#he still destroys stuff but it's more out of a sense of accomplishment

[spotaus]

Mm, hello to Bug!!! He's like if Error started off as Swap, but not <3

[sttoru]

·.⌇ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒. you’ve been one of sukuna’s many concubines for quite a while now. yet, you still cannot get rid of the jealousy in your system whenever he interacts with the other women in his harem.

wc. idk around 1 to 2k

tags. true form!sukuna x concubine!female reader. angst (hurt to comfort), fluff, suggestive at the end. heian era. you call sukuna ‘my lord’. reader gets called ‘brat, little girl’. size difference. no part2, don’t ask i beg. not beta read.

“get back here, brat,” sukuna raises his voice as he follows you. he isn’t one to care about others’ emotional outbursts, yet here he is, chasing you after you’ve poured out your heart to him.

you don’t know why you’re this upset. you do know, however, that it’s childish of you to walk away mid dinner. you should’ve just stayed seated and refuse to let the thoughts consume you.

now you’re speed walking down the hallways of the estate—your legs carrying you as fast as they can without actually making a run for it. your mind keeps replaying the ‘unsettling’ scene that caused you to flee.

you remember it vividly. the sound of sukuna’s low, amused chuckle. how intrigued it was because of something another concubine told him—how he stopped chewing to say something back to her. which he rarely does.

hell, you’ve never seen him laugh around his other concubines.

“i do not wish to talk to you right now, my lord,” you reply, voice raised so the distance wouldn’t make it a hassle for the king of curses to hear you. you know that feisty attitude of yours entertains sukuna to no end.

he raises an eyebrow once he’s heard your voice; how it’s dripping with envy and hurt. you’ve never reacted like that before—at least not in his presence. it made him want to figure out why and how.

though, he can easily guess the reasoning behind your sudden defiance.

“oh, that so?” sukuna hums. he’s lenient with you this time around. he could catch up to you in under a split second, but he decides to give you that sense of accomplishment first before completely destroying it. he walks after you slowly, your fast steps being the same tempo as his slow pace.

you don’t answer. you’re stubborn. you have no right to feel jealous. you are a fairly new concubine—only a couple months ago did you join sukuna’s harem. yet, the time spent with him was precious.

he treats you differently. everyone notices that. everyone tells you the same. you know he does by the way he lets you off the hook with most stuff you say and do.

you don’t know what you did to gain his favouritsm, but it’s addicting. his attention is addictive. real addictive.

you had sworn not to develop any unneccessary feelings for that ruthless sorcerer. but, with the way sukuna treated you so gently behind closed doors, it was impossible not to.

you eventually reach the doors to your chambers. you slide them open and wish to close them behind you, only for a big hand to halt those movements. you freeze in place and refuse to look up at the owner of that said hand.

“look up,” sukuna demands. his voice causes goosebumps to appear on your arms, but you still don't budge. he clicks his tongue. that’s your first warning. two more and your punishment will be carried out, “we can do this the hard way too if you want.”

you turn your head, your fingers curling around the material of your kimono. you really should not feel this way about a little interaction between sukuna and his other concubine. that is none of your concern. what he does with those other women is none of your concern.

and yet. . .

“i don't want to,” you retort. sukuna walks into your room with a sigh. each step he takes forwards, you take backwards. your back finally bumps against the wall next to your bed.

sukuna towers over you, his tall and big frame making you feel vulnerable. especially with the way those red eyes of his are staring down at you. he crosses all four of his arms before speaking.

“tell me what’s running through that head of yours,” sukuna inquires sternly. he isn’t playing around anymore, you can tell. you glance the other way—knowing that he will laugh at you the moment you tell him why you’re upset.

you have a feeling he knows the reason behind your tantrum anyway.

“it’s nothing of importance, my lord,” you shake your head and relax your tense shoulders to make you seem less upset. your words have some truth in them—you don’t think your feelings of envy hold any value to him.

sukuna sighs again. he’s trying his best not to be annoyed at you. you’re his favorite and he wishes not to sadden you any further. he steps forwards, one hand moving to cup the side of your face.

his rough fingers play with a string of your hair, “i’m not stupid, little girl. i don’t like it when my woman is in distress.”

your heart skips a beat. this is what confuses you—how he can go from stern to gentle and vice versa. it’s surprisingly unexpected, which makes you long for more. even if his behaviour is confusing.

you look up at sukuna. your eyes meet for the first time in a good couple minutes. the corner of sukuna’s lips curls up into a satisfied smirk. that’s one step closer to getting you to open up.

“now,” the king of curses lowers his head to your eye level, the proximity all the more nerve wracking. he holds your jaw super tightly out of the blue. it makes you whimper.

“spit it out.”

there it is. the duality of the man strikes once more. you swallow the spit that’s been building up in your mouth. you bite your bottom lip lightly, trying to gather and form the right words to explain yourself.

sukuna wouldn’t understand. he’s a cold-hearted man who doesn’t care about such ‘trivial’ matters. he’ll just call you stupid, pathetic or whatever other derogatory term.

you stop your thoughts for a moment.

“it’s really just a stupid thing,” you mutter. your fingers curl around sukuna’s wrist—the one hand he’s using to firmly hold your jaw. you take a deep breath in, “i did not like it when you, errr. . . when that woman talked to you at the dinner table.”

your voice is clearly dripping with jealousy. pure, pure jealousy. and for what? because he talked to his other concubine. you feel stupid. you thought you discarded your personal feelings for the sorcerer before you the moment you turned into one of his many women.

“that woman?” sukuna tilts his head, feigning ignorance. that little grin on his face tells you enough. he’s playing with you like some form of entertainment. well, technically you are.

he wants you to be specific. he’s forcing you to be by acting like he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

in all honesty, sukuna’s already forgotten what that woman had said to him. it wasn’t and still isn’t worth remembering. all he can recall is your adorable facial expression when you saw him interact like that with his other concubine.

that little frown on your face was priceless. it makes him want to keep teasing you.

“you know who i am talking about, my lord,” you huff, trying to look away, but get stopped by sukuna readjusting his grip on your jaw. he firmly yet gently taps your cheek once and you know what it means.

“attitude,” sukuna warns with a quick hiss. he can let you say whatever you want to him, but you also have some limits regarding which tone you use with him. you apologise quietly under your breath.

the king of curses nods in satisfaction before releasing the grip on your jaw. his large hand trails down to your neck, thumb rubbing up and down your throat, “so, my little girl is mad at me because i talked to another concubine of mine, huh?”

you nod mindlessly. sukuna can easily get you to comply with him—to obey his every word, simply with his actions. the terms of endearment he uses are the cherry on top. they slip off his tongue so easily with you.

“tsk tsk,” sukuna shakes his head. his hand is now on the back of your head, fingers tangled into your hair. he’s staring down at you with a smug expression. he knows he’s got you wrapped around his finger, “how childish of you.”

you knew that would be one of the things he’d say to you. what you didn’t expect is for him to go for a kiss right after. his lips land on yours firmly, and to no surprise, you instantly return the gesture.

your arms wrap around his neck—your chest pressing against his. sukuna wastes no time in picking you up and letting your legs encircle his waist. he’s not pulling away for air to breathe and you don’t either.

“you’re going to listen to me, yeah?” sukuna murmurs between passionate kisses. he’s holding onto you tightly with two arms, his free hands roaming over your body whilst he pins you against the wall.

when you whimper out a weak, high-pitched ‘yes, my lord’, he smirks against your mouth before turning to kiss your neck. he slightly bites the skin to make sure you’re paying attention to him.

“i don’t remember what that woman said,” sukuna continues, nearly out of breath because of the kisses he’s leaving all over you. he easily grabs both your wrists and pins them above your head on the wall, “i was too busy lookin’ at a much prettier concubine of mine.”

he pulls back a little so he can look you in the eyes. you’re panting and embarrassed by what he just said. one of his hands finds your face again, tracing the shape of your mouth.

“my favourite,” sukuna whispers whilst licking his lips. you can see it in his eyes: he’s silently planning out how he’s going to remind you of your place. your place as his favorite concubine.

he dips his head back down, aiming for the valley between your breasts. he closes his eyes before sucking on the surrounding flesh;

“guess i’ll be nice for once ‘nd show you just what it means to be my favorite so that you’ll never dare forget it again.”

[queertransetc]

- ED trigger warning -

Being skinny ruined my life. If you’re thin and think to yourself, “why don’t fat people just lose weight?” Please read this

I was the “ideal fat” in the sense that I did everything skinny people wanted me to do. I tried every diet in the book. I exercised regularly. I worked with doctors and dietitians to figure out the best way to lose weight. But nothing worked. I did everything “right” to lose weight, and my weight stayed the same

But the thin people in my life kept telling me that I wouldn’t be happy, attractive, healthy, etc. until I lost weight. So, heartbroken, I came to the conclusion that anorexia was the only option left. It felt safer than bariatric surgery, and was obviously much more affordable

I became the perfect anorexic. 700 cal a day or less, except once a week I allowed myself 1400 cal. For reference, my body required at least 2800 to maintain weight, and at least 1800 to keep my organs and stuff fully functioning. Still, 700 a day, I persisted because everyone in my life told me weight loss was all that mattered. If dieting didn’t work, anorexia had to

And it did. My weight dropped all the way down to 110 pounds. I was skinny - underweight, even - in all sense of the word. The people in my life saw it as a miracle. The ultimate success story. My mother, my “friends,” my doctors, they all congratulated me on my accomplishment

When I confessed my eating disorder to my doctor, he told me, “that’s not the best way to go about it, but I’m glad you lost the weight.” My mother took pictures of me and sent them to relatives to brag

Okay, great. I was skinny. I did what I set out to do. But there were severe consequences

The most obvious was my joint pain doubled, maybe even tripled, to the point that I couldn’t leave the house without a wheelchair

I also developed several health complications, including fatty liver disease and extremely painful GERD. I had to see a handful of specialists and get an endoscopy because of severe stomach pain

My partner, who was the only person who saw my weight loss for what it was (a horrible thing that only happened because of an eating disorder), convinced me to enter a recovery program

For nearly a year, I relearned how to feed myself. I ate everything I was told to eat, nothing more and nothing less. My diet was 100% in the hands of somebody else

And I gained back every pound I has lost. All of the work to become thin went right out the window. It was proven to me that thinness and health were incompatible with my body. If I wanted to be thin, I had to forgo my physical and mental well-being. And vise-versa

Prior to the anorexia, I never once struggled with binge eating. I was naturally an intuitive eater, and I did a good job of having a well rounded diet. After the anorexia, after recovery, I developed a binge eating disorder. I had spent so long starving myself, that my brain and body got stuck in survival mode, desperate to consume any and all calories out of fear that I might starve again. To this day I struggle with binge eating

I did everything thin people wanted of me. I dieted. I exercised. And when all else failed, I starved myself. Now I have liver disease, stomach issues, and BED. Not to mention the loads of mental issues that accumulated as a result of my weight loss journey. During the throes of my anorexia, I had to be hospitalized for suicidal ideation

When you tell fat people to “just lose weight” you are suggesting they give themselves illnesses for which treatments are not always effective. You are asking fat people to destroy their stomachs and livers. When a fat person loses so much weight that they become skinny, they are likely giving up so much of their health in efforts to be treated like a human being

If you’re thin, do your part. Treat fat people like people before we tear our bodies apart

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

hello welcome back to "god there's so much in Strahd's combat writeup", I want to talk about the Heart of Sorrow

because it's kind of weird

and at first I was like "why does he even have this" because if you're fighting him at 10th level and your party picked up their magic items, 50 HP is nothing. that's a trivial amount of protection. there are some builds that average close to 50 damage per turn at 10th level (and that's ignoring whatever insane stuff the 2024 PHB lets PCs do now).

so if I can't rely on this thing to keep this beautiful pipe-organ playing manicure safe from buffs and scratches in the final fight, what else is it good for

well I have some ideas.

mechanically:

this does mean Strahd can do insane stunts around 1st-3rd level parties, like just... let himself get stabbed or set on fire and just kind of laugh about it haha isn't this a fun time we're all having

mid-campaign this is a buffer for if I've fucked up and accidentally left Strahd somewhere the party can damage him

assuming the heart is still active, I'm in love with the image of Strahd opening the bossfight with fireball centered on himself and soaking the damage as an intimidation tactic

plot-wise:

the module kind of tucks the heart way out of the way, but I think it makes more sense to broadcast it to the party as a quest

make it something the party should go out of their way to destroy because for all they know, this thing will protect Strahd indefinitely

it's not like the party destroying it will change my tactics in the final fight because I already can't depend on it to protect Strahd

the party will get to feel like destroying the heart is a major accomplishment that opens a huge hole in Strahd's defenses and I can play along like YEP YOU DID IT, HE DEFINITELY NEEDED THAT HEART AND THIS WILL DEFINITELY NEGATIVELY AFFECT HIM IN THE FUTURE :)

if all else fails and they accidentally destroy the Heart of Sorrow way early by catching Strahd and eating through the damage threshold before he can disconnect from it, it'll be a great excuse for Strahd to be fucking pissed at the party for breaking his very expensive magical hit point rock

[duhragonball]

Chainsaw Man ch. 86-90

The shocking answers to all your existential dancing questions INSIDE!

Okay, so last time Makima basically laid out her true agenda, which is to either take control of Chainsaw Man's reality altering powers, or to die to Chainsaw Man in the attempt.

According to her, the Chainsaw Devil was the one even other devils feared, because when Chainsaw killed one of them, they stayed dead, instead of reincarnating. But devils in this world are manifestations of humanity's collective fear of a particular thing, so the only way to destroy a devil forever is to also destroy the very concept they embody. So in this universe there used to be a historical event called "World War II", which gave rise to a "World War II Devil", I guess. Then Chainsaw Devil killed that guy, and now World War II never happened.

Makima, aka the Control Devil, seems to be the only one who remembers these changes, and she knows Chainsaw Man is responsible for them, so she wants to take that power for herself and control it, natch.

I am not sure if she actually knows how to accomplish this. The Chainsaw Devil became Pochita and merged with Denji back in Chapter 1, and Makima seems to view this as an obstacle. Everything she's done since chapter 1 has been designed to undermine the contract between Pochita and Denji, but they're still combined, you know?

Also, Makima admits that she might lose and get destroyed by Chainsaw Man, so there's a sense of fatalism to her campaign. She's just sort of doing stuff and it's not clear if she cares if it works. She ordered Chainsaw Man to save her from the Hell Devil, and then he got cast down to Hell, and then he made it back, but then he attacked Makima instead of saving her. So I'm not sure what to make of it.

None of this really explains why Chainsaw Man is terrorizing a fast food place in Chapter 85. I think the idea here is that Denji is taking a back seat in this merger, and now we're seeing a more "pure" version of the Chainsaw Devil, without Denji's humanity to temper its actions. It still has Pochita's desire to experience Denji's dreams, though, and Denji once expressed a desire to eat a burger, so I think this is Pochita trying to do that on his own. The problem is that the Chainsaw Devil can't talk or do much of anything without carving up everything around him.

Coincidentally, Kobeni works at this burger joint, since she resigned from Public Safety. I'm not sure she recognizes this new (old?) version of Chainsaw Man, but either way, she's too afraid of it to serve it hamburgers without tripping and dropping the order. Her boss wonders if this is all an elaborate Candid Camera bit, because... well, it probably would make more sense than what is actually happening. Chainsw decapitates him. I'm not sure if this is accidental or not.

Kobeni finally manages to get the food to Chainsaw, who eats it, then recalls Denji's longing to go on a date. Chainsaw would like to do that too, but where would he find a girl to go out with him? Oh, there's one on his left. Perfect!

The bigger question is: Why is Chainsaw bothering with this at all? I think the idea here is that he lacks the sapience that Denji had. Not that Denji was a genius or anything, but he would probably understand that he didn't actually finish off Makima earlier, and he wouldn't just wander off to fool around with Kobeni. Then again, maybe seeking out Kobeni is exactly what he'd do in this situation. Just about everyone else he knows is dead. Denji and Kobeni were never close, but who else has he got left?

Anyway, he makes her dance on some arcade machine and when a Devil Hunter shows up to intervene, he kills that guy. I'm not sure he was in Public Safety or just a civilian hunter, but he had no idea what he was getting into.

Then he just sits around on a rooftop and Makima confronts him again. I think she's been following him for a little while now, and he's finally realized it. Or maybe all that stuff with Kobeni was just him killing time while he waited for Makima to make a move.

This time, Makima has a new squad to back her up. Some of these faces are familiar. Qwanxi, Reze, and the sword guy who was the grandson of the Yakuza guy Denji used to work for. But there's four others making their debut here.

This kind of irritates me, because the returning characters all seemed to be dead, and the implication here is that the other four were also guys we've seen before. I thought the girl was Angel Devil because of the hair and the jacket sleeves flopping around, but she's got her arms crossed and she's just wearing the jacket like a cape. And I thought the blonde guy might be the one who used the Stone Devil Power from a while back. But no, they're all new characters, yet they're presented like callbacks we're supposed to recognize.

Also, it's unclear whether Reze, Quanxi, and the sword guy are back from the dead or simply got brainwashed like everyone else. I enjoyed Reze and Quanxi from before, but this comeback is kind of weak because they're just stooges for Makima now, with no interest in their original motives.

Makima explains this, although I'm not sure Chainsaw is really capable of understanding what she's saying. It sure seemed like Reze and the others had a similar deal to Denji, where they weren't devils or humans or fiends, but a secret fourth thing. Makima confirms that they are indeed a secret fourth thing, and the reason it's a secret is because Chainsaw Man erased that secret fourth thing the same way he erased World War II.

Except... he kind of didn't, because Reze and the others are still here. The name was erased, but they're still around, somehow. The Chainsaw Man wiki calls them "hybrids", so that's as good a name as any. Maybe that's how they survived the erasure. Devils can merge with living humans, clearly, but maybe there's more than one way to do it, and Chainsaw erased one method but not the other. These seven hybrids and Chainsaw Man still exist because they were created with that other process, and Makima isn't aware of the distinction.

Or this erasure thing is bullshit. I mean, Chainsaw Man killed the Gun Devil, right? But there's still guns. Kishibe's group shot Makima earlier today. Chainsaw Man killed the Zombie Devil, but everyone still remembers zombies. Hell, some of Zombie Devil's own zombies were still around weeks after that battle.

So is there some loophole to this? Did Chainsaw Devil's erasure power only work before Pochita merged with Denji? Is that why Makima is trying to separate them? It's the only thing that makes sense to me. She already had Denji under her thumb before, so all of this would have been unnecessary if Denji could fit into her plans.

And maybe this is why Pochita merged with Denji. Perhaps, instinctively, he realized that the hybrids are indestructible enough that they can survive erasure, so combining with Denji would thwart Makima's plans.

I say this because Makima speaks of a battle between Chainsaw Devil, the "Weapon Devils", and the Four Horsemen. I'm pretty sure "Weapon Devils" refers to the seven hybrids under her control right now. As for the Four Horsemen, I went ahead and looked that up on the Chainsaw Man Wiki, and found out Makima is one of them. I wasn't entirely surprised to find that out.

Okay, some Bible triva for you: The Four Horsemen are not "War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death", as depicted in popular culture. The ones depicted in the Book of Revelation are actually named "War, Famine, Conquest, and Death." Conquest has been interpreted as Pestilence over the centuries, and I'm probably not qualified to weigh in on that discussion, but it's pretty clear that Makima is more akin to a conqueror than an infectious disease.

The reason it doesn't surprise me too much to learn all of this is because when Makima explained her plan to Kishibe, she spoke of using Chainsaw's power to erase other problems faced by humanity: war, hunger, and death. It seemed kind of odd to me that she name-dropped three horsemen without the fourth. I'm kind of a mark for this sort of thing so it sticks out when I see it. And it dawned on me that Makima wouldn't want to eliminate conquest because it's kind of her whole thing. So maybe that makes her the fourth horseman. Turns out I was onto something.

And I suppose Makima does sort of tie in to pestilence since she uses vermin to spy on her enemies, and she has that contract with the Prime Minister of Japan to undo her own deaths in exchange for the lives of random Japanese citizens. That's kind of like a plague.

Where was I? Oh, right. So Chainsaw Devil was fighting those eleven guys, then diapered. Makima says they couldn't find him, and that was because he had changed into an unrecognizable, near-death form. This was almost certainly Pochita, and that probably explains why the li'l guy was wounded when Denji first saw him.

So now, Makima can pick up this battle where they left off. Well, without the other three horsemen, apparently. You'd think they'd take an interest in this business, especially since Makima is actively plotting to eliminate them.

I have to say, this battle is kind of... blah for me. Reze and Quanxi were awesome, but Makima's brainwashing just makes them ordinary, especially with five other goons using the same kind of powers. These designs are pretty decent on their own, but part of what made Quanxi work was the way she was totally nude and her arrow stuff conveniently covered up her naughty bits. Reze fought in her barista clothes and then her undies, which was also kind of unique in this series. But now everyone's in a suit and tie, and it kind of falls flat.

The concept here is stretched kind of thin, because all eight of these characters are basically the same idea: a human figure with weapons for their head and arms. Gun Fiend was basically the same deal too, so that makes nine. It reminds me of that joke about how death metal bands all have white logos written in an illegible font. There was a list of bands at some show, and the only one you could read or really notice was "Party Cannon", which had this cutesy colorful logo because it was a My Little Pony reference.

And right now, Makima is Party Cannon, because she's literally the only one in this battle who doesn't look like a scribbly figure covered in screentone. Chainsaw defeats some of the hybrids, but the rest of them combine their attacks and Makima uses her own fingergun thing to try to drive him higher and higher into the air.

So she's going for a Battle Tendency strategy, which I certainly appreciate, but does she seriously expect Chainsaw Man to asphyxiate up there? I mean, if it was this simple, why not lure him into an enclosed space full of nitrogen? He'd suffocate before he realized anything was wrong.

But it's not that simple. Chainsaw just rips his own heart out and tosses it back down to the battlefield. On the way down, it grows back a new everything and I guess the old body dies or whatever.

Once he gets back down, he snares the remaining enemies in chains and...

Hooray, he won! Well, no. He didn't. None of this battle really mattered.

Chainsaw goes right back to where he left Kobeni and makes her dance some more, and then Makima shows up and asks why he doesn't eat her? Wait, is that how it's supposed to work? Chainsaw Devil has to eat a devil to erase what it stands for? No, wait, it can't work that way, but we'll get into that later.

So it's a stalemate, or so it would seem, except Makima has another card to play. Kobeni's fear of Chainsaw Man has diminished somewhat, and this is important because...

... the rest of the world really loves Chainsaw Man. By now, news has spread that the Gun Devil is finally dead, and everyone is grateful to Chainsaw Man for finishing him off. He's a hero! But if devils get their power from humanity's fear, then that means...

Yeah, Chainsaw Man is losing strength. All Makima has to do now is... the exact same thing she did before... and she'll win, because Chainsaw is too weak to resist.

Well, not the exact same thing. This time she just uses Angel Devil's power to make super weapons and throws a big spear down at Kobeni. She knows Chainsaw will step in to protect her, and that takes him down. So it's over, right? Wrong.

Remember Power? She's dead, though. Well, not quite, and Pochita asks her to help.

A while back, Power had Denji drink some of her blood, and this blood is still inside Denji's body, so even though Power's body was destroyed by Makima, a small portion of her lives on inside Denji. That won't last for long, but Pochita proposes that she drink some of his blood, which will... gee this is confusing.

Oh, okay, this is like how devils would eat the Gun Devil flesh to get a power boost. Power is weak, but if she eats some Chainsaw Man flesh she'll get strong enough to help. And she readily agrees because...

... Denji is her buddy. See, this is a really beautiful moment, because the two of them were assigned to work together by Makima, as part of her master plan to build up and tear down Denji's happiness and self-esteem. But what she failed to consider was that their friendship would also change Power into a better person, someone who would upset Makima's plans when she least expected it.

So Makima advances toward the fallen Chainsaw Man, who coughs up blood that turns out to be... whatever this is. Well, it's Power jacked up on Chainsaw Man flesh, but wow.

Makima gets the HOT TAG and she's a HOUSE OF FIRE, but it doesn't take long for Makima to take back the initiative.

She summons zombies to attack and I guess Makima was in control of the Zombie Devil too? All I know is that I don't like what that one zombie is doing near Makima's crotch.

Soon, the tide turns against Power, and Makima commands her to surrender Chainsaw Man to her. Power... agrees immediately. Aw, you let Pochita down! Or did she?

[thetrashywritingwitch]

Hi!

I wanted to ask why you didn't like the ending, or what were your expectations?, I have seen a lot of people saying it was terrible and stuff but I don't understand why, I liked it and thought it was a good closer, so I wanna understand why it's "bad"

anon - i'm not a meta writer and feel like others can more succinctly put into words why the ending falls flat and the narrative feels exceptionally grim and that nothing of significance truly happened in the end

putting some links to some explanations and summaries below for folks who don't mind leaks/caught up with the manga:

but to me, i say at 1 am on my birthday when i would like to feel joy now:

the entire narrative of bnha from the beginning was about who was worth saving. their humanity. that people aren't born villains. that society is flawed. that the hero system is flawed. that the justice system is flawed.

and yet? NOTHING CHANGED. everything is EXACTLY the same now as it was in the beginning. Hawks is continuing on the work that brainwashed and conditioned him as a child. he was not truly punished for killing Twice, which was repeatedly pushed as the Wrong and Unheroic thing to do. He was not made to face Jin's ghost and the reality of his crazed obsession (and he *is* crazed, he truly loses his composure and is yelling about killing the villains at the end). i was hoping for a Toga - Hawks confrontation. that he would see and face Sad Man's Parade and the absolute pit of despair that developed in Toga when Jin was killed. that made her truly cement that they as villains are not "human" to the Heroes. That they aren't worth saving.

and they fucking weren't!!!! THEY ALL DIED!!!! THEY WERE ALL KILLED!!!! We aren't saying Touya is still alive because him potentially living on as a husk in a tank forced to talk to endeavor is not him "living" in any sense of the word

izuku did not come up with a way to save Tenko. he had no plan. he never listened to or attempted to understand his point of view, or what was wrong with hero society at all. the last link above states this better than i can, but his total chosen ignorance of the reasoning why the villains are the way they are is why i just do nooooot like this kid and never have. his arc from scared quirkless bullied kid to confident hero who people look up to was a decent one - but outside of those surface level accomplishments? he's as flat as the paper in his notebook. he still keeps secrets and is not transparent with Uraraka or his friends (from ch 429 he hasn't grown at all in that respect) and Uraraka still bottles up her feelings.

society doesn't KNOW ANYTHING about what happened during the war. most of the fights were not televised. uraraka and toga's ending, arguably the best and most well rounded of the villain fights because she actually fought hard to understand and empathize with toga, falls on deaf ears because no one knows about it. no one saw it. Everyone still dehumanizes Toga and the rest of the LoV from their ending comments about how evil and awful they were, that they just wanted to destroy and sew chaos.

and toga died. she, out of all the LoV, had the best chance to live a better life. her quirk could be used for blood transfusions as we saw in the end. there was no reason for her to die. to make uraraka miserable because she couldn't save her - something Uraraka's character arc just throws away because she goes from wanting to be a hero for the money to wanting to save people after nighteye died. but she didn't save Toga, and izuku didn't save Tenko. no one really saved anyone (save for Shouto who made a new move specifically to stop his brother and NOT KILL HIM, but damn touya i'm so sorry they did you so dirty)

her fear came true: they weren't human in the end, not to the audience, not to the heroes (outside of uraraka), and certainly not to society that hasn't changed at all. there's no new support system in place for helping troubled youth, there's no destigmatization of "villainous" quirks because no one fucking knows or cares to know more about the LoV's roots. Thank god spinner's alive to yell at izuku about how stupid he is for killing his friend who loved video games and reading manga because no one else is gonna do it!

the hero ranking system and hero vs villain dynamic still seems alive and well. to our knowledge, villains haven't become fewer. no social services to help homeless or abused kids (touya, toga, tenko, etc), no real lasting change when it comes to quirk vs quirkless folks. that was NEVER really addressed properly - that Aoyama's parents were so terrified of their son being bullied and having a bad life for being quirkless that they reached out to a villain who gave him a quirk that was incompatible with his body and caused him pain and discomfort. all to avoid societal stigmas that come with being quirkless. as far as we've seen, society hasn't grown or changed in that regard, either. quirkless folks are probably still bullied and have fewer opportunities than people with quirks.

the whole child soldiers/kids going to war thing, well that's a shounen staple so we can't expect that to go away. the fact that the kids were maimed and katsuki fucking *died* in the war that killed all the villains... yet new kids come into UA wanting to be the new gen child soldiers. fucking WILD dissonance there.

i said i'm not a meta writer but damn i had to get some of this out there lmaoooo

anyway, maybe this clears up some of our frustrations with the manga ending and how it's been handled. have a good one

[x-neurotoxin-x]

how did you wanted the todoroki family plot to end ?

(Incoming large rant about the Todofam plot but mostly Touya's ending and the complete and utter bullshit I think it is.)

Not like this, that's for sure.

There are some aspects that I enjoy. I still believe the todofam plot is the best in the series, and the development of these characters and topics are amazing, but I have a lot of complaints about how it was all handled-- especially in the way of Touya's character.

Touya got such an unfair ending. All the League did, but Touya's is cruel in a way that the others isn't. Sure, it's terrible Shigaraki and Toga died, but the way Touya ends up is this twisted, tragic thing that people seem to think is framed as "Good" but it's not.

Y'see, either Touya's going to die or he was gonna actually be saved. Being confined to a medical tube on life support and only able to talk with anybody for a couple minutes a day while he slowly dies is not saving him. Then the fact that it's framed as a good thing by the fandom because "At least he's not dead" and he's apologetic towards Shouto and now in even more emotional distress is also really... eh. I'll get to that in a bit.

What I don't get is if they were gonna kill off Touya; they should've killed him off during the war like the other two out of the trio. It was quick, (mostly) painless, and they both died at least receiving some empathy and understanding by their hero counterparts. Touya dying then would have been more satisfying than this. Having him die at the end of the fight would've been awful too, but it wouldn't have been much different than him slowly dying now-- by the end of the battle, He got his family's attention (such a small wish,) he got an apology from Enji and from Rei, and learned to see Shouto as a hurt child like he is (that one panel towards the end where Shouto finally stops Dabi from exploding and Touya sees him charging in but imagines him looking as he did as a child.) Touya also got the chance to express himself and express his anger then, too. If they want to kill him off, just doing it then would have made more sense and seemed less cruel and horrible than having his family and medical staff literally force him to stay alive, in some medical contraption, with most of his skin/body gone and completely destroyed, covered in metal and wires and God knows what else and only being able to have human interaction for a few minutes a day (Those few minutes now heavily implied to be being spent with his abuser.)

What has this given us that's different from the war arc? Endeavor apologizing-- We already got that. The family trying to reach out to him-- Already got that. Touya seeing Shouto in a different light-- Already got that too. There's been nothing new brought to the table besides "i'll visit every day and talk to you while you slowly die." and that's... that's not a good thing. that's not saving him. if anything this is all really, really fucking cruel, especially if we assume he dies, because all this was already accomplished and if anything now it's being shoehorned in to further drive the point home (like Enji's stuff being basically the same recycled thing he has been saying), or the situation with Shouto where it's great Touya sees Shouto for more than Enji's masterpiece (he already did by the end of the battle) and feels bad about hurting him (Touya's felt bad about hurting his Mom and siblings since he was a kid), but why make him even more remorseful and suffer even further? touya's the only one of the villains who's even shown remorse, especially out of the main trio, and his entire backstory he spends internalizing his abuse and trauma up until he snaps. Why are we making him feel even worse and be left alone to cry in regret when him being remorseful for Shouto has already been accomplished? Assuming he's actually dying, why make the last few days/weeks/months of his life be this miserable existence when he could've just died back at the war with the other villains?

Assuming he's not going to die, and somehow recovers enough to actually get a bit of time where he's not bound to that medical tube thing, why do it like this either? He's already destroyed himself horribly, and yes he did before and survived but people forget the reason he likely survived the fire when he was a kid was because AFO and Ujiko experimented on him, put him in a medically included coma for three years and did God knows what to him, and even then his body was never the same. He's in horrible condition, so if they were gonna actually save him and let him recover, why not save him before he literally burned himself to bones and tendons? Even by the end of the Shouto vs Dabi fight he was in rough shape and had burned large parts of his skin on his face and body off, but he could've still recovered. By the time he's halfway through fighting Endeavor he's really done a lot of damage to himself because he's so upset, but that could have been prevented if they (narratively) wanted him to live and recover. He could have been saved somewhere between there and not been left in such horrible condition and basically being told he's gonna die anyway, just slower now, and more painful, and in a super dehumanizing way.

it all feels like the narrative is cruelly punishing him worse for some reason, in these awful ironic ways: You want to die? Well, we're gonna force you to live as long as possible. Don't worry, you'll die sometime but you're gonna suffer first. You don't get the easy way out. You want your family's attention? Alright, but it's only gonna be for a few minutes a day because your heart isn't gonna be able to handle it. You want to emotionally heal and connect with your family? Well, that's too bad because you're dying so you won't have the time to ever actually heal, but you can feel bad about it, and be gawked at like a "tourist attraction."

It feels unbelieveably cruel if you stop looking at it with super high (ngl unrealistic) expectations. People claiming this is fine because he's still alive and "Who cares if the doctors say he's gonna die, they're probably wrong." If we take this all literally, Touya is barely alive and unable to actually live, and he's slowly dying and likely doesn't have long. Maybe it's enough time to reconnect with the family some, but he'll never actually know them or be a part of their family unless he somehow makes a full recovery, which they're saying isn't possible. He doesn't have enough time to emotionally heal from all the trauma he's been through, he has years and years of trauma from so many different situations, he doesn't have the time to work through it especially when the conditions they're keeping him in are kinda inhumane. Assuming he's going to die, he's probably not going to physically recover either- so the rest of his short life is going to be either feeling nothing because his body is so badly damaged, or he's in extreme agony because his body underwent extreme trauma and is basically in a constant state of shock. If he's going to die anyway, keeping him alive in this state is unlikely going to actually do anything for him.

And again, I'd love to be hopeful and assume he's gonna somehow live and prove them wrong again-- but it's implied the only reason he lived as long as he did before was spite, hatred, and his inability to let go. All of that spite and hatred is burning out of him now. Even if he does survive somehow, sure it gives him more time to actually recover and heal, assuming they won't just throw him in Tartarus (they probably will), then it just makes the whole condition he's in now seem unnecessarily cruel and unneeded. I really don't think he's actually going to survive and make a full recovery though. I think if that was the case that would have been stated instead of "He's slowly heading towards death." it'll likely be left open ended and we won't know when or if Touya dies, and that's almost worse by the way.

So, to sum up: If he was gonna die anyway, I'd rather he'd die in the war like Shigaraki and Toga did. Killing him off in this slow, painful, miserable way is a million times crueller. If he's going to live/planned to live, I'd rather he's not framed as the route of all the family problems and have all his trauma minimized. I'd prefer there was some kind of set up if he is going to live to imply he'd actually recover and have his victimhood acknowledged, his trauma worked through, and maybe be able to have some connection with his family even if it's from behind bars. ANY implication of this would've been nice, and no, imo "Whats your favorite food?" "Soba" "Oh me too" is NOT comfirmation of this. Tell us he's not slowly dying, tell us how crazy it is that he survived all that and that he seems to be somehow pulling through, tell us that there's a discharge plan like Tartarus or some kind of psych hospital for villains. If they're planning for him to live, give us some sort of actual set up because atm his ending is NOT hopeful, it's framed like this sick, unfair punishment by giving him everything he asked for in the wrong ways THEN killing him off.

[hypexion]

There is a new Miraculous special London: At the Edge of Time. It mostly takes place in Paris and an extra-temporal location, neither of which are London. This is to be expected in a show by the French.

Anyhow let's consider how the characters are Going Through It this time around.

Marinette: It turns out that if your boyfriend's father kills himself in front of you that leads to sub-optimal decision making. So many people are in on The Big Lie that it seems like it will inevitably fall apart. This includes Neo Hawk Moth, although to be fair to Marinette she didn't know that when she commited to the plan. Also everyone she tells the plan to is like "hmm sounds dubious but I benefit sooooo I guess it's okay". Plus Marinette's opsec is shot to pieces with a whole bunch of people knowing her secret identity now.

Of course, doing The Big Lie is in fact very bad, especially if The Consequences apply at any point. If not it just becomes another weird thing the writers added to undermine any kind of positive ending. This is like the third one!

But really in this situation I'd probably be like "well the Wish got me into this problem so it's time to Wish my way out" so I guess I can't fault Marinette too much. I would be a bad superhero.

(also it's still incredibly unclear as to whether Marinette knows the Sentitruth)

Adrien: Kind of bad that Adrien is mostly not in the immediate aftermath of his father's defeat. I'm glad that the theories that Adrien would get akumatized over learning the true truth didn't pan out, because that would be a) a repeat of things that happened already b) super awful as a way to justify The Big Lie.

Nathalie: Well someone had to dodge the consequences of their actions and that winner is Nathalie. Once again I feel the need to point out that if she actually wanted to stop Gabriel, she had everything she needed for a while.

Gabriel: I'm glad this guy is dead. Wow he healed Nathalie, simply so she and Marinette could clean up his mess. RIP bozo, don't come back.

Lila/Cerise: The new main villain decides to put on an incredibly strong opening performance. In like ten minutes she accomplishes something that took Gabriel five seasons. Timestalker and Spectral Looter are both great designs, and make for a lovely pair of S-Tier akumas. Overall it's a very clever plan, and writing-wise it's a fun way to do a more subtle time-travel based threat, that also makes sense as something Gabriel wouldn't do.

I guess the downside here is that now Cerise's threat level has to suddenly drop, because if she stays at this level of menace she's basically unstoppable. Also for my sanity's sake I'm assuming Timestalker is limited to either a specific window of time, or is only capable of time-stalking Bug Noire.

Conclusion: I feel like some of this stuff should have been in Re-creation. Especially the bit about the universe not being destroyed by Gabriel's wish. Also the quiet fights like a meter away from people were a little ridiculous. But overall fairly standard Miraculous action I suppose.

[burnwater13]

IG-11 standing in the sewers of Nevarro City, speaking with Din Djarin. Image from The Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 8, Redemption. Calendar by DateWorks.

Grogu agreed with IG-11. The Mandalorian was sad. He’d made a friend. A good friend. That friend had saved Grogu. That friend had saved him. Now that friend was going to save them all and Din Djarin knew it would be the end of his friend. Grogu knew that as well. Grogu also knew that the sadness wasn’t just about losing a friend right now, but was also about all the friends the Mandalorian had lost over his lifetime. 

Grogu knew how IG-11 had become his friend after that strange first meeting. When Kuiil was explaining how he reprogrammed the assassin droid,  IG-11 had served Grogu all the food he cared to eat and didn’t make any comment about how much that was and how fast he ate it. You know someone’s your friend when they don’t criticize you for doing stuff everyone has to do. 

Grogu was a little less certain about when IG-11 became the Mandalorian’s friend. After all, that strange first meeting? That’s when the Mandalorian had deactivated the droid with his blaster pistol. Grogu appreciated the quick thinking. IG-11 was going to make him very cold because the bounty fob it had said ‘bring the little green guy in colder than an ice planet filled with spiders’, which was strangely specific, but that’s what IG-11 explained to him when they had a moment to themselves. 

How do you become friends with something or someone you’ve destroyed? It didn’t really make a lot of sense to Grogu. He didn’t really believe in grudges and revenge and stuff like that, but he did think that when someone shows you who they are you should believe them. IG-11 was originally programmed to be an assassin and ended up being a bounty hunter. How do you change something that basic to your personality or to be more specific, your programming?

Grogu sighed. You needed Kuiil. An Ugnaught who had served the Empire in order to free his own people and then removed himself from their reach so he would never have to serve them again. Kuiil loved his valley, the critters he took care of, and it turned out, he also loved reclaiming things that were damaged and turning them into something useful. That took a lot patience and a very different perspective. 

First and foremost Kuiil had been kind. He really did care about the people he met. He helped them. He thought about them. His actions supported his friends in ways they never imagined until there he was offering the help they needed just in time. Thinking about the Ugnaught that way made Grogu wonder if Kuiil should have been a Jedi. He had all the qualities a Jedi should have and one of the faults that made many fall away from the order. 

Somehow the Jedi who searched for Force sensitive people had missed the Ugnaught and it was to their detriment. Kuiil had proven himself time again, with the reprogramming of IG-11 being one of his most notable accomplishments, although Grogu was happy to attest to the fact that the bone broth he made was also an accomplishment few people mastered. 

That made him wonder (not about the bone broth, but he was hungry now) if that’s who the Mandalorian had really befriended, when he befriended IG-11. The droid was an extension of Kuiil. Imprinted and patterned on the kind, knowledgeable, practical Ugnaught. A reminder that if people were kind, patient, diligent, and skilled, they could make a difference that couldn’t be forgotten, hidden, or ignored. 

It seemed likely. 

The Mandalorian was pretty good at making friends, but he had hated droids for a very long time. The pit droids at Peli’s garage could tell you all about it if you had a spare afternoon to spend with them. They had just been grateful that the Mandalorian hadn’t used one of those disruptor cartridges on them, when he shot at them that first time they visited Peli. He’d mostly stopped threatening them, but he still didn’t like them. He never suggested that he pick up a mech or gonk or even a tiny MOUS to use on the Razor Crest. They would have made his life so much easier, but no. That wasn’t his way.

That all changed when IG-11 went from being a bounty hunter to being a nurse. Grogu supposed the Mandalorian couldn’t ignore how it had taken care of him when the Imps had stopped Kuiil from reaching the ship. Of course the droid had also taken care of the Imps, in a sort of permanent, never going to be warm again kind of way. 

It also seemed to possess all of Kuiil’s gentle logic. Of course the droid wasn’t living, at least not the way Mandalorian Creed thought of ‘living’. It was energized, but not alive. That made a difference and the Mandalorian survived because the droid presented that information in such a factual manner that even a Mandalorian couldn’t argue with it. 

Grogu had been very glad of that. He’d grown attached to the human in the armor and hadn’t really wanted to say goodbye to him. IG-11 had given Grogu a gift that he’d never expected and Grogu appreciated that more than he could express. 

Now, he and the Mandalorian were sad and they just had to deal with it. IG-11 wasn’t going to die. It couldn’t. It wasn’t alive. But permanently deactivated was close enough to death to make the occasion sad and solemn. Grogu just hoped that one day they would find someone who needed a friend and recall that if IG-11 could be a friend, then who ever it was could also be a friend, even if they didn’t know how to make the galaxy's best bone broth. 

IG-11 speaking to Din Djarin in the barge as they float down the lava river under Nevarro City. Image from The Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 8, Redemption.

[melanie-ohara]

19, 20, 5, 8, 18, 23 and 27 for the asks? You absolute cutie you.

Hoo baby that's a lot of questions, so this is going to be a long one with a fair few spoilers:

5 - Durge

Sithla is the Dark Urge, and she really doesn't want it. She resists as often as she can, but sometimes the thought of bleeding something is just too enticing

8 - Distrust

Mellephora is deeply suspicious of Gale, convinced that his ambition is going to land them in trouble. They are also very wary of Lae'zel because they don't like how sexually aggressive she is

As a paladin, Calarisa can't trust Astarion for a long time until she understands that he's more Cazador's victim than a danger on his own. Other than that, she takes everyone at their word. She is not very perceptive

Sithla thinks any of them might kill her at any time, and they'd all be justified in doing it. She relies on all of them too much to be distrustful

Emily doesn't trust Shadowheart, because she figured out early on that she's a Sharran, or Astarion once he's outed as a vampire

13 - Killing

If you ask them, Mellephora will tell you every death is a tragedy. They are lying. The truth is, they'll do anything to advance their fame and they don't care much about the people they kill so long as they were justifiably in the wrong

Calarisa sees killing largely as a necessity until they come up against someone they think is properly evil - the hag, slavers, bhaalists - in which case, killing them is a grim pleasure. Morally, she sees it as saving all their future victims rather than avenging those they've already hurt

Sithla loves and hates it in equal measure. She loves the feel of a blade splitting flesh and the spatter and ooze of fresh blood, and she hates that it's the only thing that makes her feel alive. Most of the time, she feels like a barely leashed feral animal the rest of them keep around to unleash on their enemies

Emily isn't against the others killing people, though she usually averts her eyes from the nastiest victories, but she can't do it herself. While she is morally against killing (unless its someone who really, really deserves it) mostly she just doesn't have it in her to hurt people

18 - If They Weren't Infected

Mellephora would still be in Baldur's Gate, crafting exquisite violins, performing, and rejecting every opportunity at adventure for not being grand enough for them

Calarisa would still be on the road after tieflings were banned from Elturel. She might have ended up with Zevlor and his band of refugees, and probably got into a lot of trouble with Kagha at the grove

Sithla would be doing hot bhaalspawn shit, like arguing with her stupid sister about how their daddy liked the murders done

Emily would be in Rivington, specifically at the temple of Ilmater, trying to help as best she can once the murders start. Since Bhaal loves to cull the kind an innocent, she may well have ended up a victim

20 - The Elder Brain

All of them decide to destroy it, but Sithla has an almost overwhelming desire to take control

27 - Before

Mellephora was born to a long line of wood-elf druids and left when they were young to pursue a career as a bard and artisan in Baldur's Gate. They worked their way up from apprentice to master craftsman. Eventually, they started to think more people ought to know the name Mellephora Lallorē, and started idly looking for opportunities to grow their reputation as an adventurer

Calarisa spent her whole life in Elturel, and worked with her parents as accomplished tailors. When the city was taken to the Hells, her parents and younger brother were killed in a fire that took everything from Calarisa. Inspired by the paladin who helped save the city and driven by furious grief, she swore a paladin oath of vengeance

Sithla was doing hot bhaalspawn stuff, like drinking blood out of a skull while her butler applauded her sense of humour

Emily was living on the outskirts of Rivington as a cleric of Ilmater, with her ailing mother. Though she barely had two coin to rub together, Emily was happy serving the broken god despite her mother's suggestion she become a librarian at Sorcerous Sundries

23 - After

Mellephora retires with Shadowheart and her parents, now a household name across the sword coast. They learn the valuable lesson that becoming a famous adventurer shouldn't be something you seek out

Calarisa goes to Avernus with Wyll, Sithla, and the love of her life Karlach. She swears an oath to defeat Zariel and is determined not to go back on her word

Sithla, having become illithid to defeat the netherbrain and take responsibility for her actions in starting the plot in motion, goes to the Hells so she can have a guilt-free source of cambion brains

I actually don't know what Emily's fate is yet, because I haven't got far enough into her story to know, oops

19 - Their End

Mellephora is doomed to outlive Shadowheart. After her peaceful death, surrounded by plants and animals and her doting father, Mellephora returns to the woods where they were born to rejoin the druid circle there. After a few more daring adventures, they eventually pass away peacefully

Calarisa and Karlach live together for many years, returning to Faerûn once the engine is finally repaired. They retire to Baldur's Gate for a long time, until the next crisis forces them to take up arms again. They die together in a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds, in a defiance that saves the city once again

Free illithids retain their original host's personality through accessing their memories. Eventually, the memories run out. Sithla makes a deal with Wyll that, once she is no longer herself, he'll kill what she has become. It doesn't happen for the rest of Wyll's natural life, and after his death she continues to hunt his prey as the new Blade of Avernus forever

[discofama]

Just gonna give Gravity Falls' characters from the Bill Cipher wheel a soul color like in Undertale. If you don't know what the colors mean, here it is:

Red: Determination ❤️

Orange: Bravery 🧡

Yellow: Justice 💛

Green: Kindness 💚

Light blue: Patience 💙

Deep blue: Integrity 💙💜

Purple: Perseverance 💜

Okay let's get started.

• Dipper: Purple for perseverance 💜

Perseverance, here, is to keep going besides whatever obstacles could get in your way. Even if your goals change, your pace doesn't. Dipper always has some kind of objective in mind, clear stuff like finding the author or more abstract things like impressing his crush or getting manlier. The truth is that, even if Dipper might doubt himself sometimes, he's always working for what he (thinks he) wants. Another considerable color in his soul could be orange, for bravery.

• Mabel: Green for kindness 💚

The good old kindness, no need to explain. Mabel cares so much about everyone around her, wants them to smile and does her best for them to be happy, even if sometimes does it wrong (she's still a child after all), her intentions are nothing but the best and the kindest and she always ends up rectifying the moment she realizes she made anyone sad. A secondary color to mention might be orange as well.

• Stan: Light blue for patience 💙

The needed patience, the ability to wait. Stanley has waited a lot through his life, that's no secret for anyone. Even if it took him ages, he waited and step by step worked as best as he could taking the needed time and never gave up. Even if it might not seem like it, he has an easy character towards those he cares about (that was lost when Ford came back and Stan got his last straw, but let's ignore that) and... he's just actually very patient with them, specially the kids but Soos and Wendy too since he rarely gets really annoyed by any of them, something I didn't realize until I tried to align him with any of the soul colors and found out that this... is the one trait that fits him; I literally couldn't fit him under any other color.

• Ford: Red for determination ❤️

Determination (sigh). Undertale players can feel this word's weight. You have an objective in mind for the long run and you won't let it go until you reach it. That's literally Ford Pines, the guy who worked half of his life to accomplish a successful scientific career and fame, and the other half to destroy a specific yellow triangle. Ford's eyes will focus on a goal and he won't stop until he makes it. A secondary color might be orange, cause he is almost too brave. Also maybe yellow, for his strong-but-not-always-accurate sense of justice, but I wouldn't consider that one as much.

• Soos: Deep blue for integrity 💜💙

He has a moral conscience, and stays loyal to the truth and to himself. Soos might seem a green type of person, but he won't hesitate when telling you a hurtful truth, but still a truth that needs to be said. He won't be anything but himself even if he's not perfect, without ever needing to perjudicate anyone. He is sincere, trustworthy, and a great person, who stayed loyal to Stan but then to the kids the moment they showed him he was hiding something to all of them. Definitely a soul of integrity. Another color to be considered might be light blue, for patience, or orange again. These guys are really brave, let me tell ya.

• Wendy: Orange for bravery 🧡

Could I make it more obvious? Wendy doesn't really try to get in dangerous places, but she never runs away from them. It is revealed in the Society of the Blind Eye episode that she is always stressed inside, which is a poorexcuseforcharacterdevelopment but anyway, she lives with a deep fear but is able and willing to get over it and face situations without letting it control her, and that is actually what bravery is rather than jumping to danger like an idiot. Another color to be considered might be green, since she's actually pretty kind as shown in the series.

• Gideon: Purple for perseverance 💜

An interesting aspect of the show is all the parallelisms between Gideon and Dipper, like both having a crush on an older girl or both getting a journal and more stuff I don't remember but I read that analysis somewhere, and you get me. It was also interesting for both to have the same soul color along with the possibility of orange. Gideon... keeps it going. He's always planning something to get away with his whims, doesn't matter if it's stealing the Mistery Shack or a deck chair. Gideon's vision and wantings might change, but like Dipper, his pace never does.

• Fiddleford: Green for kindness 💚

At first, i put Fiddleford here just because he couldn't fit any other color, but I realized green is actually perfect for him. I'm talking mostly about when he was sane since I don't think his attitude during most of the series should be considered to judge his real personality. He seemed a nice person and dedicated to others with things like writing a whole tesis for Ford, giving him a laptop or a pumpkin that "looked like him", and the way Ford described him talking about family and stuff, also he seems to love children by the end of Gravity Falls when he recovered his memories, his vibe just seems very kind by nature. I haven't read the journal for a while so I don't remember a lot, but definitely, green is his color. Mostly because he literally just can't fit under any other and I'm not joking this time.

• Pacifica: Yellow for justice 💛 (Why is there not a yellow text option?)

Am I judging her whole character because of one scene? Yes. Do I think I'm right? ... not really. The first time she stopped her parents' influence, she did it with an act of justice. She let the town people into the party, she did what was fair. Yes, it was because there was a ghost threatening to kill everyone if not, but I think there's a meaning behind her first... true action being something fair. Well, she cheated in the singing contest, but honestly, I'm having trouble here giving Pacifica a color. Her parents' bad influence made her a completely different person than what she really is inside, so her soul color might be actually anything, but I personally believe yellow is the one.

• Robbie:

....

....

Who is Robbie?

No, really. I have no idea what to give him. Maybe perseverance? Because of his search for ✨love✨? Idk man. Not kindness, nor patience, nor bravery (maybe? Nahh... Maybe? Naahhh), nor justice (i mean what justice yk), nor integrity, and I laugh at the idea of giving him a determination soul. Could you imagine? (Probably only Undetale fans will get me here but come on).

Though that would actually be hilarious.

Anyway I hope you liked this... something. I love Undertale and a crossover with Gravity Falls would be SO fun and I couldn't get this out of my head, so... yeah. Tell me if you think I'm wrong about any of these and why, I'd like it tho probably no one will read this but I will be happy anyway.

Also I forgot but Bill's is Determination, if he even has a soul, much less a human soul. His magic could be red tho, like the monsters with colored magic instead of colored souls.

[ghooostbaby]

i'm been too sleepy to read books these days so i must turn the razor beam of my weighty and emotionally intense analysis to the unsuspecting and unprepared xianxia drama love between fairy and devil

*spoilers*

i was in SO MUCH pain after xiao lanhua transformed into the goddess but then... it just felt so incongruous too. once she has all this power, just the same as dongfang qingcang, but they seperate themselves. and are this weird self-sacrificial power couple "i'm going to drain all my power and self-annihilate so you won't be harmed by the evil god" "no I'M going to drain all my power and self-annihilate so YOU won't be harmed by the evil god" ...

their satisfacton in life came from growing/being with the other so honestly you know that whichever one is "saved" would never be happy without the other so what's the point in deciding to secrerly kill yourself to let the other one live freely when they would only be miserable?? it also keeps creating doubts in they validity of their love ... because, frankly, choosing to lie to someone to kill yourself while preserving the life of the person you love/in love with you is just cruel and disrespectful!!

especially whats the point in keeping it a secret from them to make sure you accomplish your self-sacrifice when there's a chance if you both have this huge power now that you could actually work together?!

"i love this person soooo much i'm going to kill myself so they can live eternally alone"

there's also a lot about the last few episodes that is such pivotal plot stuff but is not really explained at all but the show just *waves hands* cGi MaGiC ~~

i dont really understand how tai sui took over dongfang qingcang's body ... unless dfqc was just overconfident that he could defeat him?

it doesnt exactly make sense, dongfang qingcang floating in the sky and just a lot of CGI flames and ok?? now dfcq is drifting away into mist but why?? he had all these new powers that came out of this confrontation, and now and orchid/goddess used her purifying power and the black lines on his body went away? lots of flashy colour swirls that show him being dissolved idk but it just feels so anticlimactic and ... not believable.

watching this i'm just seeing writers being like 'oh here's a chance for some SICK yet incomprehensible CGI fireballs!!' or 'here's a cliffhanger to make them watch more' not something that extends naturally from the story being told.

i feel like it would have been much more impressive to have dfcq stay after he and orchid defeated tai sui, the two of then burning away the black vapours and kissing passionately...

and there just didnt seem a clear justification why he was still destroyed despite getting his new nonhellfire-fire power and orchid using her goddess powers. it seemed like just forcing more pain to make it more intense. if they burned away tai sui together and just made out in dramatic cgi flame smoke light after they won against the ancient evil god i guarantee i won't just turn off the show for the last 10 minutes about how everything ends up!!

you dont have to shoehorn in pain to keep me watching. and it would have made the plot mirror the theme of love transforming people if they were trying to sacrifice themselves alone to save the other but instead they came together and defeated the evil god united

instead it was like grand story about the transformation of love until the last episode like, oh shit, should we shove some random cliches in here?? yeah! we totally should!!!

have you even HEARD of tolkein's theory of the defining moment of fantasy the ending where great sorrow is possible but it is transformed in a moment of joy, and that joy isn't demeaned for being "unrealistic", happy endings can feel real and true, more real than watching your lover disappear in a ball of cool CGI fire sometimes

and then the actual "happy ending" was so... disappointing. after dongfang qingcang disappears and turns into a lil moon (sweet (':) but then orchid says dfqc can't return and 500 years later the little moon hasn't changed. it goes through the montage of the others 500 years later and then little moon just pops up into a fully formed dongfang qingcang with equally little explanation

like oh ok that's fine, kiss now i guess. i give up

orchid/goddess's expression looks so sorrowful. she looks surprised but mostly just devastated ... i was waiting him to dissipate into mist at any point the way she was looking at him, it didn't seem happy at all. just.. grief.

which is the main reason i think i'm disappointed. it never feel like we got xiao lanhua back, who was the entire other half of the couple that we were cheering for. she seems so grim and hopeless, the way the goddess was pretending not to love dongfang qingcang to save the people and sacrifice herself and drains herself of all her joy, energy, and love. i would have liked to see her at the end showing some of the playfulness and sweetness of xiao lanhua. who is the person dongfang qingcang fell for in the first place. i think xiao lanhua wouldn't have said "dongfang qingcang can never return", even if it was impossible she would have been determined and hopeful and waiting for that day that it would happen anyway. even if it took tens of thousands of years

and... it just would have been a better story if they kissed away all the evil and triumped with the power of LOVE. i'm sorry, it's the truth!

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary187

3/20-21/2024

wednesday - thursday

went out tonight.

it was good, our friends were late and couldn't eat w/ us at the place we wanted to go, the plans were made way in advance and it bites and whatever but you know, it's okay, we still love them, we all love eachother, it kind of bothered me a lot cuz my gf accomplished a lot, but also, idk, it's life, they are flaky and it's okay because we like them so much, they aren't trying to be, their lives really do get in the way and everything is hard for everyone, sincerely. i feel bad for being irritated. but it was how i felt, i wasn't mean i think, i was just like, annoying for 20 minutes.

and the friend we did go to dinner with, that was very nice of course, a lovely person to be around, and he is also in the middle of difficult things. everyone's life right now seems unfun, this year has been starting hard.

but it isn't really starting anymore. it's just early, and still things hurt lots.

i think i need to fix a song quickly so i'll do that.

obsessed with this song a bit,

if i can't be myself i'll share a body with youuuu.

i sometimes feel that for my gf. like, i believe that she doesn't care i'm all messed up and stuff, and really loves me, and will let me be what i have to be, whatever that is, that she likes that even. but i sometimes worry, and if not, i could give up, maybe. but i don't think i have to. i just love her, and maybe to a point, i really need her around now, our lives are just too intertwined. but i know that she doesn't feel like grossed out, and she loves me, i'm really, really, really, just dumb. she is more supportive than anyone could ask for, she loves my vague shape and that i am an androgyne. i am just out to upset myself sometimes.

it is so odd, some of us, myself i guess, are turned against ourselves forever, i am never going to not want to harm myself, it is crucial, it is the cousin of my desire for critique, maybe even some piece of the biopolitical apparatuses lodged inside, a discipline overgrown and malignant. but it feels like an underside to a force or drive inside me that is frequently not bad, it is not acting out with nothing in mind, it is maybe the runoff, the waste product, of curiosity, to want to know and to lay on the barbs of the rose, to think, you only know when it hurts, it is hard to make joy painful, but maybe i should. i want joy to burn me horribly, so hurting myself won't be in the realm of doubt, but for affirmation to burn so bright i know something, am complete, and at once unraveling. this is i suppose, why eroticism figures so much into everything i do.

is that strange?

i had good discussion of foucault with our friend we had dinner with, he makes it so easy, it's interesting, with him, with my girlfriend, i am not afraid to talk about these things, but with so many people, it feels like to open my mouth is to invite someone speaking down to me. it's never mean, they speak down because they want me to understand. but it hurts all the same. but they don't hurt me, the conversations go places.

there are also other people i can talk to, i suppose, but it is not their interest in particular, this kind of philosophy stuff, or it's distant to them, not central. but it figures into my life a lot more, it informs a lot of what i do creatively, these critiques, the power to read methods, to try them, to mix them, to modulate whatever, it helps develop the things i create, i dunno.

part of writing is at its root, not about writing, it is about observing. observing so much, holding it all, it must be expelled, a waste product, an obsession.

the above, about curiosity, there too is the will to destroy or dismantle, the will to dismantle corresponds to a sense of isolation, too. i want to destroy the assumptions of the world, i want to destroy the foundations so something else can come, this means also, i want to be different myself, i want to originate, or suggest at minimum, that other point. this means that i set myself aside or i try, or i imagine that there is a point where i could be. i self isolate, i alienate myself in part by being alienated or whatever, why does that emerge in anyone, all i think, now, thinking that, tearfully, are images of laura palmer.

i am listening to a podcast on bataille, with a translator of bataille. i am very fond of the translator, stuart kendall, a very well spoken man. he is now speaking on the notion he has, bataille, of uniqueness in people, and that this is equated with a sort of monstrosity, not that it monstrous to be unique, but that we all are, and these unique features or facts, are monstrous or would be seen as such and thus managed in some way. this feels odd, not the construction, which feels true, but i guess stuart's talking about it, it is almost this kind of thing you'd hear as maybe something nice, a kind of sweetness, we are all unique, and to suppress that is terrible. it is true. but there is i guess something in me, i have been convinced all my life, nothing i feel or think is unique, it is not special to me, across the earth, another is feeling what i am feeling and thinking many of the same things. there are so many of us, i can disappear, it is fact. this is maybe not true entirely, but i wonder about what my un-specialness, that i have held since childhood, in my head, as something i would speak to myself to not feel sorry for myself, implicates, is this then the management of the monstrous, my horrible feelings? i do not feel it is ethical in any way to deny that others may feel these things, or that in time, the nexus i am, is special, others have access to all of this, i am not alone, i should not be. it is a strange nexus, i want a joining maybe, not of people necessarily, but that we are held as monstrous, and in this, a solidarity, perhaps in the hell of being managed? but even then, there is at root something i am convinced of, of unspecialness, but maybe it is wrong to use that word, perhaps that is not the conviction. maybe what i am convicted of is that there is a grave amount of pain, constantly, there is horror, we are expelling it, it is expelled onto us, but i do not know. does this run counter to my desire to be, is another question. i am lonely, not in life, but there is loneliness inside of me, i feel apart, it is sometimes horrible because i am nothing romantic, like an astronaut, i am waste, or something else, i am caught up not inside an object, but related to one, here my flesh is, me, but my flesh held in the minds of others, i cannot exceed myself, to get across something. there is that, the idea that i can get something across, at war with the idea that there is nothing in me no one does not know already. but perhaps knowing is the wrong sense of it, there is uniqueness, and this gets to the terrain of horror, in the sense of it, what it does to one, the traversal of malady and its inscribings upon us. it is hard to say, not what i am saying, but accurately.

this made me write in my story. i am happy. and the song is exporting. it is a lie to say i'm happy but i'm something. you know the feeling but i want it. is that special to me. it's like puking but not really. i am so sad. i am so happy. i want things inside of me, there's something there though and i don't want to push it out of the way. i am clusters of wants, so many they intermodulate.

i wonder if this is all stupid, as thinking. i am not sure. it is maybe navel gazing. i want to produce something that is true or describes the difficulty. the feeling i guess. it is incoherent, or is it, i dunno. it is not inconsistent, it is not special substance, it is not phantasm, it is memory and accrual, beneath my nails it is real, i swear, it is of materiality. the difficulty of being among others and counted, the pain of being counted in the first place, the necessity of the counting, and then on the other side, that i do not know i belong. belonging is difficult, i do not want to, but i have also never been sure of it. but i do not matter. what is this sense, it only makes me recall nietzsche and the vicious circle by klossowski. difficult. i need to finish that book. it did good things to me.

it is not that i want to defend the idea i am like everyone, or maybe worse, that everyone is like me, which is maybe the thing that really happens in the sense that others would feel what i feel, at certain points, it was always, as a child, about feeling sorry for myself. it is more that i want to know why i find difference so hard to i guess, idk, take, fully, or not take, i believe it is the case, we are different, it is true, painfully true as much as it is beautifully true, we are heterogeneous creatures. however even with this, i guess, what i am i guess approaching is that we have all be disciplined, by similar structures, borne into repetition, and so the flows/drives are restricted not by repression, but by modulation, teaching, we are made inarticulate of ourselves in order to be articulate of the structure that develops and maintains. this produces a difficulty, i suppose this is what i feel when the image of laura palmer comes to mind, finally articulating herself, in screeches, it is there i locate things of myself, the screeching as one has no choice but to wish to burn away all that surrounds and develops them, and still, ineffectual, the sense of being nothing.

i don't know though. it is difficult. it is hard, everything is difficult.

everything means too much and i am pacing.

i like the song now though. i am happy, and i mean it, and i mean it, and i mean it.

so,

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[duhragonball]

Do you think DBZ fights would be better if Goku and his pals really showed how strong they were? Like, all of them can destroy one planet, at least. It'd be fun to see guys like Yamcha and Chiaotzu crumbling mountains, or shaking continents and all that other crazy stuff.

Honestly? Probably not.

I get what you're saying, and it's pretty cool when the scenery gets wrecked during a big fight. But if it happened all the time, every time, it would get boring. And since nearly every major character is more than strong enough to destroy the whole planet, then any two of them fighting could potentially wreck the whole world if they were sloppy enough. What do they do then?

I look at it like this: In a fight between two "planet-busters", the most impressive thing either one of them can damage is their opponent. Take Vegeta vs. 18 for example. She dared him to fight seriously, and he boasted that if he truly fought with his full power, it might destroy the whole Earth. That's how powerful Vegeta was as Super Saiyan. Frieza tried to blow up Namek on purpose and it didn't quite go off like he wanted. But Vegeta was so powerful that he could destroy the Earth without really meaning to. And then this happened:

Why? Well, put simply, 18 could apply an even greater power than Vegeta without destroying the Earth in the process. Unlike him, she could direct that power exactly where she wanted it to go, which was his left arm.

I mean, it's cool and all that Piccolo destroyed the Tenkaichi Budokai arena during his fight with Goku, but what did that accomplish? He destroyed a lot of stuff, but he didn't hurt Goku at all, so it was just a waste of energy.

I often think about the time Cell achieved his perfect form, and how it caused this tremendous upheaval on the whole Earth. When Cell represented the top of the food chain, it made sense, but Majin Buu could wipe out Cell in two seconds and they both know it. Yet we didn't see the same kind of world-shaking power whenever Majin Buu did anything. You'd think every time Buu scratched his head it would cause earthquakes or something, but no. Why is that?

My pet theory is that the big dramatic powerups with thunder and quakes and tidal waves are always because the person powering up doesn't have complete control over their maximum power. So when Vegeta went to max power to fight Goku in the Saiyans Saga, it caused a lot of rumbling, but Goku fighting 19 did not, even though Goku was operating on a far greater level. The power level probably has some role in it, but it's more about the power the user isn't controlling, and where that extra power is going.

And there are times when a character is so overwhelming that he can cause a lot of destruction and still dominate his opponents. Movie villains tend to fall into this category. But even so, it betrays a lack of skill, at least when they're fighting at that level. And usually the guy that beats them is able to reach that same level without the same kind of fanfare.

I guess to put it in a more real-world way, when I watch pro wrestling, I want to see the wrestler's fight each other, not break the ring. A lot of hardcore/no DQ/deathmatch style wrestling matches will spend more time setting up spots with foreign objects. Guys will be fighting and then one of them will roll out of the ring and set up a table, then stack two chairs on it, then light a kendo stick on fire or whatever. And sure, there's a place for that, but they tend to waste a lot of time on this nonsense when they could just... you know... hit their opponent.

But I will grant that a mountain breaking apart during a fight is a cool spectacle. I just don't see it as an end unto itself.

[gaknar]

Review: Claremont’s Final Chapter

Well this is it. This is the last review I’m going to write for this blog. It covers the last chunk of Chris Claremont’s original run on Uncanny X-Men, along with the crossovers and spinoffs that accompany it. I was thinking that this was going to be a lot more comics, because I completely forgot that I already wrote a review covering the big three X-Men crossovers from the 1980s (Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno). How does that happen? How do I just completely forget that I did bunch of work on a review that’s barely two years old? I’ll tell ya how. Early onset Alzheimer’s. Or maybe I’m busy and not as focused on this blog as I used to be. Nowadays it’s all I can do to keep my queue from emptying out while doing one post a day. I’m a shadow of my former hilarious self. But I still want to tie a bow on what I’ve been doing here for the past seven years, and I guess that’s kind of what this is. I set out with a goal, to read every X-Men comic ever written. How that was to be defined, I didn’t know, but at the very least it was going to include everything up to the end of Claremont’s big run, which I have now accomplished. I’m anxious to keep reading, but I think I’m done writing for now, and maybe indefinitely. I dunno. I haven’t decided yet and I don’t want to speak in absolutes. Only a Sith speaks in absolutes.

I mean how am I gonna be reading this and not be sprinting to my blog to shit post about it. It’s just not possible. I can’t call my mom and troll. “Yeah ma and then they did that shit where they smash the cake in each other’s faces and I puked all over everything! No ma, this was in a comic! A comic!”

For posterity sake, this reading and review cover the following:

Uncanny X-Men #244-279 New Mutants #74-100 X-Factor #40-70 Excalibur #8-25 X-Force #1-4 X-Men Volume 2 #1-3 Days of Future Present Crossover Kings of Pain Crossover 

This collection of comics is the most nostalgic for me. I didn’t start collecting Uncanny X-Men until around issue #250. I was a late comer. I had already missed the best stuff. But the X-Men were still at the top of their game, and this particular run represents the exact set of comics that captivated me as a child. I’m biased toward them. This is generally considered to be the weakest part of Chris Claremont’s 17 year long run, but I cannot find the objectivity to agree with this statement. And during this reading, where I actually got to read everything that lead up to this point in time for the X-Men instead of being cluelessly dropped into the middle of it and not even knowing how to pronounce a lot of the characters names, I found these stories to be even more enjoyable.

When I was a kid, I thought Psylocke was pronounced Pisey-locke. I thought Rogue was Roe-goo. One of my older brother’s friends heard me saying that shit and he laughed his ass off at me.

Tell me what’s wrong with this story. The X-Men have become legends, both in story and in real world pop culture, but then their team is decimated. Storm is killed. Colossus, Rogue, Psylocke, Havok, and Dazzler are consumed by Siege Perilous. Wolverine is captured and broken by an alliance of villains he personally carved into cyborgs during his previous adventures. And Longshot is . . . well nobody remembers what happened to Longshot. And with growing threats rising from all over the world, it’s left to the X-Men’s fourth string, students, and attendants to continue the fight. This was a dire time for the comic, and I think for many it deviated too far from what they had grown comfortable with. These characters were real for a lot of people, and they had been scattered, their family destroyed. There was a sense of tragedy and trauma. A great loss of safety and security for characters that were written so intimately they felt like close friends you visited once a month. But I loved it. These were my first X-Men stories. I was only beginning to form my bonds with these characters, and that process was aided by the narrative drive to see them reunited. For a kid in the 4th grade, this was Shakespearian.

And then Jim Lee came along and ruins everything.

No I didn’t cover the swimsuit issue. I mean, this is it. Here, I’m covering it. Look, Logan’s a never nude. 

I mean, how can I say that. I actively concede that Jim Lee is the best X-Men artist. And that comes after years of maintaining this blog and meticulously reading every X-Men comic that was released, and falling in love with the work of Barry Windsor Smith.

Bill Sienkiewicz

Paul Smith.

Marc Silvestri.

And John Byrne was ok I guess.

In my opinion, as much as I love all those other artists, none of them can touch Jim Lee’s work on X-Men. They are all phenomenally gifted, but Jim Lee was somehow transcendent on a whole other level. And when his talent swirled with the particular aesthetic of the Uncanny X-Men, magic happened. Something new came into existence that permanently imprinted itself onto our pop culture. 

From the characters themselves to crazy alien space-tech, you just can’t beat Jim Lee.

How is it then, that these were the comics, the last issues of Claremont’s run, that killed my interest in the series when I was younger? Claremont was still writing the scripts, but it was clear that something catastrophic had happened behind the scenes. Something was terribly broken. And as much as I wanted to assume that it was all in my head, that there couldn’t have been any hurt feelings because Claremont would return some day, and he would even go on to work with Jim Lee again on other projects, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I just watched the Comics In Focus documentary about Chris Claremont, and he tearfully describes his feelings at the time as being “betrayed.” You can feel that in the writing, and it does not make for good entertainment. The final few issues of this run are conflicted and strained, and tedious in their pacing. So unlike the effortless storytelling the series had become known for.

Reading these comics again all these years later brings back memories of why I quit collecting in the first place. By the very end of Chris Claremont’s run, after his narrative plans had been derailed by Jim Lee and their editors, the Uncanny X-Men weren’t stunning anymore. They didn’t stick in my brain and leave me awake at night with a mind full of wonder. They only left me with apathy. This is in contrast to how I felt when I first started reading the series and every issue was a revelation. But I can distinctly remember attempting to read X-Force #1 a second time, searching for some hook to keep me engaged, and there was nothing there. It was an empty, shallow experience that made me question whether I had outgrown the hobby. X-Men Volume 2 reinforced those concerns.

“The writer.” He can’t even be bothered to invoke his name. I’m just going to transcribe this part of the documentary and make some observations. “Comics were boring. Even Marc Silvestri, he’ll admit, he got bored.” This motherfucker thinks the X-Men were just dull as shit until he came along and saved the whole fucking thing. JFC. “Marc had already done the book for like, four or five years. And, but it’s not a job you, you don’t leave that job. It’s the best-selling comic.” This motherfucker thinks THE BEST SELLING COMIC, THE COMIC MORE PEOPLE WERE READING THAN ANY OTHER COMIC IN EXISTENCE was boring until he came along and saved the whole fucking thing. “And the writer had been on it for 15 years. You don’t think he’s burned out?” No Rob, it’s clear he wasn’t burnt out, and you deprived us of another 3-5 years of amazing comics. “It was like hey, the X-Men girls go shopping.” Hey I liked that issue. “In the next issue, the guys go to the mall.” That didn’t even happen! You drew that god damned book and you can’t even remember what it was about!! “And you’re like, this isn’t the X-Men I grew up loving! Where’s Magneto, where’s the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!? Where’s the stuff that’s gonna psyche me out?” Oh, like fucking Strife and Strobe and Thumbellina? Did that shit psyche you out Rob??

I have given up on X-Men three different times in my life. The first was in 1992, a direct result of the conflict that arose between Claremont and these idiot artists who would stick around for less than a year for abandoning the franchise completely, leaving it in shambles. Looking back at my collection, I made it to issue #7 of X-Men Volume 2 and I was done. The buildup to Onslaught brought me back in 1996, in particular the famous cover proclaiming someone had stopped the Juggernaut which I found in a back issue bin. But I did not last long, only seeing that storyline through and losing interest again by the time Heroes Reborn got underway and it was clear that the clowns in charge didn’t actually have any interesting story ideas past the initial Onslaught concept. Finally, in 2001 it was the one-two punch of Grant Morrison’s new X-Men and Claremont’s own X-Treme X-Men that brought me back one more time. And this time I stuck with it for a good 10 years before a combination of Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel’s agenda to bury the X-Men killed my interest in modern X-Men comics to this day. 

I could not stand the idea of the original teenage X-Men becoming the main characters again. There was no blander, more basic concept in my opinion. Other than that shit Rob Liefeld came up with in X-Force.

Despite this on again off again relationship, the X-Men have always been with me. I have always wanted to stay engaged with what was going on in their lives. And that led to the creation of this blog. I wanted to start reading again, but the only way to do that was to start at the beginning and go from there. And I’ve loved reading almost every comic I read for this blog. Analyzing and summarizing each issue allowed me to recreate the experience of reading these comics as a kid, when I read each comic 5 or 6 times through the course of the month as I anticipated the release of the next and finally moved on. That reading pace is very hard to emulate in the age of collected editions, where we might instead read several issues in a single sitting and never look back again. It’s a completely different experience.

But going forward, I don’t think it’s going to be so important. I’m not going to want to linger on Scott Lobdell’s writing, or Rob Liefeld’s garbage artwork. I’m not going to want to struggle to think of something interesting to say about comics I’m apathetic toward. I’m going to keep reading, but I don’t know to what extent, if any, I’ll comment on them here.

Again, I don’t know how I’m going to be reading this shit and not need someone to talk to about it. So don’t completely give up on me. 

I recently read through Sandman for the first time, in tandem with reading X-Men comics for this blog. It was obviously very good, but it was also very dense and challenging, and it took forever since I was splitting my comic book time with blog tasks. Then I finally read the deluxe volumes of Saga I’ve owned for years but haven’t had time to read. Compared to Sandman they were a light, breezy walk through a sunny, petal soaked field. It made me excited to read some more of the independent books I've collected over the years. Oh and there’s also these.

I’m way overdue here. I bought all these books and have yet to crack any them open. But every single day they call to me. But of course I can’t start with these. I’m going to read Hickman’s Fantastic Four first, and then his Avengers, and then Secret Wars, and THEN I’ll read these. The time has come for me to start reading modern X-Men again.

In case you can’t tell, this review is also serving as a retrospective for this blog in general. Sorry to spring that on you. I really, really appreciate those who read along with me, corrected my mistakes, offered better insights than I could come up with, and explained the shit that went straight over my head. It wasn’t like reading these comics in a vacuum like I did when I was a kid. It was like being part of an awesomely nerdy reading group. I appreciated every single like and comment you made, and those who stuck with me for an extended period. I saw every engagement you made, even if that wasn’t obvious. I don’t know if this will be my last post, but this is it for now. Thanks everyone.

[luimagines]

Do time or the other links smoke? Or drink? Or do some kind of drugs? I mean when your out heroing you're going to get alot of traum

Something they all at least somewhat have to try and take the edg off or do they have other ways of coping? I am sorry if this sounds like an ask,i was more along the lines trying to get your speculation on the matter

Masterlist

I see what you're saying and I do think that some of them would have had bad habits in the past but yeah-

They do need some time to take the edge off and refocus themselves in the present, but how do they do that in a healthy and safe way?

Let's talk about that.

I don't think I have all the necessary tags so go forth at your own discretion.

Time

Time would have definitely had a drinking problem that would have started in his Termina days.

He's never really felt the need to drink though- he only found that it would have kept him from going crazy.

But as he got out of there and talked more to Malon (and have his supply cut off- (just because he knew where to get it in Termina doesn't mean he knows where to get it in Hyrule, (nor would they give it to him, even if he did))), I like to think that he would have had to find other ways to calm himself down and think rationally through his thoughts and desires.

It happens by accident.

He was working at Lon Lon Ranch when he needed to go chop some wood and he found the repetitive and strenuous work, soothing.

He felt good. Accomplished even.

And a little disappointed when he was finished.

But he started doing that whenever he could and it became his main way to not only blow off some steam but to also calm himself down.

It helps with his anxiety and his need to help feel useful even when nothing is really happening that would require his assistance.

Twilight

Twilight finds that manual labor actually makes his anxiety worse.

He can't really find it within himself to get lost in it because he's already programmed for that to be a part of his day to day life anyway. So his brain can still go on and on even as he gets his chores done.

Twilight finds that a secluded spot with little distraction works best.

He's never really dabbled in other ways to deal with it nor has it come to his mind.

All he knew one say was that everything was too much and that he needed to be in a different area entirely.

No people, no noise.

He likes to hang out by small creeks or by the lake and fish if he really needs an excuse to do something.

Bonus points if he can rest with one of his favorite goats nearby, but that's few and far in between.

It's less meditation and more taking in the moment and letting time slip by for a change.

No to do lists, no action, no survival, no need to be on the run.

Just breath.

Warrior

Warrior would have smoked during the war but I don’t think he’d actually tolerate it all that well. I feel like he’d be more inclined to drink away his problems but with shortages left and right, and all efforts going into the war, there just wouldn’t be enough to go around.

So he’d smoke and hate it.

But it worked in a pinch.

Afterwards, whether through Mask’s and Wind’s influence or the end of the war, he’d want to find a way to quit.

It wasn’t easy but I feel like Warrior would attempt to quit cold turkey. Just drop the habit completely and what does he do when he feels the need arise again?

It’s actually little said than done, but he paints.

It’s less with ink and paint and more so, just moving his hands and a brush around.

If he happens to have a canvas it’s better but again, not easy to come around.

So what Warrior ends up doing most of the time, is taking a brush and some homemade ink from berries and brushing it over his scars. His favorite spot is the massive burn covering his left arm left behind as a gift from the Dragon Knight.

It feels tingly and electric, static follows the brush and the muscles clench with energy from the contact but while it’s uncomfortable for a while, it’s also not entirely unpleasant and it’s soothing to watch and feel. And it grounds Warrior in the moment until he no longer feels the urge.

When the urge is gone, he still does it when he feel anxious and concerned. Late at night is typical time for him to do this, where no one would see him or his scars and judge him for it.

Sky

Sky in the beginning would have slept more than he did before.

He was already inclined to fall asleep easily before all of his trauma, but afterwards he seemed to lose motivation to continue with the idea that things would go back to normal. There was still a lot of expectation placed on his shoulders and it was frankly not something he wanted to deal with.

So he sleeps.

Now this turns into more of a problem with being able to stay awake and to stay concentrated. It’s hard for him to pay attention to anything beyond him and that won’t do, considering me still has to finish his schooling.

What Sky does more often than not to keep him tethered to the present moment is work with his hands. He’s already had the tools for wood whittling but he was never allowed to use them in class and it ends being a bigger mess sometimes than he’s willing to deal with in general.

Sky also has some small pockets of clay that he fidgets with to keep his hands moving and he can keep it under his desk so that it’s not that distracting in class.

It helps him focus and when he thinks about what he’s been through and what he plans to do next, it keeps him from getting overwhelmed.

Wild

I think Wild would have just gone silent and unmoving when he’s having a bad day.

Kind of similar to how he gets when’s trapped in a memory but for longer and he doesn’t eat or sleep. It could last days at a time. He doesn’t even move unless he’s prompted or dragged to the spot.

The lights are on but no one’s home you know.

There’s not a lot he can do when it happens. Everyone just has to wait for it to pass and hope that it passes quickly.

But Wild gets better with time to know the signs when of one of those days is coming.

It’s not much, but Wild like to hop on the back of his horse and just take off.

Feel the rushing wind on his face and through his hair. He’s a full gallop for a while until the poor horse gets tired. At that point he just goes to the nearest stable and exchanges horses to do the whole thing over again.

Sometimes, when that’s not enough, he’ll go base jumping from as high as he can get even using Revali’s Gale to get higher and free fall. Wild is pretty good at catching himself with his paraglider at the last moment and he likes to see all of Hyrule when as he reaches the ground again.

It reminds him that he’s done a lot of good, that he’s capable of doing more good and that life isn’t over just one ended.

Four

Unsurprisingly, sometimes Four gets too lost in his own for his own good.

He’s got a lot to think about and very little way to get it out.

Four would actually throw himself into his work to try and distract himself from the memories, the anxiety, and the guilt of not being enough time and time again even if he saved the day in the end.

This doesn’t help.

He gets so lost into it, in his attempt to stop thinking all together that he completely goes into autopilot and over works himself. Not in the sense that he pulls a muscle and has to take it easy  or end up sore and tired and regrets it. No, no. What I mean is that he’ll keep working for days on end.

No sleep.

No food.

Little water.

No fresh air.

It ends up being a hard habit for him to break. Especially since he finds himself continuously trying to fall into a blank mindset even while he actually works to get commissions done.

So what Four has to do is find something else to do. Four more or less always has to have his hands moving, so it’s hard for him to put something down and not working on it.

He likes jigsaw puzzles, he likes to read, but he also likes to make stuff.

So in the end, when Four feel a little overwhelmed and feels himself slip into a self deprivational state, he’ll stop and goes inside his house to do a smaller project.

So he bakes, he knits, he does his puzzels. It’s enough for him to feel productive still but quick enough for him to stay present and make sure he’s still taking care of himself until the restlessness passes.

Wind

Wind doesn’t really have bad habits. He’s still young and processing his adventures. 

I’m sure there’s alcohol on the pirate ship because pirates. But I don’t think he’d like it as much as some people want to write him.

Like, sure, a cup or two ain’t bad but I just can’t see Wind having a drinking problem. At least not now as everything stands.

In a few years it’s might be something he would need to be on the look out for if he’s aware enough but he was quite grasped the full implications of his position and trauma yet.

Because he’s just a kid.

He won’t know how twisted what happened to him was until he gets older and can he the age outside of his own mindset.

Wind has nightmares though and they’re ties when he gets memories that he doesn’t want to deal with at the moment- or ever again.

In the moment he thinks of his home, his grandma and his sister instead.

He thinks of his friends, both old and new.

The chain help with distracting him and he’s not above using them for the distraction when he feels that he needs one.

Wind also stretches a lot. 

When he was with Warrior, he got into some of the drills they were teaching the soldiers and for some of the nimble ones, they had to start with stretches and he likes it.

So when it gets particularly bad, he throws himself through the motions and holds the poses for a bit longer than necessary.

So yoga. He does yoga.

And it centers him, it clears his head and he feels better after.

Legend

Legend screams.

Legend cries.

Legend will go on a rampage and destroy a whole forest if he’s having a particularly hard day.

Sometimes he’ll go find something big and scary just to fight it. 

Blacksmithing is more a hobby for him at this point because it’s not something he can actually see himself doing in the future. It’s just to pass the time and help the day’s go by a little faster.

Legend likes to draw and when he’s tired after throwing whatever tantrum has taken over him, he’d go to a quiet spot and draw whatever he sees.

Sometimes, when he’s paying more attention to himself and he can feel himself getting frustrated and anxious, he takes a few days off.

He leaves his house and his items and goes up a mountain to think with some food, a notebook and some pencils.

He takes up map making.

Legend doesn’t think he’s any good at it, but with al the places he’s been, he tries to make a map for them by memory incase anyone he knows or will meet decides to visit.

His most carefully crafted map is of Koholint for... reasons.

It’s takes him an age and a half and he’s still not done with it, trying to get as much of it onto the paper as he can remember before he grows old and loses them entirely within his memory.

It’s a calming project he finds. He doesn’t feel sad when he does this for Marin for the people and their memory. It keeps them alive in his heart and sometimes he draws something on the map that doesn’t quite fit into his memory about the island but something tells him to keep it because it was there. Because he was only a visitor to their home.

The locals would know.

He feels good keeping them alive in some way.

It’s what she they would have wanted. 

It’s what she they deserve.

She They always wanted to travel and it’s better to have a map to do so.

He takes up map making.

Hyrule

I don’t think Hyrule’s... Hyrule has a lot of these methods to go around. He wouldn’t have been exposed to drugs or alcohol simply because there’s too little people for him to interact with.

And if he was, I don’t think he’s use them as a coping mechanism simply because they would be too difficult obtain and gather to be sufficient.

I think that Hyrule would actually hang out with a Great Fairies by her pool when times got particularly rough.

There’s something about the place that resonates with him and feels calming, safe and relaxing to him.

As a bonus he’s always welcomed so he can pop in and stay for days at a time if he ever needed to.

He does not stay there for days.

But he appreciates the offer.

Hyrule doesn’t stay for more than few hours at a time because he doesn’t want to attract any monsters to his safe spots but even if the fairies don’t use any magic on him, he’s always rejuvenated afterwards and he feel like he can take on anything.

And given the world he comes from- it’s needed.