#i also had many other things to say about this panel but it all zeroes every time i look at it…

[kelin-is-writing]

RAW. Next question please.

[kykyonthemoon]

Drizzle at Midnight

When you miss his twenty-seventh birthday.

── .✦ Zayne x Female Reader|MC

── .✦ Tags: angst, emotional hurt, hurt/comfort, angst with a better ending, break up & post-break up

── .✦ Word count: 1k3

── .✦ Requested by bon.

── .✦ Masterlist ♡ Request a fic

You entered Linkon City territory just as the clock on the panel displayed four round zero digits. The cool air combined with the scent of passing rain signaled the arrival of autumn. Your shadow lingered on the road all by itself. In solitude.

Your steps were rushed from the minute you exited the train station. On the deserted street there was still a shop open. Your favorite bakery. As soon as your shadow became apparent, the owner delivered you a properly wrapped box. 

“Here you go, Miss Hunter. Lucky you, our shop's about to close.”

“I'm so sorry that my order came so late at this hour.” You spoke while attempting to catch your breath. 

The bakery owner smiled at you. "Not an issue at all. We've only just started cleaning up. Last time you called to cancel the order, I was concerned that something might happen between the two of you. But today when you called again for this cake, I assumed that everything was okay.”

You clasped the box in your palm, unsure what to say for a minute. You simply nodded and smiled faintly. The bakery owner noticed that the Hunter uniform on your body had not yet been changed and realized you were too busy to be certain that you would be able to return on time to pick up the cake. After that, you gladly bid farewell to the owner and continued walking along the desolate road ahead.

Your steps slowed as you moved further away from the bakery. The shop owner knew you and the person whose cake was ordered for that day. Just the previous month, you had spent hours there asking them for advice on cake selection, decorations and other necessary things. All for this special day. But one night, the bakery received a call to cancel this specific order. You thought you would no longer need this cake. But when your mission was over and you were on the train back to Linkon, you suddenly wanted it back.

You had called that very afternoon, hoping the bakery could still make it in time. You could pay more if necessary, but the owner insisted that they still kept my order. Thinking about it, the bakery was a place so familiar to you and that person; the shop owner had also witnessed happy moments of both of you. They preserved your previous purchase because they sincerely thought you would come pick up this cake and personally deliver it to the person you loved.

Finally, you showed up. Unlike what the shopkeeper expected, you ordered this cake just for yourself.

Your footsteps halted in front of a large building. You sat down on the stairs, placed the cake box on your lap, and gazed into the distance. One side of Akso Hospital was visible in front of you. You consciously counted the number of windows that were both still illuminated and entirely dark. You stopped by his window.

The office was still lit. You smiled. Your hands trembled as you removed the ribbon from the box. Once it opened, there was a blue and white cake inside, crowned with exquisite macarons and a glistening snowflake on top. It was just how you imagined when you ordered the cake.

You also imagined his reaction when he unexpectedly spotted you at the hospital, after his shift ended. His eyes would brighten up, even before he realized the cake in your hand was for him. You would sing the happy birthday song, then urge him to close his eyes and make a wish. Most likely he would claim that he did not need to wish, because what he desired most was right in front of him. 

You had envisioned that scene so many times. Each time, you would add a small little detail; his smile, the way you stood on tiptoe when you kissed his cheek, the way he held your hand when you both returned home... But it all shattered, into thousands of pieces of ice that cut into your heart. Like all beautiful dreams that come to an end, the pain of waking up to the discovery that you have lost everything was too much for you.

Let us stop... You could not forget those words coming out of your mouth. The fault was neither his nor yours, it was just that you two no longer share the same destination. The road was divided into two directions. Looking back, you realized that he was no longer there waiting for you.

You had been away from him for a fortnight. You erased an abundance of memories about him from your phone, but his birthday reminder still existed. You turned on the screen, his account was still offline. The last time he had sent you a text message was to remind you to wear socks before going to bed. It was already cold. He was no longer by your side to take care of you like a baby. Was it because of your childish behavior that burned him out? You knew too well that he respected every decision you made, including the one that ended this relationship. Yet, honestly, you wished he would hold you tight at that time. Did he let you go because he understood that you both needed space then?

You missed him. So much. You had left Linkon and threw yourself headfirst into the mission just to temporarily forget the void he left in your heart. But the further you stayed away from him, the more you felt that air had left your lungs. You could not think about anything else but him, the surprise birthday party you had prepared in advance for him. Everything happened so fast—the argument, the goodbye... All was whirling around in your head, and the only thing you could cling onto were memories.

The past cannot be altered. You could not turn back and stop yourself from saying those stupid words. You could only wish him the best on his own path.

You turned on the lighter and lit the candles. Twenty-seven candles on the cake shimmered in the area where you sat. Your lips released a tune, your whole body swaying back and forth to the rhythm. When the song ended, the window in the front office went dark. Lights off. You blew out the candles.

“Do you want to do something special on your birthday, Doctor Zayne?”

“Every moment with you is special to me.”

“You must have eaten a lot of mint candies recently! No surprise your words are so sweet! But I still want to do something for you so that you'll never forget that day.”

“Weren't you supposed to go on a mission far away on that day? You won't try to escape back here for me, will you?"

“I am Linkon's top Hunter! I'll finish soon and come back to you, okay?"

“All right. I'll wait for you."

Twenty-seven candles went out. Tears fell from your eyes. Still, you smiled at Akso Hospital. 

“Happy birthday to you, Doctor Zayne.”

You burst into tears. Your entire body trembled so badly that the cake on your lap nearly tumbled over. You had no idea how long you sat there. The temperature grew cold, and drizzle began to fall. You raised your face to the heavens. 

There were footsteps approaching and halting in front of you. An umbrella appeared to shield the rain over your head, and that dearest face you knew emerged.

You brushed the tears away from your cheeks. Was it a dream? Your lips parted, trembling:

“Doctor Zayne?…”

He was silent. Zayne appeared astonished to see you here and unsure what to say.

“You… What are you doing here?” 

Zayne remained silent for a little longer. His gaze locked on you, then down at the cake in your lap. As if he had realized something, he formed a gentle smile.

“I'm waiting for you.”

[class1akids]

Japanese reactions to the MHA 424 Shouto panel

I went through the Japanese Shouto tags last night on Twitter because I was curious about their reactions to Shouto's panel and what it may mean. The comments were around 5 main topics:

1. Sad that he's alone

ここでは1人でいてほしくないなって思いました - I didn't want you to be alone here, I thought

1人になるなーーッッ！！！囲め囲め！- Don't be alone!!! Surround them, surround them!!

🍰くん後ろ姿で1人なの辛すぎ 誰か……誰か近くに行ってあげてくれ

🍰-kun, it's so painful to see you all alone and looking at your back. Someone... Someone please go and get him.

2. A general sense of unease, wondering what kind of fallout he'll get and if he'll be blamed for the rest of his life for Dabi

🍰くんの後ろ姿が不安で仕方ない… I can't help but feel uneasy about 🍰-kun's back

轟くんが心配 - I'm worried about Todoroki

🍰家こそ……戦いの終わりが憎しみの終わりじゃないんだよな……の背中… 🍰 The end of the battle is not the end of the hatred...

Ahhhh, I wonder if 🍰will continue to be blamed by the citizens as I've often seen in fan fiction. Seriously,🍰 's path to becoming a hero is too harsh.

本誌　ヒロアカ 轟家はこれから先地獄と言われてるし覚悟してるけど轟くんの後ろ姿で泣く Magazine: It's been said that the future of the Todoroki family in My Hero Academia will be hellish, and I'm prepared for it, but seeing Todoroki's back makes me cry

No matter how hard 🍰-kun tries, there will always be a certain number of people who will unreasonably hurt 🍰 -kun, and it's really painful to think that this will never go to zero. People will probably say all sorts of things about 🍰-kun without knowing how much resolve he had and how much pain he fought to overcome. But I guess that's the reality. I hope he'll be happy.

tdrkくんだけ後ろ姿なの辛い しかも「けれど」っていう言葉と同じコマなのはやっぱりまだtdrk家はまだ終わってないし終われない、これからどうしていくのかっていう方が大事なんだよね だからとぅやくんも生きてるんだよね It's sad that only tdrk is shown from behind Moreover, the reason it's in the same frame as the word "however" is that the TDRK family isn't over yet and can't end, what's important is what to do from now on, and that's why Touya is still alive.

しょとくん、これから「俺の顔見たら遺族や被害者家族が苦しむと思うから」という理由でテレビ雑誌などの媒体に一切出ず、給料も莫大に入ってるのに最低限だけ残して全部ダビの遺族への慰謝料に当てて、俺は幸せになっちゃいけないからヒーロー業だけ専念するんだ…という生活を送ったら…どうしよう… - Shoto, from now on you won't be appearing on TV, in magazines or in any other media because "I think the bereaved families and the victims' families will suffer if they see my face", and even though you're making a huge salary, you'll only keep the bare minimum and use it all to pay compensation to Dabi's victims' families, and you can't be happy so you'll focus only on your hero work...what should I do if I live that kind of life...?

🍰くんだけ背負ってるものが大きすぎるし、ヴィランではなく世論を相手にしなくては行けない未来が待っているのは必至だし、もちろん 🍰くんはその業を進んで背負うんだろうけど、ちょっと辛いなと思った時に思い出せる仲間たちがいて、折れない起源をちゃんと家族以外で作ることができてよかった

🍰s the only one who has to carry a heavy burden, and it's inevitable that a future awaits him in which he will have to deal with public opinion rather than villains, and of course 🍰 will willingly bear that burden, but I'm glad that he has friends he can remember when he's feeling a bit down, and that he was able to create an unyielding origin outside of his family.

とどろきくんちどうなっ…ウ……顔見えない…なにを思ってる…しょと……What's going on at Todoroki's house... I... I can't see his face... What are you thinking... Wait...

tdrkくんはdabiのこととかあるしそこらへん描かれるかな dkくんとも喋ってほしいな！！！tdrk-kun has things to do with dabi, so I wonder if that will be depicted. I'd love to talk to DK-kun too!!!

冒頭の明るい雰囲気は「5歳の読者」に向けての先生の心遣いだと思うけど、「元には戻らない」ということが繰り返し描かれていて、そこはよかった…。 デも勝も現時点でいったん何かしらを失ったけど、ショは大丈夫ですか…？　ショは30巻からもうだいぶ失いっぱなしだから、これ以���はないすか…？I think the bright atmosphere at the beginning is the teacher's consideration for the "5-year-old readers," but I liked how it repeatedly depicts the idea that "things can't go back to the way they were." Both De and Katsu have lost something so far, but is Sho okay? Sho has already lost a lot since volume 30, so is there anything more he can do?

3. The meaning of the Ochako - Shoto - Spinner panels and the villains fate (also, JPN fandom was also really confused about the Spinner scales panel - many thinking it was oysters or the remains of Dabi)

とどろきくんとお茶子ちゃん、単純にこれで良かったにならない2人のエピソードもやってくれそうで嬉しいな。 それは2人だけじゃないのは大前提やけど、今後周りから受けるものが賞賛でも非難でも、2人の中でこれで良かったともならず、これで終わりとはしなさそうなので、真っ直ぐ明るいものだけじゃな

I'm glad that they will also have episodes about Todoroki and Ochako that don't simply end with the ending. It's a given that they're not the only ones who feel this way, but whether they receive praise or criticism from those around them in the future, it doesn't seem like they're happy with this or that this is the end, so it's not just about being straightforward and bright.

爆豪勝己 緑谷出久が笑いあってるよ。 お茶子ちゃん、轟くん心配だな…トガちゃんと荼毘くん…轟くん『一緒にうどん食べる』って言ってたもんね… Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku are laughing together. Ochako-chan, I'm worried about Todoroki-kun... Toga-chan and Dabi-kun... Todoroki-kun said he wanted to eat udon together...

救えたとか救えなかったのか、デとお茶子と轟くんはこの先一生考えていくんだろうし、やっぱ今後の個性社会と同じで元には戻れないね

Deku, Ochako, and Todoroki will probably be thinking about whether they were able to save him or not for the rest of their lives, and just like in the future society of quirks, there's no going back.

mdryizkとbkgktkが主軸で、それにtdrkshtとurrkochkを合わせてくれたのが嬉しい　みんながどうこれから歩んでいくのかめちゃくちゃ楽しみ　tdrkくんがね、心配だけど　hrks先生だからきっと大丈夫

I'm glad that mdryizk and bkgktk are the main focus, and that tdrksht and urrkochk were added to them. I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone will move forward from now on. I'm worried about tdrk-kun, but I'm sure it'll be fine because it's hrks-sensei.

何でお茶子ちゃんと轟くんの間にスピナーの鱗？なんだろ、と思ったけど明るい未来を示すキーパーソン的な意味での並びかな- Why are Spinner's scales between Ochako-chan and Todoroki-kun? I wondered why, but I guess it's because they're key people who represent a bright future.

4. If Shouto lost his voice

い、嫌じゃ！嫌じゃ！🍰くんから「mdry」の鳴き声が失われるのは嫌じゃ！！（いいぞやれぇ！やっちまえぇhrks先生ぇ！）

I, I don't want that! I don't want that! I don't want 🍰 to lose the cry of "mdry"!! (Go ahead! Go for it, hrks-sensei!)

轟くん親子赫灼熱拳のシーン技名心の声で叫んでるのか実際声に出して叫んでるのかどっちなんだろ… In the scene where Todoroki-kun and his father use the Burning Fist, are they shouting the name of the technique in their minds or actually shouting it out loud?

これはちょっとズレた想像かもしれないけどtdrkくんの喉が心配…で…… 一次戦でも喉焼かれて声ガスガスになってて今回も耐えられる身体にって備えて戦ったけど、気絶前喉やられてたし最後集合した時の足場作った時大口開けてたけど特に声を出していた描写なし……。 ………………………、This might be a bit of a stretch, but I'm worried about tdrk's throat... so... In the first battle his throat was burned and he was speechless, so he fought this time prepared with a body that could withstand it, but his throat was damaged before he passed out, and although his mouth was wide open when he was building a foothold for when they all gathered at the end, there's no depiction of him making a sound...

tdrkくんマジで喉やられてたりしたんかな〜 倒れる前はわりと話してたけどそこからほんま言葉発してないもんな I wonder if tdrk's throat was seriously damaged. He was talking quite a bit before he collapsed, but he hasn't really said a word since then.

5. Shouto deserves praise and happiness too

誰か 🍰くんのことも褒めたげてよぉ…

Someone praise 🍰 too...

🍰-kun also showed his true, honest and hardworking side in the letter during the final battle, so I just want him to be happy and laugh.

轟くんの幸せを祈るしかねえよかっちゃんみたいにいつか落ち着いて轟くんも泣けるといいな All I can do is pray for Todoroki-kun's happiness I hope that one day Todoroki-kun will calm down and be able to cry like Kacchan

[waitineedaname]

Um. do you think about how mr & mrs kageyama are undoubtedly on the Good-er side of the Parents scale but also are probably viewed differently by ritsu and shigeo. like i think about how ritsu probably had to be the easy one (the one that doesn't need you to care about them and comfort them) since shigeo has probably come home beaten up and bloodied enough times for the both of them?? also i feel like they might've said something like "well shigeo you don't HAVE to do [thing that will make any parent happy/proud] right ritsu :)" at some point. like idkkk i feel like that is definitely part of why ritsu feels so pressured to be twice as good at whatever he does (to make up for whatever mob lacks) but also if anyone said that to me i'd kill myself on the spot because it puts Zero trust in mob's abilities? like i feel it doesn't give him a chance to try because well ritsu will do it anyways why do i need to :/ (but then body improvement club happened. W)

anyways i just thing his parents (unintentionally) put sooo much pressure on ritsu. like the bar for being Good is drastically different for ritsu and shigeo*. and pre-claw ritsu thought that half of this pressure would probably disappear if mob did what he was ""supposed"" to do as the Older Sibling which might be one of the many many reasons ritsu thought he hated him?

*marathon arc is the first instance that comes to mind cuz...idk..before it happens they're like Hm. we should go wait in the middway of the path for shigeo (who waited for ritsu at the finish line?🤨). and after it they're like hehe ritsu got 9th place and shigeo did his best :) (this just sounds. damn. the bar's that low/high?). and both of these are normal! considering how shigeo and ritsu are! but i also feel like they're only normal because that's what you'd expect from shigeo and ritsu respectively which kind of. fucked up my worldview.

okayyy this got long. Sowwy. 😆

the kageyama parents make me NUTS when I think about them too hard bc they're probably the best parents in the series and definitely the most normal, but with being normal comes very normal flaws and parenting fuck ups, like comparing their sons. like comparing kids against each other is a very normal and common thing for parents to do, but it fucking sucks, and it's only made worse with the specific baggage the brother have

they absolutely put so much pressure on ritsu, which is one of the components of him snapping in the cleanup arc. he's like,, the ideal that they compare shigeo too, like they're always like "shigeo, why don't you get better grades, like ritsu. shigeo, why don't you stop doing weird things, like ritsu." I feel like the best example of this is these two pages from the cleanup arc (chapter 23, if you're curious)

literally every day I think about "ritsu is way smarter than I am. he doesn't do anything weird" [panel of ritsu looking so fucking haunted]

I'm going to put the rest of this under a read more because I had a Lot To Say

anyway, this sets up the expectations for the two of them. shigeo is the one who struggles at school, who messes up, whose psychic powers do weird things. ritsu is the star student, the perfect son, the Normal One. neither of these expectations are fair to them at all, especially since shigeo works really fucking hard when he sets his mind to something, and ritsu has to wear the mask of normalcy and perfection even if it doesn't feel right. it puts too much pressure on ritsu and sets mob up with the expectations of failure! goddammit!!

I don't necessarily blame the kageyama parents, I mean like I said, this is a very normal thing for parents to do, especially with kids so close in age. I've been compared to my stepsister, I've seen this happen to friends who are close in age to their siblings. it sucks ass, but it's a very normal flaw for a family to have. but also, even though the series really emphasizes that psychic powers are just a normal thing, I don't think the kageyama parents were equipped to deal with the specific issues their kids have bc of psychic powers. I can't help but wonder how much they know about that part of their sons' lives... the more I think about it, the more I think that ritsu definitely didn't tell them the truth about the first ???% incident, he definitely lied to protect his brother because I feel like they would treat shigeo differently if they knew he almost killed his brother and several teenagers at age ten. and it's unclear how much, if anything, they know about the major arcs of the show. do they know ritsu was kidnapped? do they know shigeo was trapped in a mental hellscape for six months? I'm pretty sure ritsu actively hid the events of the world domination arc from them. we see their mom watching the news report in the confession arc -- did she see her son on the screen?

idk, I just get the impression that the brothers don't really let their parents into that part of their lives, which means they still get treated normally but also means their parents don't really understand them. I think that's part of why reigen was so important to mob's development as a kid, because he gave him a person he could go to about things he couldn't talk about with his parents. it also means ritsu was especially isolated because he didn't have that kind of person, at least not until he and shou became friends

also what you said about ritsu being the "easy one", that fits directly into the way I think about both of the kageyama brothers being autistic. I think mob was much more visibly autistic, probably needed more support, and because ritsu didn't need the same support, everyone assumed ritsu must be allistic. I think he knew he was the "easy one" between the two of them and I think that got wrapped up in him masking a LOT to make things easier on his parents so they could focus on shigeo. this kid is so damn undiagnosed that I don't think he even realizes he might also be autistic until his teenage years at least

something something psychic powers as a metaphor for autism something something ritsu desperately trying to seem normal because he doesn't have powers, but also desperately wanting to get powers and stop having to act normal. this kid is so fucking sick of masking.

[shirubae]

WHY was Blaze in Sonic 06?

In my analysis of Sonic 06 I promised not to touch lore or canon. But this single question has plagued me for years, and I can't run from it any longer: why was Blaze in the future with Silver in Sonic 06? It literally keeps me up at night. It is a core moment in her identity, yet it remains one of the biggest unaddressed mysteries in the series.

To answer this question, we must also answer: who is Blaze? She's a princess from another world. Easy, right?

Buckle up. Forget everything you know. This is a long one.

Blaze's Debut

Let's step back in time. The year is 2005.

Blaze debuted in Sonic Rush, which released on November 15, 2005. She was created by the game's writer and director, Akinori Nishiyama, as a contrasting character to Sonic. It introduced Blaze as a cat from another world who is the guardian of the Sol Emeralds.

Fun fact: Blaze being a princess was originally a twist! Nothing in Sonic Rush ever indicates that Blaze is a princess - no dialogue, no supplementary material - until the very end of Extra Story where she mentions her duties as a princess while she heads home.

How crazy is that? When you hear about Blaze nowadays, you're like "oh duh the princess" but she was not always known as such! More importantly, this is the first example of Blaze's identity being a mystery.

Blaze Returns

Blaze's next appearance was in Sonic 06, which released on November 14, 2006, exactly one year later. This game depicted Blaze as the curt companion of Silver, fighting Iblis in a destroyed future of Sonic's world. Huh? Yes. The game never mentions her alternate dimension nor the Sol Emeralds. Blaze is Silver's well-dressed friend now. You think that's confusing today? Try being a kid who just got to know her in Sonic Rush a year prior.

Because of how the game treats Blaze, some fans assumed that Sonic 06 was a reboot of the series, or that it was at least retconning Blaze's backstory into her being a denizen of the future alongside Silver. There are zero official sources to support this rumor, but it gained traction anyway, and people started citing it as gospel. It's wrong.

Blaze's official Sonic 06 backstory can be found in other sources, like the official websites and the Japanese manual. They are pretty consistent with Rush: she's from another dimension and guards the Sol Emeralds (despite their total absence in this game). None of them say she was born in the future.

The English website calls her a "queen". Close enough, it indicates that Blaze is still royalty in this game.

However, there's also some odd details, like her wearing a cape, so it may come from an early draft of Sonic 06's plot and not be entirely accurate. Maybe they were planning on her royalty being more important than it ended up (I theorize that it's why she could absorb Iblis where Silver failed).

Let's touch on the princess thing. The first game to clearly establish Blaze as a princess was Sonic Rush Adventure, which released another year later on September 14, 2007. In this game, her being a princess is brought up a lot because it is a pivotal fact in her character arc.

Around the same time, fans noticed that Blaze doesn't seem to recognize Sonic at all in Sonic 06. In their only scene together in Kingdom Valley, she doesn't say a word. If this is the same Blaze from Rush, why doesn't she know him? (Mind you, Sonic doesn't acknowledge her either). This discrepancy only fuels the "future Blaze" rumor, and it's still never been properly explained. Despite being discussed again and again, we haven't had a clear answer. So, let's at least go over the answers that we have received.

Takashi Iizuka at Sonic Boom

Takashi Iizuka is the current (2024) head of Sonic Team. He's worked on many games in the series, though notably not Sonic 06 nor Rush. Still, during the Q&A panel at the live event Sonic Boom 2012, one of the many fan-submitted questions requested he clarify some lore regarding Silver and Blaze.

Here's a transcript, since the crowd in the video is pretty loud:

Speaker: "Iizuka-san, can you please clear up the story of Silver, Blaze, and Eggman Nega? Are they from an alternate dimension, or the future? Not to mention, in Sonic Rush, Sonic Rivals, and Sonic 2006, they all know each other, but in Sonic Colors, they've never met?"

Takashi Iizuka (via translator): "So, everyone probably already knows this... but Silver and Eggman Nega are from the future, and Blaze is from an alternate dimension. That's the official story. But in 2006, basically what happened was everyone kind of had like, amnesia. That's how that kind of played out."

The guy was put on the spot to answer a big question regarding two characters from games that he didn't even work on, plus the translation barrier! He handled it well, all things considered. This at least debunked the "future Blaze" rumor, but it didn't answer why she was in the future in the first place. Let's check another source...

Shiro Maekawa on Twitter

Shiro Maekawa is a former Sonic game writer who worked on the Shadow and Silver Episodes for Sonic 06 (but not Rush). This means he wrote for Blaze; naturally, some curious fans have reached out to him with questions. His responses may give us some insights into what was intended with her in 06.

First of all, Maekawa confirmed that he intended to connect Rush to 06. He's said this in multiple tweets. What exactly he means isn't totally clear.

A fan once made a neat tumblr post delving into this connection; I don't totally agree with everything said, especially the "future Blaze" stuff, but it's definitely a valuable perspective (unfortunately the author has deleted their blog after harassment... good job guys).

He also says that he intended for the place that Blaze gets sent to in Silver Episode to be her alternate dimension. That makes sense; just sending her home! But he admits that his ideas are not official, so it's up to Sonic Team to decide.

Furthermore, Maekawa supports the theory that Iblis remains sealed within Blaze's soul to this day. Fans have taken it a step further by theorizing that the reason Blaze can become Burning Blaze is because of her connection to Iblis - this makes sense, given the fiery aura and the fact that Blaze briefly goes Burning in the cutscene when she absorbs it.

If that theory is true, and she goes Burning in Rush, then it would force 06 to be a prequel to Rush.

Since it's confirmed Blaze isn't from the future in 06, she must have gotten sent there somehow - maybe by the Sol Emeralds? They do teleport her on their own in Rush. That would mean Blaze hasn't met Sonic yet, so she has nothing to say to him. Then in the ending, she forgets everything and goes home, later meeting Sonic for real in Rush. Boom, easy! For a long time, this placement in the timeline seemed fair.

There was a tiny hole: an unused audio file of Blaze dialogue in 06.

Blaze says: "Sonic... the Iblis Trigger... a blue hedgehog... can it be true?", expressing familiarity with the blue blur. So she did know who he was...? Then why did she not say anything? Well, it's unused so it shouldn't count. But the fact that it's recorded at all means it got far enough into the script to be voiced...

On the other hand, this game also has the "Book of Darkness" flub and the "head to Wave Ocean" blooper, so maybe its audio files aren't to be trusted. Problem solved?

No. Not until a certain someone speaks...

Ian Flynn on Bumblekast

Ian Flynn went from writing the Archie Sonic comics, to the IDW comics, and now the games. He's been working on Sonic properties for a very long time, and is even consulted as part of the mythical "Sonic lore team" at Sega-Sammy. Those folks work on piecing together the canon, including the chaos of 06's timeline placement (imagine being paid to write stuff like this lmao).

This means he receives lore knowledge from on high, from the top dogs at Sonic Team. At the moment it's fairly secretive, but on Ian's Q&A podcast, the Bumblekast, he often lets fans in on tidbits.

What Ian has shared so far supports a lot of theories discussed with Maekawa. He has entirely confirmed that Blaze went Burning Blaze as she absorbed Iblis and went home, and has dubiously confirmed that she still has Iblis in her soul (he doubts it will ever be brought up again).

But the prophet has spoken: Sonic 06 is officially set after Rush in the timeline. Say what you will about Ian's writing or understanding of the characters; like it or not, he's received this info from Sonic Team. So, our timeline theory is debunked.

Ian even acknowledges that there are plot holes with this timeline placement, like why Blaze and Sonic ignored each other in Kingdom Valley, and why she didn't think to find her old friends for help. But he has no say over it. He'll just have to find a way to write around it, I guess.

He also acknowledges that Blaze's presence in the future and partnership with Silver are still completely unexplained, and he hopes to eventually touch on it... But he also states that there is an official reason why Blaze was in Silver's future. I'll write his quote here for reference:

Ian Flynn: "Here's the thing: working on something else, I actually did get a straight answer, and it was frustratingly simple. And it's like, 'that works, okay.' No, I can't get into it, that's all private work stuff but maybe it'll come to light, eventually. But there is an answer, and it works, and I kinda feel dumb for not thinking of it."

So it's currently classified. Where does that leave us? "That greedy Ian is selfishly sitting upon a hoard of gold, hiding his secrets from us!" "There must be a secret scroll sitting in the depths of Sonic Team HQ, emblazoned with the truth!" "Ian is a filthy American, he has no idea what he's talking about!"

Well, we can guess to our heart's content. There are a few theories:

Maybe the will of the Sol Emeralds sent Blaze to help Silver. The strings of fate pulled her so she could help guide him and eventually absorb Iblis. This one is the most sentimental, so I like it...

Maybe Blaze got caught time-traveling during a fight with Eggman Nega, and was flung into the future. This would explain why Ian found it "frustratingly simple" (he hates Eggman Nega lol).

Maybe at the end of Rush, Blaze couldn't get back home from the Exception zone; instead, she ended up lost in Silver's future due to space-time shenanigans. Nothing in her ending truly confirms that she ever made it back home. Pretty simple.

These still don't explain why she and Sonic didn't recognize each other, but we have to just let Ian deal with that one lol.

Conclusion

Our best course of action is to wait. In many of the clips I've linked, Ian regularly expresses interest in addressing Blaze's mysteries in an issue of IDW comics or a TailsTube episode. We also know that Evan Stanley, a fellow comic artist-turned-writer, is a big fan of Blaze and Silver (check out her "Ghosts of the Future" fan-comic). Our cries for the truth do not fall on deaf ears.

Ultimately, Sega-Sammy will choose whatever is most profitable. They are a business operating in capitalism. If revisiting Silver and Blaze's backstory is somehow a good business decision, they will allow it. If it's not... they won't.

The "Fearless: Year of Shadow" campaign has given me hope. Its success is hopefully proving to Sega-Sammy that fans do care about characters besides the main Team Sonic, and that mysteries and lore of the past can be addressed in games like Sonic X Shadow Generations. Whether it results in more leniency with using the extended cast in future games, such as Blaze and Silver, remains to be seen. Maybe the two need to be teased in a movie before they can get more attention lol. But I have hope that one day, my patience will have paid off, and I can update this article with the official truth of the matter.

Patience and hope: that's what Blaze offered Silver in Sonic 06. She supported him through his recklessness, stabilized him, and reminded him of what he was fighting for. But she also loved his passion, his drive for peace, and value of the truth. She loved how "naive" he was in the face of his seemingly impossible mission.

We fans are all a little naive. So for now, let's just wait and see.

[lightofraye]

Keep fighting the good fight!

I just wanted to comment on a few things:

1.) Every single time Danneel touched Jensen during the WCC panel, he immediately and significantly leaned away.

2.) In the infamous photo of Jensen, Danneel, and their friends (taken while they were dating in the late aughts), Jensen is heavily leaning away from Danneel. He is fully embracing the person next to him, making no active contact with Danneel. She, on the other hand, is plastered onto him from face to thighs, and shoving her hand up his shirts (so much so that his stomach is exposed). Also in that photo, in the back, on the opposite side? Riley. I would love to hear your analysis of that photo, and what you think about that whole messy situation.

I have personally speculated that one of the reasons Jensen initially stayed with Danneel was to save face after detonating a bomb in their social circle. They had to prove that they were really “in love” to justify and excuse the affair. From there, I think social pressure and apathy doomed him into marriage - and I think he’s too “old-school” to divorce her without major cause. They’ll probably be together until he actually catches her in bed with Steve. 🤷‍♀️

Hiiiiii!

Sorry it took me this long to get back to you!

Life happened and I wanted to know if you were okay with your name out there.

That said....

First, thank you SO much for the compliment! I super-appreciate it!

Comment away! I like discussing things!

1) YES! Even when she did that rather overly aggressive shove-pat and claimed to be joking, he turned away from her.

2) I know exactly what photo you're talking about! I can't find it right now but I know which one you mean! She was being overly possessive and clingy, as if to go "See? This is my man!" My lord, woman, show some class and dignity!

I'm told that photo was taken after they married--I believe--and by then they were doing a kind of WB/CW promo thing. Jensen and Riley are clearly professional enough to behave themselves, thankfully.

But I could tell Jensen was tense and not at all comfortable that Danneel was behaving in such a manner. She's always possessive and insecure, even now, which is a damned shame. True confidence stems from inside, not what they're wearing (that had been her answer once, when asked).

So… the timeline of when they got together and how varies because apparently it's hard to keep accurate information. Plus Danneel hired some company or other to scrub a lot of her bullshit off the internet. Thus a lot of her older mean girl tweets are gone.

That said… this is more or less accurate. Jensen was supposedly already broken up from his girlfriend. Danneel was not broken up from Riley. Supposedly they knew each other back from when Jensen helped make the Plight of Clownana. (I watched it on YouTube; it's hilarious.)

Fast forward a few years and Jensen and Danneel meet up again in the making of Ten Inch Hero. Jensen liked to amend years later in conventions that they fell for each other during the commute to filming, and even claimed once that he wrote her a note saying "Not now, someday."

(I believe that note thing is false, because it was brought up so many years later and not during the initial telling back when it happened. Plus, Danneel never brought it up during the Drama Queen podcast despite Jensen claiming she kept it--Danneel stated the only paper thing she kept was the birthday card from Hilarie.)

The problem is… you could tell even during their dating photos, their post-engagement photos and even during their freaking wedding… there was zero chemistry. Zero interest. Danneel was possessive, yes, but affectionate? No. It's even worse from Jensen to her--withdrawn, stiff. He used to be comfortable with PDA before her. Since they started dating then married, it's been bad. He's just not comfortable at all.

Last year at Crossroads, that kiss was painful. He was pulling away and she was forcing him.

Wales Comic Con opened some eyes and it's encouraging. It's not "cute" or "banter" or anything. Not when he actually put himself down and she didn't reassure him. Not once.

So to your theory as to one of the reasons Jensen stayed with Danneel. It's entirely possible… but they were going on 2-3 years of dating and it was only when Jared proposed to Genevieve that Jensen was given the ultimatum--lock her down or she was going to split.

Given it was barely weeks after Jared proposed, I can't help but wonder if Danneel made that threat at all because she felt in competition against Genevieve. She has been for a very long time.

Of course, there was no way Danneel was going to break it off with her money ticket. Ahem.

I do agree social pressure doomed him into the marriage. From the persistent gay rumors (poor guy had been dogged by them since Days of Our Lives) to his father's very harsh expectations… Jensen was in a no-win situation. Maybe he felt Danneel was "good enough" back then.

Then once the ring was on that finger, everything changed.

There's a reason why he says their marriage works better when they're apart--which, honestly, isn't a marriage at all.

So… will he ever divorce her? That is the million dollar question.

From my speculations of the abuse he's under and how hard it is for a victim to break free from that to other possible reasons why he may still stay with her… we can't know. We just don't know.

However, I hope he does. He seems happier, healthier, away from her. A relationship should be a foundation in which to build a good life; not one that drains you.

Thanks for the message. I really appreciate it and your patience.

[queersatanic]

Ok, regarding voting/not voting in the US presidential election because neither candidate is a good option: What other choice is there?

I want to understand because I've seen so many people say that voting for the lesser of two evils is pointless and that I must not actually care about marginalized/oppressed people if I choose to do so, but voting in the presidential election is one of the vanishingly few scraps of influence I feel we have in this country.

Does it amount to much? No. Am I happy about it? No. Are we actually living in a democracy? Not even a little bit. Am I under the impression that Kamala Harris would solve every problem ever had around the world? No, absolutely not. The way I see it, voting for Kamala definitely isn't solving problems. It's just preventing Trump from arriving on the scene to create more problems for us because the last thing any of us need on top of the colossal shit-storm we're all currently dealing with is more bullshit, and of the two viable options that we've been given, Kamala is the one that would give us less of that type of bullshit. Again, I'm not happy about it. I'm fully aware that this is a band-aid solution at best, but this is the most influential thing I can do as a US citizen. There is nothing else I could possibly do as a single individual to meaningfully sway who's in power here.

I'm lucky enough to live in a state that allows us to mail our ballots. Voting only takes me like, five minutes, and it seems worth doing if it prevents us from having Trump back in office, even if Kamala is only better by a miniscule fraction of an amount.

So, if voting is truly pointless, if there's truly zero difference between Kamala and Trump, what should we do instead? I really can't imagine an alternative that would result in swift, positive changes for anyone. (Again, not that voting would create swift, positive change either, but it at least seems like it would give us a better chance at positive change eventually.) Anarchy and protesting and raging against the machine are all well and good, but those are also things that will endanger and cause the deaths of vulnerable people, just as much as voting. Not that they aren't also worth doing, because they are, but it seems like it would be just as lengthy of a process and as impactful as it would be to vote in the election. And it's entirely possible to do those things on top of voting in an election. So I want to know what it is that I should be doing instead. Please help me understand. This is a genuine question, I'm not looking to argue, I want to know what other avenues there are and what I'm not seeing about the situation.

So, here is the simplest way to understand this: replace everything you are saying and thinking about "voting" with "signing a petition". It only takes a few minutes, it amounts to more than nothing, etc., etc.

Do you think that signing a petition — any petition — deserves to be given so much money, attention, conversation, and so on that it forms the boundary of political imagination and is used as a synecdoche for political action?

Sign a petition or don't; vote or don't vote. But it's not the most important thing you do, it shouldn't be the thing you devote hardly any of your life to, and it should not be how you neatly reduce other people around you.

This includes voting third party for president.

This includes writing in "Free Palestine" on your ballot.

This includes not voting at all.

The anarchist critique of electoralism is usually not even that you shouldn't do it but to recognize it for what it is: a mostly meaningless gesture over who you want to run the orphan-crushing machine. You can say that it's important to you to select someone who will read a land acknowledgment while operating the machine or that it's critical with global warming to have an orphan-crushing machine operator who will commit to installing solar panels by 2035 or that it's a moral imperative not to cooperate with the machine at all and express no opinion on who the operator ought to be. But none of that has anything to do with stopping the machine from crushing orphans, and the purpose of a system is what it does.

By the way, this is not new or something that privileged keyboard warriors invented in 2013. A hundred years before that, the Japanese anarchist Ōsugi Sakae wrote a short allegory called "The Chain Factory" about people wrapped in chains, making even more chains they add to it, and the only the factory boss has the key to free all of them.

The narrator wants to free himself, but he needs the help of others, and other people have different ideas about how to go about this.

There are so many who do not realize that they are bound by chains. There are many more still who, were they to realize it, would only be grateful for their chains. There are also many who, while not grateful, have resigned themselves to working industriously to forge their chains. And there are the many who, seeing the chain-making as ridiculous, frequently find openings in the watch of the guards to rest their bodies while harbouring selfish delusions in their heads and passionately spouting nonsense about actually being free and not bound by chains at all. It is more foolish than I can bear to watch. I then suddenly cast my gaze about. I found others around me that seemed to be aligned with me. They are few, and they are scattered all around. But they all desire the key to their bellies in the clutches of the master. And like me, they seem to be aware of being unable to take back their keys alone, so they whisper frequently to their neighbours to forge alliances. “They are few; we are many. They are outnumbered. If we act together, we can take back our keys in one fell swoop.” “However, since we make pronouncements about justice and peace, we must not permit violence. We must proceed through peaceful means. There is a simple way to do this.” “Once a year, we send a representative to the master to decide every aspect of our lives. All of those chaps in that meeting are representatives of the master, and if we muster up our own true representatives now, we can be the majority in the meeting, and that's how we can pass the resolutions that we want.” “All we need to do is shut up and forge the chains. Just continue to wrap the chains around ourselves. Then, when the day comes every few years that we choose our representative, we simply vote for our own representative.” Our representative will gradually loosen our chains, and will, ultimately, take back the key to our bellies from the master. We will then find ourselves in a factory under a new organization and a new system of our own ideals, with our chains in the hands of our representative.”

So, how does this relate your question of what you should be doing? Vote or don't vote in the five minutes it takes you. Find whatever slate recommendation you trust most and follow that, then turn it in or throw it away. But live your life.

Talk to your neighbors. Talk to your coworkers. Bring food to each other. Lend tools to one another. Be available to take people to the airport and pick them up from the hospital. Talk about rent. Talk about wages. Talk about working conditions. Exchange contact info so you don't have to call down the drone strike that is cops showing up in your neighborhood over people yelling. Take people into your home when you can so they can escape domestic violence. Shun rapists so they actually face consequences even if it comes at social cost you yourself. Yes, get trained on first aid and shooting, too.

If all that sounds small, you could argue that. It's certainly more personal. But it's the stuff you do every day to build relationships with another another outside of capitalism and hierarchy, or maybe it's just the cigarette burns you put into those things, hollowing them out.

You creating trust with your coworkers so that you can perform a work stoppage together on any day is much more significant that who you vote for on some day because no matter who you vote for president, they will side with "small business owners" and "main street" over your boss shorting you on your paycheck. You talking to fellow tenants about your living conditions matters much more than your vote for city council because even in the most overwhelming Democratic city, county, and state, your electeds will side with landlords over renters. When there is a hurricane or a heat wave or a pogrom, you will know each other and be there for each other.

Vote or don't vote. When you see a petition coming to put abortion rights on your state's ballot, feel free to sign it. But you'd better have other plans when the courts throw it out. You'd better have plans for when political coalitions who don't recognize you as legitimate regardless of what you and people like you do, because that antagonist coalition will ignore the courts and do what they want anyway.

Anti-electoralism is not about voting. It is about opposing the magical thinking that voting is efficacious or will save us from fascism. The special counsel Robert Muller will not save us from fascism, or the courts, or the media, or the Democrats, or the police. There is no "someone else will solve this for us" that you can rely on, so you should engage in a sort of realistic doomsday prepping that isn't just about bugging out and running off but about creating networks of mutual reliance that build up and exercise the muscles now you will need even more in the future.

[tenebriskukris]

Oshi No Ko Chapter 159 - My Thoughts/Analysis

This chapter certainly was one of the chapters of all time. Spoilers for Oshi No Ko Chapter 159 below.

We start off the chapter with Nino stabbing Ruby. I honestly half expected not to come back to this scene and instead focus on another character before the stabbing but it seems the manga is deciding to deal with these plot developments. 

Everything we did would be pointless if Ai wasn’t number one. And so would everyone’s death. Hmmmmm. I wonder if she’s talking about a certain dead actress that Hikaru dealt with a few dozen chapters ago.

DAMN Ichigo finally doing something! Seems that Detective Akane has caught Nino red handed. I’ll have plenty of paragraphs to vomit up on This Garbage Twist later, I’m sure. And with Ruby now out of Nino’s reach—that’s more or less game over for Nino. Hopefully we’ll be able to hear her squeal about her deal with Hikaru and all that jazz.

This entire scene is just hilarious in how soap opera it is. What if Nino decided to stab Ruby in the neck instead of the stomach? What if she brought a gun? What if she just had a pipe or a sword or any kind of blunt weapon and decided to beat her to death? A knife proof vest is cool and all—but there are so many ways Nino could’ve attempted to kill Ruby and a knife proof vest wouldn’t have done much of anything. It’s a small nitpick, but one that betrays the manga’s lack of thought put into this scene. 

Now that I think about it—how did Nino even find this area where Akane sprung the trap??? The answer is that Nino’s been stalking Ruby but I find that explanation doubtful—is what I would say if the manga would show us things instead of force feeding them to us. I need a giant anvil with the words “SHOW DON’T TELL” written on it to fall on the writers’ heads. 

Sorry, what? Ryosuke managed to rizz up Nino? With how terrible they both were as people they more than deserve each other but I am squinting very heavily at this. Nino being Ryosuke’s boyfriend in the past would’ve been very much publicized if it got out publicly—did Ichigo not tell the police about it? Perhaps this is how Aqua figured out that Nino was involved with Ai’s murder? I’ll need to think about this more after the chapter. 

When I told him to die, he obeyed me just like that. Well there goes my remaining sympathy for Nino as a person. She wasn’t even a very good character but one could make a half-baked case for her being not as bad as a person as she was before this chapter but with this revelation it’s just not looking very good for her.

If Ai was nothing but an ordinary girl, what would that make us then? Also ordinary people, but it’s easier to believe that Ai was special than recognize your own inferiority, it seems. Just like Ichigo I have zero sympathy for her. Throw her down the garbage chute and let’s dispense with this horribly written antagonist so we can get back to the important bits. 

Ai just wanted to be normal friends with you. That’s what Ruby said, Akane? Maybe this moment would’ve been more poignant if Ruby herself was telling it to her, you know???

Who on earth made you and Ryosuke do this? Hikaru’s figure looms over in the distance. 

The concert??? Bit of an odd scene change from the last few panels but I guess we’re just chugging along. This manga isn’t disproving the horrible pacing allegations any time soon. The first concert had a good amount of setup and you’d think the final concert would share similar or better writing quality but unfortunately not. 

Ruby with dual white star eyes!!! That’s my girl! And she’s pointing to a star, too! Crow Girl’s words echoing back to this concert…

SHE DID THE AI POSE!!! THE ONE ON THE FIRST COVER HOLY SHIT! RUBY FANS ARE EATING GOOD TONIGHT!

And another scene cut. To…Hikaru and Aqua? It’s odd that he wasn’t at the concert but I suppose if he had known about some of this beforehand he would be here instead of at the concert but I’m curious to see how this interaction pans out—did Hikaru call him here or has Aqua been following him around?

You’re a nasty liar who’s been telling lies for your own sake. And the final panel with Hikaru’s grinning face. Well then—let’s see how this pans out before the end of the line. 

I have a lot of thoughts about this chapter—but I’ll start with the trap that Akane set for Nino.

I spent a good amount of time in my last analysis ruminating on how Ruby would survive her stabbing. didn’t give the possibility that Akane disguising herself as Ruby any consideration not because I didn’t consider said possibility—but because I felt like it was yet an objectively bad writing decision for the manga to take—and yet I couldn’t help but be completely unsurprised when it actually happened. 

This “plot twist” is poorly executed. In a vacuum, this turn of events is completely fine, but this manga has already been allergic to good pacing for some time now so the scene falls completely flat on its face. This is a type of twist that had little to no preparation behind it and even contradicts the characters’ previous behavior.

Aqua has consistently refused to let Akane participate in his revenge scheme despite her being more than willing to do so—that’s one of the points that they talked about when they broke up. He refuses to let other people help him for his revenge even though it would be helpful to him—so him getting Akane on board without showing the viewer a single thing leading to this development doesn’t pass the sniff test—it’s an asspull.

While canny viewers would be able to guess at the fact that Akane disguised herself as Ruby, the basis for that logical assumption was built on sand—there simply wasn’t enough basis for that conclusion besides a single panel that we saw in the last chapter—and yet it happened. It’s a contradiction between how the characters were previously characterized and the events of the narrative. In an ideal scenario a decent writer would be able to bridge that gap before a plot twist like this was to occur—and at the very least explain it in some detail after the twist has been settled—but considering the manga didn’t even give us the good graces to SHOW US that Akane and Aqua were now working together to catch Nino I don’t expect the manga to deliver us that kind of self-reflection. Just speedrunning to the ending to the manga’s detriment.

The funny thing is that I like this idea—but the execution is straight up trash. It would be a believable sequence of events if this beat was given the time to breathe—Aqua swallowing his reservations and asking Akane for help when Ruby’s safety is put into question. It gives Akane something to do and helps flesh out how much Aqua cares for Ruby that he would go to these lengths for her. Give us insight into how Aqua and Akane are now working together and how they both independently came to the conclusion that Nino was also part of Ai’s murder.

Now—Ryosuke and Nino. I’m oddly ambivalent on this matter. Reframing Ryosuke’s actions with what we hear from Nino is just—meh. It makes his words to Ai when he murdered her and his behavior kind of, I dunno. Hypocritical? But anyone who decided to murder their favorite idol and then hang themselves because their partner said so definitely isn’t right in the head so I can forgive some of that.

This Nino-Ryosuke connection does sort of nag at me, however. Ryosuke as a character didn’t need this additional bit of characterization. His demeanor as an obsessed idol fan, while horrible, is partially grounded in reality. It doesn’t break the suspension of disbelief that some crazed fan who was stuck in a parasocial relationship with his favorite idol would do something like this since stakers assaulting Japanese idols isn’t unheard of. I dunno—it doesn’t really add anything to him but it doesn’t detract anything either? Does feel a bit like an asspull, though. You’d think Ichigo would tell the police that Nino and Ryosuke were in a relationship after Ai got stabbed but I guess he could’ve done that to protect Nino since he wasn’t sure she was involved? Still, this entire Nino-Ryosuke connection is just a minor nitpick in the stack of more objectively bad decisions that the manga has made in the last ten chapters alone that I don’t feel as much grief into ripping it apart because it’s just not that interesting.

I guess linking Nino and Ryosuke does answer some nagging questions that the series has thrown at the reader in a completely backhanded way. We know that it’s likely that Ryosuke met Hikaru at the hospital where the twins were born through Crow Girl’s words and it’s through him that he likely also met Nino which ties the three of them all together. Did the manga do this intentionally? Absolutely not—it isn’t as smart as it appears to be and certainly isn’t well written enough for me to conjure up hypothetical answers to questions that it should have the decency to answer before the manga culminates. 

The concert is also a topic I have some thoughts about. For one—it was a bit of a shitefest. I loved the Ruby panels, don’t get me wrong, but you’d think that the final idol concert for Kana would get bit more setup—especially with Ruby and Mem’s thoughts on Kana leaving, or hell, anything that wouldn’t make these panels feel too much like a slideshow of images without much substance. Alot of style—very little substance. 

A small thing that made me laugh was that Ruby was upstaging Kana at her own graduation concert. Very much deserved after Kana took the spotlight during the first B-Komachi concert despite her being, y’know, an actor.

In any case—it’s downright impossible to deny the Ruby-Ai parallels after this chapter and That One Panel. While I am dissatisfied in many aspects on how Ruby’s journey to surpass Ai was executed—it’s clear that the idea was horribly butchered because of how the manga was generally soaring downhill instead of the idea itself being objectively bad. I still like the development, of course, but I am more than willing to throw rotten tomatoes at some of the horrible writing decisions that the authors have done to her throughout the series. The fact that Ruby only got a decent amount screentime at the fucking halfway point of the series is a crime.

Now the big one. Hikaru and Aqua’s second confrontation. Honestly? I’m game with Hikaru taking back the role of the main antagonist because Nino was such a middling character and antagonist herself but whether or not this rug pull was a good choice depends heavily on how they deal with this in the next chapter. I won’t speculate too much on something that’ll depend on how the manga goes about it but I doubt that Hikaru’s going to get “redeemed” in any major capacity. I suspect he’ll lash out after hearing that Ai loved him all along or didn’t believe Ai’s words through the video—which, fair, he has that right considering how harsh Ai was with him during their breakup—but whether or not he’ll still be in an antagonistic role is still an open question.

Whatever happens with him, I doubt it’ll be well executed. The glaring flaws in the manga are becoming more and more evident every chapter and I doubt we’ll see the end of this manga’s bullshittery until everything’s finally run its course.

[skania]

Aqua, Akane & Chapter 98

I had a lot of thoughts about Chapter 97 and I've got almost as many about Chapter 98. No theories though, this is just the way I personally read their interactions this chapter lol

First thing that stood out to me is how recurrent this bridge is in Aqua and Akane's big scenes.

The way they have been saving each other over and over in this very bridge is remarkable, and I'm fully expecting them to have another big scene there if Aka chooses to go down the AquaKane route.

The second thing that stood out to me is the face Aqua makes when Akane says that she thought someone pushed her down the stairs.

It's like Aqua is seeing a preview of what could happen to Akane if he allows her to keep getting involved in his revenge. It makes him beg her to stop doing dangerous things (and we recently saw him beg Ruby to stop living her life for revenge in c122).

In my c97 thoughts, I said that I feel like Akane's wording and demeanor last chapter gave away the fact that she found Aqua's dad.

I feel like c98 indirectly validates that reading, because we now see Aqua's give away the fact that he knows what Akane is up to.

In both cases, Aqua and Akane read each other like a book because they have come to know each other too well. And so, Aqua knows that Akane is about to figure out just how he managed to get there in time.

Aqua's expression here is important because we can't see his face when he begs Akane to stay safe, but we can at least see the aftermath. To me he looks sad, contrite. And the placement of the speech bubble suggests that his expression also has a lot to do with what is about to happen.

You're really sharp, Akane

This panel is one of my favorites:

Akane's sharpness is a trait Aqua has always valued in her, and now it's one of the reasons he has to walk away from her. The irony is likely not lost on him.

That pause is Aqua getting ready to act emotionless. After this point, he will only show emotion once.

It also tells me that in Chapter 97 Aqua did already know that Akane was aware of the loophole. After all, in Chapter 95, Ichigo reminds Aqua that he is smart enough to realize his dad is still alive. Since Akane is so sharp, it goes without saying that such a thing wouldn't have been lost on her.

The GPS

I have to pause here because something that broke my disbelief while reading was... how could Akane immediately tell that the tracker was in the keychain? I know she's sharp but she's no sorceress lol

Only thing that makes sense to me is assuming that the keychain was a gift from Aqua. I feel this would explain why Akane zeroes it on it right away. However, I think the actual reason is that Aka literally came up with it on the spot and we aren't supposed to think that deeply about it lmao Same goes for Aqua being able to guess Kamiki's identity based on Akane's movements. Like all we see Akane do is a) meet up with fellow Lala Lai troupers b) cross a bridge. How in the world was that enough for Aqua to narrow it down to Kamiki? Either I'm missing something, or Aka just wanted to move things along asap without bothering with the details 😂

I digress though! In any case, I know that the tracker was a deal breaker for a lot of people. Personally, it changes nothing for me because of the time period in which he planted it. Aqua says that he installed it "some time" after LoveNow ended, and the fact that he doesn't say "Some time after Tokyo Blade started" or anything along those lines suggests that it did happen before the play.

Which means, it happened back when Aqua did intend to use Akane. But the thing is, he never gets around to using her the way he intended to.

Case in point, he himself says that he thought Akane "may be able to find something out". Except he gives her the information she needs only after he thinks his revenge is already over lol

For me the actual question is when does Aqua start using that GPS?

Technically, it should be anywhere between Chapter 95 and Chapter 98, so it is possible that Aqua was already using it by Chapter 97 and that when he calls Akane, he has already been tracking her. His "Are you up to something?" can indeed lend credence to this theory depending on how you read it.

Personally though, I can't help but think that he started using it after Chapter 97. The reason being that by the beginning of Chapter 97, Aqua has every reason to guess Akane is already aware of the loophole, but he has little reason to believe Akane has found his dad. I'd argue that Akane being aware of the loophole isn't enough reason for Aqua to start using the GPS; she has been aware of it for an entire year, starting to use the GPS wouldn't change anything at that point. Their phone-call, however, does let Aqua know that Akane has likely found his dad and that she is up to something, so it gives Aqua enough reasons to start tracking her.

Regardless of when it happened, I think the GPS ironically serves to establish a clear contrast between the kind of relationship Aqua intended to have with Akane and the kind of relationship they ended up having. The GPS was there so he could use Akane as a tool, yet the GPS ends up being a tool so he can free Akane from his revenge.

That's just me as a reader, though. Akane as a character is very much bothered by the GPS and I loved every second of it.

Trust & Choices

I have to thank Aka for letting Akane explain her perspective to antis not that they will listen. It's not that Akane "is fine" being Aqua's "pet" or "his property". She very much isn't.

It's that Aqua has never made her feel that way before now. The moment when Aqua could have lied to her to string her along, Akane asks him to be honest and Aqua complies.

He doesn't tell her that he wants to use her for something, sure, but what he does say is enough for Akane to read between the lines. Akane chooses to go along with it because she trusts Aqua's intentions. Since Aqua is inherently a good, kind person, Akane trusts him and wants to help him.

So the GPS shakes Akane for two reasons. On one hand, this is the first time she hasn't had a choice in her relationship with Aqua. I'd even go as far as saying that "Choices" are part of the very foundation of their dynamic.

Back when Akane was lost, Aqua didn't push his own wants and expectations onto her. He let her make her own choice, and once she did, Aqua did everything in his power to help her. I turn, Akane tries to do the same for him throughout their relationship, but this is probably a topic for another day lol

The point is, when it comes to Aqua, Akane has been deciding for herself all along. Aqua kisses her to trap her in a relationship with him, yet confesses that he doesn't see her as a woman and thus that their relationship is fake; Akane chooses to become his girlfriend fully knowing this. Later, Aqua confesses that there is someone he wants to kill and Akane chooses to help him. Lastly, Aqua kisses her for real and Akane chooses to date him.

Each time, Akane could have walked away. Each time, Akane chooses to get closer to Aqua instead. This is why she says that if Aqua had just asked her, she would've been fine with the GPS—because she trusts him. All she asks is that he trust her in turn—and Akane believes that he does, until now.

That's the second reason why she is so distraught over this. Since Aqua plants it without asking her and doesn't come clean about it while they're dating, Akane feels like she got it wrong.

Equals

Aqua can't even look her in the eye while saying that lmao

Akane thought that she had an equal relationship with Aqua, one based on trust (and choices). As far as I'm concerned, she is right. She was (and is) his match in every sense of the word, whether intellectually or emotionally.

But it wouldn't be in Aqua's best interests to correct her. After all, he needs to walk away from Akane. The less she thinks of him and of their relationship, the better. So, he focuses on exposing Akane's contradiction instead.

Akane says that she would have helped him in any way, but would she? Now that she knows that Aqua desperately craves freedom and that his revenge would ruin him, would Akane have allowed him to pursue it?

Her thoughts and actions betray the fact that she wouldn't have wanted Aqua to choose revenge, which brings me to:

What exactly was Akane planning to do?

Given her thoughts here, it doesn't feel like Akane is focusing on what she is about to do but on the aftermath. She says that she was just planning to talk to Kamiki and that she brought the knife "just in case", and I think this may very well be the truth.

But, the thing is... that shows Akane wasn't thinking straight.

I have no doubt that being able to talk to him would've let Akane gauge the kind of person Kamiki is, but... what then? Would she just walk away, leaving a literal knife in that bouquet of flowers for him to find? That makes no sense. Was she planning to egg him on enough that he would attack her, giving her the excuse to act in self-defense? That makes more sense, but it's also a terrible plan. Anything could have gone wrong. To say Akane was being reckless would be an understatement.

Whatever it was that she was thinking of doing, she clearly didn't think it through. She was as blinded as Aqua once was by his desire to be free of his revenge. In her haste, Akane doesn't stop to think about herself and her own well-being.

Which ironically means that she misses the forest for the trees.

Because Aqua would break if something were to happen to her, even more so if he is the indirect cause of her misfortune.

Contradiction

Since Akane won't prioritize herself over Aqua, Aqua takes himself out of the equation.

Akane wants to be together with Aqua, but she'd rather shoulder his burdens on her own than seeing him suffer. Aqua wants to be together with Akane (he says so himself, he doesn't want to let go of the days when she's by his side), but he'd rather shoulder his burdens on his own than putting her in danger.

This is both funny and sad, he really isn't suited for revenge lol Aqua could have walked away, could have let Akane have that last, terrible impression of him. But he doesn't. He once again asks Akane to stop doing dangerous things, looking sad while he is at it—the second time he can't help but show emotion during their conversation.

And now it's Akane's turn to point out the way his words are at odd with his actions.

Akane made herself into the perfect tool for his revenge, all on her own. Not only is she brilliant enough to find his dad for him, she is willing to throw herself into the lion's den for him. She is even willing to potentially kill for him.

And yet, Aqua walks away from her because he can't bear the thought of Akane putting herself in danger. This alone proves that he doesn't see her as a tool.

Aqua didn't want her to carry his burden, he just wanted her to be there by his side.

Akane desperately tries to fix her mistake, to fulfill the promise of companionship that she once made him, but it's too late and she knows it.

She knows that Aqua is about to ruin himself by pursuing his revenge, and she is willing to ruin herself right alongside him just so he doesn't have to be alone, but Aqua won't let her.

After all, not letting his girlfriend die is a boyfriend's job.

Black Stars

By saying that he plans to go to hell by himself, Aqua confirms Akane's worst fears: he has taken a wrong turn. He is turning his back on happiness and freedom—on the future—and chaining himself to the lonely, bitter path of revenge—to his past.

You took a wrong turn, Akane tells him. I know, Aqua confirms as he turns away from her.

The imagery is poignant, as so is the fact that Aqua only gets his black stars after turning his back on Akane. This right here is what stood out the most to me in this chapter, because Aqua doesn't get his black stars after finding out that his father is alive—he gets them only after walking away from Akane!

Why? Because as he says so himself, his happy days were by her side. The moment Aqua walks away from her, he is knowingly giving up on the naive thought of being happy.

This is extremely important—or at least, good writing says that it should be, even more so in light of all the parallels between the way Ruby gets her Black Stars and the way Aqua gets his—and it suggest that Akane may get her wish just yet.

She desperately wanted to save him, but she went about it the wrong way. If she had told him that she found Kamiki, there is a chance they could've worked together to catch him. But Akane messed up by taking the burden upon herself instead of giving herself the weight and importance Aqua himself gives her... and now Aqua is messing up by refusing to give his life any worth and by taking the weight of revenge squarely upon his shoulders.

It's also important to note that Aqua isn't choosing revenge because he wants to, but because he feels that he has to. He feels like he has no choice.

It makes sense. After all, he has come to realize that even if he tries to go on with his life, the people he loves will try to take revenge in his stead. Ruby. Akane. Even Ichigo.

So Aqua decides to doom himself and only himself.

To wrap this up, I can't help but to bring up the chapter title, "Going Astray". After all, Akane in this chapter represents all the good Aqua is walking away from in order to choose revenge.

So all in all, I feel like the stage is set up for Aqua to be saved from this burden—and for Akane to (hopefully) play a big role in making this possible.

[liskantope]

I think part of the reason I tend to get so argumentative nowadays about "what your side proposes kills people" -type political talking points is that it seems that this is being used more and more frequently as a rhetorical bludgeon, mainly (though not entirely) from the Left. There's a lot of shutting down of arguments based on "but HUMAN LIVES", and it's begun to feel to me like a disturbing trend. For instance, a good bit of the rhetoric in favor of shutting down schools in 2020-2021 seemed to center on "here, look at my computation that the expected value of children's lives lost if we don't shut down schools is greater than zero; anyone who disagrees with us doesn't VALUE HUMAN LIVES", with the effect that a lot of us (including to some extent me) were blinded for a long time to the absolutely devastating effect such extensive school shutdowns (in some geographic areas) had on children and their whole families, an effect that is still scarring them today. I'm not saying anything about whether or how far those school shutdown policies went wrong, just that they had very substantial harmful effects that don't vanish relative to the VALUE OF HUMAN LIVES.

Then there's the now-everyday claim that the anti-trans culture warriors "ARE KILLING US [TRANS PEOPLE]", which is true under a particular interpretation of "killing" and tragically true to an extent pretty well beyond some vanishingly rare extreme cases but is also transparently being used to drown out most other aspects of the debates around trans issues. Much more disturbing still is the accusation I now semi-regularly see casually flung that conservatives "actively want us [trans or LGBT+ people in general] dead" (I think I've occasionally seen left-wing variations on this that aren't even about LGBT+ people). A couple of months ago I called it "stomach-turning" ("it" being both the content of the accusation itself and the fact that so many people in our cultural discourse have seen fit to use it; this of course was semi-willfully misinterpreted by someone as my saying that trans people turn my stomach), and I reiterate now that it's still completely turning my stomach. This example is different from others in some fundamental ways, some of which make me more sympathetic with why people feel driven to use it (and it's not being used to drown out completely unrelated issues, for instance, like the guns thing is), and the general rhetorical weapon of "the other side wants to kill us" deserves its own effortpost which I intend to write later this summer.

So anyway, yeah, I'm also getting a kind of short fuse around insinuations of "what they show kids in school won't kill them, but guns could, so that's the only issue involving schoolchildren that anyone should care about" that I now see daily.

Of course, invocations of "my cause is the one whose stakes directly involve life or death so it outranks everything else" isn't exclusive to the Left at all. The Right has been doing it for decades with abortion to shut down both the abortion debate and whatever unrelated debate they didn't want to have ("millions of babies are being MURDERED each year, while liberals obsess over [women's bodies] [or] [just about any totally unrelated issue which appears frivolous next to MURDER]"). I also vaguely remember something that sounded like this in the post-9/11 years ("we're the ones looking out for Americans who might be KILLED in the next terrorist attack, that has to be the only priority right now"). And there was that bizarre "death panels" accusation around 2010-2011 when Obamacare was being debated which I guess might also count.

Only loosely related, but I'm reminded of a moment in the very first vice presidential debate, between Bob Dole and Walter Mondale in 1976, where Dole invoked a computation of the number of deaths in wars the US engaged in under Democratic versus Republican presidents, and apparently he got a lot of blowback from how underhanded this rhetorical move came across.

[dc-polls]

"That Really Happened?!" DC Comics Tournament Entry #20

So I Married a Protean and No One Told Me

[ID: A series of comic panels showing Garth and Ayla talking in the woods. Garth is walking with a group of proteans that look like small white bipedal blobs. One of them says, "Garth you are not. A protean you are. Human body. Without protean powers, yes... But with Proty-1 mind. Ever since resurrection..." From behind a bush Ayla exclaims, "What?!"

Garth says, "No! I've been living as Garth for twenty years! And I finally realize the... life I've built... my family... is the only thing that really matters. I can't risk losing them. Not even for Kid Quantum." The proteans ask, "Are sure? Won't come with us?" To which he responds, "I can't I'm sorry." /END ID]

What Happened?

In the Golden and Silver Age, the death of a hero was a big deal. The cycle of cynical events based around the death or return of a beloved character hadn't started yet. So it was rare and shocking when Garth "Lightning Lad" Ranzz, one of the founders of the 30th century Legion of Super-Heroes perished in battle with Zaryan the Conqueror. He stayed dead for about a year (in publishing time) until he was returned to life by the sacrifice of Chameleon Boy's pet, a shapechanging blob named Proty, by transfering its life energy to Lightning Lad's corpse by means of a lightning rod (it's 30th century science, you wouldn't get it). Chameleon Boy would later adopt another Protean pet (named Proty-II, natch) and Garth would return to active service, lose and regain an arm, and marry his sweetheart, Imra "Saturn Girl" Ardeen.

Following the very successful Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen run on the title, the DC launched volume 4 of The Legion of Super-Heroes in 1989, which would become known as the "Five Years Later" run, due to the in-universe time skip between volumes. This run was co-written by Giffen and husband and wife superfans Tom and Mary Bierbaum, who slowly started incorporating fan theories into the run. The series already had to deal with having to fix Legion continuity following Crisis on Infinite Earths, and while some of these retcons were successful (Mon-El replacing Superboy), many were controversial (Shvaughn Erin, who I will also be submitting).

Late in the run, it is revealed that the lightning rod ceremony did revive the body, but not the mind of Lightning Lad. Instead, it transferred Proty's mind into Garth's body, meaning every Lightning Lad story since 1963 had actually been a Proty story! This information is revealed to Garth's sister Ayla (Light/Lightning Lass) but, unless I am forgetting anything, not to his wife Saturn Girl! This, along with other controversial plot developments (like the destruction both the moon and the Earth) would eventually lead to DC rebooting the Legion during the Zero Hour crossover event in the mid-90s.

--

Tournament polls will be posted after all entries are up. As always you can find all posts related to the tournament using #dc-polls-trh

[zentloper-xmas]

Greetings all,

I’m writing on Christmas Eve this year. For a few years now I’d been considering going “all digital” with my Christmas letter. This year I guess it’s finally happening because every time the thought passed my mind to sit down and write it, I always had at least two other “bigger” priorities breathing down my neck preventing me from doing so. Plus, have you SEEN the price of stationery and postage?? Oh, nevermind, you probably have…

The year has taken us many fun places, like up to Chicago, IL in April, Big Bend National Park in May, Oklahoma City, OK in July, the Waikoloa Resort in Hawai’i with the in-laws in August, and Nashville, TN in November (with a quick stop over at Dollywood in Knoxville– I’ve always wanted to go, and I came back with a fabulous pair of turquoise boots bedazzled with fringe!). Always thankful for the ability to travel, see new things, and have some adventures together with my hubbie!

I also find myself as Vice President of a local non-profit (it’s that LGBTQK+ org I mentioned in last year’s letter). Neil and I got very involved with volunteering, event planning/hosting, and community outreach, and the result was a nomination in the group’s elections in November. Neil got a slot too: Membership Coordinator! Being VP pairs well thus far with my titleholder responsibilities, which includes going to conventions for panels, running educational classes, making appearances at events to schmooze, and judging contests. One of my biggest successes this year was implementation of not one but TWO ten kilometer fun runs (one in the spring and one in the fall) that I hosted as fundraisers and to raise awareness/visibility for transgender folk. I’ll be continuing that in 2025. The work  all feels very rewarding, especially when folks who I don’t even personally know will come up to tell me that the authentic way I live my life inspires them to do the same. Wow. That’s awesome stuff, y’all.

Only somewhat tangentially, I don’t know if you’ve heard but there’s a lot of anti-trans legislature hitting the Texas Senate/House in 2025 (39 of them have been pre-filled, to be precise). There were 669 such bills across the US last year (thankfully only 48 of which passed– which is still too many, but we count our blessings where we can). The majority of these bills target education, healthcare, and legal recognition, and there’s been a massive spike since 2023. (If you’re looking for a helpful resource to stay informed, I suggest: https://translegislation.com/ ) I’ve watched with sadness as transphobia has been ramping up in our country for the past decade (for reference, I came out and began transitioning mid-2011, a relatively safe time and place [California] to do so), and this year on Transgender Day of Remembrance (a day to memorialize the lives of trans folk who were lost due to anti-trans violence celebrated annually on November 20th) the death toll was at 33+.

I hope you won’t mind if I get up on my soapbox a moment just to say none of this is okay. I’m not okay with this. I ache for my trans siblings, especially our trans youth. That number hit me hard this year, and I’ve been doing all I can to get involved, speak out, and educate those I can reach with my platforms.

If any of this is stirring concern about MY personal safety as a trans person, know that I’m statistically good. I’m white (statistically-speaking, POC are more targeted), I’m male (statistically-speaking, trans women are more targeted), and I pass* so well that the average person I meet out on the street has zero clue I’m not cis (until I tell them that is, because I’m very open about working it into conversations in a form of what I like to call “every day advocacy”). Neil and I also created a “go bag” of necessary supplies and have an emergency action plan in place in the event something really bad were to occur in Texas and we needed to leave IMMEDIATELY for my safety. Kinda shitty we feel a need to have these preparations in place, but such is the world we currently live in. It’s not a matter of fear, but realism: A lot of folks out there would rather I was dead.

*btw “pass” or “passing”  is an outdated term, though still the most common parlance you’re likely to hear; a better term is “cis-presenting” rather than “cis-passing”.

Turning back to lighter matters… the Buda Library claims that I’ve saved $1,185.43 by renting rather than buying. I’ve been devouring every book they put on the shelf that relates to transgenderism, gender identity, gender-creative parenting, with a sprinkling of challenges facing women too. (I’m glad the resources are there for everyone to read– go Buda! <3) I just find all this subject matter so fascinating… and often encouraging as society progresses gradually toward a kinder, more accepting world. I hope you won’t mind if I drop a bunch of book recs like I did last time. Partake if you will (I hope you will!):

“Raising Kids Beyond the Binary: Celebrating God's Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children” by Jamie Bruesehoff

“Men Who Hate Women: The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All” by Laura Bates

“He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters” by Schuyler Bailar

Oh, and I got a new tattoo! It’s a balloon doggie with spots like a dalmatian! Xyr* name is Speckle. <3

*Xyr is a “neopronoun” used in place of their, his, or her; I’ve been experimenting with the use of xe/xem/xyr on non-gendered entities like plushies to get more used to using alternative pronouns.

Have a wonderful holiday and a splendid 2025 ahead,

Rick & Neil

[absolutedoorknob]

Pearl’s Red Dress— A Costume Breakdown

Pearl— the prequel to X, directed by Ti West. A story about a young (murderous) girl and her ambitions to leave the family farm to become…. A star! (The murder of at least three people sold separately, batteries not included)

Okay, I’ll confess: I haven’t seen the movie yet. I got about… 60% through of X before I realized that due to the rambunctious sex noises, it was probably a movie best suited for viewing when my family wasn’t home.. and I have not had the time to go back and watch X and then Pearl. I’m still trying to figure out a way to watch it with my sibling (whom I have made sit through eight saw movies, Jordan Peele’s Nope, Talk to Me, and Thanksgiving).

But I am armed with two of my greatest resources when it comes to costume breakdowns:

Pinterest

My eyesight (which is definitely 20/20 and I have never worn glasses in my life no I am not lying)

So, here it is: Pearl’s red dress: an analysis and some cosplay tips.

So: Pearl’s red dress is her mother’s dress, borrowed (stolen?) for her audition to become a star. The movie takes place in 1918, and because Pearl’s family is a little strapped for cash at the moment, plus along with her mother’s frugal tendencies, it’s safe to assume that the dress dates anywhere from 1910 onward, as I feel that it’s unlikely that a dress would be any older than that with zero remarks on it being out of style. This means that the dress is an ~Edwardian~ dress.

Now, my understanding of Edwardian fashion is loose at best, so take everything I say with like fifteen grains of salt. What marks the Edwardian era for me is two things:

Decrease in sleeve puff. We’ve moved away from Leg of Mutton sleeves and they will slowly grow more and more narrow in shape until the 20s, give or take, but we still have some gathers.

The smoothening of the front post-pidgeon breast period. A lot of Victorian bodices have very structured seaming and have a very “tailored” look compared with the relative softness of Edwardian bodices.

Compare and constrast Bernadette Banner’s Victorian waistcoat look (yes it’s a waistcoat my point still stands here) versus the 1910 Jolly Holiday Edwardian gown.

Now, based off of my very surface level research, Pearl’s dress seems closest to the style of the lingerie dress, which makes sense because a) this is clearly a nicer dress, and it makes sense to be a style that was generally “nicer” and b) the farm is in the South USA, so it also makes sense in context for this dress to be a lighter dress.

That leads us to another question, though. Why red? Well, the answer is simple. Red shows up on camera excellently, especially with the colour grading the movie used, and also… this is Pearl’s mom’s dress, and that woman is way too practical to have a white dress when they live on a farm.

So… what makes up Pearl’s dress?

Out of cursory examination, the bodice is made out of one front piece with possible darts for basic fitting underneath all that lace, and has two back pieces. It buttons in the back, and in the front there are fake buttons. The sleeves look bunchy here, but based off of the other images I’ve seen, they do end above the elbows with a cuff at least two inches wide.

I can’t see any seams on the skirt, but I’m guessing it’s made of at least three panels. From my cursory knowledge about Edwardian skirts, particularly lingerie skirts, they are quite ‘trumpet shaped’. This shape is partially achieved by a slight train, and a ruffle at the bottom. Pearl has a ruffle, but the train? Well…

The picture above seems like it has just the slightest train, but while she’s dancing on stage, she doesn’t seem to have it?

(Yes the above image is hot garbage. I’m working with Pinterest’s finest here)

Now, the lace! On the bodice is at least four types of lace. This is the best guess I have after looking at many many pictures and playing around with the settings to see if I could change the contrast. There is also lace above the sash and right above where the ruffle is sewn on.

So to make this dress, I started looking for patterns I searched high. I searched low. I searched the big four pattern website. Eventually I just googled Edwardian dress patterns. And then I found it. The perfect pattern.

The 1914 Afternoon Dress from Sense and Sensibility patterns. the bodice is basically perfect: back closures, a smooth front that can be adapted to wear with or without a corset. Now, from what the pictures show of the skirt, it’s smooth in the front and gathered in the back but the shape is not perfect when it comes to the trumpet shape, but the actual dress doesn’t have it. Personally, I would just flare the panels a bit more to get some more swoosh, and the ruffle would have to be added, but that would be simple because ruffles are basically just rectangles!

All that’s left to do is add enough lace to kill a horse, braid your hair, and definitely not chase your sister in law with an axe!

Happy sewing!

[luckyandtheheartbreakers]

Happy Pride Month! This is a story about where I came from.

I'm Sorry For Being Gay

As a child, you don't really understand what is appropriate or inappropriate for an adult to do. You interact with so many adults and often they do things that are bad, stupid, irresponsible and selfish, especially to children. Growing up in an evangelical church, I was mentored and had my perception of life shaped by religious teachers, pastors and leaders. 

I was seven. Seven years old and in first grade. My birthday is right on the first day of school, so my mom didn't put me in kindergarten until I turned six, to avoid me being less mature and smaller than all the other kids. For me, it meant an extra year of hanging out with my mom 24/7, which I enjoyed. My mom and I were quite the duo; I was usually well tempered and she enjoyed playing little games with me and singing little songs with me in the car and when we were shopping. In grocery stores she would get compliments on how handsome I was. How doughy and cute my face was, how precious my big, bright blue eyes were, how thick and full my hair was. This usually made my mom uncomfortable, because the ladies would always sexualize me in some way. 

“He's going to be breaking so many hearts when he gets into school!”

“Let me know when he turns eighteen!!”

“He's so cute I could just snatch him up.” 

My mom felt weird about these comments, but only told me about her feelings when I was older. 

I missed sitting in the booster seat in my parents’ faux wood paneled Dodge Caravan with my mom, singing Veggie Tales songs and talking about the people we knew. I missed watching Mister Rogers with her and going to the library with her in the morning and grabbing McDonald's breakfast "if we are lucky."

Now, I was in the entry way of my first grade classroom, looking at my teacher, Miss Lindt. She had short hair, which my Sunday school teacher Kathleen said was for hussies and street walkers. I didn't know what either of those things meant, but I knew they were bad by the way Kathleen scrunched her nose and looked away from the kids at church as she said it. 

Miss Lindt was looking down at a packet of papers on her desk when I was entering, blocking her view of me. I stood and watched.

Growing up evangelical, you see a lot of anger, both "righteous" and wrathful. My parents weren't angry people, but a lot of people in my church were. I wanted to be invisible to adults, to fly under their radar. The kids who I went to school with made this impossible. As I studied Miss Lindt’s face, a classmate of mine entered the classroom behind me and pushed me out of his way. The door handle jabbed into my side as his mom brushed past me. I teared up a little, a weak little kid. 

Miss Lindt looked up then and saw the look on my face. 

“It'll be okay, you'll see your mommy and daddy soon, I promise. Three o’clock will be here before you know it.” She was trying to reassure me, but didn't know what had happened. This would be a synopsis for my entire relationship with her. 

Later in the school year, the pecking order in my class had been established and, as would always be the case, I was at the bottom. I was small, quiet and shy. Little boys in first grade are not as small, quiet or shy as me. The boy who pushed me into the door handle on the first day of school is also the boy who torments me the most, Aaron. He taunts me when we play sports on the playground or at gym. At recess, he would call me names and hit me. When I was in first grade, I ran to the teacher watching over us at recess and tell them, tears in my face, saying that they had hit me. She laughed at me and said "boys will do that!" This was before any zero tolerance laws were made. So I stopped telling the teachers; they would never help me.

That was something I could never get over when I was child. I would tell my school teachers, the Sunday school ladies, or any adult, that something bad was happening to me. That I had been beat up, that a kid had called me a bad name, that I was being pushed around. None of them believed me for some reason. The kindergarten teaching assistant told me to walk it off. The school principal told me that I must be part of the problem or it wouldn't keep happening, so I should focus on not being antagonistic. I didn't know what being antagonistic meant, so I asked my dad one day at dinner. 

“It means you're doing something that makes people angry on purpose. Like being annoying, but more.”

I was being annoying, but more. 

So, I just stopped telling anyone what was happening. After a while, the other little boys noticed who was tattling and who was not. I didn't tattle, so they bullied me the most. There was another kid in my grade, Sam White, who was bullied almost as much as me. Sometimes, we would hold each other's hands in the bathroom before recess. Not because we felt close to one another or because we were friends. We weren't friends, we were just scared. 

We would go to recess and get chased down, punched, kicked, smacked with sticks, pelted with rocks, called all sorts of names I didn't understand like “faggot” and “teet-sucker.”

This lasted until the end of the year, every day, without any reprieve. The other boys were always there, at gym, at recess, at birthday parties, and they never got tired of chasing me around, humiliating me in front of my classmates and beating me up. Teachers at recess and gym saw what was happening, but didn't do anything. It was a private, Christian school. Bullying didn't happen there. My sides were sore all the time.

I would almost never get hit in the face, just a few times. It didn't matter though, I was never going to tell my parents.

My dad is a chocolatier and the production manager of a large candy factory. My mom is an insurance claims processor and works from home on a computer, typing information onto a black screen in different fields until her hands hurt. She sleeps with cuffs on her wrists and hands to help with the carpal tunnel the job gives her. 

They work really hard to send my sister and I to this school and I know it. I understand that they take pride in being able to send me to that kind of school, so I don't tell them about the bullying. I don't want them to tell me I am being antagonistic and that I am not being tough enough, like the principal and teachers told me. I don't want them to call me a liar like the Sunday school ladies do. I would be heartbroken if they said those things to me, so I never give them the chance. 

I'm Sorry For Being Gay

it's cloudy and wet and cold. It's October and the fall air isn't crisp and refreshing, but biting and harsh. I'm wearing a sweater, a coat, gloves and a winter hat, boots and a headband under my hat to keep my ears warm. My mom is always sad when I come in from a cold day and my ears are red. She gets worried when I'm too cold.

I'm kicking thoughtlessly at the bark mulch on the playground. I got kicked out of the flag football game the other boys are playing. They said I was too stupid to understand it, but I watched football with my dad and he told me everything about the game. I knew exactly how it worked and even knew how different plays worked, but they didn't listen to me or care. I was ousted.

A boy walked up to me, wearing a bigger coat and a hat that sat just barely above his eyes. 

“Hi Elliot.”

“Hey.”

“Do you want to sit in the slide with me?” 

“Sure.”

We sit in the slide. It's cold and a little wet, but shields us from the wind. He takes off his hat and looks me in the eyes.

“When is your birthday?” He asks me, putting his too-big hat in his lap and running his fingers through his hair. 

I don't know this boy very well. There are two classes for the first grade and he is in the other class, not with me and Miss Lindt. 

“August twenty-fourth,” I say quietly. 

“Huh?” He asks. He can't hear me over the noise outside the slide.

“August twenty-fourth,” I say louder. “What's your birthday?”

“October tenth. Last week. I turned seven.” 

I was about to say that I was also seven, but I didn't. I don't know why. I couldn't stop looking at this boy, everything he was doing. Combing his hair with his fingers, wiggling his foot  back and forth as it hung over the lip of the slide, his nose, red from the cold, was perfectly pointed and gave him a look of importance almost. His eyes were a bright green and his smile was so nice to look at. 

“How old are you?” He asked. 

Other boys didn't ask me these things. They just pushed, just shoved, just told me I was a faggot and an idiot. “Elliot the idiot,” they'd call me; it rhymed and it made them laugh really hard. They wanted me to feel small and unintelligent and they succeeded.

“Elliot?” 

“Huh?” 

“How old are you?” 

“S-seven,” I stammer. I was nervous. My heart was beating so hard I felt lightheaded. I couldn't understand why. Was I sick? Was I going to throw up? I threw up a lot, so maybe that was it. 

“We're the same age,” the boy said.

“Yeah.” 

“Do you like Miss Lindt?” He asked, resting his chin in the cup of his hand. 

I wanted to be closer to him. There were boots and hats in between us and I didn't want them to be. I didn't know why, but I wanted to sit next to him, not across from him. 

“Yeah, she's nice,” I say. Which was true. She was nice. She smelled like flowers and she always smiled. She didn't help me when I told her I was getting hit by the other boys, but none of the adults did, even when they saw it happening, they didn't help, so why would she? She was nice. 

“I don't like Missus Ross,” the boy said. “She's not nice, she's mean. She makes kids write that they're bad on the chalkboard. You have to write it fifty times, then write a letter of apology to her when you're done. Does Miss Lindt make you write her letters of apology?”

“A letter saying that you're sorry for what you did?” I clarified, trying to remember if this had happened to me or not. I wasn't sure, because I usually tried to forget every day after it was over.

“Yeah!”

“No, I don't think so.”

“One time, I had to write her one because I spilled my juice and she had to clean it up because I didn't know how. She said my mom should have taught me how to clean up juice if I'm so clumsy.” 

“What's clumsy mean?” I had heard this word used to describe me by the gym teacher, but I didn't know what it meant.

“Like you bump into things or fall over a lot, or you drop stuff.” 

“Mister McClellen says I'm clumsy,” I said. Mister McClellen was the elementary school gym teacher and the coach of the boys and girls basketball teams. 

“We both are,” the boy said, smiling a big smile at me. My chest fluttered when I saw his smile. I smiled back and laughed a little. So did he. We were smiling and laughing together; it was really nice. 

“Do you like anyone in your class?” He asked. 

“Nobody likes me in my class,” I said. My smile left immediately. 

“But do you like anybody? I mean like, do you like-like anyone?” This was a new term to me but I had overheard what it meant. If you like-liked someone, it meant you held hands and were boyfriend-girlfriend. I didn't know why the kids in my class would talk about it, though. Even at seven, I was aware that we were too young to be boyfriends or girlfriends with anyone. 

“No, I don't think so,” I said. I wasn't entirely sure because, again, I tried to forget each day after it was over. 

“I don't either,” the boy said. “Can I hold your hand?” He asked. The way he asked told me that he wouldn't do it anyway if I said no, which was how I was accustomed to questions being asked of me by adults. I learned from observing and talking with adults that saying “no” or “please don't” to adults didn't work. They were going to do or say what they wanted to you anyway, because they were the adult. But the boy wasn't asking me if he could hold my hand like that. He just wanted to know.

“Yeah,” I said, because I wanted to. I really wanted him to hold my hand. A lot. I wanted to hold his hand and not let it go. I wanted to hold his hand for as long as I could. Which, because of recess, would be for about another five or six minutes. 

He reached over and held my hand. Our hands were both cold and his was a little bigger than mine. I liked how it felt to hold his hand. 

I looked up and he smiled at me again. I smiled back. Then, before I knew what was happening, he leaned in and kissed me. Right after he kissed me, it started pouring down rain. It had been very lightly sprinkling rain all morning since I looked out the window before breakfast. Now, it was pouring an almost torrential rain. We sat in the slide, listening to the other kids scream in shock and dismay as the rain drenched them. 

The boy and I laughed together and smiled at each other again. I was so happy. Happier than I had ever been at school before. We continued holding hands for a minute until we heard a teacher's voice yell and tell everyone that recess was being cut short by a few minutes because of the rain; she wanted us to line up under the awning by the doors and get inside. 

“My mom gave me an umbrella!” The boy exclaimed.

“She did?” I asked, wondering where he had it. My mom’s umbrella was almost as tall I was, so I didn't understand his excitement, surely he didn't have it on him. 

Sure enough, he reached under his too-big coat and produced a small umbrella with Thomas The Tank Engine printed on it. 

“I like Thomas too,” I said. 

“Cool!” He said as he pointed it out of the slide and opened it. He got out of the slide and then turned to me, offering me his hand. “Come on, Elliot!” Nobody had ever said my name that way. 

I took his hand and he helped me get out of the slide. We walked under his umbrella to the awning, still holding hands. I saw one of the other boys looking at us; he nudged a another boy and pointed at us. They both started laughing, so I let go of his hand. I looked at him next to me, and he was still smiling, but not as much. 

We went inside in different lines, then parted ways. He waved goodbye to me as he entered his classroom, as did I. 

That night, my dad asked me how school went as he was tucking me into bed. I didn't  know what to say, because I knew he wouldn't like it if I told him I had been kissed by another kid. I quickly made up some story, like I always did, about how me and my friends did something together. This was my nightly lie. I was always scared of what my mom and dad would do or say if I told them that I was being bullied. Would they tell me it was my fault like the principal? Would they just not believe me like the teachers and Sunday school ladies? Would they be mad at me? 

So I lied and told them stories. Made up things about stuff that me and other boys did. I thought maybe they knew I was lying, but they didn't press me for more answers, so I left that stone unturned, as my dad would have put it. 

“Do you like it at school, buddy?” My dad asked me. 

“Y-yeah, I do,” I said, trying to sound convincing. 

“Well, okay. That's good. Goodnight bud, we love you.” My dad turned off my lamp and left the room with my mom. 

I stayed up for another hour or so, my eyes closed, reimagining holding the boy’s hand, how it felt when he kissed me. My heart was fluttering and my smile wouldn't go away. I was excited to go to school for the first time since I started going in kindergarten. I wanted to see him again.

As a child, you don't understand much of anything. By the time I found out that being gay was a sin in the eyes of the church, I thought how I felt was normal. Then, I spent the whole rest of my youth hiding who I was from everybody in my life. I feared what would happen and who I would lose if I was found out. I lost queer friends; I mourned them alone.

Now, I am here, I am alive, I am queer, I am loved, I am growing.

I'm Not Sorry For Being Gay

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Links Roundup

The interwebs had so many interesting things to read this week! Here’s a links roundup of a few. 

Hurricanes Becoming So Strong That New Category Needed, Study Says

Where else would we start but at The Guardian, with an article about how much bigger and more intense the biggest, most intense hurricanes (and other cyclones) are becoming. You might call it doom and gloom, but the climate–adjacent scientist in me finds some weird satisfaction in seeing that, yes, retaining extra energy within the climate system because we’ve overinsulated it by adding extra greenhouse gas to the atmosphere is having spectacular effects. Honestly, we need to get our act together about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero ASAP (40 years ago would have been better). 

Should More British Homes Be Built Using Straw?

The BBC website had an interesting article about adding straw–packed panels to the exteriors of buildings (generally as they’re being newly constructed, given the size constraints) to improve their insulation. The straw is packed so tight that it’s fire resistant but not so tight that it doesn’t trap air inside the stuffing, thus serving effectively as insulation, vastly reducing how much you need to heat or cool a building. At the moment, here in Germany, they use thick slabs of Styrofoam, which release horrendously toxic fumes if the building catches on fire. Straw sounds like an interesting, non–toxic, sustainable alternative, especially if you consider how much waste straw is generated every time crops like wheat, rye, and even oilseed rape (Canola) are harvested. The main catch is that production of the panels would need to be scaled up quickly enough to matter in our fight against further climate change by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings at a comfortable temperature. 

A US Engineer Had a Shocking Plan to Improve the Climate – Burn All Coal on Earth

This article, also on the BBC website, is about the opposite of trying to save energy, and it’s a quick history of our attitude toward anthropogenic global warming. Turns out, the sort of people who don’t want to admit it’s real today were the sort of people who used to think it would be great to burn all the fossil fuels to take the edge of the chillier aspects of climate. Bonkers. These were probably also the people who liked to think that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would totally boost plant growth, and therefore crop yields, on a major scale. Also bonkers. 

Can Slowing Down Save the Planet?

The New Yorker published an interesting review of the book Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, in which the Marxist philosopher Kohei Saito lays out the case for “degrowth communism”. He argues that green capitalism won’t be enough to save the planet—and us. It just looks good from a certain vantage point right now because it pushes the environmental and social costs of resource extraction and good production into the Global South. This allows consumers in the Global North to remain blissfully ignorant of the damage they’re (we’re) doing with their (our) unsustainable lifestyles and obsession with continuous economic growth. 

How Craftivism Is Powering 'Gentle Protest' for Climate

Back to the BBC for a fun article about “craftivism”. I’d never thought about this before, but it’s actually a thing that has touched almost all of our lives, even if we’re all thumbs with a terrible sense of aesthetics. Who hasn’t walked past a street pole or statue encased in guerilla knitwear? Even I knitted a pussyhat to wear to an anti–Trump demo on inauguration day (although I didn’t knit a pink one because I would rather die than wear pink, except utterly ironically). And—although perhaps I’m revealing my age here—who hasn’t seen at least a few squares of an AIDS quilt? On the whole, I think it’s good that people put their crafting skills to good political use. Otherwise—and this may be an unpopular opinion—our need to continually craft is just an extension of our unsustainable overproduction and overconsumption of goods. Everyone I know who knits (including myself) has already made more sweaters, hats, scarves, socks, and baby blankets than they can wear out in a lifetime and yet we keep on knitting. 

A Big Idea for Small Farms: How to Link Agriculture, Nutrition and Public Health

NPR had a great article that fits with our current podcast episode on regenerative farming with Solarpunk Farms. A literally existential crisis that we’re currently failing to tackle is that of how we grow food. The whole agricultural system is messed up from top to bottom. Food’s too cheap (and many people aren’t paid enough to be able to pay the real price of food, which is a whole other enormous issue). Because of this, farmers are pissed off and dependent upon subsidies from the governments they’d increasingly like to overthrow. Meanwhile, they’re frantically farming so intensively to try to bring in enough income that they’re destroying what’s left of our natural world. Their farming practices are degrading soils and polluting our air and waterways with fertilizers and petrochemical pesticides, destroying adjacent ecosystems and driving numerous species of plants and animals (including insects and other key invertebrates) to extinction. Related to this, we’re eating too much of the wrong stuff (meat, highly processed foods) and not enough of the rights stuff (fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables). Enter the solution: nutrition incentive programs that make it possible for people with lower incomes to obtain fruits and vegetables from smaller, regenerative farms. It’s a win for public health, a win for fruit and vegetable farming, which isn’t subsidized the way corn, soy, and wheat farming is, and it’s a win for the small percentage of food producers fighting not to be swallowed up by the Big Food companies who’ve all but monopolized the production of the food we eat. 

Tractor Chaos, Neo-Nazis and a Flatlining Economy: Why Has Germany Lost the Plot?  

Having started at The Guardian, we’ll bring things full circle and end there with a look at the situation here in Germany. Lots of us are increasingly concerned about the rise of the far right and... perhaps still flying under a lot of people’s radar... that angry farmers are going to end up ushering in the Fourth Reich. The op–ed says it all, while trying to maintain a sense of humor about it. As with so much else in the news these days, it makes you want to scream that we have more important things to be doing right now—that matter for the survival of billions of people—than withdraw into the hermit crab shell of authoritarianism. Their easy answers and general denial of the problems that need solving will only make life even more miserable for most people and allow all our existential problems, like widening wealth inequality, environmental devastation, and increasingly catastrophic climate change, to escalate even further before we begin dealing with them. 

Sci_Burst

To end on a happier note, here’s a shout out about Sci_Burst, a fun podcast from Australia about “science, popular culture, and entertainment”. They even have an episode on solarpunk. If you’re all caught up with us (including with all the extras on our YouTube channel), our feelings won’t be hurt if you give them a listen. 😊

[yurisorcerer]

some thoughts on Hanako & The Terror of Allegory

On a Discord server I'm in, some folks are doing a manga-swap challenge. I have six manga from this challenge to read in 2024, and I've just finished the first one. I don't have enough thoughts to warrant a full review, but I did want to say a few things.

This is Hanako & The Terror of Allegory. Also called Hanako & The Teller of Allegory---the name has an intentional double meaning that doesn't translate super well, I think.

This one is pretty obscure, it was recommended to me by my buddy AftershockWolf (@theokamiproject).

To be honest, I didn't love it. The series is in that "urban legend horror" genre, of a sort that's since been perfected by the likes of Otherside Picnic or, say, something like Mysterious Disappearances (which, that's getting an anime next season, isn't that weird?). The innate disadvantage something like this has is because there's such a small pool of source material, it can very much feel like you've read every take on every idea before, and furthermore, this manga is from 2004 (into 2005. Ran for about a year, from what I can tell), so I've seen a lot of different spins on the stories it mines for most of its chapters---Hanako of the Toilet, Mary the Doll, Kokkuri-san, Red Paper / Blue Paper, the Slit-Mouthed Woman, etc.---and in many cases I've seen them done better. Again, it's kind of unfair to this manga since it was written quite a while ago, so I suppose you'd call this a case of something aging poorly.

It's also bad in a few other more mundane ways; the sense of humor is absolutely daft as fuck, lots of very basic stock jokes with zero originality to them. Most of these were getting old in 2004. Reading them 20 years later makes them kind of insufferable. Occasionally it'll be funny *by accident*, but that's a different thing and doesn't really count IMO.

It's also not actually great at really getting under my skin in the way that the truly great stuff in this genre (again like Otherside Picnic) can, and has a bad habit of pulling plot twists out of its ass when it doesn't really need to. Most of this will not stick with me, and to top it all off the art is very middle of the road and of its time. Although there are occasional cool splash panels that make up for that somewhat.

However, all is not lost. The weakpoints of this manga are mostly not that interesting, what is interesting is where it goes in its final act, where it introduces a (to my knowledge) completely-original antagonist, and the manga starts essentially collapsing in on itself as the characters very directly fight for control of the narrative against said antagonist, a villainous authorial figure who herself might not really exist. It's a rather sudden shift, but it's a welcome one, and I think if more of the manga had been like this I would probably have enjoyed it a lot more.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this series got axed from whatever magazine it was running in, and that's the culprit for the swift change in direction, but in this case it saves a bad manga from itself and makes reading the thing not a complete loss. Also, said character is attractive, I'll say it. (Wolf happened to tell me that this character was the whole reason they recommended me the manga. Given that she carries this last arc hard, I will say that was a good call.)

If you can put up with everything I mentioned in order to get to the fairly compelling final act, I might tentatively recommend it, since Terror of Allegory here is only 19 chapters long. Still, I don't think anyone's hugely missing out by not reading this thing, the genre has evolved *a lot* over the past 20 years and this is not exactly a foundational release.

Interesting side note; on the scanlation page the translator actually recommends a few similar works, one of which is the MUCH better Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, which came out only a few years after this. Another reminder that even at the time this was solidly middle of the pack.