#i have the same but don't worry you have comics that are translated into english by fans

[ducklooney]

@quack-duck-comics has translations of Italian comics into English, so if you're interested, feel free to look there. @bitterlynsposts

IAM SOOO MADDDDD, WHY CANT I SPEAK ITALIAN. ITS SO UNFAIRRRRRRRRRR. Ill probably try to start learning italian just for duck comic (ノ´Д｀)ノ

I DESPERATELY NEED THEMMM, my stupid country dosen't have them WAHHHHHH.

(ignore me, im just being a crybaby)

[illym]

Hi, hello, if you like reading about localization choices be sure to check below the cut because I Had Fun Here (not being sarcastic. It was enjoyable learning about vinegar in Japan).

Translation Assistance: @masked-and-doomed + @solradguy

ID in alt.

Cleaned and original comics below the cut.

Specific Assistance:

@.masked-and-doomed: transcribed what I couldn't pick up.

@.solradguy: Verified the translation of what the npc was saying in panel 4, offered a line for it.

Fun fact: The Japanese department of a college all got together to work on this one.

I hated redrawing the back of Ky's head. I'm glad I was able to hide most of it behind the text (lol).

Anyway, let's get on with the localization (and process) discussion!

In the original text of this comic, Ky was drinking vinegar.

"But Illym," you ask, face twisted in confusion, "Huh? Who drinks vinegar as a drink for fun? Is the joke that being compared to Robo-Ky made him go mad and believe that vinegar is delicious? Did you change the joke? Why are you writing me to be so verbose?"

I'm a very verbose person. To answer the rest of your questions, here's what DeepL gave me when I put the transcript in.

[

npc:

Captain… it's only the body that gets soft from drinking vinegar.

ky:

I… This is for your health!

npc:

If you drink it without diluting it, you'll get a stomach ache.

]

At first, I assumed that DeepL has misinterpreted some other drink as vinegar, such as cider, sake, or general alcohol. In this example, even, it translated Ky as saying "For your health" when within context he should obviously be saying "For my health".

I went to [ https://jpdb.io/ ] to check the line. Lo and behold, it still translated as vinegar. Hm. By this point, I'm fairly sure it's a cultural thing that I'll have to localize, but I try to be thorough in these things as, again, I don't understand the language and rely on machine translation. I search up vinegar in English in jpdb and find the Japanese character there immediately. So it's obviously the same word, not a messy translation.

My next course of action is to look up "drinking vinegar japan".

To summarize, according to the articles/blog posts I read, the process of making vinegar is just adding an extra step to the process of making sake. After that, if it's to be drinking vinegar, it's blended with sweeteners such as honey or fruit.

It's an extremely old drink in Japan, and it's seen as a health drink there (along with, I assume, being pretty tasty). You should go read up on it yourself.

But in the western world, drinking vinegar is... Not a big thing. While I could leave it as is and just write a translators note explaining the drink, I decided that given that Ky is French and Japan has been exploded for ~100 years, it would be more lore accurate to have him drink something else. If it was Anji or Baiken, I would have left it.

Also, it's more enjoyable and easier to understand to make it ambiguously alcohol instead of requiring a 4 paragraph explanation.

So to localize, I removed mention of vinegar and made the joke into Ky drinking too much alcohol. The NPC's worries apply to alcohol as well as drinking vinegar (drinking it makes you soft, it affects your body poorly, drinking too much is Seen as bad for your health) so it made for the smoothest change.

As I write this, I'm debating whether to add a translators note between panels saying that the bottle reads 'vinegar'... It'll get people curious, at least!

Original translation of the comic below.

[flowerbloom-arts]

Hey, sorry if I'm repetitive but what do you think happened to the humans in the Moomin universe.

Absolutely do not worry about asking too many questions, I love answering them!!!

Humans in Moominland is a very interesting subject... In that they're a LOT less of a presence than even I thought they were.

Alot of people (including me) thought that when, in Moomins and the Great Flood, Moominmamma was talking about Moomins living behind huge stoves before the invention of central heating she was talking about humans' stoves.

But no.

She never uses the word human, she says people.

(...) In those days they lived together with the house-trolls in people’s houses, mostly behind their tall stoves. “Some of us still live there now, I’m sure,” said Moominmamma. “But only where people still have stoves, I mean. We’re not happy with central heating.”

“Did the people know we were there?” asked Moomintroll.

(...)

“[A Hattifattener is] a kind of little troll-creature,” explained Moominmamma. “They’re mostly invisible. Sometimes they can be found under people’s floors, and you can hear them pattering about in there when it’s quiet in the evenings. (...)

And it's not like "people" was used as a specific term in Moomins and the Great Flood, either, because we have instances like these;

“Thank you so awfully much,” said Moominmamma. “You must have invited quite a lot of people up here for sea-pudding, I should think.”

“Oh yes,” said the boy. “People from every corner of the world. Snufkins, Sea-ghosts, Little Creeps and Big Folk, Snorks and Hemulens. And the odd angler fish, too.”

(...)

The armchair bobbed slowly along towards a hill where a lot of people were running about, pulling their belongings out of the water.

(...)

“Well, well,” said the marabou stork, who was beginning to feel touched. “I think I had better put you down on dry land and try to rescue a few more before the sun goes down. It’s very pleasant, rescuing people.” And then he took them back to the shore while they all talked at the same time about all the dreadful things they had been through. All along the shore people had lit fires at which they were warming themselves and cooking food, for most had lost their homes.

So it could be that Moominmamma was just talking about living behind regular creatures' oversized stoves, like how the Moomin ancestor did in Moominland Midwinter, which is honestly a very silly image. And it's not like it'd be impossible - the Hemulen and the Marabou stork in Great Flood are absolutely massive compared to our main characters.

Marabou storks tend to be about 5 feet tall so relatively speaking, if we assume this stork is still the same size as he would be irl, then our main characters would be relatively mouse-sized.

However. Tove didn't seem to have committed to this concept, and more or less just retconned it out of canon. Since the cats in Moomins and the Great Flood are seemingly regular-sized relative to the Hemulen's chair;

But in the 1968 revision of Comet in Moominland including future adaptations of the story, Sniff's cat is regular-sized, and so are the cats that appear in the Moomin comic strip, like the one in Moominmamma's Maid.

(sorry for using a screenshot from the 90s movie adaptation, I couldn't find a book illustration since I don't have a PDF of the revised book, much less an illustration of Sniff and his cat next to eachother, if that exists. If anyone has a way to read the revision in English pleeease give it to me)

But that's just Moomins and the Great Flood, which practically functions as a "pilot episode" for the whole franchise; it set up the concepts but is not representative of the rest of the franchise and has alot of things that get retconned but not entirely removed for the rest of the series, it wasn't even translated into/published in English until 2012. What about the rest of the franchise?

Well, the only instance of the word "human" being used in the books is in Moominpappa at Sea, while Moominpappa talked about how stone-faced the Fisherman/Lighthouse Keeper has been for the whole book;

‘There’s something wrong with you that I can’t make out,’ Moominpappa said to himself. ‘You’re not a human being at all. You’re more like a plant or a shadow, just as if you’d never been born.’

Which implies either of two things; the LHK is human or human-adjacent, or human is a normal adjective in the world of Moomin aswell.

And the only instance of the word "human" in the comic strip (there could be another instance I'm forgetting, however I'm not talking about Lars' comics because I am kind of prioritizing Tove's intentions here) is in a conversation between Snorkmaiden and Mymble Jr in Moomin Winter Follies;

Which... Kind of implies Mr. Brisk is human, I think? It's hard to imagine but there it is, the one instance of the word human in the comics.

And that's like... The only thing we really have within the original medium of Moomin.

But Tove had also worked on other things first-hand, and one of them had actual human characters.

That being Mumintrollet (1969, nice), a live-action show primarily known for the body horror of the Moomins removing their heads to reveal human heads inside. But with that obviously inapplicable facet of the show aside, we have this guy, the main antagonist, the King;

This guy is an explicitly canon human (can't be 100% sure since the show hasn't been transcribed or translated from its original swedish but I'm close to sure), and he's about the same size as the Moomins (probably because of the nature of the show, kinda like the whole head thing and Little My's normal human size in the show, but ehhh)

And that's, like, it for the canonicity of humans in Moomin, everything else is questionable or vague or a bit bewildering.

Like, is King Jones from Moominpappa's Memoirs a human? Why is he so big? What's going on here???

But that's all up to speculation, even the examples of the instances of the word human I've shown doesn't totally prove the existence of humans as we know them in this world. Alot of the characters look human but aren't, and others aren't stated to be not human, there are some oversized things like Muddler's tin that don't get explained, but who knows, really.

In short, I don't think anything has exactly happened to humans. They're either living among Moominland's society like fellow creatures (heck, maybe even some of the characters we know are human) or they're like... Rare or extinct or didn't even truly exist in the first place.

It's one big "who knows?".

[savagewildnerness]

Slightly more complete thoughts on S2E3, No Pain…

Daniel’s list - he’s worried about his family… about their safety

Raglan James is so confusing.   I don't know what to make of it...He seemed so David Talbot-esque... so will David be mixed between Raglan and Daniel?  Or will he appear too?  And if he is a character drawn from other characters, will he have Raglan’s malice… because it certainly wasn’t evident in this episode…. In TTOTBT there is a clear aura of bad intent with Raglan and I didn’t feel that here

I thought the children of darkness set up was really effective.  Assad as Armand in this era was so great - jaded, depressed, hopeless.  In fact, I thought Assad was brilliant in the whole episode

Harlequin Lestat was so beautiful, and so elegant for an (Auguste!) clown!  But there as also a layer of triteness to the character and to Lestat’s view of acting it seemed that unnerved me.  Armand told it like Lestat was naturally charming, but acted only as he liked the attention. That’s NOT Lestat’s motivation.  And the comic nature of the character slightly undermined for me even Armand’s response to Lestat.  And I loved Armand’s covetous desirous looks to Lestat…. But you don’t need Lestat as a Harlequin displaying his bum, as if to Armand to make your point…. Though I enjoyed that at least they made it clear Lestat refused Armand (even if only at first from Armand’s telling…)

It’s the episode Lestat has so far been in the most, yet is also the first episode where no scene with him in made me cry... (Bad times in my life currently, admittedly)

I loved the use of French, but I found it frustrating how little of the French was subtitled. I want to know what people are saying!  I was not lucky enough to ever have been taught even a word of French in school so I have literally zero clue.  Like, *he whispers in French*... WHAT do they whisper?!  That is NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION FOR ME!!!!  Can anyone help with the French text that wasn’t translated at all?

Although the bit in the theatre, I suppose having Lestat perform in French as Harlequin, but the mind-conversation take place in English made that clear… but I want to know the French text too!

I feel very weird and sad about Lestat meeting Nicolas when he's already a vampire (I know this is only Armand's telling, but I feel this fact will surely remain, due to Joseph's Nicki not looking like he could be the same age as Lestat… I suppose it is possible Lestat could still meet Nicolas as a mortal, but I don’t see any way Lestat can meet Nicki back in his home town) - I can only see it hugely lessening Nicolas' impact... but I guess maybe they want that for TV..?  My expectations shift for TVL there though as I thought they’d go big with the Nicolas and Louis parallels to add to the poignancy of those two relationships.  Instead, the parallel that was made by Armand was that both Nicolas and Claudia were not built for immortality….?

To expand on that - The Witches Place… if Lestat and Nicolas didn’t know each other as children what happens with that SUCH IMPORTANT element… perhaps Lestat will have been married for a while in his hometown in the TV show or something and there’ll be another character to get some of Nicki’s story… but it takes poignancy away from Nicolas and away from Louis in my opinion.  It also takes poignancy away from the wolf killer red cape which Lestat is wearing.  But Nicki is Lestat's first true love, the first person he converses with who he feels understands him and Lestat is snatched away from their shared bed in their shared abode by Magnus.... if Lestat doesn't meet Nicolas till he is 34 and already a vampire, that is SO different… in many more ways than I have included here... 

But I liked Joseph as Nicki, and joy of joy, the snippets of violin playing were convincing enough for me.  I was really worried about it, but nothing bothered me, albeit they obviously were very brief.

The Lestat Armand told us was far from the Lestat I know in most respects though. Lestat suggesting killing mortals on stage?! Lestat being romantic with Armand at all?  Doing it in front of Nicki? Even Harlequin-Lestat... the behind-curtain slaughter and the non-Lelio-ness of it... It’s just overwhelming how un-Lestat the whole thing is, making it hard to know what to feel.  It’s not like I hated or was sad by anything much other than Nicki… and I liked Nicki and enjoyed how he and Lestat were together… it’s more the implications of that Nicolas may be relegated to way more of a minor character…. With the amount Nicolas means to me, that makes me so sad (Don’t get me wrong: Loustat is endgame… I am not AT ALL a Nickistat is better than Loustat because absolutely NOT - I love Nicki for himself and for his impact on the formation and formative and mortal years of Lestat’s life!)

It's just different, of course, but it’s so much to take in…

I would have enjoyed Lestat in the coven except that the first time I saw that promo image I thought Lestat was holding a leg of meat on a platter and that it's Jesus on the cross just makes it all inappropriately hilarious to me now.

I know Lestat was trying to hide from Armand how concerned he was about Nicki, but I felt underlying feelings in similar scenes in S1 and I didn’t feel even underlying concern to the degree I expected here… just because it is Armand’s telling?

Also, Armand - you did NOT want your coven destroyed!

It’s hard to watch Armand’s fanfic simply because it is SO different that at some point all the differences feel like you’d need to literally retell the entire show!?  I just didn’t feel much of *hidden real Lestat* from these scenes, the way I *could* often feel in Louis’ telling.  But then, I suppose Louis is not intentionally lying, so it makes sense we’d feel more of the real Lestat than from Armand, who *is* intentionally telling a somewhat false version…????

BUT Assad is so good.  And may I say at this point, I love how Assad, Jacob and Sam are all brilliant at conjuring convincing chemistry with each other.  NOW ALL KISS TOGETHER AND I SHALL FORGIVE THE BOOK DISCREPANCIES hahahaha… I jest!

I felt so sad and sorry for Claudia, little flea :(.  Seeking belonging, only to be so tragically disappointed.  The way she imagines herself in Santiago’s role, but instead has to act a child for eternity - how horrific.

I'm also so aware of how in the book, Claudia immediately senses the danger she is in from the coven and from Armand and here it is so very different.  I don't know what to make of it.  Louis also seems to be considering leaving Claudia already anyway too, so his role in what happens feels a lot different too…

The wet room… Is Lestat locked up in there somewhere now?  In a burial vault?  Down with the rats and dead bodies?  The fact that we’ve been shown the cellar seems to suggest Lestat could be there somewhere, but I don’t know with the book changes whether Armand will lock Lestat up in the way he does in the books?  I feel all a bit at sea and like I am an idiot to expect to see book plot or book motivations in a way…???

LOL when Daniel is just distracted and kinda disinterested in hearing about Loumand!

I did LOVE where they went with the Louis-Dreamstat - kill me again and show me you love me the only way you know how though, MMMMM!  And the reveal of what Louis did to the mortal.  I think this was my favourite part of the episode in fact??  

I wonder whether this could hint at anything to be revealed about S1E5 at all???

Tortured Jacob-Louis is fabulous in this episode

Did Armand *really* ever consider killing Louis??!?!?!

I felt a bit sad I’d seen so much of Harlequin Lestat and dreamStat in trailers… I think it took away some of the impact in the episode.

It’s NOT that I disliked the episode… I thought the acting was brilliant and I really felt for Claudia in particular… but I also felt weirdly ambivalent.  Aside from Claudia’s scenes and the Dreamstat Louis-violence scene, I wasn’t sure what I felt about a lot of it… weird… I felt kind of weird about it I would say….

[killykstudio]

— GRIS Y AZUL miguel o’hara x fem!reader

First part!

Warnings : blood; injuries; depiction of panic attack; slightly smut; fluff; making out; politician; y/n use; fem!reader x Miguel o'hara; I'm not native English or Spanish speaker so forgive me for orthographic errors; Spanish sentences are translated.

Notes : Hi,everybody! Since we are all on the same boat for having brain rot on Miguel , I decided to write something myself.

I decided to give Y/N a different personality instead of the usual cute , shy, clumsy , kind and courageous one. I opted for a realistic one this Y/N isn't an empath, to honest a blasé, she is opportunistic, Machiavellian , manipulative and has a lot of personal problems that you will get to read. She obviously has also good traits : like being truthful at herself, caring towards the one she cares , witty and even though she is not an empath, she has her own sense of good and evil , of what must be done and can understand and adapt what others are feeling, even though she doesn't feel the same.

Also I decided for another job rather than the same barista, assistant or spider person: politician. Since Miguel has a conflictual emotion towards the richer members of Nueva York and a job like that adds more tension and more themes to explore.

For Miguel personality I will try my best to be faithful to comicbooks and part of the movie, since this take place before them.

I will explore their personalities more ,but don't worry there will be a lot of tension and smut.

Also the characters from the comic book will appear.

Anyway enjoy this first chapter!

Chapter One

It's another day in polluted and overpopulated Nueva York. The bright colors of the uppercity contrasting with the undercity's neon lights. Everybody is rushing towards their destination without even caring about others and themself. The only thing that matters is keep moving , keep producing, keep consuming.The " Estación Gran Central" is full of people all running towards different direction, like ants; on a wall there is a big screen projecting a lights over them. The screen is on channel 99, airing a special after the News about the last hot social topic, where two politicians from differet opposition share their view on the matter , obviously, as in this case , ends with a rather big discussion where no one listen and everybody screams as they have the truth in their hands.

You are slowing to watch the show taking places on the screen. A rather disgusted smirk paints on your face.

"What a circus" you murmur

TUN!

Without realizing your smirk is kissing the floor and you got stepped by the hasty citizens. Struggling to get yourself up. In the end you get back on your feet, hapless with fury and frustration written all over the face and head back to your destination, melting in the crowd.

'SS BROOKLYN ZONA' is lighting the sides of the train. You are already seated inside , trying in everyway to not thinking about the day that is gonna take place. Going to the parliament, smiling to everybody , trying to convince the opposition about a new decree, that you have been trying to apply for months ; get a fake 'yes' to face , but a 'no' during the votes; trying to avoid the stamp , who will analyze every single word you say ,only to bring you down, to be feasted to the pubblic ; talking with people you don't care , who don't care about you and your ideals; it seems like being on a stage , it looks like your job is being an actress 24/24h , when in reality you wanted truly chance something , create a city strong and united against other indipent city, not for some sense of unity , paece or empathy , but for prosperity of the economy, the sciences and the arts. Then it would come the evening, where you had to go out with other "colleagues" to talk about new strateges, new plans and how to overthrown the opposition to able to have the most of the seats in the upcoming election. Not only the arguments would most of the time swift towards more "shallow", conversations about everyday things, which you would love to interested in them , but you could never bring herself to like , as you felt some sort of shame when doing them: never left yourself some mental rest, always thought that you had to do something important, to leave a meaninful print in everything, to be important for meaningful reasons. Then the night wouldn't be mercyful: the heavy silence flooding your hears, almost painful , in your minimalist, empty, modest appartment. Loliness was such a torment, but also a sort of pleasure, since was the only moment where you were yourself , free of any social convention.

This was yesterday.

This was the day even before.

The day before before

The other day.

The last week.

The last moth.

The last year.

The last 25 years.

This is gonna be the today.

CRASH!

At least it's what you thought, not what the universe had in plan for you.

The train stops abruptly. A voice from the speaker speak after a jingle :" Dear passenger we inform you that the train has stopped due to en emergency on the surface. Please remain calm and wait for further instructions".

"Finally a good day" you think to yourself. You signed , leaning your head to the window, which showed the dark of the tunnel, closed your eyes and relaxed. Meanwhile other passengers start screaming, panicking and trying to overcome their anxiety. You are in a total state of total bliss , you feel like outside of space and time, in another dimension ,in another reality , where anything mattered.

Until you get brougth back to reality to the sudden sped the train started moving. The acceleration keeps growing. Some passengers fall on the floor, others have to hold on to the handles or at the walls. You were leaning against the seat , with wide eyes and a confused expression. Outside the window change color from black to the bright light blue of the sky. There you see that all the city is under attack: most of the cars are out of control , the traffic light went crazy , the skyscrapes windows are blinking from the lights inside, all the mobiles the gizmos ,all kind of technology was out. It's a disaster.The same jingle as before ring in the train :" Dear passengers ,please remain calm, we arent gonna do anymore intermediate stops, we are going to get to destination in time".

"Hell with that!"

"What is going on?!"

"We are gonna die, isn't it?!"

"Go fuck yyourself"

"Fuck you NYLine"

Everybody is going nuts: panic and confusion is in the air

"Breath and stay calm" you thought, panic isn't a good idea, now you have to process what is going on. In total tranquility you get up and go to the real of the train , fearing that the train is gonna collide against another one, this was clearly a technical issue or a terroristic attack. When you almost get there, abruptly the train stops and you fly against the wall. When you open your eyes , your head was , blood started running from your nose, vision blurred and a ring is in your hears. It isn't in your head, it's the speaker ,who got stuck.

Then another jingle:

"Dear passenger we inform you that-

TUN!

A hand appears on the window near you ,making you jump from the sound , your blood freezes.

You turn your head and see

"SPIDERMAN OH MY GOD"

"MIO DIO GRAZIE AL CIELO"

"तब हम बच जाते हैं"

"¡DIOS MIO!"

You look at him with shock from everything that is happening

He reciprocate your look, then he goes on the roof and starts running towards the front.

After some seconds another jingle rkng :" dear passengers" the voice is different, it was more deep, smooth, almost sensual. In a calm , formal tone continues: " We inform you that Spider-Man is here to save the day and I just covered the train with webs,which leads to the ground. Usa the emergency hammers, shatter the windows ,get out immediately and search a safe space!"

Everbody start doing what he said. In a matter of time you are on the ground ,out of train, still dizzy from everything. As you find a safe place in shop near among other citizens, waiting for clearer istructions ,your mind starts running super quickly, maybe is all the adrenaline in your veins or maybe all the panic repressed before. A stale thought catch your attention :" god it must be so thrilling to be spiderman"

"All the things I would do, all the adventure, all the drama , all the handsome men, the perfect body , I could punch and threaten everbody I want , I could be able to get my decree approved with such easy, I could impose oder and peace"

"Y/N!" Your megalomaniac thoughts get interrupted by an old woman's voice. You turn to see the head of the opposition, Clara Conte.

"Happy to see a familiar face in this see of strangers"

You nooded as Conte got near you.

"This is such a tragedy... This is gonna be on the mouths of everybody for months"

"Who do you think is gonna get all the fingers pointed at for this hell?" You ask with a slight smirk of amusement.

"Mmm" Conte slightly smiles, rubbing a finger under her chin. " Probably the CEO FastNet "

"really?" your brow raise s.

"Yeah"

"Not the Web police?!"

"Nah"

"Well" you are quite suprised by her affermation.

"Whoever is gonna get the guilt , is gonna be executed by the media and popular thought"

Silence falls between the you two, Conte is still rubbing her finger, untill she speakes again

"Wanna bet 20$?"

"50$"

"Alright, you are pretty confident of your prevision"

Suddenly all the technology go back to working. A cacophonic symphony of notifications from all the cellphone in the room erupts. Conte and you watch their respective mobile. You then look at her.

"I just use logic and my m-

Out of nowhere a tentacles breaks through the shop window and grabs Clara Conte. She gets abrupted from the shop. You watched with horror as the woman is asking for help until she dissappers from the street. Your look of horror transformed into one unfazed.

"What a pity" you think scarcastically.

A drone of the stamp passes by.

You glow.

"Fuck, they saw me. She is gonna use this situation to play the victim with the electors and paint me as the coward who remained still. Fuck, fuck , fuck".

You get up and run to the direction they went , thinking about something helpful to do to feed a good image to the media.

"So tentacles... It must Octo...what does he want this time? Money? Vegeance? Chaos? Meh..."

Octo from the 2099 universe is a famous doctor, who after acknowledging to have cancer, tried to cure himself, but ended up messing his dna, becoming a monstrosity half octopus half human.

You stopped in front of the parliament where there is a cortina of policeman , army. Octo is inside.

You walk through the barrier of officers with a fake courageous look. You start talking with them about the situation.

When they finish sharing all the infomation they have , you come to the conclusion that they will not interview soon, since they are waiting for upper commands and they seem rather tired from all the work they had today and uninterested to help one single person, when the city was still recovering from the disaster. Thanks to your position, you get a permission to enter alone the building, taking ,before ,a laser gun from one of the man. They try to persuade you to not enter , but they can't bring themself care to the point to actually stop you. During your entrance you were being recorded by the stamp drones ,which where all around the building.

"This is gonna be helpful for the next elections" you try to a hide a smile to look as professional as possible.

The parliament was dark and empty , only scattered furniture all around the halls.

Two voices echo through a hall.

You follow them.

Without being noticed , stalk the two, who were talking: Conte was being still being hold by one of the tentacle meanwhile Dr.Octopus is searching for something on electronic papers.

"What's the password of this one Minister?"

....

Conte doesn't respond. He shakes her.

"W-h-a-t-a-t-h-e-p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d"

Conte scared shares the information and he getd the access to some of private governments papers and starts searching for the one, he is interested in.

You are moving slowly towards the two behind without making a noise.

TU DUN!

the sound of metal hits the ground. You stopped, shocked:

You didn't made fall anything.

Dr.Octopis starts analysing the room, in the search

Then a frying sound hits him from behind.

He gets shot by laser in the head.

It was you.

Then another shot goes through him, this time it cuts the tentacle that is holding the woman.

She fall on the ground. You go to give her hand to get out.

You feel the Doc behid you.Unfortunately for you the first shot only pierced Octo left ear.

"Fuck , fuck ,fuck , why do i make this stupid decisions?! Why?! Why?! Why?! Only for some good images of me trying to be heroic?! Why I am so stupid?! Everytime a do domething it twist itself on me ?! God I want to die , but like I don't want to die!!?????" You are trying to not hyperventilate , to act calm and resoluted , but your hands are betraying you, shaking meanwhile you are trying to take the gun. Quickly soon a tentacle storms against you.

You pushs Conte to the right and yourself to left, avoiding to be caught.

On the ground you get your weapon recalibrate it to shoot him again. He is running towards conte to grab her again.

This time he wouldn't be merciful, he doesn't need her anymore since he got the password to the computer.

You aren't ready to shoot, you are sweting, shaking frenetically, making all more difficult.

BAM!

A huge piece of Concrete hits DocOct and Conte is quickly grabbed by a neon orange web.

It was Spiderman.

In the shadow his suit glows with red hints.

"Follow me!" He shouts to you.

Clusmly you start movimg towards him. He shoots another web to grab and push you against his chest.

"Quickly" he adds with arrogance. You go from being impressed and fascinated to annoyed and unimpressed.

You are running towards the halls. Conte is being held under his arm trapped in the web.

All is going fine , till you gets strangled by a tentacle and pushed back to the dark of the building

"YOU!" Octo screams.

You couldn't even shout for help.

" ¡Mierda!" Spiderman exclamates.

He sprints outside leaving Conte to the paramedics , ready to storm inside to help you, till all officers points their guns towards him.

"STOP DON'T MOVE"

"¡Estas pendejo !" Spidey murmurs to himself , bringing his hands to the air.

"YOU ARE UNDER ARREST"

" So you can't arrest the actual criminal and decide to compesante by taking in the only one who is doing something?!"

"SHUT UP AND DON'T MOVE"

"just because we both have bizzare animal themed powers, doesn't mean we are part of a company together, you follow? Or you would make part of it too , since you are pigs wit-" before he could finish, they start shooting at him.

Thanks to his agility he avoids all the bullets. In that right moment Octo flies from from the crystal celling of the main room ,holding you in one of his tentacle.

Pieces of glass decored the sky as confetti.

He throws some granade. All the presents starts fleeing the scene to get cover.

Spiderman incredulous of himself helps them anyway to not get hurt from the debris.

After he looked at the you, who looked like you already accepted your fate.

Octo on the other tentacles has grabbed some computers,

He starts moving quickly away from the scene.

Spiderman follows and reachs him.

OUCH!

A punch hits the criminal face, making the criminal fly against a building. When he recovered he feels a burning sensatuon running in his veins, thus realition hits : on one of his tentacles were bitten by Spiderman , injecting him with paralyzing venom. His eyes widen and he gathers all his remaning strength, before the venom could hit completely. Unfortunately it wasn't enough: another streak of punches and kicks got him out.

Spidey pulls out his blades from his forearm and slices the tentacles, being rewarded by a scream from the Doctor, who starts losing his senses,until he meets his destiny to the ground.

You watch this scene surprised: you knew the officers wouldn't do much to save you as they did with Conte, you already submitted yourself to the consequences of your action.

Death by stupidity, by fake heroism , it is what would be on your cause of death. Spidey manages to free and hug you to swing away from the scene.

You are in a total state of disbelief. Your arms are locked around his neck , his hand is grabbing your butt, with gentleness and your face is dig in his collabrone. You could smell his strong scent, a mixture of sweat and cologne , it is so mesmerizing.

Now you feel safe and relax . The wind in your hair , the softness of this man , his warmth , his scent , his breathing, the beating of his heart.

You never felt like this, in peace with the world, then everything comes immediately to an end , when the adrenaline stopped pumping through your veins and all the emotions you had repressed, exploded out.

"Please DON'T MAKE FALL" you screams panicked

"Why would I do ?! I didn't save you to male you fall on the ground?!?!"

You tighten your hug

" ¡Relájate Nena!" (Relax ,baby)

"I SPEAK ENGLISH"

"you don't speak Spanish?!? AND LIVE IN NUEVA YORK?!"

"I've never learned its to diffic- STOP IM SLIPPING"

"YOU AREN'T!STAY CALM!"

You start crying without realizing over his shoulder.

He notices and feels bad , everything you went through today must had you destroyed your nerves with fear and anxiety.

"Ey ey ey , why are crying?! In this right moment you being saved by the most beautiful man in whole NY"

You slightly chuckle at his comment, making you feel better.

"Yeah , you say that based what"

"On the people who saw me"

"But you always wear a mask!"

"It's because I'm too handsome , it would kill everybody ,who sees my face of envy "

"Then why don't you use it as a weapon against all your enemies"

"Because do you think its fair to make admire such a magnificent face to those bastards?! They don't deserve such privilege"

"Then I can get suche privilege?"

"Sorry but to take it off, i will have to use my hand"

"So?"

"Okay , you can choose between the one that is helding you and the one that shoots the webs"

You rolle your eyes to your stupidity.

" I can use mine" You start moving slowly you hands up ,from his neck to the sides of his cheeks

"Sorry, but you can't, it's Company policy"

You started chuckling harder.

Before you could do anything else, the hand under your butt left you and you fell down.

You scream.

A web engulfes you

Your face just stopped in time a few centimeters from hitting the ground: caught upside-down like a prey. Adrenaline started again flowing in your veins. Your heavy beath jumping againt the floor.

"I saved you three times today : one from that creep , two from your disobedience ,three from my beauty "

He frees her from the webs, making you fall on your knees and immediately you stands up, adjusting yourself.

"Here take it , for the turbulence"

Before your could meet his gaze , 50$ bucks appeared on your hand and he swings away.

You look at him disappearing im the chaos of the city with blown eyes , you still have to reconnect everything that happened.

;;;;

The night had fallen on the city bright colored lights decored the skyline. Everything almost got back to before. Now the sounds of chaos were gone.

Your appartament is quiet and covered in dark, the only lights are the one from the outside. You had fallen asleep immediately after you came back from the mess of today, still dressed; blood,dust and sweat stained all over you . You didn't care your brain literally went blackout the Moment you touched the fresh sheets of your bed.

Your phone is full of missed calls and not-read message.

The peace in the apartment gets interrupted by a sound of an opening window from the living room. Step by step someone is heading towards your bedroom. Your door opens slightly and a black silhouette of a man comes inside

You didn't wake up at any of this.

The man gets on bed on his knees, nearing himself to you.

"Por nena! ha sido un día difícil" ( poor ,baby , it has been a difficult day?) the men whispered in your left hear as you are laid on one side.

"Mmm" you get awake by the warmth of his breath on your neck , which sends a shimmer in your back.

"Necesitas relajarte" ( you have to relax) with a hand he grabs your shoulder and pushes you on back violently .

You gasp and your breath speeds up.

You are still a little bit asleep and weaken from the fatigue of the day.

He puts his hands on both you shoulders , chaging you between his arms : he was huge, he completely covered you with his broad should and chest.

You narrowed your eyes to focus who he was

"spiderm-" before you could finish your sentence he lifted his mask till up his nose and kissed you passionately.

At first your eyes were wide by the shock , then you relaxed and melted by his soft lips.He wrapped them around your bottom, breathy groans easily escaping him, as he pulled you impossibly closer. His heart was beating on overdrive, nearly at a concerning tempo as he lapped at your mouth.

He eventually pulls away and you find yourselves both panting slightly from the exchange.Your hands go to the back of his head and you pull him in to kiss him again, more deeply this time but just as passionately. He quickly and easily matches your kiss, and soon you find him leading as you let yourself become completely vulnerable to him, nearly losing yourself to him. He ends the kiss again, pulling away, heavy breaths leaving his mouth.

"Déjame ayudarte" (let me help you) He said softly smirking.

TO BE CONTINUED

;;;;

Thanks for reading till the end , I hope you enjoyed it and be ready soon for the next chapter!

[systematicallycapricious]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I recently got the first volume of the English P4U2 manga!

I am absolutely geeking out over comparing the Jap, Eng, and fan-Eng versions, so if anyone has any pages or panels they want to see side-by-side across the three, let me know and I'll make a post for you! I can't do the entirety of the book of course, but I can do a few pages at least.

--------------------

(Below the cut is my initial opinion on the quality of the translation work, some comparisons between various details of the Jap volume and the Eng volume, and some more manga page side-by-sides.)

--------------------

As for my impression of the translation work so far... To me, it feels like the translator was trying to preserve more of the original Japanese language/culture than Eng-P4AU chose to? Not in every instance though, as there's definitely cases where vernacular translations are utilized instead of literal. But where more literal translations are favored, the wording can feel a little awkward or OOC in English.

Even still, it's a pretty cohesive reading experience, in my opinion.

Also, they translated "Plume of Dusk" correctly, which is a relief. I was worried that some of the technical lore terms might get bungled by literal translations, lol. Conversely, while I'm glad that they didn't preserve Jap-Teddie's "-kuma" habit, and happy that they included a few bear puns in accordance to Eng-Teddie's speech habits, I do lament the low quantity and diversity of bear puns in Teddie's speech overall. Maybe there just wasn't a lot of good places for those in this volume though, so I'll have to see going forth.

Oh- and I noticed that some of the background signs and text got translations as well, which I think is really neat. (I don't read enough manga to know if that's just a standard feature of manga translations though, lol.)

Granted, this is just my first-read first impression, and I don't know enough Japanese to know if some lines may be translated less accurately or not. Plus, I tend to be on the lenient side when judging the quality of creative works. So please refer to other opinions as well if you're trying to decide the quality of the translation for yourself!

--------------------

Fun fact: the Eng version was printed bigger than the Jap version (at least for the Jap volumes I have; no clue if they printed those at multiple sizes).

--------------------

Also something cool about the Eng version is that it comes with the same color illustrations as the Jap version had, just sized-up. The exclusive edition also comes with a bonus fold-out poster of the original volume cover!

The end-of-volume artist/editor comic was included as well! I'm personally very glad to finally know what this comic says. My respect for Rokuro-san and Sakamaguro-san (the fish) as creatives has grown even further.

--------------------

Here's a few other page comparisons too because I found them interesting. xP

(If you wanna see the fan-Eng in higher quality than the screengrabs I used, you can find it on Mangadex [here].)

[stackthedeck]

20 questions for fic writers Thank you @babblingflowers for the tag!!

How many works do you have on ao3?

45 minus the podfic which i don't count but maybe I should

what's your total ao3 word count?

308,676

3.What fandoms do you write for?

writing now mostly marvel comics specifically fantastic four and spider-man but before that it was that weird soup of marvel where it's both the comics movies and shows blended into a beautiful mess

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Getting together for the kids, space boys, one little slip, what's mine is ours, let's see how far you've come

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used to be really good about it, but in the same way I get overwhelmed by responding to online messages comments have been a lot but I still love them so much! I always respond if it's a recent fic and I swear I will reply to the 60 in my inbox soon

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending

either "put me together and take me apart" because it ends with Matt and Peter breaking up because they're still grieving their exes but it feels so much less sad because they get back together in the sequel.. Or "ignorance is bliss" because Jon (tma) forgets Martin exists

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

One little slip, Johnny and Peter get together and go to a premier as the human torch and spider-man

Do you get hate on fics?

Not on any that are currently up...

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeah, it's been very gender queer lately idk what that means but smut has just become a vessel to display the beauty of queer bodies recently

Do you write crossovers?

not anymore, but my second most popular fic is one so...

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah I had a good omens fic translated into russian it was good old fashion lover boy

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no but I'm trying to cyberbully one of my friends into co-writing one with me (Ash if you're seeing this, we've gotta do it)

What's your all-time favorite ship?

All time is hard it's gotta be Percabeth but like currently it's parksborn

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I will finish them it'll happen I swear to god it will, don't look at the parksborn divorce fic I promise it'll update one day

What are your writing strengths?

I think what I have up currently on ao3 has really good dialogue but in my current wips I'm really vibing with like I guess internal thoughts, they feel in character but not it's not so much information that it feels like telling instead of showing

What are your writing weaknesses?

schedules, discipline, finishing anything, my pacing is a little weird at times and I'm always worried about "he would not fucking say that"

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I don't because I don't know any languages other than English, I'd reach out to someone that actually spoke the language but the reader would probably just google translate it and that'd take them out of the story and the translation wouldn't be good but I guess I could do a footnote. Idk I haven't found a story that has use for it yet

First fandom you wrote for?

Why couldn't it have been the first fandom I read for? ...it was Hamilton, I'm not happy about it either

Favorite fic you've written?

either the parksborn divorce fic because of an unpublished scene or it's you, it's always been you because of the spideypool fight. I think I just love reading couples fighting where they go for the throat (metaphorically if not also physically)

guess I've gotta tag people @evilwickedme @waterme-stories @seek--rest and all the other lovely writer mutuals who I'm forgetting

[centrally-unplanned]

Lets talk about the Jimbocho book haul! This was a vacation, not a research trip or anything, so I didn't have set goals - instead I just explored and found things that looked interesting or were attached to my interests and seemed “cool” to own. And that strategy worked surprisingly well:

I will as always highlight just a few of them - if you want me to deep dive one of them, shoot me a message. First up we have the "Erotic Newspaper '97 Highlights", a completely-out-of-nowhere find.

Which right out the gate, really pushing my limits here on the "getting banned" front; I don't even know the rules anymore. Made by the circle 児童販売鬼/Juvenile Sales Demon (!), it is this style of “doujin omnibus” that was decently common in the earlier areas and is sometimes still made today; blending essays, personal rants, art, and full comics, often even on to the same page. And of course, this is about ero-doujin, so that blend gets pretty intense sometimes!

But as an “anime fandom “ researcher documents like these are absolute gold mines. The opening page discusses the late 90’s “bubble” in ero-doujin publications, possible legislative action against hentai being discussed that everyone is worried about, and even has that classic otaku identity tic of politicizing their own identity, mentioning a “Rights for Eromanga!” slogan going around (which it cautions against). It seems like a great biased-but-expansive view of the state-of-play in eromanga circles at the time, which few other documents can give you. Primary sources, baby.

Additionally, amoung its topics it has some sections about Evangelion:

And even a section on Utena:

Yeah that entire bottom corner's just... it just has got to go. I am unsure if this is something I will ever scan - its really niche, and being a porn archivist is not really my goal. But I hope to do a full read and post a summary someday.

Next up in a similar vein, I have a copy of Fanroad Magazine from 1996!

Fanroad Magazine was similar to the Comic Box magazine I have discussed before, in that it collected art & essays from fans about the shows of the day and gave them a place for their voice to be heard. Before the internet this was the only real way to do that en masse; by the 2000’s these magazines would almost all die out as social media replaced them. Fanroad was one of the most popular, having highly structured sections, detailed questionnaires for submitters, in-jokes, the works. And of course this edition was a bit of a targeted buy, as the cover surely gives away - Fanroad released a few issues focused on Evangelion, and this is one of them:

I might scan this one, but first I will give it a read and see how interesting the takes are - it had so much cute fan art though, valuable for that alone.

Next up is a very quick and personal one: Comic Cue Vol 4. Which…what even is this, I imagine you are thinking:

Comic Cue was an off-beat one-shot manga anthology magazine that ran through the 90’s into the 2000's, often focusing, not on hentai, but that middle-ground “erotically charged” narrative stories or comedy shots. Its covers were often just insane - no clue why this cover is in English, none of the magazine is. This one is of interest to me, however, because amoung Volume 4’s submissions is:

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Dirty Work one-shot. Yep, thats right, from the random-deep dive essay I put together analyzing a single line of dialogue Sadamoto wrote for Mamimi in FLCL. Now I own the fucker. That's cool! I like that. I am really proud of that essay due to how much I learned from it, writing about a topic whose specificity seemed like it would be impossible to get that much out of; so owning the actual manga is it centered on feels special.

Speaking of niche Ash-writing references!

We have “Girl’s Life on the Flat Battlefield”, the Kyoko Okazaki Artbook made for an exhibit done on her back in 2015, the cover of which I featured in my essay about the proper translation of “battlefield” from River’s Edge. This is an amazing book in its own right though - its content is so diverse. It has essays from her and from other writers about her work that I hope to read. It has beautiful art compositions and solo pieces:

It has recreations of the actual drafts of her manga as she made them - showcasing things like how she would type up the dialogue and cut-and-paste the printed text into the bubbles, the normal way that was done in the pre-digital composition era:

It has this one section by a contributing artist of photographs of “otaku edgy women” and stuff, amazing documentary work:

I see you, Gunbuster figurine on the table! This is probably the best book-as-a-book I found; I highly recommend it to any Kyoko Okazaki fan for the depth of coverage it has on both her work and the context of her work.

You can see some others of course - I found a few copies of magazines like Newtype and Animage from when they covered FLCL! I would like the Catch Them All - these are all generally scanned & archived already of course, so its just for fun. You can see another book on Okazaki, a really cool academic book on the history of magazines and fanzines in Japanese subculture, and the Gothic & Lolita Bibles that Partner is quite excited about. I am very happy with what I found; there is a beauty in the serendipity of these things. Of course I could have searched Yahoo Auctions for a copy of the Okazaki book, I knew exactly what it was. But stumbling on it in a floor-level cubby while my hands were already stacked with magazines and nearly dropping them in surprise is the magic of the physical bookstore in its fullness. It has its own value that the book itself can’t possess.

[meglyfer]

As someone who used to be in the Spanish side of the UT fandom, when my interest for the game revived and I joined the English side of the fandom my mind was blown, but probably not for the reasons you're thinking

(To clarify, everything that I'm going to be talking about is from 2016-2018, so things might have changed over time for the better)

You know how some people say that Frisk's/Chara's gender in the game is not defined so that the player could feel more identified with them? Well, in the Spanish side EVERYONE SAYS THAT, which means that the chances of you finding someone who sees Frisk/Chara are minimal. Most people refer to them as girls, and every now and then you'll see someone who sees them as boys, and the few things you saw of them being non-binary were usually translated comics from the English side (though some of them had their pronouns changed to fit the person's view on them)

On the other hand, god knows why, every single character that was referred to as they/them in the original game, like Napstablook or NPCs, WERE CHANGED TO BOYS. I think part of the blame lies on the mod that translates the game to Spanish, but at the same time, there were people who did play throughs of the game in English, and when they translated the dialogue for the video they changed the they/thems into he/hims??????? You can already imagine my surprise when I realised all these characters were non binary and I had been misgendering them all this time (forgive me if I ever he/him Napstablook, I sometimes forget about this since I found out about it fairly recently)

Funnily enough considering these are Undertale fans, there was also a lot of homophobia in the fandom, and all gay relationships were seen as "one has to be the woman"

Oh, and fucking everyone were proshippers

Because of the previous statement, I was gaslighted into believing Sans and Frisk were teenagers (yes that goes down the path you're thinking. Don't worry, I got better, I was really young and stupid back then, so makes sense for me to fall into that stuff)

I'm probably forgetting a lot of things, but I've already talked for long enough. If anyone wants to add something don't be afraid to do so

I really hope the Spanish side of the fandom got better since then, after all it's been years since all this, I mean, it MUST have gotten better, right? RIGHT?

Either way, I am NOT going to be the one to test that theory, so if anyone knows more about this or is brave enough to go by themselves and find said answer, feel free to tell me "Don't worry, it's much better now" or "It's still an absolute hell. Stay on the English side, where the flames at least aren't as big and hot as in here"

[tr1nd2de]

Gotham Thief

(I'll say in advance that any spelling mistakes are normal for me, besides I don't have English as my native language so I used Google Translate to help me with that. Also, if there's any continuity problem, let me know, maybe I deleted a part but I don't know if that will cause any problems in the story.)

So I've been having this idea for a while now. We always see Batman's point of view regarding the criminals but we never see the criminals' point of view.

Also, as I have a rather fertile imagination, I kind of imagine it as a comic book or simply as a film, both in the first person, which works as if the reader himself were the protagonist.

I imagine a man/woman who has to steal to survive because of poverty and to try to give himself a better life, so he joins some Batman villain. At first there are several robberies here and there that work out and plans are well executed. The protagonist even gets into a high position, becoming some kind of boss. Then one day Batman appears and then the terror begins.

A not-so-large technology company that is in a good part of town that isn't too expensive for the company, but isn't also a dangerous place.

The plan was simple: take the alert system out of the game, go in and grab all the technology you can, plant bombs to destroy any evidence, and get out quietly, then tear the place down.

A simple plan if it weren't for Batman, suddenly the lights go out, the moonlight bathes the place and shows the few henchmen looking everywhere looking for Batman, and near the wall he partially comes out of the shadows the tall and muscular figure dressed in that black bat costume, the lenses in his eyes make his figure more feared, hideous and frightening.

Batman easily deals with the henchmen coming in and out of the shadows, taking down the henchmen one by one until you are left. Batman begins to advance on you, punching and beating you, giving you broken bones and bruises. His vision is that of a demon, his gaze is like staring into the abyss, and you blinked, many, many times.

He questions you about why you are there, you try to resist at first out of loyalty to that villain who gave you money and a better life, but fear and terror of not suffering at the hands of Batman speak louder. So you tell him everything and he makes you swear on him that you would never go back to that shitty life again.

Time jump.

After one or three years of surviving in Arkham and becoming a good inmate, having good behavior, you leave prison but you are not the same as before. Inside Arkham you lived peacefully even having to survive alongside the biggest crazies and psychopaths in Gotham, but when you return to society you cannot live normally.

You got a job as a cleaner at Wayne Enterprises, Mr. Wayne is a good person after all and has no problem contacting you even though you were a criminal.

Things have changed a lot for you, mainly because now you hate the night, and for some reason you swear you can hear Batman calling you from time to time... Sometimes you also see a very familiar silhouette at night. But distorted, but it's not just your imagination, is it?

You now take medication for anxiety and panic attacks, as well as visiting a psychologist and psychiatrist. The days have been relatively normal. Every now and then you see some colleagues from when you were a criminal. They are happy that now they can have a job and a normal life with the help of Mr. Wayne. He really likes being a good person.

But one day, your medicine ran out and the money wasn't there in your not-so-full wallet. You spent the entire month working double overtime to be able to buy your medicine, which means you end up going home at night practically every day.

Character: It's something simple, I'll get the medicine, then go back home and nothing bad will happen, don't worry, don't worry, Batman wouldn't come to you for anything, you don't owe anything and you didn't steal anything so there's nothing to worry about...

You walk to the pharmacy rubbing your hands and pressing your fingers together in an attempt to disperse the anxiety running through your veins. Entering the pharmacy you pick up the medicine and lost in the anxiety and growing panic inside your head, you end up leaving without paying, which results in you realizing this a few streets away.

You decide to go back to pay for the medicine, along the way back you feel like you are being watched which makes you walk faster, and your panic grows. Deciding to enter an alley to cut through, you end up looking back to make sure you are not being followed, and who is behind you in the shadows, in that same bat costume, and his eyes are now dark as an abyss and yet you feel the eyes on you seeing through your being.

Protagonist: I-I didn't take it for s-stealing, I ended up leaving on impulse, I was already going back to pay...

Batman doesn't respond and then you start walking quickly and towards the pharmacy and when you look at the alley and he's no longer there, you start running and trying to get back to the pharmacy, but when you leave the alley you look at the shadows away from you and he's there, walking towards you.

So you run down the street in despair begging that you will pay, and you run and run in despair and when you look back again he is not there, when you look forward he is on top of a pole so you start running to find any police car but nothing, no car or police officer is in that part of the city now.

Batman chases you down every street, down every alley, telling you he'll bring justice to Gotham, that he'll rid the streets of criminals like you, and you run, begging and screaming: Please! Please, I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't mean to take the medicine without paying! Please, Batman, I'm not stealing, please, believe me!!

You pass through the middle of the street, cars stopping abruptly so as not to run you over, you push anyone in front of you, you run on top of the car screaming, begging for it to spare you the pain: no!, no!, no!, no!, please I didn't mean to do this! Please it was a misunderstanding, I don't want to suffer again! I swear, believe me!

You run with all the strength you have when you look back and see Batman flying towards you, his bat wings making the moonlight disappear, you in all your desperation run across the bridge that connects Gotham to Arkham like you have never run in your life.

Crying in tears, begging him not to hurt you, you enter Arkham, pushing guards who hit the floor. In total panic and despair, you enter a cell and sit in the fetal position against the wall of the asylum. The other two inmates look at you with shocked and confused expressions, watching you cower against the wall like a frightened child.

Your eyes glazed with fear and tears falling you look at the bars of the cell hoping no one would come see you, but Batman appears behind the bars and you cover your face in total fear of getting punched.

Protagonist: I'm so sorry, I'm never leaving here again. I swear to you that I won't steal anything again. Please don't hurt me, I don't want to suffer again. Please! I don't want to suffer again.

Camera cut.

Batman, along with some members of the Bat-family, listen to Commissioner Gordon: You know Batman, of all the things you are and all the things you call yourself, a mental disorder was not what I expected... He/she is simply having a panic attack and hallucinating about you. Apparently he/she took some medication for anxiety and panic attacks, but left without paying according to the owner of the pharmacy, who also said that he was coming back but started running and screaming into nowhere... Well he'll have to stay here from now on, he'll want that anyway.

Commissioner Gordon says quietly to Batman and some members of the Bat-family who are there in a low and worried tone: you know B, it's not the first case I've seen but it's the most worrying, if you're not careful with your methods the people of Gotham may see you as a threat as big as the Joker.

After that, Batman and company leave there thoughtful, especially Batman who now has to live with the fact that he drove someone crazy.

Joker is laughing out loud in his cell right now

[worm-film-talks]

30 days 30 movies! Charly,días de sangre (1990)

This is a gem of national cinema, one of the first (if not the first) Argentine slahser. It was directed by Carlos Galettini, a director who already had a lot of experience directing films. The film was recorded in a short time, which is quite noticeable. It features the performances of Adrián Suar, Norman Briski, Fabián Gianolla among others... but what is the film about?

synopsis

Charlie, a young man with problems, is taken to the country house where his brother was burned to death. The idea is to enjoy a pleasant weekend, but a serial killer threatens the cast

-

Explained in 'criollo', Charlie's father is worried because his son (who is completely traumatized by the death of his brother) does not date women. What worries the guy, as it is implied, is that his son could be gay. So what do he do to help Charlie? He sends him along with a group of friends to a country house to 'que la ponga', to 'que debute', to have physical closeness with a woman. The country house he sends him to is the same house where Charly's brother died years before in a fire.

Said like that, everything seems strange and even bizarre, well I'm sorry to disappoint you but the movie itself is not.

Seriously speaking, the movie is bad, but not that bad. It is clear that the director had no experience in the genre, as for the performances they leave much to be desired. the gion is just strange and the scenes sometimes seem poorly connected. The dialogues are simply brilliant and unintentionally comical.

The movie doesn't have many deaths, but the few it does have are well done and the makeup is decent.

Even so, the idea of ​​the movie is good and interesting and the ending seems not ironically good to me.

Another thing,most of the movie is nude scenes, the characters spend more time on screen without clothes than with clothes. This is one of the reasons I didn't put up the movie poster, since it also has nudity. (It's also suspiciously similar to Nightmare on Elm Street 2 poster .)

but well, that is the recommendation for today, October 4, I don't know if it will be possible to get this movie in English considering that it is already difficult to find it in Spanish.

(I'm not going to translate all that)

[romance-of-three-memes]

I know I've (rightfully) complained a lot about people who totally change the meaning of passages in translations for no good reason, but something that's mostly harmless yet also annoying is people who are way too inflexible about making things sound more appropriate or natural in the target language. You can often get away with this in languages that are closely related or have a long history of directly influencing one another but with Chinese and English? If you tried doing that a lot of the time you'll end up with an awkward mess either way, sometimes it's so bad that it obscures the meaning to begin with. Like you don't literally translate the phrase 'turtle's egg' into English because that just sounds funny and weird, you translate it as 'son of a bitch' because it carries the same insulting tone. If someone called you a turtle's egg in English you'd likely laugh or be confused unless you were familiar enough with Chinese to realize it carries the same air as 'son of a bitch'.

I read a memoir of a second gen Chinese immigrant where she was telling her father about how kids at school were mean to her so he, not being aware of what I just elaborated on, said that she should call the mean kids turtle's eggs to their faces and that would get them off her case. She was familiar enough with English to know that wouldn't exactly work though. But my annoyance is with people who are familiar enough with both languages to know better and yet... Still decide to go with the much more awkward option. Admittedly, sometimes there are constraints that make that harder to pull off, I know with animation in particular it can be a big pain since you have to worry about something matching with the way a character's mouth moves too.

But it's all about *balance*, you know? Especially with static text like in books or comics where you don't have to worry about that sort of thing. You can't be wishy washy or overly stubborn.

[daughterofheartshaven]

Aw, thanks! Seriously, that means a ton. I put a buttload of effort into this stuff, so it does really feel nice to get that appreciated. The answers to your questions are written out below

Yay for a good Susan backstory! TBH I didn't really come up with this, given how The Book of the War went out of its way to state that "Grandfather" is the name of a head of a House and also that sometimes Time Lords go together to make new Houses. I gotta imagine whoever was writing that had that same idea in mind.

I agree that the Doctor's name being a genetic memory is dumb, but not only is it required for this to work, its literally strongly implied in Lungbarrow's version of events anyway. You work with what you get. If it helps, there is a different book, Frayed, which states that "The Doctor" and "Susan" are names that those two only adopted after they left Gallifrey - we can assume that any scenes with the two before they left Gallifrey are using those names for the audiences' benefit (in the same way all Gallifreyan dialogue is translated into English). So the Doctor didn't always call themselves such, but they stumbled into that name in Frayed and it felt right to him bc blah blah blah vampires vampires.

Don't worry about coming across like you are hole-poking, btw - I love this stuff! Here are my answers to your questions.

Yeah I had in mind the Timeless Child as a lesser vampiric servant. One of the comics I cited, Monstrous Beauty, shows that the vampires had plenty of those during the Yssgaroth War. It's also worth noting that... somewhere in the Faction Paradox lore I don't remember if it's The Book of the War or somewhere else, it's stated that all vampires are linked to a degree - Yssgaroth can be considered one entity. So even a single, small piece of it being lost to another universe would have disastrous consequences.

One idea I had literally right now as I was typing this but actually super like is that the physical form of the Timeless Child wasn't from Spiral Yssgaroth, but was infected with the Yssgaroth Taint that fell through the wormhole. This would neatly explain why they happened to be humanoid - humanoids are common in our universe due to Rassilon's eugenics projects (cite: Zagreus), but there is no reason for that humanoid template to show up in Spiral Yssgaroth. So, some random child wanders too close to a portal and is accidentally infected with the Yssgaroth taint and becomes a vampire. Since Yssgaroth wants to be whole, the child (whose original mind and personality have been subsumed by the Taint) - a gap in time that could have been years. Once they are away from the portal, Yssgaroth's influence on the Timeless Child lessens, so they are able to develop a personality and identity.

Yeah I actually really like that.

Anyway onto the second question you asked. My reason for the Fugitive Doctor's Tardis is a police box is because Chris Chibnall made dumb errors because the Fugitive Doctor's Tardis scanned the planet where they were landing and saw that on this planet, Tardises tend to look like police boxes, shrugged, said "I guess we're doing Police Boxes now" and turned into a police box since that was apparently the proven thing to work with disguising a Tardis on Earth. This isn't a perfect answer (her Tardis is still a police box in like EU stuff and that isn't explained) but it's the best I've been able to come up with so far. I guess I could say that since Tardises exist outside of normal space-time, the "I guess we're doing Police Boxes now" ended up applying retroactively before and after that?

I will say that I fully believe that the Fugitve Doctor's Tardis is not the Doctor's Tardis. That's one coincidence too many.

If anyone else has any follow up questions to this, please let me know! As has hopefully been made clear, I think about this stuff a lot and love talking about it.

Using the Doctor Who EU to recontextualize the whole Timeless Child thing

Or, why the Doctor is a dhampir.

Salutations!

Maybe you saw my essay here about how Gallifrey wasn't actually destroyed by the Master using the Expanded universe as my evidence. Now, I want to tackle The Timeless Children's other controversial plot point - the titular Timeless Child's relationship with the Doctor. Also, perhaps you have heard of the Doctor Who book Lungbarrow, and how it connected the Doctor to a mysterious figure called the Other in Gallifrey's ancient history. So how are those connected? Was the Doctor really the Other? And just what is the story of the Timeless Child?

So let's talk about the Timeless Child. Let's talk about the Other. Let's talk about Patience. Let's talk about Division. And let's talk about vampires and where regeneration really comes from.

Shall we get started? Buckle up for another ride into the endless pit that is the Doctor Who expanded universe.

Okay, ground rules first. Anything seen on tv, happened. I can recontextualize as much as I want (and I'm gonna do that, believe me) but it still has to fit with everything we see onscreen. I also have to use all of an EU source if I use it. No picking and choosing bits. However, that same loophole applies to EU material - I can recontextualize those as much as I want, too.

With that out of the way, let's meet the stories that are our players. I'm going to be sorting them into medium by category this time.

Tv stories:

Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children: The controversial Thirteenth Doctor episodes. I'm assuming you're familiar with if you're reading this.

Fugitive of the Judoon: The Thirteenth Doctor story that introduced the Fugitive Doctor. I'm assuming you're familiar with this.

Flux: The Thirteenth Doctor story that followed up to the Timeless Child plot points in a way that is very relevant to this discussion. I'm assuming you're familiar with this.

A Good Man Goes to War: An Eleventh Doctor episode that established some of the history of the Time Lords

The Brain of Morbius: A Fourth Doctor story. Notable for this discussion because it featured brief images of ten faces that were implied to be incarnations of the Doctor from before the First Doctor. These are collectively known as the "Morbius Doctors".

State of Decay: The Fourth Doctor tv story that established the series lore on vampires

Books:

Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible: the Seventh Doctor book that laid the groundwork for Lungbarrow and its Gallifrey Lore

The Pit: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

Goth Opera: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

Damaged Goods: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

Cold Fusion: A book starring the Fifth and Seventh Doctors that is notable for introducing the character of Patience

Lungbarrow: the big Gallifrey Lore book. I will be going over this one in depth

Interference: Shock Tactic: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

The Infinity Doctors: A very confusing Doctor Who book (this will get explained later)

The Book of the War: The first book in the Faction Paradox series

Audios:

Zagreus: A Big Finish story starring the Eighth Doctor and Rassilon

Patience: A Big Finish story starring the Eighth Doctor

Comics:

The Tides of Time: A 70s comic starring the Fifth Doctor

The Bidding War: A 2010s comic with some vampire lore

Monstrous Beauty: A 2020s comic with some vampire lore

Origins: A recent comic that features the Fugitive Doctor

Okay, so there are kinda four threads running together that tell a more complete story, but were all written independently of each other. The story of the Timeless Child and Division, the story of the Other, the story of Patience, and the story of the Yssgaroth War. Let's go through them in order.

Also while the Other, the Timeless Child, Patience's husband, the Fugitive Doctor, the Infinity Doctor, the Morbius Doctors, and the Doctor are all presented as more or less the same character who all call themselves "the Doctor", I will be referring to them all separately. I have a few reasons for doing this which will become clear later, but it's also helpful for reasons of clarity.

Prologue: Where all this mess came from

So in the 70s, there was a tv story called The Brain of Morbius. Morbius was a Time Lord president who decided it was Morbin Time, tried to conquer the universe, and caused a civil war on Gallifrey in just about the only interesting thing to happen on Gallifrey between Rassilon's presidency and the Doctor being loomed. He was killed, but one of his followers managed to save his brain and is trying to make Morbius a new body so it can be Morbin Time again. The Time Lords decide to throw the Doctor at this problem, and he ends up getting into a mind-bending contest with Morbius (who was by that point in an artificial body). During this, both Morbius and the Doctor's past incarnations are shown on a screen, and then we see ten new faces while Morbius says, "How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?". A lot of people assumed those faces were Morbius's, but the intention from the producers was that they were prior faces of the Doctors (I will be referring to these incarnations as the Morbius Doctors moving forward, as that is how they are generally reffered to in the fandom). Trouble is, the rest of classic who completely ignored that.

Oh and if you're worried, while Morbius won the mindbending contest, it left him disoriented enough that he was able to get mobbed by the Sisterhood of Karn and pitched off a cliff, averting the renewal of Morbin Time.

And with that out of the way, let's get on to the real attractions.

Part 1: The Timeless Child and Division

So this story is the most straightforward of the three. In Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children, it is revealed that in Gallifrey's prehistory, a Gallifreyan scientist named Tecteun travelled off-world (in her world's first exploration of another planet) and found the Timeless Child by a portal to another universe. She took the Timeless Child back to Gallifrey and discovered that the Timeless Child had the ability to regenerate. Tecteun was able to synthesize this regenerative power and give it to her own people, becoming one of the founders of modern Time Lord society in the process. Later on, the Timeless Child and Tecteun were both recruited into something called Division, a time-active-interventionist group that skirted around or outright ignored Gallifrey's laws. It is also stated that the Timeless Child's memory was wiped - at least once, possibly more than once - in order to control them. It's also suggested that Tecteun seems to have regrets about all of this, given how she left a message for the Timeless Child in the matrix about it.

This is where the story gets fuzzy. The next time we see anything, the Timeless Child has evolved into the Fugitive Doctor. She is seen working for Division in the flashbacks in Flux and Origins, but following Origins, she goes on the run from them. The events of the Fugitive Doctor's flight from Division play out in Fugitive of the Judoon. She is able to assassinate Gat, the Time Lord seeking her capture, and while it comes at significant personal loss, there is nothing to indicate that the Fugitive Doctor is unable to make a clean getaway.

By the story presented in Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children, however, the Fugitive Doctor is assumed to have been captured with her memory wiped to eventually become the Doctor. Let's put a pin in that assumption, though. That same story also shows the Fugitive Doctor and the Morbius Doctors being a part of the Doctor's past.

Tecteun, meanwhile, had become head of Division (if she wasn't head of it to begin with). Origins briefly shows her leading Division at the time of the Fugitive Doctor, and she is finally shown meeting the Doctor proper in Flux. There, it is revealed that she had started considering the entire universe a scientific experiment, but due to the Doctor being considered too much of a rouge element, she decided to use antimatter called flux from outside the universe to destroy the universe, with Division being safe outside the Universe. She also released a pair of Great Old Ones, Swarm and Azure, with the intention that they would kill the Doctor. Tecteun's plan was that the old universe would be destroyed, and that Division would conquer the universe that the Timeless Child originated from.

This plan did not work.

Swarm and Azure instead killed Tecteun and destroyed Division, before being destroyed by an entity only known as Time (and I could go on a whole tangent on what her deal is, but I'm gonna save that for another post). It's not shown explicitly in the show, but I also believe Time removed the destruction of the flux from the universe as well (mostly because planets explicitly destroyed in Flux are shown still existing in the future of the series).

In any case, during the Flux event, the Doctor was able to recover the archive where the Timeless Child's wiped memories were stored, but she ultimately decided not to access them.

It's never stated which universe the Timeless Child comes from in the show, but we're gonna circle back to that. It's also not stated how long Tecteun ran Division between its founding in early Gallifreyan history and its destruction during the Flux event. We're coming back to this, too.

Part 2: The Other

Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible establishes two very important things about Gallifreyan history. One, all Time Lords became sterile early in their history - shortly after the conclusion of their war with the vampires (more on that war in a bit). Since then, instead of having sex, they have big cloning machines called Looms that make new Time Lords. And two, Rassilon (the founder of Time Lord society) had two major co-founders - Omega, and one other whose name was lost to time. He gets called just "the Other."

Rassilon and Omega were both established as characters in the classic series, but the Other is an invention of the books in the 90s (from the reader's perspective at least - he was a behind the scenes idea from the last few seasons of classic who, but he was never explicitly mentioned onscreen). He gets cryptic references all over the Virgin New Adventures book line, but this only gets concrete in their final Seventh Doctor book, Lungbarrow.

Where we get to know them in the book, Omega is presumed dead, and the Other and Rassilon are having a falling out. Omega's death is weighing heavily on the Other, and he thinks Rassilon is going power-mad and is trying to have the Other killed. Omega's last and most impressive creation, the stellar manipulator called the Hand of Omega, is quite possibly the Other's only friend by this point. The Other wants to leave the planet and so he tells his family to escape, and then confronts Rassilon with his intentions. Rassilon Does Not Like This and tries to have the Other stopped, and blocks all spaceports to make this happen. The Other then calmly walks into the primary generator for the looms and is never seen again.

And then, ten million years later, out from a loom, comes the Doctor. The Doctor's looming process was unusual, with the Doctor later claiming he could remember just before it happened, waiting to be born. (Although given the Doctor was five years old at the time he said this, that may be a little suspect). In any case, the Doctor lives a fairly normal life for a while, until he is found by the Hand of Omega which sees in him its old master. Shortly thereafter, the Doctor is confronted by the Time Lord Glospin (explaining his deal is a little complicated but he's a part of the same Family House as the Doctor is, the titular House Lungbarrow), about some irregularities in the Doctor's biology before being driven off by the Hand. It's ambiguous if either of these were the deciding factor, but the Doctor takes the Hand and leaves Gallifrey shortly thereafter.

Of course there's one last little piece left to take care of. If you're familiar with Classic Who, you may know that when we first met the Doctor, he was travelling with his granddaughter, Susan.

Lungbarrow claims that the Doctor's first trip in the Tardis was to travel back to Gallifrey's prehistory and meet the Other's granddaughter, the last child born before the Time Lords became sterile. She recognizes the Other in the Doctor, and considers him her grandfather. The Doctor doesn't quite recognize her, but takes her on as his first companion in the Tardis. And thus, Susan joined the Tardis crew.

The other thing that's important is uh that Lungbarrow has an actual plot. And said plot is only tangentially related to the above. Everything I just said is presented as three flashbacks in Lungbarrow - one straight narrative sequence (the argument between Rassilon and the Other), one where the Doctor shares his memories of leaving Gallifrey (basically everything that happens with Glospin, the Hand of Omega, and the Doctor first leaving Gallifrey), and one where several characters enter the Doctor's subconscious and have a dream sequence (including the Other walking into the Looms and the Doctor meeting Susan). The subconscious trip has some moments to it that are super trippy and metaphorical, and I'm gonna use that fact later. But for now, on to part 3!

Part 3: Patience

Like I said earlier, Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible is the story that establishes that all Time Lords are sterile. At the end of a civil war in Gallifrey's ancient history, the leader of the losing side, Pythia, cursed the people who would become Time Lords with sterility before killing herself. (Her followers, by the way, left Gallifrey and eventually became the Sisterhood of Karn). The Time Lords, desiring to avoid extinction, created breeding engines known as Looms, which would create new Time Lords through what was effetely cloning. That's the story presented in Cat's Crade: Time's Crucible, anyway. But if you look at other places in the EU, this story starts to crack. An Earthly Child introduces Susan Forman's explicitly biological son, for example. And in Lungbarrow, the Time Lord Andred is able to get a human, Leela, pregnant, although the character's future appearances in Big Finish are notably child-less, suggesting the pregnancy failed somehow (either that or the child removed themselves from history as part of joining faction paradox and became the character known as Intrepid, but this is a tangent).

So are Time Lords sterile? Yeah, I think so. For the most part. But we know that not all of them are. A rare few can still reproduce sexually. There is another Time Lord who had a biological child that I've yet to bring up, as well. Her true name was lost to time, so we know her only as Patience.

This is her story.

The character of Patience has some truly strange origins, even for the Doctor Who EU. In the 1982 comic The Tides of Time, the fifth Doctor briefly sees an illusion of someone who looks familiar to him, created by the demon Melanicus using something called the Event Sythesizer (no, I'm not going to explain that). The art shown is close enough to Second Doctor companion Zoe Herriot to assume that's who the author and artist intended the illusion to be of, but that's not the direction later stories went in.

The character of Patience was introduced proper in 1996's book Cold Fusion. It also features the Fifth Doctor, in an earlier point in his life then The Tides of Time. In it, a prototype Tardis crashes into a planet that is later colonized by humans. The humans discover one pilot, comatose, who by all rights should be dead. She isn't. They take her back to their big fancy lab and attempt to find out more about her with basically no success.

Enter the Doctor. (And also Tegan Jovanka.)

When the Fifth Doctor stumbles into this, he is able to help the pilot complete her first regeneration. She is unable to remember much of anything from prior to her regeneration and is from Gallifrey's distant past. She is, biologically, something of a proto-Time Lord: she speaks a different language then the Doctor naturally, she only has one heart, and a few other things. She's explicitly more-or-less a contemporary of Rassilon.

Not having a name for herself, she adopts the moniker "Patience" on Tegan's unintentional suggestion. Despite all this, Patience and the Doctor recognize each other on some level, and neither really have any ideas as to why - the Doctor shouldn't even be able to recognize the dialect of Gallifreyan she speaks, as it is dead by his time. Patience has some garbled memory of fleeing from arrest as ordered by Rassilon (with the implication being that any fertile Time Lords were having their births stopped so that the loom-born were to inherit Gallifrey). Patience's escape came with the help of her husband, whom authorial intent confirms as one of the Morbius Doctors. In any case, in the present day, Patience is starting to properly recover when she is shot in the back of the head, apparently killing her. Her body then disappears. The Fifth Doctor's memory of Patience is lost shortly thereafter when the Seventh Doctor orchestrates the Fifth Doctor losing his memory of the whole adventure in order to preserve the timelines. The Seventh Doctor only met his prior self after Patience's body had vanished, meaning that the Doctor's entire memory of Patience was erased - except, perhaps, for some vague recollection which we see in The Tides of Time.

While Patience's fate is followed up in the book The Infinity Doctors, The Infinity Doctors is a very strange book that doesn't really contribute much to this ongoing discussion. The Infinity Doctors is deliberately evasive about which Doctor it stars, with its protagonist being sometimes implied to be the First Doctor and sometimes the Eighth. It's very possible that Patience and Omega (yes he's here but I'm not going to explain that) are the only characters in the story from the Whoniverse as we understand it, with everyone else being from a different universe. I might do a breakdown of The Infinity Doctors someday, but now is not that day.

The only other information we have about Patience comes from the 2021 audio story fittingly entitled "Patience". In it, the Doctor tells uses an ancient artifact that takes the form of a deck of cards called the Paradoxica to analyze time and hide his companions - Liv Chenka, Helen Sinclair, Tania Bell, and Andy Davidson (yes, the Torchwood character. no, I'm not explaining that either) - from the Judoon. The narrative is interspersed with the Doctor telling a fairy tale about a woman completing an impossible task (emptying an ocean with a bag that had a hole in it) and receiving the child she desired once she had spent an eternity completing this task. The story ends with the confirmation that this woman was Patience, and that she gave the Doctor the Paradoxica. How this happened is left unsaid - either she gave it to her husband who became the Doctor, or this happened during the events of Cold Fusion.

Part 4: The Yssgaroth War

Unlike the other narratives I've just rambled off, the Yssgaroth War is much more of a patchwork from various places around the EU, so this is gonna be even more scattered than I have been thusfar.

State of Decay, for being a story set in the pocket universe called E-Space, ended up being one of those foundational Gallifrey lore episodes of the classic series. That's the serial that established that at the dawn of time, the Time Lords fought and won a massive war against the vampires.

Yes, you read that right. This is one of my favorite pieces of Doctor Who lore.

State of Decay establishes that the Great Vampires were massive bat-like creatures who could drain the life from entire planets and who created more traditional vampires as their servants. Rassilon lead Gallifrey against them, and ordered the construction of "bowships," which were giant spaceship crossbows that could be used to stake the Great Vampires. The Great Vampires were ultimately defeated by the Time Lords. EU sources generally agree that this was the biggest war the Time Lords ever participated in until the Time War ten million years later.

The book The Pit would add a couple of new details about the conflict. It would rename the Great Vampires "Yssgaroth" and claim that the Yssgaroth originated from outside the universe - the early time travel experiments overseen by Rassilon ripped a hole in reality and the Yssgaroth were what came through with intent to consume the universe. These details are supported by Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and Interference: Shock Tactic.

A couple more recent comics have fleshed out the Yssgaroth War a bit. The Bidding War further reinforces that the Yssgaroth are from outside our universe, with it showing that during the Time War, the Time Lords opened a rift to the Yssgaroth dimension in an attempt to use them as a weapon against the Daleks. Monstrous Beauty was the first story to show us the War proper, depicting Rassilon personally leading forces against the vampiric army.

And this would all be interesting but irrelevant to our discussion if not for two stories published in the early 2000s that both seek to recontextualize the Yssgaroth War and the Time Lord's rise to power.

Let's start with Zagreus. The story as a whole is dedicated to deconstructing Rassilon's façade as a benevolent and reasonable ruler and instead reveals him to be a xenophobic tyrant who wished to remake the universe in his image - something that lines up with pretty much all of Rassilon's appearances post-Zagreus. As part of this, the vampire Lord Tepesh states that before the war, the vampires were peaceful and Rassilon provoked them because he feared their power. Tepesh is presented by the narrative as an unreliable narrator, but the point he makes is still worth noting.

The other story I need to talk about is The Book of the War. While the book's primary focus is The War in Heaven (for the uninitiated, that's basically spin-off series Faction Paradox's version of the Time War), it does give a lot of relevant information about the Yssgaroth War. First of all, it gives the timing of the War being right after Gallifrey established History as a concept - by "anchoring the thread" and making a linear history, the Time Lords accidentally let the Yssgaroth into the universe. While this contradicts some of the timings given by some of the sources mentioned above (other sources agree that it was the early experiments that caused the Yssgaroth to enter the universe not the final establishing of History and mastery over time), this can be excused since The Book of the War is an in-universe document and so may not be completely accurate. What makes this book relevant is that it also theorizes that the Time Lord's regenerative capabilities were stolen from the vampires. Even for an unreliably narrated book, this is treated as speculation, but as a concept, that is fascinating.

Interlude: when regeneration happened

There is some inconsistency in all of these sources as when regeneration first became a property of the Time Lords. The Timeless Children has it come shortly after they discover interstellar space travel, and far before time travel, but several of the VNA-era books (including Cold Fusion and I think Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) depict early time-travelling Gallifreyans as being without regeneration. The tv episode A Good Man Goes to War states that regeneration came about as a result of exposure to the Time Vortex. My personal take is that The Timeless Children showed Tecteun discovering regeneration, and initially only shared it amongst herself and her elite (Rassilon, etc.). After the Looms went into effect, they started Looming more and more Time Lords with regenerative capabilities, until eventually it's a shared trait among all Time Lords. After ten million years, the artificial origins of regeneration have been lost to time, but the symbiotic nature of the Time Lords to Tardises and the Time Vortex has meant that a being conceived in a Tardis could be engineered to have limited regenerative capabilities.

Part 5: Bringing it all together

So back to the Doctor and Gallifreyan history. Uh, how does this all make one cohesive story?

Okay so our story starts with Tecteun and finding the Timeless Child by a portal to another universe. She takes said child home, discovers from it the secrets of regeneration, and so on and so forth. Tecteun, Rassilon, and Omega become the three founders of Time Lord society.

So that's the first thing there. The Other, as revered in Time Lord history, isn't the Doctor or some version thereof. The founder whose name was lost to time was Tecteun. And Tecteun discovered regeneration from the Timeless Child. This child, for whatever reason, starts calling themselves the Doctor.

But wait? Wasn't there some theories running around that the the Time Lords stole regeneration from vampires? And that vampires initially weren't as hostile to the universe before Rassilon saw them as competition?

Yes, yes, there were. It's simple, really. The Timeless Child was from Spiral Yssgaroth. They're a vampire.

(I really wish I had been clever enough to come up with that on my own, but I'm not. Pretty much everything else here is out of my own brain, but that is a fan theory I saw on the internet.)

In any case, the Yssgaroth War was motivated, at least in part, by the Vampires' outrage that their secrets and child had been stolen. But, as history records, they were defeated.

And for a time afterwards, Tecteun and Rassilon continue to rule Gallifrey together. But Omega's apparent death shortly after the end of the Yssgaroth War weighs heavily on them both - and they're both ambitious enough to not quite appreciate the other being their equal. Trouble is, they kinda need each other. Rassilon, despite his posing, isn't a scientist - he's a politician. He needs his scientists to continue to work miracles, and Omega is already gone, so that just leaves Tecteun. Tecteun, for her part, is no leader. She wants power but doesn't have the people skills. And she still cares deeply about her people and about the vampire she has come to see as her child. The two drift apart - Tecteun becoming the leader of Division which she took increasingly off-world while Rassilon becomes more and more the sole face of leadership on Gallifrey.

Eventually this reaches a boiling point. Tecteun and Rassilon have lost all trust in each other. Tecteun makes preparations - including leaving the message in the Matrix we saw in Ascension of the Cybermen / the Timeless Children. She and Rassilon then have the confrontation that we saw in Lungbarrow. But Tecteun doesn't throw herself into the looms - she takes herself off Gallifrey through technology Rassilon doesn't know about and begins to cut Division's ties with Gallifrey altogether. Division has already begun recruiting across the universe, so she figures she can leave Rassilon to his one planet. Notably, she also leaves the Hand of Omega behind on Gallifrey, where it is eventually put in a vault and forgotten about. She maintains contact with Gallifrey only through her agents, one of which is the Timeless Child.

For their part, the Timeless Child has gone through several incarnations. They've had their mind wiped to hide that they're not Gallifreyan, and they have then been the Morbius Doctors, including Patience's husband. The Timeless Child has had a personal life (as seen by their marriage to Patience), but they're increasingly being a full-time agent of Division.

In any case, right now the Timeless Child is the Fugitive Doctor. And she plays along with Tecteun for a while. However, following the events we see in Origins, she goes on the run. Tecteun has Division track her to Earth, where the events of Fugitive of the Judoon play out. The Fugitive Doctor manages to get away as we see, but she doesn't know of any way to get away from Division long-term (as Big Finish is currently exploring) - and, away from Tecteun's influence and protection, she's starting to work out that she's not the Gallifreyan she thinks she is.

In an act of desperation, she pilots her Tardis back to Gallifrey - on the very same day Tecteun left. She takes Tecteun's place in Lungbarrow's story, and throws herself into the Looms, where she dies, dissolving into the giant vat of Gallifreyan genetic material.

This leaves Tecteun searching time and space desperately for the Timeless Child. At first, the Timeless Child seems nowhere to be found. But eventually Tecteun discovers that there is a time traveler called the Doctor out and around the universe. An investigation into the Doctor reveals that they've been all over the universe. Trying to just grab them and do a memory wipe isn't an option because they've done too much. Tecteun doesn't realize this Doctor is a different person to the Timeless Child, to the Doctor they left a message in the Matrix for.

Tecteun had probably never been that good of a person, but she used to care. She used to care about Omega, but he's gone. She used to care about Rassilon, but they burned too many bridges. She used to care about her vampiric child, but she takes this as a betrayal. And whatever good left in Tecteun dies.

Tecteun decides to destroy the universe and start over in a new one where she can control everything, so she picks a point far in the future where Gallifrey will have been destroyed naturally so her home planet will be unaffected. By convivence, one of the Doctor's most common destinations - Earth - happens to be at that point. Tecteun initiates the Flux event in Earth's time and releases Swarm and Azure to finish the Doctor off.

The Doctor stumbles into this, but she's operating off incomplete information from the Matrix. She doesn't realize that she's not the Timeless Child, since the Master seemingly destroyed any records that she could check his claims against. So when Tecteun and the Doctor confront each other, they both assume that the Doctor is the Timeless Child.

And this becomes a moot point because the Doctor finding Tecteun and Division HQ allows Swarm and Azure to find it as well. They kill Tecteun and destroy Division. If you're reading this, you probably watched Flux, you know how this goes.

It's not clear if Rassilon is aware that Tecteun died shortly after their argument. He certainly comes to the conclusion that she won't be an ongoing concern anymore, and, as the last survivor of Gallifrey's founding trio, uses his remaining lives to rule Gallifrey unopposed. With no one to oppose him, he removes Tecteun's name from record - as far as he's concerned, she betrayed him and does not deserve to be remembered.

Ten million years pass.

The House of Lungbarrow looms a new Time Lord, but, for whatever reason, this particular Time Lord has a significant amount of the Timeless Child's genetic material mixed into their genetic soup. This new Time Lord chooses to call themselves the Doctor - in unconscious echo of their genetic predecessor. Their amount of vampiric genetics makes them genetically distinguishable from other Gallifreyans if close examination is done, but for a while no one has any reason to do this.

This is also why I get to call the Doctor a dhampir - they're not a true vampire, but have a nontrivial amount of vampiric genetics - or, to use the terms of The Book of the War, they carry the Yssgaroth Taint.

These genetics are still enough to get the attention of the Hand of Omega, which has been mothballed for those Ten Million years. Maybe the Hand sees the Timeless Child in the Doctor, or maybe it's just intrigued by someone who isn't just another Time Lord. In any case, Glospin confronts the Doctor, the Hand drives Glospin off, and the Doctor leaves Gallifrey with it.

He also leaves with Susan. She isn't from the dawn of Gallifrey. Instead, she is a Loomed Time Lord of the Doctor's era who found herself ostracized and disliked. That being said, she found community with three other Time Lords: the Doctor, the Master, and another Time Lord named Braxiatel. The four of them are all outsiders from their own Houses, and so consider themselves a house unto themselves, and Susan, as the youngest, began referring to the Doctor as "Grandfather", as that term is reserved for the head of a House (something that is established in The Book of the War), as she views him as the head of their little house of four.

In any case, the Doctor and Susan leave Gallifrey. The Master loses his mind when he realize he got left behind, steals a Tardis himself and heads out after the family he thinks abandoned him. Braxiatel stays behind and becomes a successful politician and art collector.

A couple hundred more years pass.

We're now in the events of Lungbarrow. The Doctor shares his memory of leaving Gallifrey with some of the fellow members of his House. However, he edits Susan out of the memories he shows - technically, he went through the criminal justice system for this, but Susan never did and he doesn't want her to. Gallifrey has seemingly forgotten about her, and he wants to keep it that way.

And then he has his vision trip dream sequence where he sees the past and sees the Timeless Child walk into the Looms. He then sees a memory of himself meeting Susan. This isn't literal - it's symbolic of Susan and the Doctor's relationship changing and evolving as they left Gallifrey. The Doctor knows this isn't literal, but it's in his best interests to act like it is - he's not in control of this dream sequence and several other people are there (including one of the Doctor's enemies), and he still wants to protect Susan, so he goes along with that story.

The Doctor continues their life and eventually gets to the Thirteenth Doctor where she meets the Fugitive Doctor in Fugitive of the Judoon. When she scans herself and the Fugitive Doctor, the two register as the same entity. However, Time Lords are not biologically identical across regenerations - the Doctor has to have something specific to herself that she is looking for.

And she actually has one. At some point in the Doctor's life, they found a genetic quirk that has persisted across their regenerations. They don't know it, but it's the Yssgaroth Taint. Since the Doctor has never encountered another Time Lord with the Taint, she is by this point assuming it's a quirk of her own biology, so takes her sonic detecting the Taint in the Fugitive Doctor as confirmation that the two are the same.

And then shortly after the Doctor meets her genetic predecessor, the aforementioned stuff with Tecteun happens. It's possible that the Doctor themselves has noted the ambiguities in their backstory and heritage but given that there were several thousand years of life between the Seventh and Thirteenth Doctors, it seems likely that they don't think to try to analyze it that closely.

And that's a wrap! If you have any thoughts on all of this, I'd love it if you would share them! Thank you!

[lettheladylead]

How about Granny De Spell and Rosolio?

Okay so Rosolio isn't really interesting - he's Caraldina's apprentice and he's in love with Magica. Also he's allergic to Ratface.

Granny/Caraldina/???? is much more interesting.

In the 60s, Magica had a grandmother named "Granny De Spell" or Nonna Amelia in Italian (yeah even though Magica's Italian name is Amelia, idk don't worry about it).

She's a retired witch who taught Magica everything she knows - and obv she's from the canon where Magica and Madam Mim hung out all the time. I don't like thinking about humans in Duckverse so I usually ignore this kind of canon BUT it's fine we're just talking about the big picture

Granny Amelia appears in a bunch of comics, none of which ever came to America but a lot of them have official english translations in Australia. I couldn't find them so idk any details about them but these are also the comics that Samson Hex comes from, he's a (teenage?) apprentice of Magica's:

From what I can tell, Granny Amelia doesn't do much in most of her comic appearances. She's mostly just there for commentary or guidance and she's always in this weird canon with Madam Mim.

Now InDucks and some of the Duck wikias have this wrong, but the blonde "Granny De Spell" / Caraldina that we see in the same comics as Rosolio and Minima is a different character.

She's an Italian creation and a lot more fun and dynamic than Granny Amelia up there, plus she fits better into modern duck comics (where there is no Madam Mim lol). Her comics were mostly from the 90s, though I think she's made a few appearances in the 2000s. Not a lot.

As with Minima, she's cursed (thanks to Magica) and trapped in a magical dimension for 77 days at a time, and is only able to escape for 33 hours each time. She doesn't seem particularly bothered by it, but she guilts Magica about it everytime she sees her.

More recently I assume they dropped the curse concept (or it was lifted) and she just appears whenever she wants. In her most recent appearance, Magica came to stay with her for a bit because of some trial with seven other volcano-themed witches (this comic looks great and I definitely want to scanlate it sometime but of course it's super long lol)

Anyway so these are Magica's two grandmothers. I like to think Amelia De Spell is probably Magica's mother's mother ('cause of being so magically powerful), and Caraldina (who I don't think has ever been referred to in canon as a 'De Spell' and though she's magic, she's not as notable as Amelia)* is Magica's father's mother.

Why is Magica a De Spell, then, you may ask? Well it only makes sense that in witch marriages, men take the women's last names. Especially a name like De Spell, with a history of powerful witches...you don't give up a name like that for marriage.

And we saw in Origins of a Witch that Magica's father was just a normie while her mom was a powerful witch, so I think him taking her last name is sensible.

*I haven't been able to read all of her comics, but the ones I have just call her Granny or Caraldina afaik.

Anyway Magica's grandma history is complicated. The author who created Caraldina specifically said Caraldina is not Amelia, but they're still listed as the same character in a lot of places. But they have literally nothing in common physically or personality-wise, so idk what's up with that.

We could also just consider that they are both Magica's Granny De Spells, from different timelines or canons or whatever. Especially since Granny Amelia is from a canon that doesn't really exist anymore, she's very easy to ignore. But that'd be mean so I'll keep her it's fine.

[batjokesbrainrot]

batjokes fic rec [international edition]

Hey guys. In this post, I am going to recommend some of my favorite batjokes fanfictions. Wait, you've it seen all? This is getting redundant?

Then worry no more, Because I've brought you probably underappreciated fictions (to English readers) written in Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish!

+ btw, the list will also include shameless smuts because there's not enough to be put in another post

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Translator recommendations

Russian - Yandex (and sometimes Google translate/Deepl)

Spanish - Google Translate or Deepl

Korean - Google Translate

Chinese - Deepl (and sometimes Google translate)

Japanese - Deepl & Papago (Yeah this one is tricky. Don't ever use GT)

Tip: You can copy/paste URL into Google Translate and Papago. You can also upload documents for complete translation in Deepl. (For NSFW works on Pixiv, I usually use this site to extract links).

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Ashley777

Batman/Joker stories are romantic that squeeze your heart. All plots are elaborately written and all of them come to a full circle. Their characterizations and interaction are amazing.

Five times Joker died, one time he didn't (Arkhamverse)

Joker dies the same way in Arkham City, but each time Bruce's reaction is different. Joker remains in character but the story gets very romantic. And the stunning imagery.. don't get me started on it.

Gotham Disease (#48 verse)

Two amnesiac patients entered the hospital. They are briefly interviewed and they describe their strange dreams.

Other fics that are not mentioned are also strongly recommended!

Alex

Her fics are well-written that left me emotionally devastated for months.

H (Telltale: The Enemy Within)

John explains to Bruce why he is special to him.

The Good Old Days (Batman Beyond)

Joker finds Bruce in his most vulnerable state.

"If it weren't for you, my old age would have been much less depressing." - Bruce

A late-night guest (N52, amnesiac!batjokes)

Batman appears at Jack's house at midnight with severe wounds.

Diseazhaze

She understands Batman and Joker very well. Her character analyses are comic-accurate and inspiring.

Twelves Steps to Quit (post-Joker War)

After the last incident, Joker disappears completely. Bruce, somehow conflicted, follows the trace to Joker's hideout. A story consisting of 9 chapters.

Diseazhaze also has NSFWs in her AO3 account and other fics that I have not yet read in her lofter blog.

F*ck you, Bat by mariferlafuria

Omegaverse batjokes. The way the writer brings Bruce's struggle and his identity as alpha together is brilliant. Non-con is from Joker's flashback, so keep that in mind.

only had an eye for that which was evil by muerteporagua (N52)

Joker POV. Character study fic. The fic's main focus is not romance, but I had to include this one. It's about Joker's despair and his choice.

There is no immortality by Jenny_Ien

The Laughing Batman takes over Joker's universe and tries to persuade him to see the world his way.

This is non/dub-con. And their interaction is violent. However, I want to point out that the writing is mesmerizing. So, so, beautiful. I'd have believed if I saw colors bleeding through texts.

Union of Strong and Independent by Браво (The Harley Quinn Show)

Joker is very towards Batman and Bruce takes it. Harley and her gang, unfortunately, walks into their affair.

This is Harley POV. Joker is very narcissistic and has a disturbing moment with Harley but this is hilarious. If you liked or hated the show, read this. I still remember the members' reactions, haha.

HIBANA by 桐野

Joker wakes up in a hospital room, and with his memory missing, he gladly accepts B's declaration, "I will personally watch over you," but his severely injured body has undergone certain changes.

+ I will be keep making changes!

[revolutionale]

Important Update

Before I go any further I want to assure you that I am not going to leave Revolution Tale unfinished.

Now, allow me to explain.

I've been working on Revolution tale for five years. A lot has changed in my life during this time. I've had jobs, lost jobs, lost people, and even made some new friends here. I thought of trying to make internet art, and such, my career, but quickly learned I do not work well under my own management. In the background I have been going to collage, taking classes here and there but never really committing. Finally this last semester I decided to get a move on and graduate. If I play my cards right, and all goes well I should be graduating this time next year.

However this means my work load is about to get intense.

I thought long and hard about how to move forward with this story. I never wanted to leave it unfinished. I knew from the moment I posted the first page I would see it through to the end. This mindset has not changed. However, it is very clear to me, that as it is now, I won't be able to keep up with uploads. I thought I might take a break, but quickly decided if I went on a break there was a high likely hood of my never returning.

So what's the solution? I am going to finish off Revolution Tale as an illustrated novel, rather than a graphic novel. This mean more words and less pictures. However, it also means it wouldn't be another five years before the story is complete.

I know this will probably discourage a lot of you, and you may leave, and that fine. I'm sorry for disappointing you and I hope you much happiness in the future. To the rest of you, I just hope the promise of a conclusion to the story you have been following for so long will keep your spirits up.

What's making me most worried is my non english speaking readers. So now I'm going to speak directly to the wonderful people who have been translating my comic. If you have it in you, I would ask that you please don't stop. Its probably going to be more work because there will be far more words. But if you can keep going it would mean a lot to me.

Lastly I will be closing my Patreon. Thank you so so much to my crew members. You all were so helpful and I can never tell you how much I appreciate your generosity.

Thank you all so much for sticking around with me for so long. I hope to have you along for the rest of the ride. I'm going to try and keep the same upload schedule if possible, but we'll see how that goes and make changes as needed. I have two almost finished comic pages. I am going to upload them both on Friday, even if they aren't finished. Then after that we will move into the new formatting.

I'll still always be around if you wanna have a chat or ask me questions. I love you all! Thank you again.

-Capitan Alamort.

TLDR: Get ready to read.