#hes so twink icon HAVE YOU SEEN THOSE ANIMATIONS??

[writer-of-the-lamb]

i firmly believe ratau and lamb gossip

lamb : “the problem is i was always into him.” *rolls dice*

ratau : “…i thought this infatuation was a mere realisation after he was indoctrinated..”

lamb : “oh nooo no. at first, yeah, it was scary, but then he gave me these little proud smiles and sometimes he’d stroke my chin. *rolls dice* tell me that isn’t homoerotic.”

ratau : *frowns* “i was going to suggest it was a merely evil action, but i cannot deny the subtle flirt.”

lamb : *gasps and slams hands onto table* “TOLD YOU. even clauneck believes he’s into me.”

ratau : “clauneck believes whatever the cards tell him.”

lamb : “yeah well the cards probably promised a hot god.” *sighs* “you see it now, right?”

ratau : “…this is the one who waits, correct…?”

lamb, sighing : “he lets me call him narinder.”

ratau : *rolls dice* “maybe it is…a bit forward.”

lamb, giggling and kicking his stupid little feet : “i knoooow.”

[ja-khajay]

Wanted to post this before but I forgot ^^’ so here we go! I read all of Dorohedoro, here are my thoughts on the series :) (spoilerless for those who want to read it later!)

Spoilers : I loved it a lot. Stellar character writing and worldbuilding with a unique graphic style, strongly recommend it to anyone who can stomach how graphic it gets (which is a LOT). If you’re like me and dissapointed by the lack of originality in post apocalyptic and/or fantasy settings, it’s a blessing

artwise : technically speaking it’s not the most advanced shit you’re gonna get but it’s got a very distinctive style. I rarely see manga who stand out that much graphically and it was a pleasure. I know the author’s anatomy gets criticized but it wasn’t much of an issue for me - lots of her characters have the same body types but thats extremely common in manga/comics in general and it’s sweet to have the default body type be “brickhouse” instead of some variant of muscle twink

the backgrounds are amazing, the sketchy grit works wonders with her urban cluttered designs

characters design are great too : iconic, diverse and practical, even if there’s a big sameface syndrome to lament. I’m usually not a fan of such cluttered designs but here they work in the setting and in logical terms too. just a look at the devils or at the mage’s masks would showcase how creative the author gets

the action scenes : loved the how absurdly graphic they get, very disturbing but in style! however i found most of the fights to not be boarded very well, resulting in a confusing mess. couldn’t see what was happening, who was hitting who until the very end so i skimmed through most of them. shame, the ones i do remember are very fun

similarly the story/dialog gets SUPER CONFUSING at times. i managed to understand all of it at once by some miracle but i know a lot of people for whom it took several reads to understand it all. since it includes time travel and identity as major themes thats surprising but still. damn bro

it was written by a woman and like most manga written by women you can feel the difference and it’s a breath of fresh air. expect way less nasty tropes than what you normally see, even if it’s not perfect either. I especially disliked the writing of Ebisu as a character ): and if Chota is a character I like he’s not great either

what stood out most to me were the characters. i’ve rarely seen such weird, well written characters and especially their interactions!!! it feels organic and extremely wholesome (funny given how it’s also famous for being extremely violent but i mean it). i love seeing relationships depicted so well - you see characters living alongside each other, being friends or enemies, spending time together before they go fight and each moment reinforces their personality. the bonus chapters are a lovely addition in that regard, since they focus even more on showing characters living their life outside of the main story. given how wild and fun their personalities get, it’s really sweet! you don’t normally see this sort of stuff outside of fanfiction

related to what i just said but i usually cannot stand romance in media because i am an anti-corny person and find most love tropes unrealistic : here the few instances of romantic love you have are very well written. my favorite being “married couple of 25 years and how their love evolved during that time but stayed there” godspeed

the worldbuilding!!! it’s original, it’s fun, its well done. nothing felt weird or out of place and its frequent reimaginings of classic elements are fun as hell. having the worlds meta lore and divinities being regular characters mentioning how they created the universe as a casual thing was also a treat

this is a personal thing, but i usually end up disliking the near-end of manga where everything escalated right before being epically resolved, but it wasn’t the case here. if i still liked the beginning better, as i do for most media, the ending doesn’t seem to break the pace much. if the story does get very confusing at parts, it doesn’t abruptly clear itself and has more of a bell curve of adding elements that are later solved one after the other. and surprisingly, the “final epic battle” was fun as hell, i usually hate those a lot lol

TLDR : skyrocketed among my favorite series, hyped for the anime, wish more series made girls this buff for no reason, wish more series showed characters having a good time with the lads, wish more series got as weird on the art style, prof haze was my favorite character

[overkeehl]

Thank you to @misas-biggest-fan​ for requesting my number one boy for the ask meme!

First Impressions

The first time I even saw Mello was on the cover of volume 8 of the manga and full disclosure, I thought he looked gross lmao and definitely thought he was a really scary looking girl and I did not like him. I still think he looks like a gross and scary girl, but now its one of the reasons I like him so much. I guess once I actually got to him in the manga he must have grown on me pretty fast, because I know by the time he died in volume 12 I was fully emotionally invested and his death definitely came as a gut punch – though I'm not sure how much of the credit for that can go to the manga as much as all the fic I might as well have been consuming intravenously.

(This is... gonna get long so continued after the cut)

My Impression Now

I actually still hate his outfit on the cover of vol. 8 - really Obata? Brown quilted leather?? But in all seriousness, it's kind of strange to think of having an “impression” now because liking Mello has weirdly been part of my personality for such a long time? Even when I was pretending to be a Real Adult with Good Taste or whatever at uni I still had a Mello nendoroid on my desk in my dorm lmao. I guess my biggest impression now is just how... queer Mello is? Like, it's definitely an anime thing to have bishounen characters read as female at first glance, but Mello is very much not a bishounen character. I used to think that Mello looking so goddamned gay was unintentional (in HTR13 Obata said he based Mello’s look on what he thought was “stylish”) but let's consider any one of his iconic leather vests – exposed midriff? Double ended zipper?? O-ring at the collar????? First of all, the only place you can buy a leather/pleather vest like that is a fetish shop, and even then – even then! I have never seen any for sale in such a venue (and believe you me, I have looked) that has all three of those slutty, slutty features. Its not just that I refuse to believe that Obata never visited gay leather porn websites prior to putting together Mello's twink-ass look, but that it's statistically impossible for him to have made those outfit selections in a gay-porn-free vaccuum. But then! Just thinking out loud, we don't get anything else that would be recognizable both in Japan and in the West as your typical queer coding. Sure he looks effeminate and has the fashion sense of Hard Gay, but he's otherwise quite masculine – his body language, aggression, violent outbursts - he drives cool cars and motor bikes, has a cool scar, and is an active player within the narrative with so much agency they had to kill him off. His effeminate looks are never played for laughs and his voice actor has a deep voice. He's no okama and he's no sassy Disney villain and I love him very much.

Favourite Moment

This is kind of boring but I really like all the panels where he's just hanging in the mafia hideout? I love how at ease he is draped over that stupid zebra print couch, taking up space and sitting like the boy-king he is, totally unperturbed by pretty much any batshit thing that happens. People dropping dead right in front of him? Making hostage negotiations? Threatening world leaders? A literal death god come to collect it’s magic notebook that kills people? Just another day on the job with our boy Mello - all we get out of him is either quiet curiosity or cruel satisfaction. Just the coolest cucumber. I also love how even just his body language is such a foil for pretty much all the other geniuses – L and Near are very self contained in their idiosyncrasies, and Light of course sits like the prim honour student he is. And then there's Mello, limbs everywhere, fully embodying the gays can't sit on chairs meme

Idea For a Story

As much as I love the grand heartfelt Matt/Mello reunion trope, I'm still kind of fond of the idea of an awkward reunion? Where they run into each other and both leave, like, thank god that's over with, but then fate somehow thrusts them back into each other's paths, and Mello's hand is forced and he has no choice but to ask Matt for help after being the world's biggest douche to him. And then they begrudgingly work together and maybe also angrily make out, eventually falling stupid hard for each other and only realizing it just in time for them to both die :)

Unpopular Opinion

LABB is bad and I don't think it captured Mello's voice at all and I generally pretend it never happened.

Favourite Relationship

Oh, definitely Matt, but I've gone on enough about that here. As time goes on, the more I like Mello's dynamic with Near and I wish we got to see more scenes with them together. I really like that Near genuinely respects Mello, something I feel makes Mello really uncomfortable, especially after having invested so much energy into hating and resenting him.

Favourite headcanon

Not to be a total arm chair psychologist, but I think one of the biggest reasons Mello's stuck with me for so long was his use as a proxy for my own relationship with gender? I still don't what's up with that, but non-binary Mello is very very important to me

[i-want-it-on-fire]

Spoilery Last Jedi raving under the cut

You thought you were watching Empire Strikes Back? SIKE it’s Return of the Jedi. I owe Rian Johnson my life. 

Biggest spoiler of TLJ: Porgs can FLY?!?! 

Fucking Luke Skywalker. Iconic. That extra bitch. Also, he’s been JUMPING AROUND THESE ROCKS WITHOUT THE FORCE THIS WHOLE TIME?! The ABSOLUTE MAD MAN. And god that scene at the end, I’M SO PROUD OF OUR TWINK.

K, one negative thought tho, those bombers in the beginning are the MOST POORLY DESIGNED PIECES OF SHIT I HAVE EVER SEEN. They’re huge targets. Slow as FUCK. You have to ARM THE BOMBS AHEAD OF TIME?!?! Like, I am GLAD that went so poorly, because then maybe the Resistance will learn its lesson and NOT USE THOSE. Look I know the Y-wings don’t pack as big a punch, but at least if they blew up only TWO people died. Not a WHOLE CREW. 

Finn waking up and immediately asking where Rey is, like just let these two be friends without bullshit constantly happening ;_;

Also, can I just say I LOVE what they’re doing with Kylo? Like him killing Snoke was fucking AMAZING, him choosing his own path and refusing to be manipulated by Snoke anymore? and his new motivation to destroy what’s left of the old ways, good and bad, is so interesting? And it totally makes sense. It’s the old ways that failed him in the first place. Like I’m just waiting for him to turn on the First Order once they no longer serve his needs. I also think it’s really interesting and makes a lot of sense that the reason for his obsession with Vader is because Snoke was purposefully trying to MAKE HIM INTO A NEW VADER. That’s why Rey sensed so much fear in him around that, because he knew deep down that if he failed, Snoke would destroy him. 

AND THE FIGHT WITH HIM AND REY. SO FUCKING GOOD. 

AND REY IS NOT A SKYWALKER YOU ALL CAN SUCK MY FUCKING DICK, GOD BLESS EVERYONE WHO MADE THAT DECISION LIKE THANK FUCKING GOD. I OWE RIAN JOHNSON MY LIFE.

Another negative thing, that purple-haired lady had NO reason to hide her plan from people. This was not a moment where “if plan gets out we could be compromised.” This was a “we are all trying to survive, and you already have people questioning you, maybe you should tell them your plan.” 

THAT BEING SAID. I’m glad it wasn’t Leia who did this. And the moment where purple lady flies that cruiser into the big-ass ship was SO COOL TO WATCH. 

I love all the animals. They are all so good and I love them? 

AND THE END BIT. WITH THE KID. WAS SO GREAT. AND I LOVED IT. I’m sure I could say why in more eloquent words later, but rn all you get is SO GOOOOOOOOOD.

Again, really glad that this wasn’t like Empire Strikes back again. I loved the themes of killing the past from an in-story and meta perspective. 

And god fucking YODA. FUCKIN YODA YOU SNEAKY SON OF A BITCH. “EVERYTHING IN THOSE BOOKS IS SOMETHING SHE ALREADY POSSESSES” YOU SNEAKY ASSHOLE!!!!!!

I would die for Rose Tico. She is good and pure. 

And the “horrible place” they had to go to to find the hacker? WAS A BUNCH OF RICH ASSHOLES? I loved that. We’re so used to seeing the bad side of the galaxy as the scoundrels and stuff, so I loved seeing the ugly side of all the clean cut rich folks as well. I loved that beautiful hive of scum and villainy. And Finn and Rose getting fucked up over a parking ticket like omfg. 

The thing with Luke contemplating killing Ben did kinda rub me the wrong way because it felt kind of OOC for him. Like him realizing that what he was doing was fucked up and wrong, but it still leading to a bad misunderstanding did help to fix him initially thinking about killing Ben, but I think there were better ways to do this. Like Like refusing to continue Ben’s training or something. IDK. Some kind of dispute. So yeah that whole thing felt kind of weak to me, but I guess it could have been worse?? I guess??

I know some people didn’t like Leia saving herself from the void of space but consider these counter points: A) Did you REALLY ACTUALLY want them to kill Leia? and B) she is a queen and strong with the Force, fuck you that was awesome. I love her. 

So overall, so good. A few complaints, but there was so much good shit that I can forgive them. So so good and I am SO ALIVE. 

[angstandhappiness]

LMAO ACCURATE

i firmly believe ratau and lamb gossip

lamb : “the problem is i was always into him.” *rolls dice*

ratau : “…i thought this infatuation was a mere realisation after he was indoctrinated..”

lamb : “oh nooo no. at first, yeah, it was scary, but then he gave me these little proud smiles and sometimes he’d stroke my chin. *rolls dice* tell me that isn’t homoerotic.”

ratau : *frowns* “i was going to suggest it was a merely evil action, but i cannot deny the subtle flirt.”

lamb : *gasps and slams hands onto table* “TOLD YOU. even clauneck believes he’s into me.”

ratau : “clauneck believes whatever the cards tell him.”

lamb : “yeah well the cards probably promised a hot god.” *sighs* “you see it now, right?”

ratau : “…this is the one who waits, correct…?”

lamb, sighing : “he lets me call him narinder.”

ratau : *rolls dice* “maybe it is…a bit forward.”

lamb, giggling and kicking his stupid little feet : “i knoooow.”