero. As for the Squadron of Justice? They were beloved too. They, plus Captain Marvel were the superheroes of that time. They were the flipping blueprint for being a hero, especially Captain Marvel. Then the bubble formed in 62, and they just disappeared off the face of the earth and everyone thought he died.

Then, out of nowhere, they just reappeared.

News channel: *showing a clip of Marvel*

Grandson: *tugs on Grandma’s sleeve* “Grandma, that looks like the hero guy the teacher are making us learn about.”

Grandma: “Amazing. He looks just like the real thing.”

Yeah… People didn’t really believe it at first. Though, to be fair, all the Fawcett heroes have been gone for over sixty years.

Old Man: “It’s disrespectful is it what is. Just because you have the same powers doesn’t mean you can dress up as a dead hero.”

Old Woman: “ I just feel bad for the families. To see someone dress up as your dead husband or wife and then go around pretending to be them? Disgraceful.”

It was then the Justice League got involved. They really couldn’t have these people running around like this. Not only that, but some of the imposters are lethal. Not to mention that there are people in the Justice League who used to know the Fawcett heroes. They were friends with them for Christ’s sake. So that’s why unanimously, they went and confronted these guys.

Supes: *hovering over Fawcett*

Marvel: *helps a cat out of a tree and sees him so he flies up*

Supes: *disapproving look* “I hope you know that if you’re trying to be a her—”

Marvel: “Oh my gods, your suit is awesome!”

Supes: “Thank you…?

Marvel: “Are you a new hero? What’s your name? Are you from Fawcett or are you gonna join us here?”

Supes: *computing, still stuck on the first question*

Meanwhile, Flash and Minuteman were arguing which then somehow spiraled into them getting tacos. Batman and Robin, and Mister Scarlet and Pinky are just fighting. And Bulletgirl and Wonder Woman had a civil conversation that actually got them a lot of information.

After sorting out the entire misunderstanding that they were all imposters, things thankfully got lighter.

Marvel: “Oh my gods, Jay, you’re an old man! What happened to your long luscious locks of beautiful brown hair?”

Barry: *holding back a laugh* “Long luscious locks?”

Jay: “Okay, it was not long, luscious, or beautiful. He just insists on calling it that to embarrass me.”

Marvel: “But it’s true! Or it was true.”

Jay: “No it wasn’t. I had perfectly average hair, thank you very much.”

Yeah, Billy met up with some of his old friends, and they were all ecstatic to see their eight feet tall, golden retriever who just wanted to make the world a better place.

Marvel: “So your not an hero anymore? Then what happened to the JSA?”

Alan Scott (First Green Lantern): “We disbanded…”

Marvel: “WHAT? Why?”

Alan: “Well, we were getting old. We needed to retire.”

Marvel: “Oh yeah.” *sounds a little bummed*

Alan: “I mean, there’s now this thing called the Justice League? Wildcat joined them. So did Mr. Terrific.”

Marvel: “That sounds like a ripoff of you guys!”

He joins anyways. So do the other Fawcett heroes cause they might as well. That’s when things go down hill once more because the JL are forced to remember that a couple Fawcett heroes, mostly Spy Smasher, kill people.

Batman and Spy Smasher: *tied up the Joker after beating up his goons*

Spy Smasher (SS): “Alright, let’s get out of here.” *pulls out a gun and puts it to the Joker’s forehead*

Batman: “What are you doing?”

SS: “I’m ending this…?” *cocks his gun*

Batman: *slaps the gun away* “No, you’re not. He’s going back to Arkham.”

SS: *pulls another gun out* “Yes, I am. Are you seriously telling me you don’t want to permanently end this guy? I’ve heard people call him a terrorist.”

The two then duked it out and the Joker still went back to Arkham anyways. Spy Smasher was so salty, not that literally anyone could blame him.

Marvel: “Wait, so people don’t kill villains anymore?”

SS: *sitting next to him, bandaged*

Wildcat: “Nope. Nowadays, you got to turn them into the police and let them break out again. I know it’s stupid.”

Marvel: “But what about the mass murderers? What about the Black Adams or the Captain Nazis? People who have done messed up stuff?”

Wildcat: “To jail they go. Why do you care anyways? It’s not like you killed any of your villains.”

Marvel: “Well, I didn’t, but I gotta ask because Smasher is trying so hard not to physically claw off his own skin at the thought of these guys just breaking back out.”

Safe to say, getting used to the modern world, took some getting used to for everyone. As for Billy, he chills with the gang at the old folks home, reminiscing about times as if he’s aged with them.

Also, like, genuinely, their disappearance would show up in top ten unsolved mysteries vids because genuinely, they just disappeared with no trace.

Billy also doesn’t know what to think of the many memorials he finds of himself and the other Fawcett heroes around the country.

[weaponizedducks]

poor shiro cannot catch a fucking break can he. first he gets a crippling disease he's got two years to live. then an angsty wattpad breakup with his boyfriend then he gets kidnapped by aliens and pumped full of alien weed then he crashes on earth with so much walking midlife crisis energy that he gains the skinning puppies to make a fur coat hair, and then he immediately gets shot right back into space by his shittass little brother and weirdo friends with the literal matt clone. then this poor man is made the leader of an alien war, becomes a father to four fuckass teenagers through accidental child acquisition, is forced into the kim kardashian lifestyle by a ginger on drugs, gets kidnapped again, gets cloned, fucking dies, somehow comes back (yeah I'm not really clear about this) then this pathetic wet cat of a man, this stressed jean valjean father of four, experiencing his fourth midlife crisis and millionth mental breakdown, gains that senior citizen swag at twenty five. you could colour match his hair with a polar bear. then he witnesses a walking loreal ad (derogatory) get melted alive, watches a castle get blown up, loses three years in a space time jump and then finds out his ex- fiance who broke up with him right before he left has fucking died in a purple thumb invasion before he got to marry him. but oh no no no that's not the end for this poor sad man. poor guy doesn't get a second to grieve before he is visually assaulted by a less cunty sue sylvester ripoff and her gang of bitchy cheerios (this is admiral s*nda), and yet again made a leader against his will, and shot right back off into space again. then he watches the only other responsible adult in this entire franchise (hot badass space princess who like shiro did not catch a break) sacrifice herself and is left a struggling father. ends up marrying some random fucko. all while suffering through his shitass hot topic brother and blueberry disaster's doomed yaoi romance. oh yeah and he's only got one arm. give the guy a BREAK. FREE my man he doesn't deserve this 🔥🔥

[spaced-out-human]

Sarah kept to herself, mostly. As the data clerk for an interstellar shipping company, she had "a plain old office job, just with a couple extra bells and whistles". She made a few friends, human and alien alike. Didn't break any rules, didn't have any "hold my beer" moments, kept her adrenaline at healthy levels...

One afternoon during her lunch break, Sarah and a few others started discussing their childhoods.

"On my home world, the skies are deep blue and the forests breathe together. You walk in the plants and instantly know every insect who touches their roots." Aniv flexed his antennae, eyes shining as he spoke.

"...I think the skies are blue everywhere." Marie, human, chimed in. She made a mental note to look into mycorrhizal networks on Aniv's planet.

Sarah chuckled. "I'd bet 50 units that Marie's planning another research project right now. What would you do there, anyway? Hunt bugs?"

Aniv tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"You know, like when you were a kid- didn't you wanna go find them?"

"What for? I knew they were a part of-"

"-Yeah," she interrupted, "But like. On Earth at least, they'd hide. When I was a kid I used to go catching fireflies and me and my friends would hold them and take their wings off and then just.. release them... back into the grass..." Sarah trailed off, surprised at her friends' expressions.

"I, um-" Marie piped up. "I never, uh. I never did that. That's like, cruel."

Aniv was frozen, stunned.

"...Oh. Yeah, yeah I guess it was- it was a long time ago... Obviously I wouldn't do that today, haha. But Marie, don't tell me you've never, like.. Ugh, I don't know."

"Um," said Marie, "I was a real menace to villagers in blockcraft... I wasn't allowed to buy anything online so I got stuck with the ripoff version." She laughed, and Sarah joined. It was like nothing had happened.

Aniv didn't understand. They... tortured as children, trying to accomplish what exactly? He didn't ask. He didn't want to know. It took all his willpower to stop him from throwing up.

He eventually mustered the courage to speak- "What, em... what about pack bonds? Don't you, uh, protect the weak? Isn't that what humans.. do?"

Marie laughed. "Aniv, historically speaking, sometimes humans don't even protect their own. There's backstabbing, and then there's 'schadenfreude'. I'd encourage you to look it up but you seem terrified right now."

"Maybe we ought to change the subject." Sarah sighed. "Remember the HR meeting? Does 'social awareness' ring any bells?"

Marie chuckled. Soon the conversation shifted to their incoming shipments and work schedules, and before they knew it, lunch was over. Aniv, bless his heart, was tense for the rest of the day.

It's easy to forget how primal humans are, still. How their rules are written in hindsight and blood. But they can still choose to do things that alienate them from their own species. They can drop their standards in the blink of an eye, some willingly. Needless to say, Aniv was pretty paranoid from then on.

[chaylattes-art]

✨️THE CHAYNEMATIC GALA 2024✨️

PART I: WATER

this past month i've been imagining what various OCs of mine-- some from a DECADE ago, some of which i've never talked about publicly-- would look like in MET gala style outfits! the theme was THE FOUR ELEMENTS and characters were sorted into whichever element i felt suited them best.

water | air | earth | fire

director's commentary below the cut!

Zeya Kade (The Gemini Heist). Zeya's look was fun because i didn't want to put her in a dress, and kept seeing all these cool ceramic corsets. the water theme is a bit more subtle with her, though. i wanted something moon-related as the moon represents mystery and Zeya has that mysterious air about her. the pattern on her corset is not marble, but ocean waves 🥲

Maeve Santana O'Reilly & Kitty Royce (UnSuper Squad). Maeve's look is just a simple military style jacket embedded with seashells; she's a pretty lowkey person stylistically but would still be faithful to a theme. her girlfriend Kitty has a cute, sparkly, wave-inspired two piece set accented with pearls. they're not the type of couple to fully match but they do complement each other nicely.

Marie-Claude Prince (Girls With White Teeth). MC is the daughter of a model and an online influencer so you bet she had to serve at this gala. she's wearing a literal mermaid dress, with a seashell bra and iridescent scale tail. while pretty, this looks incredibly impractical to walk around in.

Mila Freeman (Girls With White Teeth). Mila had to be in something cute, because she is cute. she's giving ocean princess in her little sparkly dress adorned in seashells, pearls, and glistening starfish. and perhaps her earrings whisper compliments in her ears like in Aquamarine (2006) bc god knows she needs it.

Blanche Saint-Pierre (Aurora Hearts: Mirage). Blanche is a very old OC (lowkey an Elsa Frozen ripoff lol) that i repurposed for a friend's universe. naturally i put her in an ice queen outfit.

Emma Chakravarty (Strangewayes Library of the Arcane). Emma is a grad student in magical theory. she's a bit of a refined girlie and i wanted to give her something simple but elegant, so a famous painting on her skirt felt like the move.

[warriorcatsofficialfacts]

one of the seekers characters is, and i cannot stress this enough, a shapeshifting human child. he is not actually a bear. he simply chooses to be a bear to hang out with bears. the non warriors erin hunter books are so much weirder than people give them credit for, they are literally all unhinged. ripoff simba from bravelands was raised by baboons and the baboons have a caste system and the main character is a peasant baboon trying to get higher on the ranks so he can date the daughter of weirdo baboon. the main antagonist of the first arc of survivors killed her own newborn babies. two characters in survivors get their heads ripped in half. that happened twice. the dogs in survivors believe the earth is the sentient god of death. these books are fucking absurd

[authortobenamedlater]

Does anyone want to help me construct a playlist for my S1 novelization which I have officially titled "Halo: Awakening"?

I don't use Spotify or anything but I'd like to have a rotation of songs to get me in the writing mood.

Here are some I've found myself listening to:

Battle Symphony by Linkin Park

Castle of Glass by Linkin Park (I almost named the project after this song but it's also the title I would use for my Babylon 5/Earth Alliance Civil War ripoff starring Captain Lasky. I am 99% sure I'll never write it, but I don't want to part with the title.)

Bring Me to Life by Evanescence (If this doesn't give you John + Cortana chills what's wrong with you.)

Immortals by Fall Out Boy (This is my Silver Team song. I like to imagine Cortana would play it before an orbital drop.)

Holding Out For a Hero by Bonnie Tyler (Tell me the UNSC would not use this for propaganda.)

Numb by Linkin Park (My Miranda & Halsey song. I also have a Linkin Park thing for fanfic inspo, it seems.)

What I've Done by Linkin Park (my Jacob Keyes song.)

I Enjoy Being a Girl by Doris Day/Rogers and Hammerstein (Just a fun one for Kai.)

New Divide by Linkin Park (my Jacob & Miranda song...I. REALLY. Have a Linkin Park problem.)

Human by Rag'n'Bone Man

Unbreakable by Bon Jovi (a good Master Chief song)

That's a decent list but I am in this project for the long haul and I need MOAR. Specifically looking for Kwan and Makee songs, and songs for the Arbiter/Sangheili and Covenant generally. I'm not picky about artist or genre for this.

My musically driven friends, come to my aid! @ageless-aislynn @sarnakhwritesthings @morganas-pendragons? Also @rainintheevening and @novelmonger, I know you two aren't in the fandom but Star Wars/MCU fic inspo songs could work well for Halo too.

[heartsforkento]

🩰 🌿 🐞

hiiiiiii

okay so these are the questionss:

🩰; you’re stressed in your dr. what’s likely stressing you out? and how do you cope/feel better?

if i'm stressed in my DR, i would probably be because of university work or because of my family. because we live so far from each other and because i have a large family, a lot can happen within a day so that's definitely going to stress me out. if i'm stressed, i would prefer talking things out. i like to talk to everyone about it in a big circle (circle time!) and whether they give input or not doesn't matter, i just need to talk

🌿; pick your favorite quote from each of your favorite people in your dr.

kento: "NO!" okay so a little backstory soo before he started warming up to me, he was kindaa kinda uhh a bitch soo like anytime i tried to include him in my brainrot activities he would say NO and it would be so loud and it's like you can feel the annoyance in his voice 😭😭 i still quote it to make fun of him hehehehe

yuji: "mom" i adopted him, so whenever i hear him calling me this, i lowkey feel like crying... i miss my son man

satoru: *speaking korean* it's so funny because i lured him kinda into kpop and he went on to watch kdramas as well and the way he sometimes says "noona stop ignoring me" "jinjja??" and my personal fav "ssibal sekkiya" with all that sass and all (tell me why he reminds me of oli london)

🐞; name three oddly specific things you’re excited to witness in your dr.

participating in our masterchef ripoff 😭 it's gonna be soo funny man (i think i'd be a perfect gordon ramsey, more opportunity to bully gojo, i'm just kidding 🙏)

powerpoint nights.

"why gojo satoru is the best human to have walked this earth"

"why we should manipulate gojo into eating buldak"

"my personal puppy rankings (my opinion pls, no hate)"

"why you (nanami kento, i mean) should totally go out with me and make out"

"why i hate my job (30 slides)"

"why we should try to get men pregnant"

"things to note before approaching me (#baddie)"

lastly amusement parks. like omg i'm gonna script gojo rents out amusement parks for us to go to (he rich rich). so like no one is gonna be there except us and it's gonna be sm fun mannnn. can't wait to get on formula rossi and all that. also i scripted i'm actually brave for this because me here is kinda 😓

that's it thank you sm for this i felt a sudden wave of excitement writing this <333 take care mwah

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Lord of the Rings but I've never watched it

*slides into the post with a creepy smile* hello maggots it's me back again doing what Satan put me on this green earth to do, summarise things I have no authority to summarise.

I kind of read the Hobbit when I was like 9 or 10? And I may have seen a scene or two from the movie(s)? But that's it. So of course let's hear my hot take on the series.

The elves are hot. Like really hot. They are fucking pretty. Everyone is such a slut for them.

Now I hear some of you lil shits saying no asmi actually i'm a hobbit person no actually i prefer the dwarves and one motherfucker who says actually i'm a gollum kinnie and I'M PREEMPTING THAT BY CORRECTING POINT ONE. MOST PEOPLE ARE SUCH A SLUT FOR THE ELVES. DON'T MAKE MY POST WEIRD.

Oh yeah Gollum was a hobbit but now he's married to a ring and he calls it my precious.

I think he's also a cannibal. Not to indulge in profiling, but he looks the type.

There are like horsepeople of the apocalypse except they're just horsepeople of Smaug and they're like scary. I think their music theme/call is very cool. I do not remember.

Who is Smaug? Smaug is Bendover Cumsnatcher.

On reflection, the horsepeople might be of Sauron, not Smaug.

Who is Sauron? Idk but it's his ring and he has an eye.

Martin Freeman is the hobbit named Bilbo and he had to shave his legs for the fake legs so he has shaved legs in one Sherlock episode.

There's an old dude named Gandalf. He wears robes and says mysterious shit. He has a wand/staff and a possibly homoerotic history with the villain. He has white/grey hair and a long beard. He's the main character's mentor sometimes.

No, what do you mean R**ling's Dumblewhore is a ripoff of that? I see no similarities at all.

He's grey and then he dies and gets whitewashed by the narrative.

Frodo is played by that one actor that reminds me of Aamir Khan.

Frodo is like Freeman's nephew or something. He has a bestie named Sam. They take the ring somewhere to destroy it.

It could be Mount Doom. It could be not. It is in New Zealand. Idk.

The pretty elves live in Rivendell. I've studied to Rivendell ambience before.

The hobbits like comfort and they eat second breakfast and elevensies. I stan.

Thorin is dwarf. He's the king of something.

I had a Hobbit activity book when I was a kid. It was very cool. The riddles were fun.

Galadriel is an elf and they just made some kind of backstory series with her and ruined her character which seems on brand for modern cinema.

There's some kind of book called the Silmirallion or Similarlion or Smillylirryon IDK IT HAS A SI, L, M, A, R AND ON.

Uhhhhh that's all I've got. I am open to being educated, even though I clearly know everything about this.

[sir-adamus]

RWBY takes its inspirations from a lot of places

it's no secret that RWBY wears its influences on its sleeves - it's characters are all based on fairytales/myths/legends/memes and is a series created by someone who wanted to make his own anime. and while it does make a lot of nods to specific things (and is dogged on for that by some people despite that it isn't new or even exclusive to RWBY - see the episode of AtLA where Aang dreams about being Goku and Naruto), the show itself draws or seems to draw so many elements from so many different sources and arranges them into something new

putting the rest below a cut because it got lengthy

like i think i've seen the claim that Remnant's four Kingdoms are a ripoff of AtLA's four Nations... except the Kingdoms aren't elementally themed and these places are so important because most of the planet is uninhabitable, which isn't the case with AtLA, and each Kingdom has thoroughly different theming that it's barely similar. it's such a surface thing that it's barely a nod because the world setups are so wildly different

Dust is clearly inspired by Materia from FFVII (or more broadly, Magicite, which recurs through the FF series and has a similar function); a resource mined from the earth that allows the wielder to do magic (though Dust is more limited in its function where materia/magicite can allow for non-elemental and abstract stuff like time-stopping or summoning). the four Academies are almost definitely a reference to the three Gardens in FFVIII (and one of them, Balamb Garden, is where teenagers are trained to become SeeD, a mercenary force for hire that conducts missions around the world, which likely was one of the points of inspiration behind the Huntress/Huntsman career in RWBY)

Aura, being a personal protective shield, both visually and purpose-wise, is a reference to the personal energy shields used by the Sangheili in Halo

the Maidens seem to be a cross between the Sorceresses from FFVIII (who unlike normal people can do magic naturally, and each Sorceress passes on her power to another individual upon her death) and the rule basis for the Sirens from Borderlands (only 6 Sirens can exist at a time and their powers transfer to another individual upon their death, similar to how there can only be 4 Maidens at a time) - Sorceresses, Sirens and Maidens powers can also only be exclusively passed on to women (Troy Calypso in Borderlands 3 has partial-Siren because he was conjoined with his twin sister Tyreen in the womb, and has to leech off of her in order to survive; it's made clear both by the appearance of his Siren tattoos that he's an aberration to the normal process)

Grimm are so obviously inspired by the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts - dark beasts of destruction that are defined by their lack of something (the difference of course being that Heartless come from the nebulous 'realm of darkness' which is separate from the other worlds while Grimm are very much a part of Remnant). Kingdom Hearts has a lot of influence thematically, as it similarly presents itself as a bright and cheery story with a lighthearted, stylised aesthetic, only for that to be an artificial facade for a very dark and often brutal story that becomes more obvious as each series continues. and in terms of specific Grimm, the Apathy (and the Brunswick farm story in general) are a direct reference to the short story Bartleby the Scrivener, but the Apathy's emaciated, skeletal appearance and paralytic scream draw from the ReDeads of the Legend of Zelda series

the Faunus being part animal could be inspired from any number of different shows or games, but in the BlazBlue series, demihumans (who are also part animal) are also noted to face discrimination (though the series doesn't touch on it much by nature of being a fighting game)

in terms of characters, Ruby is obviously Red Riding Hood, but she wields a scythe like Maka from Soul Eater, was initially presented as a completely silent, gun-wielding protagonist in a high octane fight similarly to Black Rock Shooter (the 2012 show also served as an influence on RWBY's animation style, and BRS's flaming blue eye is similar to the Maidens), and her bladed weapon also being a gun brings to mind Squall's Gunblade from FFVIII. plus, positioned as the protagonist and falling into the leadership role and it continuing to weigh down on her is something she has in common with Sora from KH

additionally, the visuals for Ruby's Semblance are inspired by something similar Vincent Valentine does in the FFVII Advent Children movie, with the addition of rose petals (which may be inspired by a similar thing the protagonist of FFXIII, Lightning, has)

Yang is Goldilocks, her design evokes Tifa from FFVII (and her characterisation not being what you'd expect based on the initial impression of her design also borrows from Tifa), her original theme outright compares her to a Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball with her glowing, flaming hair when she powers up with her Semblance evoking the aesthetic appearance of the form (and her 'gets stronger every time she takes a hit' is essentially a temporary, low-level zenkai boost from that series; 'get stronger every time you almost die'). in fact, character-wise, her losing an arm and being characterised as fairly thoughtful and introspective, you could make an argument that she's meant to parallel Future Gohan specifically. however, losing an arm, growing up in the woods and having to care for her younger sibling when they were young also could be a reference to Ragna from BlazBlue (and to boot, Yang's weapon is named Ember Celica, Ragna's parental substitute was Celica A Mercury), and additionally, Nine the Phantom from the same series (Celica's doting older sister) also has heavy fire theming, meaning she could serve as another point of inspiration

finally, Yang may also be partly inspired by Nero from Devil May Cry. while it wasn't explicitly confirmed until DMC5, when Nero was introduced in 4, he is highly implied to be the nephew of series protagonist and demon hunter Dante (who typically wields a greatword) and the son of Dante's twin brother, Vergil (who wields a katana that he can open portals with). Nero's design from jump is asymmetrical, with one of his arms being demonic. asymmetry is a theme for Yang from her trailer (and culminates with her losing one of her arms), her uncle Qrow wields a greatsword and her mother, Raven, Qrow's twin, wields a katana and opens portals with them (that Nero then gained a mechanical prosthetic arm in DMC5 is a hilarious coincidence)

Ozpin, Headmaster of Beacon is obviously the Wizard of Oz (his name comes from the acronym of the Wizard of Oz's actual name, Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs - OZPINHEAD), but he also draws from Cid Kramer from FFVIII (being the headmaster of Balamb Garden), as well as Gandalf in putting his faith in a 'smaller soul' (and his manipulative bs is clearly meant to analog to the guy from the bad wizard books, except in rwby it's clearly meant to be a bad thing that has actual consequences, and no more needs to be said about it)

Ironwood is clearly the Tin Woodsman as his main inspiration, a man who (thanks to a cursed axe) kept hacking off parts of his body and getting them replaced with metal until even his heart was gone (and at no point did he consider putting down the axe) - with the key point that he's a subversion of the Woodsman's story. but his descent could be inspired by Walker's descent in Spec Ops The Line (as it would've been in the public zeitgeist when Monty, Kerry and Miles were developing the show and writing these characters, and the game had been played on Achievement Hunter around that time), or from Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, which inspired that game. his willingness to go to extreme and appalling lengths to achieve his goals may also be drawing from Director Leonard Church, from RT's first show Red vs Blue, who has the quote: "Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species. I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable." which feels very in line with Ironwood's willingness to compromise every moral and sacrifice whatever and whoever he thinks he needs to to win

Penny's fairytale inspiration is obviously Pinocchio but her robotic nature and relationship with a caring father also brings to mind Astro Boy and Mega Man, while her combat style is directly inspired by the Prime Field Devices of BlazBlue, who also fight with a floating array of many swords

the structure of the show honestly feels like a JRPG too - with the first few volumes being the lighthearted prologue where characters and concepts are introduced to ease you into the world, there's some hints to a wider world and a bigger story but there's very little sense that the protagonists are in real danger

until they are, and things go catastrophically wrong in a major way that shakes up the plot, throws the characters out into the world and gives them the main goal they're now striving toward (stopping Salem, in this case), with personal narratives developing in tandem with plot progressions that shake up how the audience and the characters see the world and reveal things to be more complex as things go on

you could literally go on forever; and it's not so much 'taking these disparate puzzle pieces and making a collage' so much as it is laying out the bones and building up something new on top of them through the way these bones intersect and interact in new contexts. RWBY isn't ashamed of its influences while still standing as its own story to tell

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2023 (Graphic Novels)

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

It's that time of year again, when I round up all the books I reviewed for my newsletter in the previous year. I posted 21 reviews last year, covering 31 books (there are two series in there!). I also published three books of my own last year (two novels and one nonfiction). A busy year in books!

Every year, these roundups remind me that I did actually manager to get a lot of reading done, even if the list of extremely good books that I didn't read is much longer than the list of books I did read. I read many of these books while doing physiotherapy for my chronic pain, specifically as audiobooks I listened to on my underwater MP3 player while doing my daily laps at the public pool across the street from my house.

After many years of using generic Chinese waterproof MP3s players – whose quality steadily declined over a decade – I gave up and bought a brand-name player, a Shokz Openswim. So far, I have no complaints. Thanks to reader Abbas Halai for recommending this!

https://shokz.com/products/openswim

I load up this gadget with audiobook MP3s bought from Libro.fm, a fantastic, DRM-free alternative to Audible, which is both a monopolist and a prolific wage-thief with a documented history of stealing from writers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

All right, enough with the process notes, on to the reviews!

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. Shubiek Lubiek by Deena Mohamed

An intricate alternate history in which wishes are real, and must be refined from a kind of raw wish-stuff that has to be dug out of the earth. Naturally, this has been an important element of geopolitics and colonization, especially since the wish-stuff is concentrated in the global south, particularly Egypt, the setting for our tale. The framing device for the trilogy is the tale of three "first class" wishes: these are the most powerful wishes that civilians are allowed to use, the kind of thing you might use to cure cancer or reverse a crop-failure.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/11/your-wish/#is-my-command

II. Ducks by Kate Beaton

In 2005, Beaton was a newly minted art-school grad facing a crushing load of student debt, a debt she would never be able to manage in the crumbling, post-boom economy of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Like so many Maritimers, she left the home that meant everything for her to travel to Alberta, where the tar sands oil boom promised unmatched riches for anyone willing to take them. Beaton's memoir describes the following four years, as she works her way into a series of oil industry jobs in isolated company towns where men outnumber women 50:1 and where whole communities marinate in a literally toxic brew of carcinogens, misogyny, economic desperation and environmental degradation. The story that follows is – naturally – wrenching, but it is also subtle and ambivalent. Beaton finds camaraderie with – and empathy for – the people she works alongside, even amidst unimaginable, grinding workplace harassment that manifests in both obvious and glancing ways.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/14/hark-an-oilpatch/#kate-beaton

III. Justice Warriors by Matt Bors

Justice Warriors is what you'd get if you put Judge Dredd in a blender with Transmetropolitan and set it to chunky. The setup: the elites of a wasted, tormented world have retreated into Bubble City, beneath a hermetically sealed zone. Within Bubble City, everything is run according to the priorities of the descendants of the most internet-poisoned freaks of the modern internet, click- and clout-chasing mushminds full of corporate-washed platitudes about self-care, diversity and equity, wrapped around come-ons for sugary drinks and dubious dropshipper crapola. It's a cop buddy-story dreamed up by Very Online, very angry creators who live in a present-day world where reality is consistently stupider than satire.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

IV. Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

The story of three young Canadian women meeting up for a getaway to New York City. Zoe and Dani are high-school best friends who haven't seen each other since they graduated and decamped for universities in different cities. Fiona is Dani's art-school classmate, a glamorous and cantankerous artist with an affected air of sophistication. It's a dizzying, beautifully wrought three-body problem as the three protagonists struggle with resentments and love, sex and insecurity. The relationships between Zoe, Dani and Fiona careen wildly from scene to scene and even panel to panel, propelled by sly graphic cues and fantastically understated dialog.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/11/as-canadian-as/#possible-under-the-circumstances

Like I said, this has been a good year in books for me, and it included three books of my own:

I. Red Team Blues (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a—contain your excitement—self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before—and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (nonfiction, Verso)

We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. We must to seize the means of computation by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users to leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

III. The Lost Cause (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam. And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth. The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

I wrote nine books during lockdown, and there's plenty more to come. The next one is The Bezzle, a followup to Red Team Blues, which comes out in February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

While you're waiting for that one, I hope the reviews above will help you connect with some excellent books. If you want more of my reviews, here's my annual roundup from 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/01/bookishness/#2022-in-review

Here's my book reviews from 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#bibliography

And here's my book reviews from 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#recommended-reading

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review

[thecreaturecodex]

What are DnD and Pathfinder if not medieval fantasy? Just curious, I've been (perhaps wrongly) calling them that for ages 😅

The classic Fantasy Tabletop RPG setting is similar to medieval fantasy, sure, but much Weirder. With the capital W intentional. D&D owes as much to the Weird Fiction of the early 20th century as it does to Tolkien, if not more. You won't find a crashed spaceship, multiple species of mind controlling alien horrors or a general vibe of adventuring as a thing to do to make a quick buck or die trying in Middle-Earth, Narnia or Westeros, but you will in the Hyborian Age, Newhon, or Zothique.

This is also why Final Fantasy, which started as a D&D ripoff, added airships and robots pretty early on and they fit right in no problem. That kitchen sink attitude towards fantasy, science fiction and horror tropes is very Weird Fiction, and is a hallmark of D&D and especially Pathfinder to this day.