#even though he's a human in the Kill All Humans Club and I was notably Not Human

[whypolar]

If they end up making Elendira some kind of (partial? attempted?) clone of Knives in Stampede that will just make me even sadder that she's stuck as a child and probably has a different personality. Thinking about the kind of interactions Elendira and Legato have in the manga but with that angle added is making me lose it

Everyone involved would hate it so much

[crascet]

X-Men Movie Tier List Update- X-Men: First Class

Set in the swingin' 60s, this film covers the origins of Charles' idea for the X-Men, but this is also more of an origin to Erik as Magneto as well, and the whole relationship between Charles and Erik is the strongest part of this movie. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Charles and Erik respectively, and both did a great job in these portrayals, especially with the ladder. Any scene involving them just talking to each other are just the best parts of it all. From their first meeting outside Shaw's yacht with Charles telling Erik, "We're not alone," to that spectacular scene of Charles encouraging Erik to not just focusing on anger in using his powers when attempting to turn the huge satellite dish towards them.

Seeing how they develop into the characters we see during the first X-Men movie is great, starting with how Xavier wants coexistence between humans and mutants, but there is still the fact he wants them to be secret and not out with the public, while Erik wants to be more upfront about their existence with wanting to start outright conflicts with them, and the best character that shows this aspect has to be with Raven/Mystique.

Now, I'm aware that some people don't like how the new X-Men movies post Origins have more of a focus towards Raven, but I honestly like how these movies portray her. She first starts out with her human form and throughout the most part of the movie, since that is still the form that Charles prefers her to stay in public compared to her true-blue form, still wanting to keep it as a secret. Erik on the other hand wants Raven to be in her true form as it is the real her, not just some fake image that she has to keep. Hank also does a great job in showing this theme. Hank and Raven seem to hit it off well in the first place, until Hank introduces her the cure for them to look more human, which has Raven doubts herself on wanting look human and decides to not only declining the cure but is a crucial step towards her final decision of staying with Erik and his new brotherhood at the end of the movie (and a way better showing of her compared to TLS).

Hank is a good character here, played well by Nicholas Holt (who will be Lex Luthor in James Gunn's Superman movie next year, so can't wait for that!) and, previously mentioned, is a great part on the themes of the movie. Even though his only deformity is his feet where he can just simply wear shoes to hide it, he wants to create a cure where he can look more normal to people, only for it to backfire, essentially changing everything about him physically to Beast. This actually starts an arc that goes beyond this film into his way of accepting this new form.

The new characters are pretty good too. I like Moira's character in accepting these mutants and how they help in stopping the Hellfire Club, and it's cool to see Banshee in this, although I am disappointed how they're both not Irish in this movie. Come on, where's the Irish representation? (Note: I'm not Irish) It's also cool to see Alex/Havik here since it's always great to see the Summers brothers here and its nice to see an arc where he starts being a bit harsh towards Hank, before being nicer to him. Angel, who is not Warren but a different character here who is also named Angel, however I have heard she is also called Pixie as an alternate name for her, unless I'm mistaken. So, Angel 2 here is alright, even though she joins the Hellfire Club to become the new femme fetale member after Emma Frost was imprisoned by the CIA. Darwin has a cool ability, but it does suck that he died early on, but atleast he went out trying to take out Shaw while still protecting Angel 2. It is messed up how the only black mutant out of the new mutants in the movie is killed off, while the rest are still alive at the end.

Now the Hellfire Club is here are good, but Kevin Bacon did a great job in playing Sebastian Shaw and is a notable part of the group. The whole plot of Shaw wanting to start World War 3, so that the U.S. and the Soviet Union to use nukes to create more mutants and take over the world by actually making the Cuban Missile Crisis happen is a great case of alternate history in superhero films I haven't seen much, with the only one off the top of my head being in Watchmen. It's also great to just have Kevin Bacon be here, pretty much one of my favorite actors.

And of course, there's that cameo scene:

Probably my favorite cameo scene ever!

There is a bit of a continuity error between this and TLS, where Charles and Erik were together when meeting Jean for the first time, but its TLS so who cares.

First Class is a great film that takes my second favorite X-men movie slot, surpassing the first film, but still falling short against X2. Next up, we follow Logan post-TLS, still mourning Jean, as he heads to Japan in The Wolverine.

[furtive-pigmy]

Well Well Well. This beautiful big fella. What's not to love? Aside from his D-tier ass boss weapon. I do hate that thing. AHEM. The very first boss any mortal human is to face in the dreaded game "DARK SOULS" is this (not so) friendly face.

Generally speaking, the Asylum Demon exits to gently convince the player character that they truly can still uninstall this game, that yes, you can leave and nobody will blame you! This fella is terrifying! He drops in from the bloody sky and is holding a club the size of New York. Not to mention that sneering face, red eyes. bone spike things on its head to form some mockery of a crown. There is a lot to take in, and as soon as you do? He smashes your entire being into the floor. Dealing roughly 90% of your health bar's worth of damage to your fragile starter class body. You hit him back with a broken sword you started with, and deal like, 4 damage. You scream, and then he ass crashes you into the ground, ending your life. YOU DIED. Care to try again?

Looks and first impressions aside, The demon is MADE for you to RUN AWAY. The very first hostile enemy in this game is Both a Boss and something you are meant to RUN from. That is truly a message to the player. "Running away is a valid option" And I for one think that's a perfect tutorial.

Now, actual gameplay wise? Not overly special. Its big and slow. Yet honestly doesn't hit as hard as it feels like it should. Granted, as a first timer getting hit more often, the damage values are likely perfect for the first "REAL" fight. The Demon throws out large hit boxes that can usually be dodged by rolling any way at a halfway decent time. Not to demanding for dodging perfection, as to be expected from the First Boss. Though it can catch you off guard if you try to back away and heal, its no slouch when it comes to reach, as it will leap forward and cover the distance of about 7 small dogs to bring the hammer down on your tender Estus filled skull.

LORE TIME! As a self proclaimed "soulstorian" , I have a vast wealth of sources for my accurate and "factual" interpretation of the Souls History. that includes this fella. AHEM. The Asylum demon is sadly little more than a footnote. Notable things include that The Demon is a "Lesser Demon", It drops Humanity when slain, and that it is guarding the undead. All of these things are rather uninfluential, and can be ignored at no expense to the greater narrative, but are still neat. The idea that even within a lesser demon can exist a glimmer of Humanity, the dark glimmers even within demons. This actually makes narrative sense considering that demons were once Humans, or something adjacent at least as they were denizens of the Witch of Izalith who got corrupted by the Chaos Flame. But alas, a story for another time.

Overall, the Demon is a checkmark on the path of the chosen undead. A speedbump to the experienced, and a wise teacher to the beginners. Nothing strikes me as offensive about this beast, and as such, and can offer it no more than a 7/10. No higher due to the fact that it offers nothing special to the experienced, aside from its shitty hammer if you kill it without running away. Shitty reward for an easy feat. Mind you, the invisible bird can give you hammer for a sack so its not like its an exclusive reward or anything.

(Note. the Demon is "easy" to kill via black firebombs you can get as a starting gift, or you can also just kill the demon in New Game+, where the demon has a pitiful 1,100 hp (As opposed to its 825 in New Game)) and is a very easy kill then too.)

[madraleen]

Bungo Stray Dogs - Kafka Asagiri/Sango Harukawa Vol. 21 - Ch.118: A Fairly Predictable Commentary

-bless, tachihara, you gave a good fight. it was a good plan, mori's and tachihara's. i hope we'll see you soon, little man.

-babe, i'd love for you to be a mafioso through and through (<= the fact that i just wrote that phrase), but tachihara love, you need the hunting dogs' monthly surgery... or does he? could he possibly not need it after being turned into a vampire and then human again?

-"ALL THE AGENCY'S POWER BACK IN ONE PLACE," ATSUSHI?! ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE SOMEONE'S NOT MISSING? I'M NOT ABOVE DENOUNCING YOU, YOU KNOW!

-"TWO" KEY MEMBERS STILL AREN'T HERE, ATSUSHI?! DID YOU FUCKING FORGET ABOUT DAZAI, ATSU- you know what, go ahead, fight gozen all on your own, i don't even care after THAT attitude.

-ARE YOU SURE IT'S AN "AGENCY-WIDE" MEETING, FUKUZAWA! ARE YOU SURE

-(i'll give them all the benefit of the doubt, since technically they might be in contact with dazai in real time, but we wouldn't know, bc it hasn't been revealed yet how he communicates with them. it might have even been a hint, if one opts to be optimistic about it.)

-jouno has pinchable cheeks, idk

-JOUNO SHOULD HAVE WON, i hate time-travel. jouno, join tachihara in the "hunting dogs fate: pending" waiting room. we miss you.

-how tf did aya get in the room and hide before fukuchi and jouno

-i love how much attention harukawa-sensei pays to the eyes of every individual character

-bram meets aya, waaaaaahhhhh :")

-y'know, at this point in the real-time timeline of the manga (ch.118), dazai could pop up and be like "actually, i predicted this five years ago and it's all been part of my plans, we're actually winning as we speak" and i'll be like "thank you, king, save us."

-ANGO FLICKS DAZAI'S PICTURE AS HE SMILES, MY HEART

-i really can't imagine how asagiri can up the stakes after this arc, assuming the order of the clock tower is still a thing. i trust him though.

-KENJIIIIII *sob*

-AKU-KUN WEARS THAT FRILLY THING BECAUSE DAZAI TOLD HIM THAT WAS THE UNIFORM?!?!?!?

-yes, tetchou, we know that "everyone misunderstands jouno," only you understand your boyfriend. "i will place jouno above justice," tsk, they need to reunite stat.

-like yes, the way dazai transmits and receives messages is insane, but you gotta hand it to asagiri, he did find a way

-why is drenched dostoy so cute, argh

-ranpo. how is bb doing these days i wonder

-oh, atsushi doesn't know yet that the decay of the angel goal was based on dostoy's lie, right? in real time?

-FUKUCHI, IF YOU COULD JUST STOP STABBING PEOPLE!

-interesting how in atsushi's visions tanizaki and ranpo talk theories, and dazai and aku-kun basically tell him "do." do anything, just do SOMETHING.

-dazai saying "i wonder how kunikida-kun is doing" all in merriment hits kinda different now...

-did akutagawa look as alluring in his death scene as atsushi remembers him

-seeing sigma join the dazai fan club in real time

-akutagawa keeping so much to his promise to atsushi that he doesn't even kill in vampire form, argh

-atsushi stops himself from punching aku-kun 'cause he'll break his face :')))

-chuuya was like "i AM NOT hearing a 'we are destined for-' speech, dazai you asshole. BANG!"

-dazai was fyodor's most formidable foe "since that man." WHAT MAN! WHAT MAN, DOSTOY

-ah, ch113 :') that's when i started reading in real time :')

-studio bones are rubbing their hands in glee reading this

-reading these back to back really puts the pace into a different perspective. when reading monthly, you're like "it's been like a few hours... WAIT, ALL THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING IN A FEW HOURS?!" but reading it back to back it's "OMG EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING SO FAST!" (in a good way)

-YES, FUKUZAWA, ONLY HER BODY WAS LIQUEFIED, NOTABLY NOT HER CLOTHES, WHAT DOES IT MEAN

-unless. UNLESS! what they leave behind IS the essence of who they are? teruko's thing that defines her life is her being part of the hunting dogs, so her clothes stayed behind. kunikida's essence is his ideals, so the notebook stayed behind. so technically, their ESSENCE isn't gone, just the... hollow part of it, the vessel?

-i can't believe we LOST SO MANY PEOPLE IN BACK TO BACK CHAPTERS! the ada members aren't dead, i'm sure of it, but for all intents and purposes they are, for now.

[bamfdaddio]

Uncanny X-Men Abridged: 1982: Fairytales & Nightmares Edition

The X-Men, those fantastical mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. We��ve been untangling that history for a while, but sometimes, you really want a more in-depth look. Interested? Then read the (un)Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 153 & 160) - by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Josef Rubinstein, Bob Wiacek, Brent Anderson

I love how every character gets hit with a good dose of magical fairy dust except for Wolverine and Nightcrawler, who get turned into the Tasmanian Devil and a horny smurf, respectively

1982 is a pretty arc-based year. Most of it is dedicated to space operas, the Brood and Shi’ar politics (yawn), but there are a few outliers. Most notable of these two exceptions are issue 153 - Kitty’s fairytale - and issue 160, the introduction of Limbo. I’ve chosen to highlight these two issues because they are fun, fascinating and, moreover, they are sort of dark mirrors of one another.

Both feature Illyana as a catalyst for the action; both of them feature someone spinning her a little fairytale..

Both feature alternate takes on X-Men: one high fairytale, the other grimdark.

Both are standalone issues that barely feature into the main Shi’ar-plot of 1982 -- seriously, you can take them out without disrupting any narratives -- while still introducing plot points that would become a part of the X-Men mythos. (The Lockheed dragon; the bamf and, most importantly, the introduction of Illyana as Magik.)

It’s funny how the Brood saga takes up almost 80% of the narrative space this year, whereas the whole Limbo/Belasco/Illyana-thing is almost a throwaway plot that is arguably more iconic for the X-Men currently than the Brood are.

Anyway, context. The mansion is in shambles after the attack on the Hellfire Club. Illyana hasn’t returned home after being kidnapped by Arcade -- perhaps to give Colossus a little relief of his homesickness. Illyana then tempts fate:

Take note of that stuffed Fozzi toy, wocka wocka!

Illyana prefers Kitty to tell the story, and I get it. Colossus is a sweetheart, but the dude’s not exactly light of heart. Piotr would probably tell something dreary and fatalistic about three old sisters in a decaying orchard, while Kitty is a lot more fun.

Claremont shows that he is familiar with the workings of the teenage mind, because when faced with the challenge to tell a story, she does the same thing I did when I was thirteen: she goes for a self insert. And she incidentally writes in the boy she has a crush on as her boyfriend.

Look, all I’m saying, we’ve all been there, right?

Anyway, Kitty’s fairytale. Kitty is a pirate, Peter is her shipmate and they stumble upon a quest when ruffians accost a blind prince -- Scott -- and a wizard on his own personal flying carpet -- Xavier. They help out and get roped into the prince’s quest to save his princess from an evil corrupting influence. Sound familiar?

In true Final Fantasy-fashion, all the other party members are introduced one by one. Kitty calls upon a dragon called Lockheed she befriended while Piotr saves a weather goddess trapped in a bottle by the cursed princess. Best highlights, however, are Kitty’s versions of Kurt and Wolverine.

Way of X, I love you, but take note. Kurt was never meant to be puritan.

One of the best parts of this issue is the reaction shots of the other X-Men who listen in to Kitty’s tale. Most of their alternative versions fit stock fairytale characters, although Bamf is more a Disney sidekick than anything else. Wolverine is straight up a Looney Tune though:

At some point, someone looked at this character design and first thought of Sabretooth, right?

The kicker of all of this Kitty wasn´t actually there for the Phoenix Saga: she only met Jean once, briefly, when Jean saved her and the other X-Men from Emma. Kitty never met Dark Phoenix, she only ever heard the details secondhand. Still, she gets it mostly right: prince Scott and princess Jean are star-crossed lovers until Jean is cursed by a corrupting force. As Dark Phoenix, she is hellbent on stopping wizard Xavier and the prince in their tracks, lest they lift the curse by confronting her with her one weakness.

THE HUMANITY

Xavier uses Jean’s humanity to fight off the dark Phoenix and, in this particular universe, they succeed. Scott and Jean get the happy ending they didn’t get in the actual timeline: Kitty even cures his cursed eyebeams. It’s kind of funny that this is the only happy ending the X-Men will ever get during Claremont’s reign.

Speaking of a lack of happy endings, the dark counterpart of Kitty’s fairytale also starts with someone telling Illyana some sweet little lies:

I’m assuming that the whole Stranger Danger-campaign only got big after the eighties? Illyana has all the self preservation skills of a lemming.

Kitty notices that Illyana has vanished and is curious, following her. She steps on a strange light disk and vanishes.

As a slightly piquant aside, I was pleasantly surprised when reading this one digitally. I own a copy of this comic in Dutch (straight from the eighties) and apparently, they censored the version for the low lands. In a comic with creepy assaultey Nightcrawler and many, many, many naked Storms and Wolverines, this page was a bridge too far:

Look, maybe they weren’t entirely wrong. Last time three guys were bouncing around me and I invited them for a shower, I wasn’t entirely innocent either.

I was “also not welcome in that gym again” but that’s besides the point.

Who knows, maybe they just wanted to cut out the clunky exposition of storylines recent. In any case, the X-Men decide to investigate and they are also whisked away: those disks of light are apparently teleportation circles.

Also, can someone please tell Chris Claremont that German sometimes does have i before e?

They’re pulled into a pocket dimension where time and space are treated as guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. While Belasco taunts Kitty (and pulls her skeleton from her body to keep her from escaping), the other X-Men get separated, wandering about this utterly foreign dimension and encountering future/alternative versions of themselves.

I still love how alien this first version of Limbo is. The comic is titled ‘Shoots & Ladders’ and it’s exactly like that, except in creepy, never-ending tunnels and topsy-turvy, shadowy caverns.

Both Wolverine and Colossus are confronted by their dead selves, killed by S’ym, Belasco’s brutish lackey. The alternative Nightcrawler, meanwhile, has been perverted into a freaky little toady who has no qualms about touching Kitty inappropriately. (He's essentially the creepy, disturbing version of a Bamf.) Storm, meanwhile, is aided by an older, jaded version of herself. She’s also the one in charge of teleportation disks, which she uses to aid the X-Men:

Kitty’s casually waving skeleton always sends me

Storm is furious with what Belasco has wrought onto Kitty, her Mother Bear Instincts activating. She wants to give chase, but that’s when older!Storm intervenes. She warns Storm that this is a crossroads. In her variant universe, the X-Men chased after Belasco and it went badly for them: Wolverine and Colossus died, Nightcrawler turned evil and Storm became trapped in Limbo.

There’s no word of what happened to their Kitty or Illyana, but I think that’s because Limbo does not play by any of our regular rules. See, if Belasco wanted Illyana, wouldn't he have one now? But he doesn’t. So maybe Limbo is the Schrödinger’s place, where the X-Men both did and didn’t chase Belasco. Because if they didn’t give chase, they wouldn’t have the older Storm to tell them they shouldn’t give chase, which they end up not doing. But if they don't, there wouldn't be a Storm to warn them from not going, so they would. But they wouldn't.

Got that?

Just when older!Storm prepares to send them home, Belasco returns with an army of demons.

See? I told you that paying attention to that Fozzi-toy would pay off! (Wocka wocka)

And it ends there, with Illyana rescued from her nightmare, but with the promise of more darkness in her future.

I love how Chris Claremont takes a soap opera trope -- aging up a child in the shortest amount of time possible to an age where there’s more to do with them narratively -- and makes it fit into his crazy X-Universe.

And that’s it. Two relatively pared down stories where the normal rules of reality take a backseat: one to lift Illyana’s spirits, one to break her beyond belief. In a year that’s defined by space opera, these two stories have always stuck out to me, simply because of the way they break the mold of the X-Universe. More importantly, they've given us Magik. And Bamf!

Next up: Brood, Brood, Brood, and Shi'ar.

[strangerthings4theories]

S3 Is Billy’s Superhero Origin Story - Not The END Of His Story

If you’ve been following my meta, you’ll know I’m in the middle of a discussion of Billy as the mythological “god-king” who dies and lives again. Well, in my next post, I was going to compare him to the three brother-gods of Greek mythology (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades). However, I need to bring up an important point first.

Stranger Things has already raised Billy to “god” status. 

The show is about superheroes - El, Kali, and others like them - facing off against the forces of evil. And superheroes are often modern-day gods with god-like powers. A few are lifted directly from ancient mythology (Thor, Loki, etc). Sometimes, if they aren’t full-fledged gods, they have gods for parents, making them demigods (such as Wonder Woman, who’s the daughter of Zeus in the recent movies).

In S3, Billy becomes a superhero. By becoming a superhero, he becomes a demigod. And, as I’ll explain, the Duffers have already tied that to his resurrection.

>>Explore the definition of “demigod,” and we run headlong into Billy.

When we look up “demigod,” Google comes back with this:

a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank.

If we look up lists of demigods in mythology, we get some interesting results, like the Greco-Roman Hercules. Hercules was known for his incredible strength (!!), as well for performing The Twelve Labors of Hercules. Among these are slaying the Nine-Headed Hydra and the Nemean Lion.

Oh look it’s Hercules vs. the Hydra/Lion. I’d say Lion because killing it was the first labor of Hercules. Also the Mind Flayer doesn’t have nine symbolic heads yet, that’s probably coming in a future season

Because of his association with the Nemean Lion, Hercules is often depicted in ancient art as wearing a lion skin:

In Roman works of art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance art, Hercules can be identified by his attributes, the lion skin and the gnarled club (his favorite weapon); in mosaic he is shown tanned bronze...

Gosh. Where have I seen that before?

Damn. A quick Google search about demigods, and we’re already knocking on Billy’s door. I haven’t even talked about him as a superhero yet ;_;

>>Superheroes could be considered modern demigods.

Like I said in the intro, superheroes often embody the “demigod” archetype. They’re gifted with powers that put them a cut above the average human. Some even have explicitly divine origins. This gives them a striking similarity to the demigods of old myths, such as Perseus, Achilles, and our favorite lion-killer, Hercules.

Isn’t it weird how Billy looks like Perseus and Achilles and Hercules though

>>Billy’s S3 storyline mimics a superhero origin story.

Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes Spiderman. Eddie Brock is possessed by an alien symbiote and becomes Venom. Billy Hargrove is possessed by an interdimensional monster and becomes... well, Billy Hargrove, but with the added bonuses of superstrength and super-healing.

One article I read has a line about Eddie Brock in The Amazing Spider-Man (1988) that I find especially eerie:

The symbiote enhances Brock's strength and endurance, and since the guy was already addicted to working out, the result is almost equal to Spider-Man in raw power.

Hi there, Billy. How ya’ doin today.

The same article points out that, over his 40-year history, Venom has slowly morphed from a villain to an anti-hero. Look up the definition of anti-hero and you get this:

The term anti-hero has been provided to those who act as superheroes for some time and villains for another. It is not a surprise that fans usually like anti-heroes more due to their rebellious nature...

Oh look. It’s Billy’s trajectory from S2 (villain) to S3 (a villain who becomes an anti-hero). But I’m sure that’s a total accident. Wanna bet he’ll go from “anti-hero” to straight up “hero” in future seasons

But it gets better...

>>The Duffers have already told us S3 is Billy’s superhero origin (!) story.

In the first scene of S3 Ep 4, Max and El are hanging out in Max’s room. Max shows El two comic books and asks, “Which one?” 

I don’t know about you, but that bit always gave me a weird vibe. It’s just one of those things that seems... purposeful... like it has a hidden meaning. So, following my instincts, I took a closer look at the scene.

Y’all.

Y’all.

Look at the comic books.

On one side, we have Wonder Woman. On the other side, we have the Green Lantern. Framed this way, they’re presented to us as dueling opposites. or a superhero dream team, but that’s for future seasons

Wonder Woman is El. The scene tells us this by having El ask about her. She’s drawn to her, sees herself in her.

The Green Lantern is Billy. In S3, he’s the opposing force to El’s Wonder Woman. Also, Green Lanterns draw their power from the aid of magic rings.

Huh. Interesting.

If you need more evidence, just juxtapose the comic book shot with this shot from Heather’s house:

Would you look at that. Max is in the middle, with Wonder Woman El on the left and the Green Lantern Billy on the right.

Furthermore, the Heather’s house shot happens at the end of Ep 3. In the very first scene of the next episode, we get the comic book shot. The juxtaposition in time suggests they’re linked.

Now look again at the Green Lantern comic book.

Origin issue.

Origin issue.

ORIGIN. ISSUE.

Are y’all seeing this.

Not only is Billy a superhero on par with El, he’s also coming back to kick ass. S3 was his origin story, not the end of it. The Duffers are telling us so.

The death and resurrection plotline shouldn’t surprise us. Superheroes die and come back all the time. Just check out this list of superheroes who have done exactly that. Batman, Captain America, Spiderman, Superman... seriously, it’s old hat by now. (The list notably includes Jean Grey, who I consider El’s X-Men alter ego. Kinda makes me think she’s gonna die and rise again too)

It makes sense that superheroes can cheat death. Like I explained, superheroes are basically demigods - humans who are more than human. 

What better way to show you’re more than human... than to beat the one enemy common to all humans everywhere?

»»————-　✼　————-««

P.S. Billy’s superhero status probably explains why he gets an El-and-Kali-style nosebleed in S2 ;) FORESHADOWING, BABY

Oh and I love the idea of Superhero Billy SO MUCH that I made a music video about it...

»»————-　✼　————-««

The “Billy Is Alive” Meta Series

[according-to-the-laura]

StackedNatural Day 101: 1x13, 3x09, 14x12

StackedNatural Day 101: 1x13, 3x09, 14x12

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

January 31, 2022

1x13: Route 666

Written by: Buckleming

Directed by: Paul Shapiro

Original air date: January 31, 2006

Plot Synopsis:

Dean is contacted by an ex-flame who asks him for help when black men in her hometown are being murdered by a driver-less racist truck.

Features:

Racist trucks, Dean’s first love, mob justice, high speed ghost chase, hallowed church ground.

My Thoughts:

The thing about this episode that @meg3point0 said is that even though it has all the subtlety of a brick to the face, it wouldn’t actually be so bad if it wasn’t completely insistent that all of the town’s virulent racism was a thing of the past. Cassie is the only one who brings up racism happening in the present, to the mayor, and then the narrative sides with him by having him be part of the cover-up of Cyrus’ death. An old white dude says he isn’t racist and so for Buckleming, that’s the end of that.

Cassie is a great character. I love when Dean gets to be more vulnerable with someone than he is with Sam, especially this early in the show. It’s excellent accidental foreshadowing that her name is Cassie when Cas is going to become such a huge part of Dean’s life later in the series.

This episode makes me very sad about desperately lonely Stanford-era Dean, who fell in love in the couple of weeks it took him and his dad to work one case in town, and then told the truth because he wanted to make it work. The scene where they argue and then kiss works only because both actors are selling it but the writing is quite bad. And it’s so wild to watch the early seasons episodes where there are sex scenes because they used to be really drawn out and in late seasons they do a lot of implying and fade-to-black instead of anything like this episode.

I enjoy any episode where Sam is a little shithead for no reason. Younger brother behaviour.

Notable Lines:

“You told her the secret. Our big family rule number one. We do what we do and we shut up about it. For a year and a half I do nothing but lie to Jessica, and you go out with this chick in Ohio a coupla times and you tell her everything?”

“What's interesting is you guys never really look at each other at the same time. You look at her when she's not looking, she checks you out when you look away. It's just a...just an interesting observation in a....you know...observationally interesting way.:

“Everybody's gotta open up to someone sometime.” “Yeah, I don’t.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 7.0

IMdB Rating: 7.4

3x09: Malleus Maleficarum

Written by: Ben Edlund

Directed by: Robert Singer

Original air date: January 31, 2008

Plot Synopsis:

The seemingly harmless practices of a group of neighborhood witches goes bad when one of them kills a woman. Ruby offers her assistance... but she has a few secrets of her own.

Features:

Teeth falling out, hex bags and witches, coven book clubs, Ruby saves Dean’s life, demons were once human, Ruby is preparing Sam to wage war without Dean.

My Thoughts:

We watched out of order and saved this episode for last today because we wanted to reward ourselves for watching two Buckleming episodes with a Bedlund episode, and that was the right choice.

It actually seemed like just a Fine episode in the beginning, but it really picked up when Ruby appeared. I always forget how much season 3 Ruby rules because I haven’t rewatched season 3 that much.

You can tell that Robert Singer directed this episode because both of the first two women to die died in sexy little black slips. At one point when they were looking at the second body there was a really weird clunky zoom out and @meg3point0 said “oh my god Robert Singer you are doing violence to Ben Edlund”, which I thought was funny so you all get to hear it too.

The coven/book club is fine as a plot point, but it’s the Ruby and demon stuff that really gets me in this one. Also, early Supernatural used to be really gross and that’s a compliment. Just really visceral stuff. Demons used to be really scary, too, and they are in this episode.

I LOVE Ruby. She plays them so well for such a long time. She basically negs Sam into trusting her and that works. She knows that trying to make Dean like her will never work, so she acts like she doesn’t care, saves his life, and gives him a ton of information he can’t get anywhere else. You know it worked, because at the end of the episode he calls her by her name instead of “Bitch”. Her go-to move to trick the other demon is homoeroticism.

I love the reveal of demons having been human. It’s such a huge paradigm shift and they really nailed it here.

Final thought: I really assumed that the internet was just making fun of Dean for the “it tasted like ass” line, but he truly delivered it in a way that made it seem like he’s literally eaten ass before. You didn’t have to do that, Jensen. It’s not the first way you would read that line, either.

Notable Lines:

“And why does the rabbit always get screwed in the deal?! The poor little guy.”

“If she wants us dead, all she has to do is stop saving our lives.”

“If I'm gonna fight this war after you're gone, then I gotta change.” “Change into what?” “Into you.”

“That's what Hell is – forgetting what you are.”

“I remember what it’s like. [...] Being human.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 8.7

IMdB Rating: 8.5

14x12: Prophet and Loss

Written by: Buckleming

Directed by: Thomas J. Wright

Original air date: January 31, 2019

Plot Synopsis:

Sam and Dean must figure out how to stop the bloodshed when Donatello who, in his current condition, is inadvertently scrambling the order of future prophets. Nick comes face to face with his past.

Features:

Ma’lak box nightmares, classic Buckleming torture scenes, Sam and Cas scheme behind Dean’s back, Michael is trying to escape Dean’s cage, Donatello’s successor as Prophet, Nick’s wife’s ghost, the homoerotic undertones of Lucifer’s possession, Donatello wakes up.

My Thoughts:

This one hits a lot of Buckleming bingo slots, including unnecessary torture porn, Mark Pellegrino, scenes the w*ncesties will love, continuity errors, and a deus ex machina.

The frankly kickass opening of Dean’s nightmare of the Ma’lak box reminiscent of Lazarus Rising is a redeeming moment, especially with the transition to his fingers bleeding where he was scratching the walls in his sleep. Cas playing dress up in a doctor outfit is too, although they really missed the opportunity to do a Dr. Sexy callback. I’m glad they call John a bad parent.

Both of the Buckleming episodes today had stupid titles. It’s picky but Route 666 is named as if it’s demonic, but it's a ghost. Prophet and Loss isn’t even a good pun.

The whole plot with Tony Alvarez was completely unnecessary and just an excuse for a bunch of torture. The only thing that comes out of it is that Donatello’s brain is rebuilding itself (the deus ex machina), which sucks because Donatello is one of the most hateable characters on the entire show. I’m still bitter that they killed off Kevin Tran and then gave us Donatello instead.

There’s no reason for Nick to be a good fighter when he’s not possessed, although we can chalk that up to the cop being useless. There are two main problems with this whole Nick plotline in Season 14. The first is that in concept, Lucifer’s vessel becoming psychosexually obsessed with him is a very cool plot, and somehow they flub the execution so badly that it’s either uncomfortable to watch or just plain boring. The second is that I don’t understand what place it has in the greater narrative other than to show that it is possible to pull an angel out of the Empty, and then the greater narrative conveniently forgets that it’s possible when Cas goes to the Empty, which enrages me so much that I have to stop thinking about it or risk medical issues.

They really wanted the scene with the wife to be a powerful moment and reveal, but it's very obvious what they were leading to and the woman playing the wife was not a strong enough actor to pull it off. On a related note, I usually say that Jared is a good actor when he’s trying, but he is trying so hard in this last scene and it is NOT working for him in any capacity. Terrible to watch. Sorry, Samgirls.

More nitpicking: within the lore of the show, there’s no way Sarah’s ghost would still be coherent 10 years after her death. The video Cas takes of Donatello has his face clear while he mumbles Enochian, and then he has a breathing tube when they run into the room mere seconds later (the continuity error mentioned above).

@meg3point0 and I both agree that it would have been a much more fun and sexy solution to have Cas possess Dean and fight Michael to kick him out. This isn’t important, but please just imagine it, or else send me the links to your fanfiction.

I was watching with my roommate (Meg’s husband) and at the end of the episode when Sam was trying to give his big faith speech, he said “this is very ‘man-who-just-discovered-Bell-Let’s-Talk-day’” and “I just think they shoudn’t have put their suicide allegory in the hands of the worst writers on the team”. He’s right, and he should say it.

Notable Lines:

“Dean, you were the one who was always there for me. The only one. I mean, you practically raised me.”

“Sometimes when I was… when I was away, you know it wasn’t ‘cause I just ran out, right? Dad would… he would send me away when I really pissed him off.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 3.5

IMdB Rating: 8.2

In Conclusion:

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[linawritesocs]

💛twst oc: riley glacier💛

okay, so.. IT ALL STARTED WITH TWST OCS SPONGEBOB AU. we talked about how allen would be spongebob and i remembered about spongebob having a cousin. and i was like "haha what if allen had a cousin that ruined all of his dates and annoyed him with questions about romance and all that stuff"

and here we are. i wanted to name this boy riley and then i was told that the girl from inside out was also called riley and i was like "huh.. we can work with that"

SO YEAH THIS GUY IS BASED ON BOTH ANNA AND RILEY. HE SURE IS A FUN CHARACTER.

how riley sees himself:

what he actually looks like:

name: riley glacier (ライリー ・グレイシャー) (his last name is a reference to him still being allen's cousin and having a connection to frozen)

age: 16 y/o

gender: male

species: human

birth date: february 10

zodiac sign: aquarius

height: 160 cm

hair color: light brown

eye color: light green

homeland: shaftlands + he lives close to allen

family: father, mother, he has no siblings, but he has allen as his cousin

school: night raven college

dorm: savanaclaw

school year: first

occupation: student

club: basketball club (he actually thought that it's a baseball club and that's why he joined.. but then he was like "oh this is nice too" and he stayed)

best subject: p.e.

dominant hand: ambidextrous

favorite food: none (but he likes to try and eat soap just because he can)

least favorite food: none

hobby: baseball, rhythm games and people-watching

talent: though he's bad at expressing his own emotions, he can guess and understand other people's emotions really well, no matter how hard they try to hide them.

unique magic: "mood swings". when riley uses it, his personality and mood completely changes and he can either become cheerful and talkative, pessimistic and tired, aggressive and violent, picky and strict or anxious and scared. his eyes also change color, depending on the "mode" he's in at the moment, in his "joy mode" his eyes become bright yellow, in his "sadness mode" his eyes become dark blue, in his "anger mode" they become bright red, in his "disgust mode" they become a more bright and intense shade of green than usual and in his "fear mode" they become dark purple. however, he doesn't just change his personality, he can also make everyone around him feel the same emotion he's feeling at the moment. if he keeps doing it for too long, he will accumulate a lot of blot.

dislikes: loud sounds and anyone who hurts allen

personality: riley is a truly weird boy. he doesn't talk much with anyone except his cousin, allen, he always keeps the same emotionless face and he speaks in a monotone voice. but it doesn't mean that he isn't friendly, he likes to spend time with people, he just likes listening more than talking. he always carries his baseball bat with him and says that he feels safe with it. if anyone tries to take it away from him, he will actually show his more emotional side and will fight that person (he's really strong even without his bat). he also shows his dark side when someone tries to hurt allen physically or emotionally, he becomes extremely protective and he's fully capable of killing that person if no one stops him. he can understand anything in this world except romance, he just doesn't understand why people fall in love and why they do stuff like dating, kissing, cuddling, etc. it doesn't mean that he has no interest in romance at all, in fact, he's very interested in it, but he just wants to know how it works and why it happens. he's the type to casually ask someone if they want to kiss him, because he just wants to know how it feels like and why couples do that.

notable relationships:

allen and riley are cousins and they knew each other well since childhood. they were pretty close, though allen liked spending time with his childhood friend more than with his cousin and riley knew that. riley got very attached to allen after the older boy yelled at him for being too clingy and told riley to leave him alone. riley spent his whole life being spoiled and surrounded by people who did everything they could to make him happy and hearing someone say that to him was a life-changing moment for him. riley started trying to become closer with allen after that, because in his eyes allen was more honest than riley's friends, classmates, teachers and even parents. allen, however, doesn't enjoy his company and thinks that riley is annoying and creepy. riley also likes to interrupt allen's dates and ruin them, because he wants to check if allen's new partner is a good person and also because he wants to understand romance better.

riley and vance are very close friends and you can often see them hanging out together. both of them are very similar, but also very different: they are good at sports and enjoy them, they're pretty short and both of them are freshmen, but also their personalities are completely different, with vance being an extroverted and childish prankster and riley always being quiet and emotionless. they balance and complement each other very well and riley is always here to listen to vance talking, meanwhile vance wants to get riley out of his shell and help him express his emotions better.

ruggie can't decide if he's scared of riley and thinks he's weird or riley is the funniest person he's ever met. at first he found riley creepy, like most savanaclaw students, but when he got to know him better and when he noticed leona feeling uncomfortable around riley, ruggie started to think that riley is actually a very interesting boy who's fun to spend time with. also riley's quiet personality helps ruggie calm down and he appreciates riley being a good listener.

fun facts:

riley is very sensitive to textures, he likes to "analyze" them and he will often say his opinion after he touches something, like a piece of cloth, a book cover or even someone's hand.

riley is not like vance and he doesn't get hurt that often, the bandages on his hands are here just because i wanted to give him more of a "delinquent vibe"! riley most likely wears them because he feels more safe with them, just like with his bat.

riley has a lollipop keychain on his phone, it's a gift from vance.

he doesn't have a particular reason for disliking loud sounds, he's just also sensitive to them, so he gets overwhelmed sometimes. surprisingly, he's okay with yelling and doesn't find it that scary.

he tried to dye some of his hair strands white, so that he would look more like allen and he also hoped that allen won't feel bad about having white hair if he does that. the result was.. not good.

most savanaclaw students either think that riley is too weird or they're terrified of him, but they can't deny that the boy is talented.

but if we're talking about other dorms, riley is actually VERY popular and a lot of students think he's attractive. he gets quite many love letters and love confessions, but he never accepts them. allen finds it very annoying and he's jealous of his cousin's popularity.

most people don't even know about allen and riley being cousins and when they hear about it, they get shocked and confused, because the boys are too different to be related.

[nealiios]

The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: A Tale of Two Slaves (2/17)

Summary:  “Soulmates don’t exist. Fate doesn’t exist. Everything is a choice. At that moment, Levi could only watch as she made the choice for him.“

Reincarnation AU. Levi remembers everything from their past life. Hange doesn’t.

Note: As always, feedback is very much appreciated. 

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

"Hey! Are you alive?"

Levi's body was on fire. Another type of pain, added to the list that only grew longer and longer the more mornings he woke up to.

It was new. In the grand scheme of things though, it was routine. When Levi woke up, the pain was already fading into a distant memory. He knew it could be easily soothed with a Tylenol and a few more minutes in bed. He had to press his face harder into the pillow, focusing on the feeling of cloth and cotton on his face to get a grip on his reality. He wanted to hear that voice again but at the same time he wanted to escape that pain.

That voice was familiar. Levi was sure when he showed up for training she would be there, and he could listen to her again. He ended up adding salt to the wounds though as he remembered the last few things he had said to her the night before.

It could have been from the stress of the whole ordeal or the embarrassment of having blurted out a bunch of nonsense.

Who the hell are we escaping from? Levi had scrambled for an answer then. What came out were a string of words he wished he had never said.

“Nothing.”

“Hey, I’ve spent a lot of time talking, I wanna learn something about you too.”

“My life is none of your business.”

She had kept quiet soon after. As Levi recalled how she had offered to take him home, he only buried his face further into the pillow. A part of him thought that maybe if he deprived himself of oxygen enough, he could forget the conversation between them.

“How far is your house from here? I’ll take you home. It’s my fault you got injured anyway.”

“It’s fine.”

“You sure you’ll get home safe?”

“Why do you care? We just met. I couldn’t care less either if you got home safe or not.”

We just met. Obviously I wouldn’t care too much about her. His meager justification did nothing to placate the guilt that had taken over him, leaving him unable to move.

He remembered the face she had made before he turned away and limped home. He had thought to himself then that maybe she just wore her heart on her sleeve. Most people probably would have thought the same thing as they saw the way she bit her lip and looked away. She could have been about to cry. Levi could not help but think though that she wouldn’t. Her mental resilience is stronger than that. Levi just knew.

Either way, Levi still regretted his actions that night. He spent the next few minutes in bed gathering himself up mentally for his morning training. As he pushed himself into a sitting position and planted his feet on the floor next to his bed, he felt his knees protest at the weight. At that moment, the dull pain on his palms also made themselves known.

Of course it wouldn’t heal. How long has it been 12 hours? When injured, most of his teammates could easily skip training with little to no consequences, as long as they sent a text. Most of his teammates still showed up anyway to watch. Feeling a little guilty for having skipped training just yesterday, Levi decided to show up anyway.

It was a force of habit more than anything for Levi to throw his jacket and shorts on, grab his gym bag and hurry to the track as soon as he saw the first signs of the sun about to rise. In fact, he only realized how completely useless it was to be thirty minutes early when he was already sitting alone in the empty clubroom, entertaining himself by looking for patterns in the stains and discolored blots on the ceiling.

He considered going back to the dorm and just informing his coach on his recent injury. He had already exited the clubroom when he decided otherwise.

The track stretched out in front of him, illuminated by the dim light from the sunrise. The morning was notably cooler and Levi remembered that summer was ending soon, if it hadn’t ended yet. The days would only get colder and classes were starting next week. How long would he be able to enjoy a morning walk without having to wear an extra layer or without considering how he could fit in a shower before his next class?

Levi ignored resistance of the stitches on his knees and the stinging pain of sweat and bandages rubbing against his palms, allowing himself a slow jog around the oval. He promised himself instead to sit out the rest of the training. His coach would probably stop him anyway when he sees the state of Levi’s hands and knees.

“Levi!”

It turned out Levi was right. Time had gone faster as Levi focused on the rhythm of his breathing, the cool wind that brushed past him and the scenery that blurred past him. Also, his coach had stopped him as soon as he arrived.

“What happened to you?” Greg gave Levi a onceover before shaking his head.

“I fell while jumping on the hurdles.”

“Get that checked. I’m not allowing you to join training until you see a doctor.”

Levi looked down to see blood seeping from the white of the bandages. His stitches split open. He could barely give his coach a nod, too disappointed by being forced out of training, a little angry at Hange for indirectly causing that energy, too conflicted by his own feelings. He grabbed his phone which he had left on the table next to the track and walked away from the track.

He had to grab the gym bag he left in the club room. He made sure to take the long way back, the scenic route with more trees than people. Having just been told off by his coach, having been barred from training, Levi felt like he was taking a walk of shame and he preferred not to run into anyone else.

He checked his phone. It was six in the morning. The university clinic opened at eight. He could kill those two hours quickly in the empty clubroom while everyone was training. By the time they finished morning training, he would be on his way to the clinic.

He had plans of just lying on the bench for the next two hours, exhausting all the content in all of his social media timelines and maybe getting into some other Wikipedia or article black hole. On his way to the clubroom, he set his alarm for 7:45 that morning.

As he arrived in the clubroom though, he found himself occupied by something else.

Everyone in the club always put their stuff away in the cubbyholes to the side. There was more than enough space for everyone. Yet somehow, even with three cubby holes open, someone had decided to leave their bag half open on the floor with what looked like half its contents spilling out.

Levi gathered what had spilled out. He had the option of just dropping it into the bag leaving the problem of organizing it to the owner. His fastidiousness took over though and Levi found himself spreading out the contents of the bag and putting it into the bag in a way that would have made it take the least space in the cubby.

“Sorry. I forgot my phone in my bag.”

Levi heard footsteps and voices just outside the clubroom and it was only then was he become aware of the fact that he had invaded someone’s privacy. He hurriedly pushed the contents of the bag into the nearest cubbyhole.

His hands though were not at their strongest, still sore from the accident last night. It was at the moment the door opened did the bag fall again on the floor, its contents spilling out, more haphazardly and messily than he had found it.

He looked up at the door to see Hange and behind her, another student.

"Levi…" Hange’s mouth was turned up in a smile but her eyes were expressing otherwise.

Levi wondered what he looked like crouched down next to her bag, with its contents spread out all over the room. From the way Hange was staring at him, he guessed he could have even looked like a criminal. "I made a rule here. All bags go in the cubbyhole," Levi tried to keep an authoritative tone as he said it, maybe it could make up for the compromising position they had found him in, somehow.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry." Hange rushed beside him, carelessly gathering things into one bundle.

Levi noticed she kept herself a polite distance from him, purposefully pushing her bag into one of the cubbyholes farther away from where her bag had fallen.

"Just don't mess up the clubroom again."

Levi lay back on the bench as soon as the door closed behind him and propped his phone on his face. He could not even bring himself to even turn it on and lazily scroll through some timeline.  As he listened to the footsteps get further away, Levi closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  The rush of incomprehensible emotions had left him cold as he lost one of the few opportunities he did have to talk to her.

Why? Why couldn't I chase after her?

A part of him wanted to run after her, apologize then maybe thank her for last night.

A part of him was also just as pissed off with the chain of events. He was injured. He couldn't train. The club room was a mess. Hange had something to do with all of it.

His four years living in his own tiny island with only training and studies keeping him company had left him unable to process the strong emotions that came with human interaction.

Why does she make me so angry?

He was aware that he was abrasive and sometimes too frank. It had never bothered him then. He had always believed that it was also the other party's responsibility to handle their emotions well.  Hange had handled it better than many other people in similar positions yet...

Why do I care that it hurt her? How the hell did I say something so offensive so wrong?  In fact despite his inability to express a lot of feelings, Levi did care enough about people to check on injured teammates and help grandmas cross the street.  

He turned his phone on, deciding to occupy himself with Twitter for the next two hours. Watching people fight online was oddly calming.

                                A Tale of Two Slaves

By the time Levi made it to the university clinic, the bandages on his knees were bloody. The red buds had bloomed into adult flowers. Underneath, the stitches had to be redone, and Levi was prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection.

One of the nurses offered to go out of campus to buy it for him. Levi hid under the covers of one of the vacant beds in the nurse's office while waiting. The clinic was empty save for one nurse and one doctor with not many students living on campus just yet.

Levi found himself going through his timeline first, then articles on dreams.

By the time the doctor had checked on him, to ask him if he had plans to at least take a late lunch, Levi was in a black hole with 50 tabs open. They weren't about dreams or were they from random links he had found on his timeline.

They were all about Hange Zoe, pages worth of articles with pictures of her at varying ages. The awards varied, some were in the form of certificates, others as trophies. The girl behind them all was the same chestnut haired girl with that same overenthusiastic glint in her eyes.

Kid whiz Hange Zoe bags gold in the city wide

Governor congratulates the representative to the national Science symposium.

7 year old genius has big plans for the future.

Hange Zoe talks about future plans. "I want to test the physical limitations of the human body."

I wanna see how far we can throw, how fast we can run, how high we can jump, how high we can fly.

"Fucking stupid. Humans can't fly." Levi muttered to himself. He sat up in bed and checked the time at the corner of his phone.

3:00pm.

Afternoon training would generally start at five. He had time for a late lunch. Or dinner.

Nothing in the university was open though and the raw stitches on his knees continued to ache. Levi found himself staying in the club room two hours before training was to start, having Mcdonalds delivered instead at the doorway of the clubroom.

A few times he had heard footsteps by the door, he stood up the first two times, just to check who it had been. The clubrooms were lined up near the athletics area. All the sports teams hung around that area, he should not have been too surprised to realize that none of the foot traffic in that hour were from anyone in his team. In fact, he should not have expected that any of them would have been Hange.

Why the hell am I looking for her anyway?

Levi shifted to his side. The bench did not give him much room to roll completely and Levi found himself having to grasp at the sides to stay on the bench and avoid falling painfully on the ground and further aggravating his stitches.

With his two hands occupied, it became a choice. Either his knees or his phone was to take the impact of the ground beneath him. He chose to sacrifice his phone.

As Levi reached out to grab his phone from under the bench a few seconds later, he came across a small trinket on the floor. It was a ring was covered with purple cloth, the middle of the ring covered with some sort of web. The borders were lined with feathers, soft to his touch. Levi wondered whether the feathers were real or not.

Levi sat back on the bench and brought the keychain closer to his eyes. It turned out the ring was not covered in cloth. It was covered in threads so pressed closely to each other, from afar it had looked like one surface. He carefully traced the dark green strings that were interwoven so tightly around the purple cloth, no pattern was the same, no hole was of the same size or shape. It could have been homemade.

Who the hell left this here? Levi took a picture with his phone and sent it to the team chat.

Lost and Found.

Most had denied owning it. For a while Levi suspected that they could have been scared he would get mad. He knew he had a reputation when it came to cleaning and clutter. He was considering adding that he wasn’t angry eventually deciding against it. Would they believe him anyway?

One of the med students probs.

So it’s Hange’s?  It was an excuse to message her at least. Before Levi could even process what he did, he had searched Hange’s name on Facebook.

No account. He would have at least expected to find a profile with one or two mutual friends. They went to the same school after all. He checked the school supergroup to find that no one there was named Hange Zoe.

So she doesn’t have an account?

He looked through other groups built for their team. He looked for a medical students group, looking one by one at the profiles for a familiar face. One of the profiles had the face of the blond man who was behind Hange when they had found him that morning.

Levi had a habit of forgetting faces. The awkwardness and the embarrassment he had gone through had only made that memory more vivid in his mind. That vividness at least was the reason why he had found a lead to Hange.

Moblit Berner.

He clicked add friend and sent a picture of the keychain through chat.

Found this in the clubroom. Might be one of your friends?

It’s Hange’s.

Probably fell when her stuff got scattered on the floor.

Okay, will give it to you when you get here.

As Levi soon found out, the students were all out of campus and had no plans to visit training that afternoon at all. The main reason why they had showed up in the morning instead.

Levi scolded himself for not even bothering to learn their schedule. Maybe it could have alleviated his disappointment even a bit. Seeing no reason to be there in the clubroom anymore. Levi dropped a message in the chat, mentioning something about injuries and rest.

He wasn’t lying. His stitches were fresh. His palms hurt. More importantly. He was recovering from a painful bout of disappointment.

We’ll be there tomorrow morning though.

Ok see you there.

Levi had plans of making it up to his coach the next morning by being extra early anyway.

                              A Tale of Two Slaves

I wonder what types of titans we'll get to meet today...

It was a beautiful morning. Or possibly, it was just a relatively beautiful morning when compared to all the others where Levi had to lie in bed for an hour or so just to forget the pain and the shock of dreams he could not even remember to function.

That morning he had awoken with a burst of energy and a motivation that followed suit.

I wanna talk to Hange.

The only stopping him then was the awareness of how stupid and rash it would be to make friends just because he had such a vivid dream about them.

Section Leader Hange Zoe.

Special Squad Captain Levi .

They worked too closely in his dreams. She was constantly happy, constantly annoying. She was comfortable. She had made him feel excited, calm, annoyed, an incomprehensible and tumultuous storm of emotions. The dreams were too lifelike, realistic and vivid to have just been dreams.

Was she the reason for the painful mornings? Was she the reason Levi found himself so particularly confused around her? So abrasive? So conflicted?

Levi quickly changed into his clothes, grabbed his gym bag and rushed to the track. He did not bother to check his phone for the time anyway. The sun was rising and Moblit had said the night before. They’ll be there.

He used the walk to the track to process further the emotions that had been running through him since he remembered the dreams.

His name was Levi Ackerman. He was a soldier. They fought these giant zombie creatures. Hange managed another team but they were stationed close and that was how they had gotten close in the first place.

It felt like some sort of roleplay Levi could just easily put into words and post online. He wondered if that’s what it felt like to be a writer. Do stories come to writers and artists in dreams just like that? Levi had considered writing it all out, completely disowning that thought after he remembered he was shitty with words.

He probably would never channel those emotions into words or to art. Regardless, the determination to make sense of it was unwavering. Despite his awareness of the amount of stress he had caused her the past few days, the nagging self consciousness of having exposed that many facets of personality to someone, Levi was sure he wanted to talk to her. It was too strong. She must have felt it too. Maybe that’s why she was too friendly? Too touchy?

As Levi soon found out, she was touchy with a lot of other people. If Levi had checked his phone that morning, he would have seen that training was starting soon. With autumn coming, the nights were long and the sun was rising later.

Hange was there, by the side of the track, her arms around Elijah, one of his other teammates and fellow seniors. From where he stood, Levi could not tell if she was joking or not, but he could not help but note, he had never been the object of that playful smile she gave Moblit who stood next to her with a clipboard in hand.

“Hey Four Eyes.” Levi did not need to muster up any courage to approach her. The irritation he felt at seeing her arm around someone else, that playful smile directed at Moblit provoked him enough.

Hange’s face quickly fell as she made eye contact with him. Levi’s stomach followed suit, suddenly painfully aware of the shit he had put her through the past few days.

“Oh yeah, Levi found your dream catcher in the clubroom.”

The keychain! Levi had completely forgotten to bring it with him.

“Sorry about leaving it there. I shouldn’t have been too careless.” Hange’s smile was careful and rehearsed, a far cry from the one she gave Moblit only a while ago.

“I don’t have it with me now though since I had to rush here.” Levi was sure the excuse was understandable. A lot of his teammates were already warming up in the middle of track. “I could bring it later this afternoon?”

“Actually, we probably won’t be going back here for a while. We gotta prepare with classes starting soon and we got all the information we need anyway.” Moblit explained. “So we’re gonna invite some athletes out for an interview then work closely with them.”

“About the keychain...” Yes, the keychain. I need to meet Hange again and give it to her.

“You can give it to Elijah here.” Hange suggested. “Or maybe...Moblit? If you’re okay working with him.”

Why Moblit? My teammate, Elijah? “Wait why?” Levi’s mind was racing with questions. The shock and confusion had left him a little disconnected from his surroundings. He almost did not notice the way Hange had pulled him to the side of the track. Suddenly, it was just the two of them, on the corner, out of earshot from everyone else.

“This is probably the last time we’re gonna meet so I’ll be honest with you.” Hange took a deep breath. “I really wanted to work with you for my thesis but yeah I guess… with what happened the past few days I kinda realize maybe we just aren’t compatible and we might just end up driving each other crazy.” Hange added a small laugh to that cold and rehearsed smile she was giving him. It only added salt to the wounds she was already opening up with her speech.  “And I guess I should have noticed this before but you really don’t like me do you? I’m sorry if I couldn’t give the best first impression.”

No… I really like you. You gave a great first impression. Like always, even when Levi had wanted to say it, the words had gotten lost somewhere in its journey from mind to mouth.  

[sebastianshaw]

Does Shaw feel lonely sometimes? From what I have seen from his appearances is that he doesn't really have meaningful relationships in his life, and that a handful of people betrayed him in the past. Would he be able to form meaningful relationships, let alone want them?

Firstly, I apologize for this absolute novel, you just picked SUCH a great meaty juicy topic is all! Shaw absolutely has a lot of difficulty connecting to others, and I think he always has, even before he was evil and toxic. We see literally no friends in his backstory, well before he was a bad guy; when his father dies on the same day he gets his college scholarship, he goes to a bar to both mourn the former and celebrate the latter. . . no one is joining in with him, he’s alone. And when a group of rich kids attack and beat him for getting out of his place, no one comes to his aid. He’s described as completely devoting himself to his studies in college, fanatically so, because he’s so grateful to be there and desperate to make the most of it and be successful and escape the poverty he grew up with. I don’t think he had many, if any friends, even though, again, this was well before he was evil.   And then by his own admission, he only loved one woman in his life, Lourdes. He met her when he was still poor, so in his 20s, but it wasn’t until his early 40s that he proposed to her, and both she and Tessa point out that Shaw doesn’t not seem to actually KNOW how much Lourdes loved him. It’s very unclear what they meant by this but it tracks with how Shaw consistently seems to have a ton of difficulty relating to and understanding others, especially if they’re different from him in any significant way.  So, that’s where we’re at BEFORE anything bad happens to him. Then Buckman, whom Shaw regarded as a trusted friend, tried to kill Shaw’s allies Harry and Emma, intended to kill Shaw, and killed Lourdes when she sacrificed himself to save Shaw. Shaw seems genuinely shocked that Buckman lied to him, and not that specifically Buckman lied to him, but that someone lied at all. He comes off as almost bizarrely naive for a 40 year old man, but maybe that makes sense for someone whose primary relationship has always been with work, not other human beings. In any case, that’s the first betrayal. After that, Shaw still has Harry and Emma and Tessa as allies, and he truly trusts Tessa. Harry dies saving Shaw, as Lourdes did. Emma betrays him by persuading Magneto and Selene to vote him out of the Hellfire Club (note: Emma is not bad for this) And before that, Donald Pierce, a member of the Inner Circle, also makes an attempt on his life, as does Selene. The Hellfire Club is an extremely cutthroat place where manipulation and murder is the norm; Shaw has immersed himself in it and he has consistently negative experiences with others to show for it as a consequence. He literally even once says that the more mutants he meets, the less he likes to be one, and I get why, but also .  ..Sebastian, maybe hang out with PEOPLE WHO AREN’T TERRIBLE THEN? But it basically reinforces his distrust of others over and over. 

In the 90s, Shaw makes his first (and last) attempt at a sincere romantic relationship since Lourdes, with Madelyne Pryor. Yes, that one. And yes, sincere. By his own mental admission, he doesn’t love her, but he does care for her and show her sincere affection---not just lust but affection, such as putting a blanket on her shoulders when it’s cold---and he makes a public commitment to her at her request. Meaning, this was more than just a sex thing. And he never, ever compares her to Jean Grey---whom he notably never had any sexual interest in, and he also knew INSTANTLY that she was NOT---nor does he ever have any plans to exploit her power. He just actually was having a normal relationship again. Then Maddie left him, and I think it hurt him. To be clear, I think her reasons were good ones and I support her. See, Shaw was nothing but good to Maddie from everything we see, but how he treated HER wasn’t the issue. Maddie, while a former villain and very gray character at the time (before descending back into poorly written evil in the 2000s) still had a moral compass on her, and the risk that Shaw’s villainy put other people at---even people she didn’t know---was not something she could stand by and watch. She didn’t stop him but she left him. We’re not shown if she ever explained to him why, but given remarks he makes later---calling her a succubus---he seems to believe she was just after his money. Which was not the case. So, she’s the first person he tried connecting with on a romantic level after Lourdes, and she splits, and he thinks she was using him all along. That has to hurt.  Then we’ve got Tessa. Their relationship was NOT romantic, but she was the last person alive he trusted, and the one he trusted the LONGEST. Since his first appearance, she’s always been by his side as his ever-loyal assistant. He prized her above all others, never mistreated her or saw her as disposable like other employees, and even on occasion showed concern for her. He ended up betraying her, when she was kidnapped by an extremely evil mutant who held for her the ransom of Shaw’s entire fortune. . . .Shaw did not pay up, and left her to Bogan. And he does NOT seem to resent her for joining the X-Men after Storm left her. I think he understands perfectly well why she would not return to his services, and he never seems to begrudge her for it. What he begrudges, what drives him nuts after the fact, is when he found out that she was a spy for Xavier from the start. All along, all these years, she was a double agent. Storm’s rescue merely gave her the chance to show what her true allegiances had ALWAYS been. Again, this is a guy who already has YEARS of trust issues built up, and this is the one and only person he always trusted, the ONLY one he had LEFT. . . and it was all a lie, everything, from the beginning. Shaw definitely had some feelings about that, to say the least. So much so that when she pretended to want to return to his service, HE ACTUALLY TOOK HER BACK. Emphasis on “pretended”----she was not sincere. But this time, it’s not even her who he’s that upset at---he berates HIMSELF, calling HIMSELF a fool for taking her back, saying it was “like trusting a scorpion” and I think he said something similar when he called Maddie a succubus. He insults her and Tessa, but insults himself too in the same breath. Not for being an evil toxic walking wastedump of a person, which is what he SHOULD be upset with himself for, but for trusting another person ever.  This quote is from canon, specifically Book Two of The Legacy Quest, and it’s BEFORE Maddie and Tessa both left him: “Shaw had only ever loved one woman, and she had died in his arms. He had almost forgotten what it was like to be held, to feel the simple warmth of companionship. He had built for himself a world in which such things had no place. His relationships were handled like chess games. He engaged with others only for the purpose of advancing his own position, and he always knew that their eyes were on the grand prize too. Nobody could be trusted. They would all betray him in the end.” So if that was the state of Shaw BEFORE Maddie and Tessa turning on him (which, again, I would like to emphasize, WAS NOT BAD OF THEM AND BOTH MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE it just doesn’t effect Shaw any less for that; people who are terrible and in the wrong still feel pain) I can only imagine it’s that much worse NOW. He seems to THINK he’s trying to mend things with his son Shinobi on Krakoa currently----and whether Shaw actually cares for Shinobi on some level is a debate in itself, but he abused the hell out of that poor boy either way---but all his ACTIONS have shown is him using him as a tool/ally and LYING to him. Shaw is a terrible person, and while some of that is from things that happened to him, a lot of it is his OWN CHOICE (which I like about him) So. . . do I think he gets lonely? A bit. I think he used to be more so, though not as much as the average person. I think he was always more introverted and less empathetic than the average person, with a lesser need for relationships, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and then his subsequent experiences exacerbated these traits, along with his own decisions to pursue power and greed at the expense of his morality and better nature (which he did canonically once have) I think that, much like an old injury, he still FEELS lonely now and then, but it’s LESS than it was, and he frequently doesn’t even recognize it for what it is. He doesn’t WANT relationships any more, romantic or others, he sees them as distracting at best and dangerous at worse, other people as disappointing and betrayers, as only useful or useless, and I think that if he did TRY to have a meaningful relationship, he’s become such an awful person that he’d be awful at it. Shaw’s. . . .really, really messed up and self-sabotaging, some of it by nature, some by experience, some by his own decision. I should also note---even if Shaw did get better on this front, he’d still be evil and doing all the same villainy he always has. Shaw being a bad guy has NOTHING to do with his personal issues. If he got a ton of therapy and got emotionally healthy and made up with his son and had someone he loved and was good to and trusted. . .  ..he’d still be a supervillain, just a supervillain with a happier and more fulfilling personal life on the side. Also: Dude is having a TON of hot sex so like. . . .there’s also that. I would say I’m sure that gets empty after awhile but IDK HE SEEMS GOOD WITH IT

[yeonchi]

Kisekae Insights #24: GJ Club - how a spinon became a spinoff featuring Kyōya and Kasumi Shinomiya

(Art by 結城辰也)

The Kisekae Insights series has allowed me to bring the spotlight back on Waifu Network animes that I haven’t posted much about in the past due to lack of fanart or lack of interest. Like Hidamari Sketch in the last instalment, GJ Club will be no exception until I continue posting the usual content in my anime posts. Honestly, it was good while it lasted.

While Hidamari Sketch is a fairly popular and notable anime, GJ Club, sadly, isn’t. The anime was adapted from the light novel series written by Shin Araki and it only received one 12-episode season in 2013 and an OVA in 2014. Since it is a slice-of-life series, not much is known about the characters’ histories, which made it very easy to adapt into my personal project. All these factors coinciding with it being the 50th anniversary year of Doctor Who made GJ Club the perfect anime to adapt and expand on.

Background information

For some reason, the light novel has been a bit hard to find. In short, while you are able to read it online, the sources are unfortunately scarce.

From 2013 to 2015, NanoDesu Translations posted translations of the light novel. They published a PDF and EPUB of the first volume (which is available on archive.org) and translated up to Chapter 17 of the second volume. It was then abandoned for two years before Haraguro Scanlations picked it up. As of September 2018, they only finished up to Chapter 3 of the third volume (with the first chapter being translated by Shadowys on Baka-Tsuki) and there are no further updates after that, with the exception of a one-off chapter released in November 2020.

As of August 2021, however, all the original translations by NanoDesu seem to have been deleted from their site. All the translations are available on AsiaNovel, but there are no illustrations because the reader doesn’t seem to support images. If the images weren’t discarded in the code of the novels, then all they would need to do is add support for them and then they would appear.

There are 9 volumes and two special volumes for GJ Club along with 8 volumes and a special volume for its middle school spinoff. It’s honestly telling how popular the series was when the translators have all but abandoned it.

Shin Araki also wrote an additional spinoff to GJ Club, namely GE: Good Eater, and a sequel, namely KB Club. GE is set in a fantasy world with the characters being based off the characters of GJ Club, while KB Club turns everything meta by having both series be the creations of a high school light novel club, with the characters of GJ Club being based off the members of said club, right down to their names. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of that approach given how I’ve adapted GJ Club into my personal project. In the end, I guess we’ll never really know what happens in the novels, but at least we have this.

Watching the anime and listening to the character music was how I first realised that anime was sexist to males because of the female-centric focus in most animes. Kyōya only gets one character song in the series, and even then it’s a duet with Megumi. If that isn’t sexist to you, then I don’t know how I can convince you that a lot of animes are sexist.

In January 2015, I published two posts outlining my idea for an English dub of the series that also fits with GJ Club’s depiction in my personal project. The setting would be changed to London, England, specifically the areas of Chiswick, Ealing and Acton (where their school is located) and the characters would speak with British accents. The images in the original post are dead because I idiotically copied the images from the site instead of saving and reuploading them to the post, but since I’m grubbing for content anyway, I’m going to repost my character details as follows:

Kyōya: The protagonist of the series. When he started Year 10, he was kidnapped by the girls when he walked into an old school building, hoping to find the Culture Club. He moved to London from Manchester just before he started Year 7. His best friend outside the club is someone named Tesshin Yokomizo (横溝徹心) who is a local and not seen in the anime. In the GJ Club, he is nicknamed “Kyoro” and despite his spinelessness, he seems to have talent in dealing with the girls around him. His birthday is December 18. Due to a crisis involving his family during his childhood, he and his sister Kasumi were left in the care of a family guardian just before they moved to London, but she left when Kyōya started Year 10. It might have been that childhood incident that emotionally scarred him and left him spineless…

Mao: The Year 11 president of the GJ Club. Her family is rich and they live in a mansion in Ealing. She has a habit of biting and picking on Kyōya when she is bored or angry. She always reads books and watches shows without kissing scenes.

Shion: The only daughter in her family, Shion is an expert chess player with many brothers, all experts in some kind of activity. She speaks in a Birmingham (Brummie) accent because her mother and a few of her brothers were born in Birmingham. It is unknown if Shion was born in Birmingham herself.

Megumi: The calm and nice middle sister of the Amatsuka family. She likes knitting and she is always seen making tea and cakes in the club room. In the same year level as Kyōya.

Kirara: Born in Swansea, Wales, Kirara is the tallest and strongest member of the club. She speaks English in simple, monotone sentences. Welsh is her first language. Kirara can be seen eating meat, sometimes sharing it with Kyōya, but not with anyone else. She is afraid of spiders and has little tolerance to alcohol.

Tamaki: (voiced by Karen Gillan!) The newest member of the GJ Club when Kyōya becomes a Year 11 student. Like Kyōya, she is kidnapped and forced to join the club. Her nickname is “Tama”. Her family is from Glasgow and they run a Shinto shrine in Acton. She has several younger siblings.

Kasumi: Kyōya’s younger sister, who was born in Manchester. After a visit to the GJ Club, she becomes inspired to start a middle school division when she starts Year 7. She has a brother complex and she mistook Mao for being a primary school student when she met her. Her proficiency in Welsh is better than her brother’s, who can probably speak at a beginner level.

Geraldine: Shortened to “Jill”. She moved to Chiswick from Swansea to be with her sister, Kirara. She first met Kyōya at Ealing Broadway Station when she had difficulty buying a Tube ticket. She didn’t really understand how to use the ticket machine, so Kyōya went to help her. After this, Jill considered Kyōya her “samurai master”. Jill doesn’t speak English fluently, so she relies on her whiteboard to communicate with the others. She is as strong as her sister and she joins Kasumi’s GJ Club when she starts Year 7 in Chiswick.

Seira: The youngest sister of the Amatsuka family. Though she speaks in a typical London accent, she sometimes talks through her cat clip in Received Pronunciation (the Queen’s English/RP) using ventriloquism to state her true feelings to Kyōya, who she has a grudge against.

Mori: The maid of the Amatsuka family. She likes to ride a motorcycle.  A running gag is her twirling before Kyōya much to his pleasure and annoyance to the rest of the club members. Sometimes, her mother takes her place without the family even noticing due to their identical appearance.

Kyōya, Kasumi and Momoka: The Brother, the Child and the Yandere

Normally in previous instalments, I would have described each character separately, but because their backstories are heavily intertwined, I will introduce them all at once in this section. Most of the backstory takes place around the Battle of Koshi Castle in December 2013 and during the Manchester Campaign of 2005-2013, which I have already covered in #15.

When Hiroki Ichigo’s twelfth incarnation was killed at Koshi Castle, he managed to escape in his TARDIS, where he regenerated into his new prototype, namely a four-year-old Kyōya. The TARDIS crashes outside North Manchester General Hospital on 11 December 2005.

Earlier, Hiroki and Akari’s gametes (along with those of Hiroki’s brothers and their families) were taken by Reona Yukawa and placed in the Progenitor so that they could breed super-soldiers out of them. When Takumi Kamijō and Kyōko Sakura manage to escape from their cells (saving Nodoka Manabe and Azusa Nakano in the process), he changes the destination of the baby about to be released into the Progenitor’s time portal. That baby was Kasumi, one of the super-soldiers grown from Hiroki and Akari’s DNA. She ended up at the same hospital as well and was about to be taken home by a couple when Girl Power killed them, resulting in Kasumi being taken by Akari and Shaun.

What remained of Hiroki was contacted by the spirit of Walpurgisnacht. Making a deal with her, Hiroki regenerated into his thirteenth incarnation, the female Momoka Mizutani. No, Momoka is not an OC for GJ Club, but she is based on the character of Apple Lam Chung-yan from the TVB drama A Great Way to Care II, played by Tavia Yeung. Momoka takes Hiroki’s TARDIS and heads to Salford, where with the help of Walpurgisnacht, she establishes a cha chaan teng café in the middle of a trading estate and hires a group of red drone Daleks as her workers, hiding their identities by having them disguise themselves as humans.

Over the next eight years, Momoka gets close to the new Shinomiya family by influencing them through Kyōya’s dreams to come to her café. Eight years later, on 11 December 2013, the Fourth and Fifth Doctors come in with their companions. When the Shinomiya family come in, a confrontation with Ayaka Kikuchi and her army ensues before Momoka transmats the Shinomiya family to a Dalek spaceship, where she prepares to execute them using the Yashio’ori. However, the Yashio’ori is sabotaged by the enemy army so that the laser beam would not charge.

As Ayaka and her army attack the Dalek ship, Momoka uses the Dalek-enhanced machine guns to fend them off. While two Doctors confront the Master, Momoka is killed by Girl Power officers, resulting in Walpurgisnacht taking over her body as she regenerates, maintaining her current appearance. Read #15 to find out what happens after this.

Once the Battle of Koshi Castle and the Manchester Campaign conclude, the Fourth Doctor helps Kyōya and Kasumi move to Chiswick in 2008. Five years later, the events of the GJ Club anime take place. During his time in Chiswick, Kyōya gets a job at the post office there and later, studies a double degree in Japanese Studies and Politics at SOAS in the University of London while also learning Cantonese, Mandarin and Welsh in weekend and evening courses (apparently he also wanted to learn Taiwanese but they weren’t running any courses, but that’s alright, he can always learn it somewhere else, which he presumably did).

On a side note, I volunteered myself to be Kyōya’s English voice actor, so I’ve practiced my Mancunian accent by watching actors like Christopher Eccleston, Stephen Tompkinson, Karl Pilkington and maybe a bit of Peter Kay as well. The only problem was that I’m not even sure that my accent is even Manc because I can’t tell if I’m getting it wrong and sounding like someone from Liverpool, Yorkshire, Newcastle or even Scotland. Oh well, that’s what happens when you really get into things.

I don’t buy expansion packs, I make my own (budget allowing)

So as I said, GJ Club only got one season and an OVA to go with it. Do Kyōya and the GJ Club make further appearances in the series? You bet your ass they do.

After being absent for much of the Next Gen Series in 2014, Kyōya and Kasumi receive a letter from their aunt, Narutaki, asking to meet in Hong Kong after their mother, Akari, went missing following the Siege of Ōsaka, only to be followed by Mao and the rest of the GJ Club, who learnt where he was going and managed to get on the same flight as them.

Narutaki, who had taken her Girl Power friends and established a rogue faction separate from the main group, takes the GJ Club to Nijō Castle, where she explains the background behind the Manchester Campaign and the events of Series 8 and 9. Soon after, Girl Power’s commander, Daniel, sends his brother, Nathan, out to find Narutaki. Kyōya tries to contact Hiroki, but he is unable to get through to him. Luckily, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Hiroki help Angela and the others repel the attacking Girl Power forces. Some more things happen and by the end of the story, we learn that Kyōya and Mao are dating.

That Christmas, Kyōya and Kasumi head up to Manchester, but the Doctor briefly takes them and their friends back to Hong Kong for a picnic with Hiroki and the rest of the Zhuge family.

A few years later in 2018, the GJ Club and Momoka get a cameo at the start and end of the Gokaiger TV movie special. By this point in time, Momoka’s café in Manchester has expanded to many other branches around the UK and in Hong Kong.

The next year in 2019, Kyōya, Kasumi, Mao and Megumi are featured in a four-part adventure in Soulbound Series 3, helping the cast solve the mystery of Parker’s past and Shinbu’s origins. Two years after in 2021, Kyōya and Kasumi move to Hong Kong (along with the GJ Club) and join the Superhero Project as the new ShinkenRed and ZyuohTiger. You’d think Kyōya would be against violence given his harmless tendencies, but I suppose his character has developed over the years despite having abandonment issues.

So this has been the involvement of GJ Club in my personal project. It’s a shame the series wasn’t more popular or it could have gotten a second season, a manga, more (and frequent) translations of the light novel or hell, even a licenced release. This series is just like Sea Princesses in how popular it was, but despite the number of episodes the anime got, at least Shin Araki hasn’t abandoned the series (by putting it in a spinoff no less) unlike Fabio Yabu, who hasn’t made anything new for Sea Princesses since 2010 after getting more animated episodes than GJ Club did. On the other hand though, neglected series with little material has been good development fodder for my personal project as it allowed me to bring awareness to the existence of those series while also developing backstories and afterstories for them.

[cherry-valentine]

Fall 2020 Anime Season:

Golden Kamuy Season 3 is, so far, just as good as the first two seasons. For anyone unfamiliar with the show, it follows a former soldier called “Immortal Sugimoto” (nicknamed so for his tendency to survive a lot of shit that would kill most people) and a young Ainu (the Japanese equivalent of Native Americans) girl as they search Northern Japan (and even parts of Russia) for hidden Ainu gold. The story is pretty wild, with threats coming from the wildlife and the harsh, snowy conditions as often as from mercenaries, assassins, and various other human dangers. The cast has expanded enough that we have several separate groups of cool, well-written characters roaming about (and they’ve shuffled a bit from season two, making their interactions very interesting). Sugimoto remains one of my favorite anime protagonists. He’s one of the more brutal, violent main characters I’ve seen, but, strangely, also one of the nicest. He’s kind to innocents (both people and animals) but will slaughter his enemies without hesitation. He’s also pretty funny. Then again, almost every character is subject to the show’s weird but endearing humor. It’s very hard to dislike any character, even the ones who are quite cruel. The show is also notable for having a lot of homoerotic subtext. The beefy, handsome men sure do love taking their clothes off and wrestling. Like, taking it ALL off. Multiple times per season. Yeah. Watch this show, everybody.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park is a new show this season that I was initially interested in because it reminded me of Durarara!! in that it’s set in Ikebukuro and features color gangs. That’s where the similarities end, however. Whereas Durarara!! had tons of supernatural elements and just plain craziness, IWGP is more realistic by comparison. The show follows Makoto, a seemingly normal guy who seems to function in a sort of “odd jobs” type of role for a color gang called the G Boys. While they’re a gang, they don’t seem like criminals or thugs, or even delinquents. They really feel more like a club, held together by their respect for the leader referred to as King. So far the series seems to be episodic in nature, with most stand-alone episodes focusing on some sort of social issue, from drug addiction to immigration. It’s interesting to see these issues presented in such a sympathetic light, viewed through the lens of Tokyo’s youth. The art is nice, with varied character designs and animation that’s just good enough that you don’t notice the problems very often. The music is a highlight, with my favorite opening theme of the season and one of the better ending themes.

Magatsu Wahrheit is a show I was very iffy on at first. It has a lot of things working against it. It’s based on a video game I’ve never heard of, the opening theme is one of the cheapest, most unimpressive things I’ve ever seen (note: it does improve a few episodes in!), and the series overall has a low budget feel (though nowhere near as bad as Gibiate from last season). But the story is actually very interesting and very well written. The basic premise is that Young Man A (I’m not remembering these weird names, sorry) works as a delivery truck driver in your usual “modern fantasy” setting (kingdoms and monsters and other medieval fantasy trappings alongside trucks and cars and advanced science laboratories). When he’s loading up his deliveries, Young Man B, a fresh recruit in the kingdom’s military and general goody-two-shoes, randomly offers to help Young Man A load his truck. Young Man B spots some boxes off to the side and, assuming they were part of the load, puts them into the truck while Young Man A is talking to his boss. These boxes turn out to be illegal weapons being smuggled by a group of... freedom fighters? I guess? This, in turn, drags Young Man A into a shit storm of trouble when the illegal weapons are discovered in his truck. It also leads directly to tragedy for Young Man B as well, setting them both on wildly different but similarly dangerous paths. The whole idea that a simple act of kindness for a stranger sets off such a terrible series of events is pretty engaging. As it stands in the show right now, Young Man A is the more compelling character. He’s just a truck driver. He’s a coward who runs from danger and wants no part of any of this. But at the same time, he can be surprisingly brave at times (usually when a child is in danger). In a twist on the usual trope, these spurts of bravery are rarely rewarded. At least twice, his decision to act has led to heartbreaking tragedy. So far Young Man B is your typical “idealistic youth realizing the military isn’t comprised entirely of nice people” type of character. As such, he’s just not as interesting. He hasn’t had as much screen time though, so hopefully he’ll grow as a character. I guess it says a lot that I’ve written so much about the show, and almost all of it is about the plot. But the plot is really the only remarkable thing about it. In this case, that’s enough.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is, well, a bit of a trainwreck. And I’m not necessarily talking about the quality of the show. Let me explain: The show was marketed as a remake of the 2006 anime, which was one of my all-time favorite series. I was pretty excited about it. Lots of new fans who had never watched the original started this one. The first episode was okay. I wasn’t crazy about how shiny everything looked (I realize the original’s visuals are a bit dated now but at least they were unique, this new one looks like pretty much every harem anime from the past five years) but the story seemed to be doing good and I looooooved the use of the original opening theme song as the closer. Then episode two dropped, and the fandom basically exploded. The first few minutes of episode two reveal that this is not a remake, but a sequel! Shock! At first, I was impressed by this little bit of manipulation. It felt exciting to realize the truth. But then it dawned on me (and the rest of the fandom) that new viewers who came to watch this were screwed over. Those first few minutes of episode two spoil some very important things from the original series (we’re talking major spoilers here), and it’s going to ruin a lot of plot points for those who never watched the original and now want to go back and watch it first. So here’s a PSA: If you’re new to Higurashi and want to try this new series, DON’T unless you’re okay with watching a sequel that spoils the original.

Okay, so now let’s talk about this new series/sequel. First, the good points: The ending theme is GORGEOUS. Just... go watch it. Soak it up. The opening isn’t bad but I can’t help comparing it to the far superior original opening. Aside from the overly shiny and generic character designs, the rest of the visuals are pretty great. The scenery in particular is very nice. In terms of story, I like the idea of beginning each new “arc” by staying close to the original story, then throwing in some pretty wild deviations that make them end in completely different ways because a character that lived through the original is trying to make subtle changes (that so far have ended up turning out very badly). When it comes to the bad points, one in particular sticks out: It’s not scary! The original had some truly unsettling moments, and so far this one hasn’t even been creepy. It’s had some moments that obviously tried to be scary but have failed miserably. For example, the early scenes with Rena in the original were actually terrifying. But I felt none of the intensity or creepiness in this sequel. Still, it’s nice to see these characters again and to see how this story deviates as someone tries desperately to change the outcomes.

Haikyuu!! has another new season and... I don’t really know what to say about it. I’ve talked about this show several times now. Looks like this season is going to focus primarily on one long match, a concept I’m not crazy about. They also made the baffling decision to cut in with a full episode about a rival team’s match right in the middle of showing the match with the main team. I mean I love seeing more of the rival teams but it felt disjointed to do it this way. Still yet, it’s a fun and energetic show full of great characters and easily understood volley ball matches.

Jujutsu Kaisen is probably the most hyped up new show this season, and I would say it definitely deserves that hype. It’s a pretty familiar shounen fighting anime setup: A teenage boy acquires special powers and joins a school to train so that he can use those powers for good. However, following that formula does little to negate just how fun and well-done this series is. A lot of people have compared it to Naruto (the protagonist is a vessel for a powerful entity, he joins a trio of characters with a more serious and moody black-haired boy and a chick, and they have a badass teacher with silver hair who keeps his face partially covered). So sure, it’s like Naruto... except it’s much better than Naruto in every conceivable way. The animation and fight choreography are consistently fantastic. The main character is not the least bit annoying. The only chick in the group (there are more cool ladies in the story, just not in this group!) is a badass in her own right and her story and motivations have absolutely nothing to do with romantic interest in any of the guys. Even the teacher character is incredibly fun. The music is great, with my favorite ending theme of the season. You know it’s an excellent ending theme when people start making different versions of it using characters from other shows. It’s so, well, fun. A word I keep using here, because that’s the first word that comes to mind when I’m watching this series.

Talentless Nana is one of those shows that’s going to be difficult for me to talk about without spoiling a very cool surprise. This surprise comes at the end of episode one (basically, the show makes you think it’s about something, but turns out it’s about something completely different). So if you want to really enjoy that surprise, stop reading this and go watch episode one before coming back. If you’ve already watched it or don’t mind having the surprise spoiled, here we go: The first episode sets up the series to be a cheap Boku no Hero Academia knock-off. We have a school of “talented” (super powered) kids training to use their powers to save humanity from (so far) unseen monsters referred to as “the enemies of humanity”. We are told one boy has no “talent” or special power and he’s ridiculed for this. There’s a new transfer student named Nana, a super sweet and cheerful girl with pink hair who has the ability to read minds. There’s also another transfer student, a sullen and quiet boy named Kyouya who hasn’t disclosed what his “talent” is. With that setup, I think a lot of people were ready to dismiss it as “BNHA, but not as good”. But then, a few minutes before the first episode ends, we’re hit with the twist that reveals what this show is really about: Nana is the one with no “talent”. She lied about being able to read minds (the boy we thought had no talent did actually have one). She’s a totally normal human being, and she has been sent to infiltrate the school and kill off the students, the true “enemies of humanity” (called so because their powers make them incredibly dangerous). Thus, the show is about a normal human girl using only her wits and skill in manipulation to kill off super-powered individuals. Watching her work is an absolute delight. She is ruthless and incredibly intelligent, but she does have one major problem: the other transfer student Kyouya, who is at least as smart as she is and is suspicious of her right off the bat. But since he’s not sure she’s up to no good, he can’t really act on his suspicions. Nana in turn knows he suspects her, so she has to be careful around him. As a result, the two become “friends”, constantly watching and outmaneuvering each other. In this way, the series reminds me of the early, best parts of Death Note, with the mental sparring between Light and L. But the most fun you’ll have with this show is watching Nana come up with ways to deal with each new “talent” she comes across, from the ability to time travel to necromancy, all while having no special power of her own. The art is nice, a bit generic, nothing too fancy. The music is great, with one of the better opening themes this season.

Moriarty the Patriot focuses on the classic Sherlock antagonist Professor Moriarty. Let me get this out of the way first: I know next to nothing about Sherlock. I haven’t even watched any of the various tv shows about him. What I know of the character basically comes from mentions of him in Detective Conan. So I’m coming into this series with no preconceived notions about these characters and no other versions to compare them to. Anyway, Moriarty as a series is about class warfare. Moriarty as a character pretty much embodies the phrase “eat the rich”. If you’re familiar with the phrase and understand its meaning, you’ll probably like this show. Moriarty works as a professor, but his side job is as a “Crime Consultant”. He helps the poor lower classes get revenge on the cruel nobles and elites who have wronged them. This revenge most often involves murder. There’s something refreshing about how unapologetic it is. In most anime, the hero tries to find other ways to punish evil than by actually killing them, or there’s some lesson involved about how revenge isn’t the answer or how killing someone who wronged you makes you as bad as them. In this series, there’s absolutely none of that. People get their revenge and, so far as I’ve watched, seem to be living much happier lives afterwards. In this way the show totally avoids being preachy. The art is gorgeous, with classy character designs and lovely backgrounds. There’s a certain lushness to it. The music is very nice as well (particularly that poppy ending theme). The only downside is that this has probably ruined me for watching other versions of these characters now. I mean, once you see them as sexy anime pretty boys, it’s hard to see them as anything else.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons:

Black Clover

Best of Season:

Best New Show: Jujutsu Kaisen

Best Opening Theme: Ikebukuro West Gate Park

Best Ending Theme: Jujutsu Kaisen

Best New Male Character: Moriarty (Moriarty the Patriot)

Best New Female Character: Nana (Talentless Nana)

[vegetacide]

TaG: Bloodlines (Part 6)

Veg • notables: Little something for Fluffember .. works for several prompts... Brothers,  warmth and together...

Any errors in this are strictly my own

Ty to @gumnut-logic and @scribbles97 for the brainstorming help and the encouragement.

Previous: Part 1 | Part 2 Bit 1 & Bit 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Rating and General warning: Mature content head. If you are not a fan of medical issues of a female nature in relation to pregnancy please proceed with caution.

Characters: Virgil, Kayo, (V/K)  Scott, Alan,  John, Gordon and Grandma.

Location: TaG-verse AU | Tracy Island

E N J O Y

8-8-8

Part 6 - Keluarga

The flight home was thankfully an  uneventful affair.

Kayo had fallen asleep almost as soon as the jet’s door had been closed and Virgil had been by her side holding her hand the whole way back to their island.

When the island finally came into sight there was a collective sigh of relief. The stress of everything having sucked the energy right out of all of them and home meant safety, comfort and more importantly; sleep.

Tucking Kayo safely back into their marital bed saw Virgil relaxing for the first time since… well since he’d woken up that morning..God, had it only been twelve hours ago? It felt like a lifetime and the exhaustion weighed on him furiously.

Not that he would be able to get much sleep tonight.

Leaning over his sleeping wife,  he adjusted the sheets and brushed her forehead with a kiss.  She stirred slightly and turned into him, always one to seek his heat even on a tropical island and her eyes blinked open myopically.

“Shhh,  it’s okay.  We’re home.  Go back to sleep.”

Kayo snuggled further under the covers and quiet ‘Love you’  drifted his way as he emptied his pockets of his ID, wallet and personal communication.

A light knock on their door, had him turning and he toed off his boots to muffle his movements before he traversed the short distance.  Opening it he was only mildly surprised to find his brothers on the other side..  All of them.

Holding up a finger he glanced back into the room to make sure everything was in order and that Kayo would have everything she needed. Not that it looked like she would be rising anytime soon.  The whole affair of the day had done her in.

Truthfully, he was happy she was finally getting some rest even if it was ordered and dismantling Shadow had been in his back pocket as a way to convenience her.

Surprisingly though after going through all the details with his family when they were discharged, Kayo looked like she wasn’t in the mood for any more lecturing so the Shadow card hadn’t needed to be played.

She’d barely moved since they’d left the hospital except when he’d move her.   He’d woken her up long enough to pour a drink of electrolytes down her throat and a protein bar into her belly and she’d been out again barely after swallowing the lot.

An uncomfortable trip to the bathroom later which his Grandmother had seen to though he had been hovering just outside the door in case he was needed.  A change of clothes and into bed she went. Out like a light again before her head even hit the pillow.

He was done in himself but his brain was running in circles which didn’t look like it would be giving up anything time soon. So the company just outside the door was a welcome distraction.

Satisfied that his wife would be alright.  He set his comms to alert him if she woke up and carefully crept out the door.

“Hey Virg,”  Alan whispered, stepping up to his brother and giving him a hug.  “How’s Kay?  She gonna be alright?”

Virgil hugged his brother back,  taking the opportunity to ruffle his hair while he was at it.

Alan grumbled at the action and wiggled away.  Smoothing his hair back into place as soon as he was free  and Virgil couldn’t help the smile that upturned his lips at the disgruntled look his littlest brother shot him.

“Hey Space Case.  She’s sleeping but Doc said she’ll be alright. She just needs to get some rest.”

“Looks like you could use some yourself.”  Gordon observed and moved in for a hug as well.

“Thanks, Squid.  Glad you noticed.”

“Well someone has to keep you honest and Kayo..” His eyes did a sweep of him from head to toe. “Well, she’s blinded by all that muscle."

The swat Virgil sent the aquanau's way as easily dodged as he danced out of reach.

Laughing as he used Alan as a human shield who protested loudly at being manhandled,  he tossed out  “All that bulk is slowing you down,  you should lay off the protein shakes.”

Virgil just rolled his eyes.  Trust Gordon to do whatever he could to lighten the mood with whatever tomfoolery he had at his disposal.

It was at that point that he noticed John standing in the back of the crowd of brotherly forms.  “John, when did you get here?’

John just shrugged,  “Not long ago.  I came as soon as I could but that storm system off the coast made taking the elevator down impossible.

“It’s good to see ya in the flesh.” Virgil smiled, stepping forward enveloping the communications expert in a hug. John’s hugs were rare but the returned squeeze was given freely, a testament to the support system his brothers were offering.

“You too, brother mine.”

Scott stepped up next, though he’d been at the hospital with the couple. “Anything you need, let us know.”  He offered and the round of hugging continued.

“I know and I appreciate it.”

He could always count on his family when the chips were down,  there was no doubt about that.

Scott released him, one hand giving his shoulder a squeeze and tipped his head towards the door at Virgil’s back. “Doc’s made arrangements to come out in a couple weeks' time.  Just had the call come through with the details. Shouldn’t be a problem getting him out here for it.  Between us and Aunt Val we have plenty of pilots who can give him a lift.”

“Great,  I’m sure Kay will be thrilled.” The hand on his shoulder squeezed again and Scott gave him a knowing look.

“She’s a fighter.  Hates being benched just as badly if not more so than we do.”

“That’s what I’m worried about..”

“Meh don’t worry about it.  With the Great Doctor Sally Tracy with her sights set on her,  Kayo doesn’t stand a chance.” Gordon piped up.  “Trust me on that one. She’ll be lucky if she can manage to wiggle a toe without Grandma noticing.”

“Well she had to be super vigilant with you, Gordo. We still have no clue how you managed to change the electronic audio to Spanish from the couch.”

Gordon stood up taller,  primped in all his mastery of everything prankster.  “Trade secret. If I tell you, I would have to kill you.”

This time there was no dodging the swats directed at his head from three older siblings though Alan yet again shrieked in protest as he was tossed about like a sac of meat. 

Sally was a practical woman with simple tastes and simple pleasures.   A night of bridge with the girls at the local social club,   bocce ball every other Tuesday with fellow medical alumni and curling once a month with her bereavement group who had become like an extended family to her after her husband had passed.

Simple things, never extravagant.

She grew up with the mentality that to get what you wanted took hard work and determination.  Blood, sweat and tears was her motto through her years of medical training and her intern placement in one of the busiest hospitals in the U.S.

She’d worked hard to get where she was today despite the trials and tribulations of being widowed, dealing with her own grief and that of her son’s and taking charge of his young brood while he wallowed in his pain.

She didn’t fault Jeff for his actions,  she understood them intimately.  She’d lost herself in taking care of the boys to help keep the pain at bay.  Oftentimes pushing them just as hard as she did herself. In the end though despite the odds, she thought everything had turned out all right.

Was the road easy?  No.  Far from it.   Was there things she wished she had handled differently?  Of course.  Her son disappearing into a bottle of despair being one of them.  But the boys had been raised well by their dear mother even if only for a short time.

The eldest who remembered her memory took that care, love and devotion their mother had been known for and poured it into the younger two.  Doing everything within the power of their shattered world to keep the family in one cohesive piece even when their father was absent both mentally and physically.

They’d survived and come out the other end stronger than anything she could have imagined and she wasn’t afraid to admit it and how proud she was of every single one of them.

And true form when one of the brothers stumbled the other four were right there to steady him and get him back on his feet. Providing whatever support that was needed in their own individual ways.

When others would bolt,  her boys rallied.  Diving in head first to shore up whoever was in need.  It’s what made them great at what they did. That core strength of love and support radiated out of everything they touched and because of that they’d helped more than she could count.

Here she was,  coming to check on her adoptive granddaughter and her loving boys where right were she expecting them to be.  Standing as a unit outside Virgil’s door.  Surrounding him and holding him up with hugs, pats on the back and caring words.

She stopped and kept back a few paces, letting them have their moment and watching all the love. They deserved this moment cause they were few and so far in between.

Rescuing the world didn’t leave much time for brotherly interaction and these precious moments needed to be cherished.

Leaning against the wall, she allowed a soft smile to grace her lips.  Something in her movement must have alerted her boys though because no sooner had she settled than one by one they turned her way.  Not surprised in the least to find her there.

She looked at them, taking in the details of the men they had grown into and she locked the details away for safekeeping.

Scott with the little licks of grey at his temple a sign of the stress the last years had put on them all but his eyes sporting the beginnings of laugh lines.

Virgil,  his quiet nature and artist spirit.  Steadfast even with his wife just feet away resting with their babe growing in her belly.   As worried as he was for he felt things more deeply than all of them he put on a brave face. Not wanting youngest brothers to see him waver even though she knew he was.

His eyes spoke volumes.  She could see the exhaustion and fear in them but even so he graced her with a small smile in return.;

John, her star baby.  When had he come down?  Shocked, she frowned slightly as she took in his uniform. He’d need to wear that for a while until he acclimated to Earth’s gravity again.. A downside to living in the stars so far away.   How he managed the isolations, she had no idea. He’d grown up in a house so full of life until there hadn’t been but he’d silently held on.  Striving to be the best at what he did.  

Next was the vivacious Gordon.  Beams of sunshine in his hair and mischief in his eyes.  He’s seen and done a lot in his short life. Days so dark with despair as his broken body healed.  She’s spent many an hour sitting with him in the VA hospital watching and keeping him company as his body painfully knit itself back together again after every surgery but for all of it. He never complained with the exception of food.   Just grinned and bared it though she could see the cracks.  He'd come through it all, scarred and sporting a motley collection of surgical steel plates and bolts and kept on smiling.

And lastly her baby boy,  Alan. Her rocket man.   He’d missed so much in life.  A normal childhood, school, friends and typical boyhood misadventures.  First date,  prom, graduation but he’d still done the family proud and held his head up high.  He flew the stars and was living a dream most kids his age could only dream about.  A tender age but the top of his field and he got to fly a rocket ship.  What kid wouldn’t love that? 

Her boys.  No, her men.  Through diversity and trauma they all stood tall and together.

Pushing away from the wall she went to them and was lost in a sea of hugs.

8-8-8

TBC

NEXT

[secret-engima]

I ADORE your Night King Noctis! Any snippets from there?

Ummmmmm no? It’s not … actually … a fic? At least not yet. I have a couple AUs that I enjoy that currently only live in Tumblr HCs because that way I can work on them/have fun with them without getting the stress of having YET ANOTHER DOC on my WIP pile. But here have a few more HCs:

-Some daemons are sentient and some are just- semi-sentient/non-sentient. Since I cannot remember all of the various daemons, the general rule of thumb is that if it LOOKS humanoid-ish it’s probably sentient. The Flans and Hecteyes and such are not sentient. About as intelligent as a really smart cat or dog. No one knows if they were originally pets of the other daemons or if the Accursed did something centuries ago to rob them of their intelligence but like- there there. The other daemons go out of their way to take care of them like one would a bratty pet cat.

-A notable exception to this is the Nagas and their other variations.

-It’s mostly the blobby daemons that aren’t intelligent actually.

-The Flans are great for cleaning up the city because they’re basically living garbage disposals. If you give it to them, it will be eaten. Even if the thing is stone rubble or rusted metal. Thankfully they do not seem interested in eating living things unless the Accursed himself orders them too, so no one has to worry about their kids getting too close to a Flan or something.

-Hecteyes like in inhabit the borders of Insomnia, they’re basically self imposed guard dogs. Anyone who is spotted trying to get in will be bedazzled with that shiny light attack they do, which will also handily alert the nearest sentient daemon or human that an intruder is near.

-The bombs like to follow people who feed them. Prompto, being a sucker for all things not trying to kill him and vaguely cute, now has a literal army of living night lights at his beck and call, though he usually doesn’t let them follow him around all day because that would cause traffic jams in the hallways and stuff.

-They like to mimic the flash of his camera but flaring their flames/lightning/ice/whatever. No one knows WHY but now Prompto has to be careful with taking pictures because if he takes one when he has his mob of night lights following everyone else in the nearby area WILL be blinded by the corresponding flashes of the happy bombs.

-One of the Citadel daemon doctors is a Mindflayer. His assistant is a Gargoyle (you know one of those lovely suckers that could TELEPORT ALL OVER GRALEA and chase you down no matter where you went? Yeah him.). There is no escaping the checkups.

-Ever wanted to see a Mindflayer throw a temper tantrum? Just sit in on the first medical checkup Noctis grudgingly allowed (with all the Chocobros plus Cor there as backup if this went sideways). The Mindflayer Doctor just known as Doc might not know EXACTLY what a healthy human should look like but he does know that NOCTIS ISN’T IT.

-Ignis decided he LIKED this strange, creepy looking doctor the moment Doc rounded on Ignis as head chef and demanded they work out a proper diet plan for Noctis. Noctis was a Fear.

-The local Tonberry cooks under Ignis will regularly show up throughout the day in the throne room to foist snacks on Noctis. He accepts them with exasperated grace while trying to insist he’s FINE, seriously, you don’t need to keep feeding him ever hour.

-The Tonberry just. Look at him. Then come back the next hour with more healthy snacks and the occasional cookie.

-Gladio thinks it’s hysterical. Especially when he tries to snitch a snack and gets chef knives waved angrily in his direction.

-Prompto has been adopted by like- fifty different Naga/Serpentesses/etc. They’ve formed a Mom Club. He has NO IDEA WHY and they aren’t explaining. Prompto’s one rule is that they don’t unexpectedly drag him off somewhere or call him “baby”, they accept these rules will grace.

-This plus his collection of night lights means that basically Prompto is an adorable daemon magnet and he has no idea why but this is Very Stressful until he finally acclimates to the knowledge that these daemons aren’t out to kill him and he stops flinching when he sees them.

-Prompto’s Mom Club also may or may not be in contact with Cor’s brigade of Ronin Dads and Ignis’s clan of Tonberry so they can exchange notes on the Care and Raising of Humans.

-Gladio laughs at all of them until he unknowingly kicks the butt of the Iron Giant Boss in a training spar and now finds himself the “Boss Giant” of all the local Iron Giants/Red Giants/etc. They call him Boss now. They bring him swords four times his height as gifts.

-NOCT STOP LAUGHING IT’S NOT FUNNY.

-Noctis, who is the literal king of daemons and deal with this kind of stuff from ALL the daemons not just one or two clans, does not stop laughing. Suffer with him Gladio. Suffer with him.

[theniftycat]

I’ve been thinking about my first fandom drama today.

I was 14 in 2004 and I became a huge fan of Alexandre Dumas’ books. Not only the musketeers (with both sequels) and Monte-Christo, but also notably his trilogy about religious wars in the 16th century and his quatrology about Joseph Balsamo and the French revolution (altho my collection lacked the second part of the last novel and now I’ll probably never read it).

So, I found an online fan club (in Russian) made with basic html, on a free site hosting service. It had a guest book and I started talking to the owner. It was fun and in a couple of months she added a forum to her site (if you’re young... it’s like a discord server, but each page had a maximum of like 200 or 400 messages, so, when a topic got closed, you had to open a new one).

That’s where I spent the next 4 years, that no doubt had a lot of influence on my personal development. It had everything. Nuanced character discussions, arts, games, fics, funny and serious poems, jokes, role plays, a database of adaptations, history nerds, horny people, genuinely the best people you’d meet, trolls, jokers and character stans.

After about three years of it being a genuinely nice environment, we had maybe like 10-20 people who’d post every day (yes, it was a very active community, but people generally talked more online back then, that’s why lj-style platforms don’t work anymore, nobody will comment as much as in the 2000s). And we all knew each other pretty well.

Of course, The Three Musketeers (and both sequels) were the most popular. While I was more of a Monte-Christo fan, and we’d basically make silly jokes about sea and treasures with another girl who I still keep in touch, as in we say hello to each other once a year. Among the musketeer fans we had two groups: ones who loved Athos and ones who loved Aramis (maybe gays).

I always liked Aramis more due to his flamboyant nature and him always wanting to leave the secular life and become a priest (which is a big mood). And then in the sequels he does, but he’s also bad at being a priest (which is a big mood) as in bad at keeping his vows, while being a great Jesuit (Catholic secret police), and later he also becomes a snake and leads to the death of Porthos, aka the human cinnamon roll. I felt like he was relatable, but also that he could teach me what not to do. All in all, a greatly written character and an object of gender envy.

Athos was a man of honour in all the best and the worst ways. I’m not gonna retell his story with Milady, but like, if you know you know. His fans loved him for being honest in every situation, as well as being a tragic single dad. Idk, MAYBE, there was also the issue of loving the actor who played him in the Soviet adaptation. Maybe there was something else, but for me he was pretty boring, I’m not a reliable narrator. Some of them also hated Milady, which is sad cause she was fun.

(Keep in mind, it was almost 15 years ago and in Russia, it was like before the second wave feminism. Also, most Dumas’ major characters were very flawed and messed up people who commited crimes.)

Anyway, one day somebody created a topic called “Was it right to kill Milady” or something like that. And it started. Months and months of Athos stans defending his every action. Hating Milady more and more and hating Aramis just because his fans were not Athos stans. First I was trying to participate, but I was pretty young and inexperienced with arguments, plus, I didn’t have a real position and didn’t care too much. I distinctly remember the number 1 Athos stan being in her early 30s, she was the loudest.

After I stopped reading the discussions, I still talked in other threads, but it all felt tainted due to the existing tension. As a result, the forum pretty much died in a few months, even though prior to the whole situation we all got along well and respected each other. More than that, many of us felt a real sense of belonging there and loved the place.

It’s been more than a decade and only in 2015 I found another fandom that felt close to that level of nice to be in. Now I just don’t mix with stanning characters like that.