#i think an ongoing conflict with characters is way more fun than one just beating the snot out of the other and thats all there is to it

[as-above-rp]

Basilisk has been itching to get out more. I'd love to write with him, but GOD he's so hard to write sometimes 😔 🤣

[absolutebl]

This Week In BL - GMMTV Holds the Line

Feb 2023 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

When they say “famous last words” this is what they mean. 

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) ep 10 of 12 - They are so stinkn’ CUTE as bfs. Possibly the cutest. I chuckle a lot with this show. And that’s great, very serotonin inducing. Also 2nd half had good soapy drama tension with the music competition + the mom’s surgery at the SAME TIME (gasp). Can’t wait for next week.

Moonlight Chicken (Weds YT) 1-2 of 8 - Oh it’s great. Messy gays struggling with both internal and external conflict. It has a Taiwanese gritty queer authenticity to it. EarthMix are perfect for these roles. Khaotung is the most adorable thing ever. And GeminiFourth are fun to see as new characters. Fourth is showing off his acting chops, the way he holds his jaw and mouth for this more sullen complicated part - it’s completely different from Gun. His acting style reminds me of Nanon a bit, he’s very nuanced in his facial expressions.   

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) ep 9 of 12 - 15 minutes of cute bf and dumb tattoos and then SUFFER! I love how quickly Palm put to rest your bog standard gay boy fantasies about a bisexual’s options. Palm was basically: “All the things that you dream for me with a woman, I can do that with you.” Honestly? I wasn’t that moved by the noble sacrifice of this episode. It was fine. More peril please. Looking forward to things going very very badly for the next couple of episodes. Bring on the pain GMMTV. 

Hit Bite Love (Sat YouTube) ep 3 of 6 - Baby Dom is quite the kink dilettante, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kinkster with more varied tastes. Maybe baby just hasn’t found his true fetish yet? I feel for poor Shogun who just wants a boyfriend who treats him decently and ends up with Mr. Experimental. The humorous outcome is, of course, predictable. Not wild about the stepbrothers storyline (despite my taboo preferences). Really? I just want more King and Burger.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) ep 11fin - With the exception of Mum, every character suddenly started acting totally OUT of character. Anygay, Mum comes back to find Dew single and all obstacles to their romance magically cleared. The pub staff setting them up was cute. But all in all it felt like we were suddenly in a completely different show. Series review below. 

I cannot believe we have 3 BL’s airing AT THE SAME TIME from GMMTV. It’s insane. I remember when it was exciting because we had 3 BLs airing at the same time at all.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) ep 7 of 10 (or 13&14 of 20) - It’s an office romance BL, so I like that office politics is complicating matters for both of our couples. I personally don’t believe in scions (with very few exceptions, we know it tends to be bad for a corporation, and that has certainly been my experience). Still, it’s suitably traumatic to see our couples in angst over the power transition. The confession scene for the leads was very sweet. And a nice kiss. And cute bf. Taiwan always just does these beats better than anyone else. 

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 8 fin - K needed to realize O is a big boy. Yes we get it. Bummer he couldn’t figure out that for himself and had to be told by somebody else. I do feel sorry for the bartender character who keeps having to deal with all of these gay boys and their inability to communicate and resulting overdramatic depression. Meanwhile O needed to realize K needs him. And they both needed to learn to communicate, these… journalists. Good kiss and decent sex scenes for a JBL, with an HEA. Careful Japan we may start to develop expectations. I bumped up my rating on the strength of this finale. It was good! Series review below.  

Individual Circumstances (Thurs Viki) 7-8fin - I like the resolution and explanation for the conflict, a lot more than I liked the conflict itself. The kiss wasn’t awesome, but it wasn’t entirely dead fish either. However, Korea has proved that it can do better, so I was annoyed by it. Also, no shirtless scene this time around, we were robbed. Series review below.

The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu (Japan Sun Gaga ep 2 of 8 - This is way too high heat for them to end it happily. It’s all v weird. I guess I’ll keep watching? Even if everyone dies, this one is not gonna ruin me the way Eternal Yesterday almost did.

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching it 

My Beautiful Man S2 (Viki & Gaga) - Because there are only 4 episodes, I decided to wait and binge this one. What can I say? I just do not trust Japan. Sorry I’m too scared, those of you braver than I must watch first - I salute you and look forward to the gifs.

Egoist (Japan) cinema - Japanese movies are notoriously difficult to get ahold of.

Marry My Dead Body AKA Ghost and I Becoming Family (Taiwan) - movie about a police officer forced to marry a ghost.

Cafe in Love - Can’t find it 

Finished this week

609 Bedtime Story 

An interesting time slip concept and a great set up ultimately disappointed. It opened strong, on one of my favorite under appreciated Thai actors: Plustor (as Vee) in a side bartender romance with younger bisexual king, Games. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. OhmFluke’s solid chemistry and romantically soft kisses were ill served by a reformed rake meets rich-kid cheater pairing. While it was nice to see Ohm play a part with more animated facial expressions, his was the only character that remained consistent. All in all, this was a confusing show about disloyalty and parallel worlds that never made sense or stayed true to its characters. A promising start, confusing middle, and disappointing end. I don’t say this lightly, but Oh My Sunshine Night is better, and OhmFuke deserve better than either. 6/10

Individual Circumstances 

A second chance romance between a movie director who was once promising and a writer who disappeared due to past hurt. Stars JunQ (main rapper of MYNAME) and Han Jung Wan (Mr International Korea winner). Reunion romances are not my thing but I liked the bratty director despite his stalking (and prob because of his naked chest). Using a guitar to torture someone is entirely appropriate, in my book/BL world it happens all too often. I did want to know what happened in the past but the mystery got drawn out too much and the tsundere character became frustratingly mean spirited as a result. I like the resolution and explanation for the conflict a lot more than I liked the conflict itself. I could tell what this show wanted to be, and what it could’ve been, but it simply never got there. In the end, like a host of other KBLs over the last couple of years, it is serviceable but eminently forgettable. 7/10

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox 

Innocent but talented gay tabloid journalist partners (and falls in love with) a jaded player bisexual cameraman. This is a solid JBL of the more emo, cringe, and navel gazing variety that never really resonates with me. The main pairs’ chemistry felt weak and their characters were pat (for live action yaoi, I’ve seen or read this couple a million times). Bringing Izuka Kenta in to guest star was a stroke of genius and also challenging, because he has a complex history with JBL which I could not forget as I watched him EAT up the screen so hard he made the leads feel insipid. There were a lot of aspects of this show that felt more KBL than JBL. I missed the kinky edgy pushing boundaries we usually get from Japanese office romances. It did have a stellar ending (featuring a decent kiss and 2 nice sex scenes, you go Japan) but for me CCP was fine, just no more than fine. 8/10

Look you know how I feel about JBL, when it’s good it’s some of my absolute favorite (Seven Days, Old Fashion Cupcake, Minato’s Laundromat, Takara & Amagi), nothing else whips me into wit and eloquence and film crit like it, but when it’s off, for me, it’s really off. And Ameiro never gelled with me. It was too much work to watch. I don’t like chewy BL - nourishing and necessary though it may be for others. 

Gossip

Issues and Controversies of Thai BL Actors - I get asked about these a lot, so I’m just gonna point you all at this YT henceforth.

Viki picked up Boys Planet so I’m watching it. I have FEELS but I’m not going to ruin a perfectly decent BL blog with Kpop reality TV, no matter how pretty. Just know I’m over here suffering for 4 hours every week. SUFFERING. Some of the singing during the first ep alone was SO BAD it put Thai BL boyfriends to shame. I am so glad they got 3 vocal coaches in this show. People better vote with their goddamn ears and not just (as they did with iLand) much lower down. (Oo, I’m salty already.) 

In Case You Missed It

Feb releases list is here.

2023 forthcoming BL master post. (see comments some are inaccurate, NOT UPDATED)

Next Week Looks Like This:

I am so spoiled these days, now I’m upset there isn’t a good KBL airing right now. Do you remember when we barely got one or two a year? What a demanding monster 2022 turned me into. Anygay, 4 more Thai BL starting this week... 

Destiny Seeker (Tues WeTV ) 1 of ? - Feb 14 we think, MDL is janky on this one. Engineering student Songkram is head of dorm 3, for "strong & athletic" students. Aye is head of dorm 2, for the "good looking" students. Aye used to be Songkram's tutor and friend, but they fell apart after becoming dorm heads. Aye is actually in love with Songkram but thinks Sonkram likes someone else. Songkram actually likes Aye. So, Bad Buddy the pulp rebirth meets that weird Japanese “girls-crossdressing-as-boys for love and infiltrating secret society of hotness” tradition. 

Boyband (Thurs YT) 1 of 10 - Feb 16, it’s on the tin, BL drama about putting an idol boyband together. AKA how to make ABL suffer by combing favorite (celebrity romances, Kpop) and least favorite (bad singing) tropes.

Bed Friend (Sat YT & iQIYI uncut) 1 of 8 - Feb 18, but we’re looking for the rerun/uncut, so not sure on drop date for those. Fuck buddies get messy, AKA Between Us the second cuming, this time in an office (and on a desk). I have been waiting for James to hold down (or be held down in) a BL for years! Watch out, new kings of high heat are heading our way. 

Chains of Heart (Sat Gaga) 1 of 10 - Feb 18 Suspense thriller about a forest ranger, smugglers, memory loss, and lost love. Stars Haii (Cirrus in TT2) and Poppy (Porpla in YYY). Adapted from a Y-novel of the same name by TJ Tommy. 

Supposedly, but I’ve no idea where to watch it:

Jack Frost (Japan) - Feb 17 After saying goodbye to his friend, Ritsu had an accident and lost his memory. His roommate, Ikuya, struggles to rebuild their relationship and help him regain his memories. In the process, Ritsu falls in love with Ikuya, but he was unaware that they were already in a relationship.

Moments Of Love (Thai) Feb 14 Foremorfilm Production movie for cinema release. Was originally Golf (Director of 609 Bedtime Story & The Eclipse) to direct stars SmartJames (LeonPhob from Don't Say No) in a series. Is now something totally different and a movie. We are all confused.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Open boys are the best boys. Never Let Me Go

Moonlight Chicken with ALL the zingers, plus verse characters. Thank you GMMTV! 

Why so cute indeed. My School President 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Villain by Key (Shinee) just on hard rotation. It’s great. 

[thereaderstea]

G´day tor-mon, how are you<3? Recommend me your favourite bts!jungkook x reader fics! so I guess its not an au?(no smut✋🚫)

Merry meet, nonnie! I am well, busy and a little stressed because I had a power outage yesterday, but well nonetheless ☺️ I hope you are merry in the holidays (if you celebrate) and are happy and healthy 😄🖤💜

asdfghjkl, my favorite JJK x Reader fics? I have to choose? 😰 *has an existential crisis*

Alright, after some deep reflection, an existential crisis, and fighting the urge to devour these fics again (you have a mission, tor-mon!), I present to you my current favorite JJK fics (this list is only bound to grow). These fics have made me feel so intensely and I think about these fics a lot (an unhealthy amount, probably). I sorted them by genre: fluff to angst to yandere.

tor-mon’s Favorite JJK x Reader Fics

Sugar and Coffee by @jimlingss​  ➵Fluff, Angst, Slice of Life | slice of life au |  pâtisserie school au | enemies to friends to lovers au | Slice of Life series | 23 ch series | 100.5k ➵You are quite the pâtisserie chef, or at least on your way to becoming one, but there’s that one person who always has to complain, Jeon Jungkook.  ➵A masterpiece, honestly. I remember cracking up so hard over their competitions, the banter, and dynamics, but nothing beats that one day after the dream... I don’t want to spoil! but I do want to warn that there is a wet dream (not too graphic and it’s not a lot, I promise) somewhere in there, but honestly, it’s so hilarious.

Chess of Ice by Jimlingss​ | The Reader’s Tea Reviews 1 | 2 | 3 ➵Fluff, a lil bit of Angst | sports au | curling au | trilogy | 42.8k ➵Jeon Jungkook is a rising star, that is, until he falls. Now he’s picking up another sport, curling. ➵I love a good team dynamic and the characters in this are everything 🙌🏻

Date in a Box by Jimlingss​  ➵Fluff | Service Series | oneshot | 9.7k (Jimlingss’s summary: ) ➵If you’re in a hurry then we’re here to help you! Everything you need in a box. Delivery less than five minutes. Upgrade and we can personalize your date even more! Guaranteed 100%! Don’t fret, we’re here.  ➵I love the entire Service Series because the concepts are so much fun and they’re hilarious and I love the service descriptions, aka the commercials XD

I Will Not Lose! by Jimlingss​ ➵Fluff | magic au | oneshot | 6.2k (Jimlingss’s summary: ) ➵A single bet - use every means to make Jeon Jungkook fall in love with you. ➵It’s fluffy and cute, and it’s got that hint of enemies to lovers, especially with how competitive the mc gets over this bet. And the ending! asdfghjkl ^.^ 

midas by @gukyi​  ➵Fluff, (light) Angst, Comedy | enemies to lovers au | ceo au| magical realism au | oneshot | 32k (gukyi’s summary: ) ➵jeon jungkook was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and the power to turn whatever he wants into pure gold. you were born with healing and invisibility powers but without a cent to your name. so when you’re plucked off of the streets for pickpocketing and assigned to be his minder as punishment, you realize you’re going to have to overcome a lot more than class differences if either of you are going to get what you want. (or,) ➵you become Jungkook’s magical babysitter ➵I really love this concept! This fic is what got me looking into magical realism as an entire genre. But also, who doesn’t love a good enemies to lovers? and from the master of enemies to lovers 🙌🏻

ice prince by gukyi | The Reader’s Tea Review   ➵Fluff, (very light) Angst | figure skating au | enemies to lovers au | oneshot | 22k ➵Your ice skating partner just had to break his leg right before a big competition and “of all people on this godforsaken Earth, you’ve been re-paired up with Jeon Jungkook, Ice Prince.” ➵an axel-lent enemies to lovers :D I love it so much! And I really love Tae and mc’s friendship and all those icebreaker questions ☺️

if i told you by gukyi​  ➵Fluff, (light) Angst, Comedy | friends to lovers au | college au | oneshot | 22k ➵Jeon Jungkook is a broke college student, so to pay off his debt, he sells himself as the perfect boyfriend. If only you weren’t a broke college student either, then maybe you could buy yourself a date with Jungkook. ➵The mc is so not what I expected, (no spoilers!) all I will say is that I really love how supportive she is. I also love how close they are and this Jungkook is too fluffy and cute! ^.^

a moonlight melody by gukyi​ | The Reader’s Tea Reviews 1 | 2 ➵Fluff, Soft Angst | fake dating au | orchestra au | vacation au | duology | 50k ➵Your best friend has pranked you too many times and you’ve done nothing about it, because you, quite frankly, suck at pranking. As such, Jungkook ➵This is so soft and magical and sweet and soft ☺️ and did I mention soft? but also all those memes! There is so much good and wholesome and hilarious dynamics in here! This is the kind of fic that makes me wish I had a big friend group to do crazy stuff like this (but I hear you have to leave your house and, like, socialize??)

Down With The Ship by @tatastaetae | The Reader’s Tea Reviews 1 | 2 | 3 ➵Fluff, Angst | pirate au | trilogy | 25.4k ➵ You board a ship to escape forced love; but you join a pirate crew to fall into the arms of your only true and constant love: the sea. (or, tatastaetae’s summary: ) ➵Captain Jeon Jungkook; a beautiful mess of blood and gold. His greatest treasure, may also be his greatest downfall. ➵Very very fluffy! I love the adventure and the antics and I still want to know what’s in that soup, Jin! But that ending, holy heck, I didn’t see it coming and I just malfunctioned and stared at my wall in shock for who knows how long, and I just love tatastaetae’s fluffy writing which always somehow wrecks my soul! ^.^

His Name by @jimlingss ➵Angst | multiple personality au | 8 part series | 52.4k ➵Jeon Jungkook has multiple personalities and gaps in his memory. It’s your job to treat him and perhaps help him remember his past... ➵This is the first bts fic I ever read (a special thanks to Nani for reccing it ☺️) and so it holds a special place in my black heart, especially because I sobbed so hard at 3 in the morning and my mind was stuck on this for days

Gravity by @donewithjeon | The Reader’s Tea Review ➵Angst, Fluff | ‘90s au | oneshot | 29k ➵Time can bring you together, but Time can also push you apart; will you and Jungkook be able to fight the distance and Time to stay together, or were you always meant to only share this descent to earth for just a moment, always meant to eventually drift apart? ➵I am a wimp when it comes to Time, but does that stop me from reading fics that exploit that weakness? nope! That last train scene destroyed my heart and that entire ending, the acceptance, stabbed me in the heart, for good measure.

written on the sky by @inktae​ | The Reader’s Tea Review ➵Angst, Fluff | apocalyptic au? | end of the world au | ‘seeking a friend at the end of the world’ au | oneshot | 22k ➵The 60-mile-wide asteroid was supposed to slip by Earth, but it’s a little late to change its course or do anything about it except to prepare for the end. So while you’re waiting for the end, find a friend, someone to hold a hand with at the end of the world. ➵I was sobbing before the fic even finished. The odd thing is that you know the end, but knowing doesn’t prepare you for the feels. 

below thunder showers by inktae | The Reader’s Tea Review ➵ Angst, lil bits of Fluff | sci-fi au | oneshot | 30k ➵ Yoongi leads Earth, while you lead a withered space station. You go to Earth to settle the tensions that have been brewing between Earth and the space station, and Jeon Jungkook, a broken soldier who holds a deep love for the rain, is there to deliver you. ➵we stan a fellow pluviophile ✊🏻 I am so conflicted over this Min Yoongi >.< but Jungkook is so soft and he really didn’t deserve to live this way :(

first light by inktae | The Reader’s Tea Review ➵Angst, Fluff | hotarubi no mori e au | 24.8k (inktae’s synopsis: ) ➵“Have you ever felt like the world is too loud sometimes?” “No. For me it’s always quiet.” ➵This fic wrecked me and made me so conflicted >.< I can never forget this fluffy, masked boy who lives in the woods and silence...

the swirling way of stars by inktae | The Reader’s Tea Review ➵Angst, Fluff | fantasy au | oneshot | 19k ➵You’re tasked with showing Jeon Jungkook what it’s like to live a completely normal life. ➵It’s just falling in love with life itself, the simple things, and it’s written so magically...how can you not fall in love?

the train of lost souls by inktae | The Reader’s Tea Review ➵Angst, lil bits of Fluff | fantasy au | oneshot | 13.6k ➵You have two options when you step on the train: you can live but forget your life, and everyone in your life will forget you, or you can move on and keep your memories for the rest of time. But, how can you choose when part of your soul rests on this train, and the other part longs for someone just out of reach... ➵Once again, I’m a wimp with Time, and the choices really get me thinking...

Pen Pal by @chinkbihh​  ➵Part 1 | Part 1.5 | Part 2 | Final 1/2 | Final 2/2 ➵Angst, Horror? | yandere au | murder and crime au | pen pal au | trilogy | 127.3k ➵Warnings: mental disorders (agoraphobia?), yandere, murder (stabbing)  ➵You sign up to receive a pen pal and are paired up with an inmate, jungkook. You just wanted to talk to someone who could understand what it’s like to be removed from society, but you just may be getting more than you asked for... ➵I love a good yandere fic, there’s something about a yandere’s demented psychology that calls to me, and it’s always so interesting to see how one yandere differs from another, especially in different scenarios. But please please please read and be mindful of the warnings in case it just doesn’t vibe with you.

Quarter Quell by chinkbihh ➵Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | +more  ➵Angst, Horror? | yandere au | hunger games au | ongoing ➵You have resigned to your fate as a tribute in the next hunger games when someone from District Two takes an interest in you...a bit too much of an interest, you’d say. ➵I am a little hesitant to rec this because it isn’t finished, but the premise is exciting and I am really amped for the next chapter in this fic, heck yeah! I mean, heck, a yandere hunger games au? let’s go! But please please please read the warnings in case it just doesn’t vibe with you

~*~

Bonus rec!

I haven’t read this fic, but my friend, Nani, rec’d it to me the other day, and it sounds so exciting :D so I’ll let her tell you about it:

Fan Identity by @tteokggukk​  ➵Fluff, Crack, Angst | enemies to lovers au | social media au | 37 ch series   ➵Influencer!JK is whipped for influencer!reader. Both don’t know they’re interacting with each other on their secret fan accounts. You’re rooting for the two long before they properly meet. But the best part? You’re rooting for their pseudos, Blair Witch and Seagull, as well. ➵I laugh, I pause, I gasp. The conflict between the two mc’s hurt. Honestly, it made the story worth the read.

~*~

Can I also...🥺...may I suggest:

10 Series by @deepdarkdelights | The Reader’s Tea Reviews 1 | 2 | 3 | The Reader’s Tea Analysis ➵10 Seconds | 10 Days | 10 Years ➵Horror? | yandere au | Bouquet Series | 10 Series | trilogy | 29.2k ➵You’re just a college student returning home from a late night out trying to finish up your ungodly college work...but “All it took was ten seconds” and well, now, you’re his. ➵How can I not include my favorite yandere writer, the master of yandere, herself? 🥺 I’m only hesitant because you requested no smut and I respect that, but if you are alright with a small smut scene (I promise there’s not too much) or even just skimming/skipping over it, I would highly recommend this series 🙌🏻 The smut scene is in the final installment (10 Years). It’s an all-time favorite from an all-time favorite writer. But please please please read the warnings in case it just doesn’t vibe with you.

~*~

Happy reading, carissima! I hope at least one of these fics will become your favorite, too ☺️ Let me know what you think as well after you’ve given the authors some love ☺️

Well met!

your fellow reading monster,

tor-mon 🖤

[pencilofawesomeness]

Fics I Absolutely Adore and Would Recommend to Anyone

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long, long time, because I love reading fanworks and they deserve a lot of love and I love sharing things that I love. 

Obviously this isn’t everything, and if it’s not on this list that doesn’t mean I don’t love it, it just means I forgot at this moment. I will be adding to the list and I remember things or come across it again. (Trying to sort through my bookmarks and subscriptions is like trying to catch a fish bare-handed.) I’m also gonna shy away from the one-shots, even though I adore fun one-shots, just for the sake of organization. The list would be super long otherwise, and those are best sorted by fandom. Here... Here are just some brilliant works I want to rant about. 

Disclaimer: I say “recommend” because I would recommend these works, any time any place, but do keep in mind the story’s rating and tags and stuff. Not everything is kid-friendly.

There is absolutely no hierarchy to the list below. They are added as I add.

Fairy Dance of Death

by Catsy ( @fairydanceofdeath​ )

Fandom: Sword Art Online Word Count: 660,282 Status: ongoing

「AU reboot of the entire SAO storyline, beginning from the premise that Kayaba Akihiko was obsessed with magic and Norse Mythology rather than swords and pure melee. As a result, he created the Death Game of Alfheim Online rather than the floating castle of Aincrad—a world in which player-killing is not a crime, and the nine player races are in competition with each other to reach the top of the World Tree. Multi-POV epic following the stories of multiple canon characters throughout the game.」

If Catsy wrote the SAO light novels and anime, SAO would be among the legendary series. Fairy Dance of Death has this amazingly simple premise of making Alfheim Online, the video game from the original series’ less-than-stellar second part, the game that the main cast becomes trapped in. However, it’s so much more. They took the characters and made them characters, and everyone gets ample spotlight—even background characters that normally wouldn’t receive a second thought. It’s masterful work, and to boot, there is a lovely frame of in-game mystery and player conflict. The organization is phenomenal and I aspire to world-build the way they did. Not to mention that stakes are so much higher and this series has ripped my heart to shreds more than once. 

It has also brought me great joy, and even when I was in the dumps and didn’t want to read anything, a FDOD update made me pick up my phone and read when I otherwise wouldn’t have. It has a really special place in my heart. It updates once in a blue moon, but that’s okay. 

Even if you have never seen a single piece of Sword Art Online, Fairy Dance of Death is still a great read. In fact, it’s the Better Version of SAO, if we’re all being honest, so I would especially recommend it if you hadn’t seen the original. Or if you have. The characters are given so much love and detail, to the point where Fairy Dance of Death’s characterizations are More Canon to me than Kawahara Reki’s work. It is just a beautiful piece of fiction, and it makes you question the depravity of man on levels that SAO shied away from. 

Poisoned Dreams

by StrangeDiamond

Fandom: Genshin Impact Word Count: 82,852 Status: Complete, with a complete sequel and more to come

「 Every night now, Diluc dreams of death. Usually Kaeya's. In between these nightmares his life is falling apart. It doesn't take Kaeya long to realize that this is something much more insidious than simple bad dreams. His brother's life and sanity are on the line and there is nothing Kaeya won't do to save him. Bonus chapter added.」

In a growing fandom from a new game, StrangeDiamond swooped in and characterized these bad boys so well I think it’s canon. It really breathes life into the video game lore, and it’s an A+ depiction of awkward sibling re-bonding post-Terrible-Happenings. Poisoned Dreams can be read alone with a basic understanding of Genshin storybuilding, but StrangeDiamond has an entire group of fics and oneshots set in the same headcanon, and they integrate them really well and subtly together. Not to mention that the narrative style is really clever with making you question what is real and what is dream (a big point in this story) and the inner voices of the point-of-view characters are very compelling. 

One Word to Change the World

by AgentMalkere 

Fandom: Fairy Tail Collective Word Count: 43,988 (30 parts) Status: probably never coming back

「 In just one universe, Ultear called out to her mother instead of turning away and the fate of Fairy Tail and the world was irrevocably altered. These are glimpses of a world where a single word made all the difference.

In other words, welcome to the Butterfly Effect - Fairy Tail style. 」

It’s a really cute canon-divergent, and while the series makes no attempt to re-write Fairy Tail, it addresses the major events and just snippets in between. It does a good job at giving the vast cast ample spotlight, but it’s also an easy read. It’s special to me because it was the series that made me really pay attention to Bickslow in particular, and I respect that.

Vigilantis Pretium Libertatis

by aradian_nights 

Fandom: Attack on Titan Word Count: 399,226 Status: Complete

「 Five years ago, an accident freed Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackerman, and Armin Arlelt from an experiment that forced the most extraordinary powers onto them. After five years of separation, of being raised apart to be heroes by a set of three very different adults, they meet again. As they uncover the truth behind their captivity they realize being free and being heroes are sadly nothing but an illusion. 」

This wrecked me.

I still remember when I read it. It was the beginning of 2018, and I had the flu and a lot of time on my hands, so I binge-read this. It was simultaneously the best and the worst thing I have ever done, because I resonated with it so deeply there were times I was just staring up at the ceiling wondering what was real. I empathized with the characters to a level I rarely achieve, and I empathize easily. I laughed. I cried. It was amazing.

I refer to this story in conversation to this day. It handled themes published authors have only dreamed of achieving. Heck, if Dani (the author) took out the names of the AoT cast and replaced it with new ones, it could be its own stand alone novel. It is worldbuilding from the ground up, and any fandom knowledge you take in with you is used against you like a knife leveraged against your throat. Yet, no one is out of character. It’s phenomenal. I would say more, but this is something I daren’t spoil for anybody, because you must be as wrecked as I was. Vigilantis Pretium Libertatis is a level of writing I achieve to gain as a writer myself. It is a masterpiece in every sense of the word.

Life in Glass Houses

by blueskyscribe ( @blueskyscribe​ )

Fandom: Transformers (Transformers Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass) Word Count: 119,900 Status: Ongoing (maybe, I hope)

「 No one would have thought Bumblebee and Knock Out were capable of getting along, but when they're stuck in a strange new world and their only hope of survival is cooperation . . . Yeah, they're probably doomed. 」

I could be biased because Knock Out and Bumblebee are two of my favorite characters, but it really is brilliant. Two enemies, stuck together—but not in an overly cliché way. It’s the right amount of cliché, with heaps moral conflict and inner conflict and sometimes just beating each other with a broom when no one is looking. It’s also a fascinating look into what makes a character the way they are in relation to the morals they possess, and how stalwart those morals can be. I can’t help but think of this story whenever I see or write a “role reverse” or mirror-verse AU. It does an excellent job at making all of the characters engaging and their own character, despite being in a mirror-verse.

Yesterday Upon the Stair

by PitViperOfDoom ( @pitviperofdoom​ )

Fandom: My Hero Academia Word Count: 424,070 Status: Complete

「 Midoriya Izuku has always been written off as weird. As if it's not bad enough to be the quirkless weakling, he has to be the weird quirkless weakling on top of it.

But truthfully, the "weird" part is the only part that's accurate. He's determined not to be a weakling, and in spite of what it says on paper, he's not actually quirkless. Even before meeting All-Might and taking on the power of One For All, Izuku isn't quirkless.

Not that anyone would believe it if he told them. 」

As a person who normally doesn’t read these kind of minor canon divergences, especially at the time of reading, I frickin’ love this fic. In fact, I think YUTS gave me a deep appreciation for canon divergence fics. It’s MHA in all of its glory but it’s so much more, and even the parts that rehash canon give new light to the characters and their points of view. 

I had read Viper’s work before and saw Yesterday Upon the Stair filling my inbox, and then I finally watched My Hero Academia. It was one of the first MHA fics I read and it still has a very special place in my heart. I recommend this series to people who don’t even watch MHA; in fact, there are some who might prefer the darker tones and themes of heroism vs apathy to the main series. Not to mention the writing style is phenomenal, and I aspire to be that good. It made me laugh. It made me cry. Yes, tears streaming down my face crying. It is the best ghost story I have ever read.

the Vantage Point Universe

by Aggie2011 ( @aggie2011whoop​ )

Fandom: The Avengers (MCU) Collective Word Count: 1,032,651 (35 parts) Status: Ongoing (just slowed down)

「 Six months after the Loki incident, Clint isn't adjusting well. When an enemy from his days in the Army comes back to haunt him, he'll be forced to face a part of his past - and to move past Loki, if he has a hope of finding his place with the Avengers. (First of a universe created to center around Clint Barton) 」

// description taken from first installment

Have you enjoyed the MCU, especially the first-era Avengers phase, but like me, were disappointed in the fact that Hawkeye was barely there? The VP universe is for you. 

I honestly have a hard time remembering what was canon and what was VP. And if it’s not canon, it should be. The VP universe gave so much life to Clint and to Natasha and to all of SHIELD and even the rest of the Avengers. It’s just...so good. It’s completely immersive. It focuses a lot on Hawkeye and Black Widow from before the Avengers team-up, as well as after, and it all flows together so beautifully. Not to mention that I can be reading a mission that happened pre-series, so I know that they are going to live with all of their limbs, and I still sit there on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The OCs, minor as they are, that are created for this are also wonderfully done. I can’t believe Dan and Phil don’t exist in canon. Every character, canon or no, is engaging and dynamic, it is a pleasure to follow each point of view. The emotional turmoil is also handled very well, and the VP universe carries the MCU trend of humanizing its heroes and takes it so much further. 

Ghosts of the Future

by Evan Stanley ( @evanstanleyportfolio​ )

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog Word Count: comic (18 issues) Status: ongoing

「 About 200 years in the future, Silver the Hedgehog is an average kid living in San Francisco... except for his strange and terrible dreams of a dying Blue Hedgehog, a Black Hedgehog, and mysterious gems called "Chaos Emeralds". What will he do, when these "figments of his imagination" appear before him in his real life? 」

// description taken from first installment

Okay so this is the only one that isn’t an Ao3 story, but rather a comic on DeviantArt. However, it is still one of my favorite stories. Even though it takes the commonalities of Sonic canon and turns them on its head, GotF really treats the characters well. There are enough familiar world elements to create intrigue, but it is set in a completely different take of the future, so there is ample opportunity for world building and being able to engage with a completely new thing. I wish SEGA put as much love in the series (namely the games, because the comics are *chef’s kiss*) and all of its possibilities as creators like Evan Stanley do.

The friendship and family relationships in GotF are so diverse and all so fantastic to witness. It’s a keynote example of the new hero and the old veterans, and both parties are active and trying their best.

Do not be alarmed by the starting art style. Sure, it’s rough around the edges at first, but then it gets better, and then it gets gorgeous, and then you’re left there so stunned that it looks like just life canon art. And then you could be like me, blinking slowly as my small brain finally connected that this Evan Stanley is in fact the Evan Stanley. GotF is an amazing fanwork, but she also draws and writes for the Official Canon comics (the IDW ones now) and that work is also phenomenal and should be supported. 

Whirlwind

by Lynse ( @ladylynse​ )

Fandom: Danny Phantom, American Dragon: Jake Long, Miraculous Ladybug, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja Word Count: 75,556 Status: Complete

「 Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny really should've expected something like this when he got that phone call from Jake. (Secret Quartet fic) 」

I have to start by saying that I adore all of Lynse’s fics, and I chose this one simply because it is one of my favorites. But it’s all fantastic, one hundred percent. I also love Mirrored, the sort-of prequel to this fic, but Whirlwind just has the chaotic pure bean energy that each of the shows bring and it foils against each other so perfectly. This is the epitome of the Secret Quartet crossover, truly.

All fandoms and all characters get ample love, and the way the reader gets to see just how badly the characters’ assumptions are going is positively wonderful. It’s so easy to fall into the “I know what’s happening and so do the characters” trap, but Lynse leaps over it gracefully and lands in greatness. The fic had me smiling like a maniac one minute, and feeling sorry for my babies the next. Wonderful. Simply fantastic!

[9bitghost]

REMEMBER THIS AU???

Took me 2 years, but I’ve finally got everyone’s designs roughed out for my RPG AU!! Some designs gave me a lot of trouble, so I’ll probably change a few in the future, but for now, they’re all based around their outfits in the show. Getting back into this has also got me more into learning about D&D, so classes and subclasses are based on stuff from there and homebrews I’ve found and liked, with some liberties taken for the fun of it. ☆  

I want to write proper backstories for all of them sometime, but until then, classes, alignments, and headcanons are under the cut!! ↓ ↓ ↓ (VERY LONG)

This AU can be set either as its own, or if everyone sat down and played D&D with characters based on themselves. I would love to write fic splicing the two together if I ever get around to it lol

Character Info

David: Ranger/Bard - Champion of Nature (Lawful Good)

S4E7 pretty much laid out his character and class perfectly; David is a Bard at heart, and sought to make people happy with his tricks and performances when he was younger, until he found his true calling in his connection to Mother Nature. His home is wherever he can set up camp and has his heart set on protecting the forests’ natural beauty and integrity from quickly growing cities. Breaks into song at random and dislikes conflict. Prefers to shut fights down though talk and song, but does excel at archery and long-range combat if the need arises.

(tbh, binary-bird’s david design is so much cooler and i was heavily inspired by it, so please just imagine him in that one instead lol)

Gwen: Bard/Cleric - College of Lore (Chaotic Neutral)

In all honesty, Gwen is the most difficult one for me to place in this AU. She strikes me as the one to DM for the kids so Nerris can play, and enjoys creating stories for them, hence why Bard comes as the most natural to class her. An unconventional one, as she’s sharp-tongued, usually straight-faced, and witty in a sarcastic sense. Probably owns a bookshop in her town and writes many of her own books (half of which are erotica and stored in a curtained off area you need a password for). She has a way with words and handles her spear with the same proficiency. Badass fighter if you get on her bad side.

Max: Rogue - Thief/Trap Master (Chaotic Neutral)

Grew up poor and practically on the streets with barely a glance from his parents, Max learned it’s every person for themselves from an early age. Known for being a little shit and a master at picking pockets, MacGyvering traps, and winning bets through words alone. Shitton of knives, prefers throwing them from the shadows. Says he doesn’t care for anyone but himself, but would actually kill a man or 20 for his friends. Met Neil when trying to swindle him out of some expensive potions and wound up traveling with him. Purely for profit at first after hearing about the tech Neil’s in search of, but they ended up clicking and became fast friends (in denial).

Neil: Artificer - Alchemist (Lawful Neutral)

Neil’s family is very well off and many of his relatives are well known scholars; his father being the leading philosopher in their district. Though proud of his family’s and his own scientific accomplishments, Neil became bored of his mundane village and life, and thus set off in search of new scientific discoveries that could land him a place in the history books. Hates combat and stays out of it whenever he can. Sticks to the side lines, crafting bombs, poisons, splash potions, and buffs for the party. Relatively level-headed and often leads the team’s strategies in battle, until things go wild and sends him into a panic.

Nikki: Barbarian/Druid - Path of the Beast Master (Chaotic Good)

Born into a broken family, Nikki fled to the woods at a young age and lost her way home. Found and taken in by a pack of wolves, she quickly answered to the call of Mother Nature and grew into a nomadic lifestyle with her pack. Nikki is a wild one, brandishing her giant axe with ease, communicating with animals, and able to shift into a wolf form. Met Max and Neil as they were passing thorough her forest and nearly bit a chunk out of Neil’s arm on their first encounter. Would do anything for her friends and thinks of them as her own pack as she journeys with them.

Nerris: Sorceress - Storm Bloodline (Neutral Good)

Born to a human mother and elven father, Nerris is skilled in magic pertaining to the elements, specifically lightning and electricity, and not to shabby with their shortsword when the need arises. Left their village on a traditional journey to hone their skills and become a great sorceress to make their family proud. Always up for adventure, but rash and dives head first into more dangerous situations. Met and traveled with Harrison, who they bicker with constantly over who is the better magic user, before they both joined the Main Trio feat. David. Don’t mess with their party, man, Nerris will beat your ass into the neighbouring realm.

Harrison: Wizard - School of Illusions/Wild Mage (Chaotic Good)

Harrison was born with chaotic magic that had his parents on edge since the beginning. He quickly became a specialist in illusions, but due to his wild magic, he’d caused a lot of unintentional trouble in his town, escalating to making his brother disappear with no idea how to get him back. Fled his family and town young in pursuit of honing his magic and searching for a way to bring his brother back. Terrible at hand-to-hand, weapons, or close-range combat, but packs a punch when his magic goes haywire, often being linked to his emotions. Will sometimes levitate without realizing and freak people out. His hat is his nearly unlimited inventory and is probably a dangerous rip in space-time that should be dealt with.

Preston: Bard - College of Glamour (Lawful Neutral)

Preston travels around in search of fame and artistic inspiration and loves any audience he can find. Rarely staying in one place for long, he recites his poetry and one-man acts for captivated audiences in the town’s square or taverns, sometimes accompanied by lute or flute music. His outfits are flashy and as much of a trainwreck as he is so he’s easy to spot. In battle, his acts are usually used to stun or paralyze opponents, often done as a tag team with a more offensive member of the party. If forced to fight, he’s not too bad at fencing his way out of it.

Dolph: Bard - College of Paint (Neutral Good)

Born into a prestigious and proud military family that he left to pursue a career in art. Has painted quite a few nobles’ portraits and has thus become well known as a traveling painter. Became quick friends with Preston when they met in a town square Dolph was passing through. Hates conflict and tends to stay back in battle, but if he has to fight, he’s able to summon whatever he paints in ink to fight for him (think Sai from Naruto lol).

Ered: Rogue - Scout (Chaotic Neutral)

Daughter and assassin-in-training of her two fathers who work closely with their country’s monarchy. Though she loves them more than anything, Ered has more of a go-my-own-way attitude, opting to work more freely and alone for smaller contracts than under her parents’ wings. Amazing sharp-shooter with her crossbow and can hold her own in hand to hand combat. She’s a name quite a few know in underground circles, and Max has heard of her before as well.

Nurf: Barbarian - Path of the Brawler (Chaotic Neutral)

Half-orc and full temper, Nurf is a brawler through and through. On the run for various crimes and resents the justice system for putting his mother behind bars. Fights mainly with fists and daggers and is one of the strongest in the party. Actually quite perceptive and insightful, but whether he chooses to act upon that insight is entirely dependent on how he feels at that moment. Nurf joined the party a little later than the rest, after meeting them during an ongoing brawl and teaming up as a spur-of-the-moment decision. He stuck around for one reason or another.

Space Kid: Cleric - Cosmic Domain (True Neutral)

Space Kid comes from a line of astronomers and astrologists, and he too answers to the Stars and Celestial Bodies. Many of his decisions are based on what star charts tell him and he’s just happy to be along for the ride. Met the Main Trio early on during a quest relating to astrology and, realizing they lacked a designated healer for the team, found Space Kid to be decent enough. Probably has untapped powers that are pretty incredible if he knew how to access them. Sticks around due to the Stars hinting that their fates are tied and good things will come about in the party’s future.

Other Notes

I’ve gotten an ask or two in the past asking about Daniel and he is 1458903% a Lawful Evil Warlock/Bard who answers to his patron Xemüg. Quartermaster is also a Warlock, probably Chaotic Neutral, and I like the idea of his patron being The Octopus (thank you S4E5 for the harrison and QM inspiration).

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: August 2020

August! Lots of reading this month but I did manage to catch up on two movies I’ve been meaning to see for aaaaaaages! Here’s how I spent the month.

……….FILM……….

Arrival (2016) Whoa. I’ve been meaning to catch this for ages and finally got around to it! I’m amazed I didn’t really have anything spoiled and I loved it. It’s a shame that the themes of fear and skepticism are evergreen but I really loved the overall message. Now I better appreciate why this director was a good fit for the Blade Runner sequel. Anyway I 100% recommend.

Clue (1985) Exactly what I was hoping for. I think we’d put this on our list of movies to watch after loving Knives Out and this was wonderfully adjacent while being completely different. Comedies like this don’t really seem to get made any more, do they? Fun and silly and smart all at once. Just fantastic.

……….TELEVISION……….

Insecure (Episode 1.01 to 3.03) So great! I wasn’t sure about it at first (I don’t generally connect with characters who are just kinda meandering through life) but the cast and writing are very very good.

Mad Men (Episode 4.12 to 5.03) I wasn’t sure about Megan but she’s such a great foil for Don and has far more personality than I was expecting (I was expecting Jane 2.0). Also the new copywriter (Ginsberg) is already my favourite character and I sure hope he sticks around.

What We Do in the Shadows (Episode 2.05 to 2.10) Another solid season of this series. Each finale really wraps up the season’s ongoing conflict while immediately opening up to the one, and it’s a really fun way to pace a show. Still super fun and funny.

……….READING……….

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson (Complete) While still a fantasy novel, this was unlike anything I’ve read in this genre before. I’d almost describe it as...narrative poetry? It took me a bit to adjust but the experience was closer to gleaning a story from a song than it was reading a novel. It has some jarring language but I think that adds to the lyrical quality. All this is to say if you want a change from your typical fantasy, give it a go.

Illuminatus! Part II: The Golden Apple  by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (Complete) I now realize that this truly is just one long story being told and it’s changed my whole perspective. Book I didn’t really have a complete narrative and neither does this, but I can see it's building towards something that (hopefully) comes to a head in Book III. It’s fun, if slightly indulgent, but the worldbuilding is very very good.

Saga Book Three by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples, and Fonografiks (Complete) Oof what a gut punch. Waiting for the hardcover collections before catching up means a long time passes between reading them and it always takes me a minute to get back into it. But after that 30 second hurdle is jumped, I remember why this series is so so incredible. Consequences and stakes, funny and heartbreaking, it’s just everything a comic can be. It sounds like there’s only one more hardcover to go before the series wraps so if you haven’t checked it out, now’s a good time to start.

Seven Little Sons of the Dragon by Ryoku Kui (Complete) Short stories by the creator of Delicious in Dungeon? Oh yeeeeeeah. These were fun and there were more hits than misses, as is hopefully the way with an anthology book like this. Worth checking out if you’re a completionist of Ryoku’s work, but I admit it can’t deliver on the same depth that Delicious does (nor should it). It’s the same, but different.

Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One by Hubert Boulard & Bertrand Gatignol (Complete) The art is beautiful and the world is richly fleshed out but I couldn’t really connect or want to follow any of the characters. Petit, the main protagonist of this book, doesn’t really have much personality. If you liked Attack on Titan then it might be worth checking out (similarly violent, strict hierarchy, some politics at play). Truly a beautiful book but it just wasn’t for me.

……….AUDIO……….

The Empty Town by Jaguar Sun (2020) Great end-of-summer energy and I think this’ll be on regular rotation for the rest of the year.

Lofi Hip Hop Music - Beats to Relax/Study To (Playlist) I have trouble listening to music with lyrics while I write so this has been my go-to playlist. I listen on Spotify but it looks like you can find a bunch of other options on YouTube and such.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The party has met a bunch of Fairies, delivered a tea set, and are about to ambush some Pirates! I’m really having a lot of fun with this setting and am super stoked for it’s release in October! In the meantime, you can read more detailed accounts of the group’s adventures over on Reddit.

D&D Homebrew Adventure (Menace of Merlin) Is this it??? The trio have saved the Viking village and have begun infiltrating Merlin’s tower! They seem skeptical of his non-magical security but who doesn’t love a cookie-themed puzzle?

And that’s it! As always, I love a good recommendation so don’t hesitate to send me something you enjoy and happy Monday!

[comfeyworks]

Alastor writing/ Character ref sheet

NOTE: This is MY interpretation/ notes of my characterization of Alastor. Most is speculation and the other parts are just me having fun imagining what his character could be like. This is no way meant to be official or taken as cannon in any way.

A wonderful user by the name of dolly moon complied a lot of information from Viv’s streams. I’m referencing some of the information here so please check them out, they did a fantastic job making notes.

Warning: Contains talk about murder, cannibalism and other possible triggering subjects.

General

---NAME: Alastor--- Died: 1933 Age: 30′s Occupation: Former radio host and serial killer. Currently powerful overlord in hell

Main Personality/ notes

Always smiling (He sees people frowning as weak)

Sadistic

Charming and charismatic

Very proud( puffed out chest, arms behind back)

He's controlling/ does things his own way

Careful! He's not too braggy, or too forceful/ demanding. Ex: Viv stated in her qna that the pilot was originally going to have Alastor boast about himself and his backstory. Instead vaggie narrates his backstory. She changed this because Alastor wasn’t the type of person to flaunt his achievements. He knows that everyone knows how powerful he is, he’s not the type to rub it in. He's supposed to be charming, but still proud, juuuust in the right way

He knows what he wants, but doesn’t necessarily brute-forces his way to get it. Ex: "He-" "-llo!" He KNOWS he's getting in hotel regardless, but waits for Charlie to open up the door before invading the hallway.

Deceitful; When asked why he wants to help out at the hotel, he says: "Consider it an investment in ongoing entertainment for myself!" 'This is what you can think my reason is...' is essentially what he's saying. He answers Charlie’s question in a roundabout way that givers her what she wants to know while still keeping his true intentions secret. Time and time again, he lets his mask down slightly when Charlie isn’t looking. At 24:10 he narrows his eyes when she has her back turned to him At the beginning of his song he distracts her with magic so he can push Vaggie away. When he says “...And it’s just laughable-” during he reprise he turns away from Charlie to say this, he leans down to Vaggie.

He’s a hypocrite (hates being touched, invades other’s personal space)

Watches people do things the hard way and then reveal he can do it once it's done just to watch people fuck up

DELIGHTS in watching people failing/ struggling to do things. He likes observing people/ sinners as they are battling with their conflicted emotions.

He’s curious (He stopped by the ‘radio shack’ place to see what Charlie was talking about on the broadcast, and cocked his head when she started singing. To me that meant, “Oh? What’s this now? Something new?” he was intrigued and wanted to know more)

He analyzes people. He looks at the Magne family portrait when left alone. You can briefly hear him playing Charlie’s “Inside of every demon is a rainbow” song, and smiling.

He picks up on things quickly. Vaggie makes it clear she doesn’t like the idea of him being there, and he messes with her. He puts his elbow on her and pushes her away ( 20:44-20:48) He pulls her chin up and tells her to ‘smile’

He’s egotistical. No one is really ‘up to his level’

He gives verbal and physical affection constantly throughout the pilot, but it’s not genuine.

Likes being unpredictable

Primary drive:   Decisions are weighed in his own wants/ feelings. He wants to be amused, he chases exciting/ entertaining things. Think of him as like a cat chasing a mouse.

Fears: He doesn’t fear anyone. But is wary of powerful threats. He dislikes dogs Physical Expression: He’s VERY, VERY expressive through his body language and eyes. Large/ easy to read emotions can be perceived through his body language (Leaning towards someone, or leaning away). Smaller/ pinpoint emotions can be read through his eyes and type of smile (Wide eyes, squinted, closed vs open smile, etc.) He’s like a bird, fluffing out his feathers constantly. (He fixes his hair briefly at 24:41) He expresses himself proudly. ‘This is who I am, remember that!!’. Viv said the reason why almost all of characters have nicknames is that a soul’s real name is dangerous, its a way others can have power over you. Yet Alastor uses his first name, because he’s not scared and confident in who he is as a person. He doesn’t hide from any aspect of himself. I’ve stated he hates being touched by others. When he picks up Nifty in the pilot, she poofs out and spreads her limbs out. At 25:41, Alastor turns his head away from her briefly so she doesn’t touch him.

Flaws/ Weaknesses:

(Note: Basically anything already stated can be a problem depending on the situation, I’m just saying things about his character that he’d find weak or naturally cause problems)

His mother, he’d do anything for her.

He has a darker/ more powerful demon side to him where he runs purely on instinct/ primitive emotions.

He’s arrogant. This can cause problems!

---

Killer/ moral compass profile (Living)

Motivations:

Thrill Killer- Pleasure from pain

Slight power/control aspect involved as well.

‘Causes’

Childhood trauma (abusive father)

Environmental factors (mother died when he was 18-20)

Type of killer: *Note: I’m still not 100% satisfied with this part, I might make some changes later*

He won’t just kill anyone. They have to meet a certain list of requirements.

Viv compared him as someone similar to Dexter

He’s a very goal oriented killer. Whatever he did it was with reason and purpose, meticulously planned. Ex: Maybe one year he’d kill someone who was a real jerk, to see how the others around him flourished. Likewise he might kill someone who was important to the community just to see how the grief made everyone react.

He was a very careful killer, he ended up dying purely on accident, bad luck.

He killed for the fun of it, pure joy, excitement, curiosity. But he only killed people he thought deserved it.

He considers what he does to be ‘work’. He expresses in the pilot how after decades in hell it’s become ‘mundane’ and ‘aimless’.

The victims had to be overconfident to some degree.(This ties into the ‘he wouldn’t chase his victims.’ They had to be somewhat full of themselves or naive)

Some kills are personal (Someone wronging him, trying to hurt him, otherwise he just wouldn’t care if some guy is an asshole) but others are just because he feels like they’re bad/ they’ve have done something that they need to die for.

He used ‘personal’ ways of killing people. (Knife, his hands). I don’t think he would have used a gun of any kind because of the noise, but he could have once every blue moon.

Generally doesn’t draw things out for too long ”...If I wanted to hurt anyone here... I would have done so already.” (He defeats Sir Pentious in under a minute. But still takes the time to crush him and drag his body across the floor.)

He ate people, and knew how to make delicious meals out of them.

Buried his victim’s bodies/ remains on a hunting ground for deer.

Morals

No human is pure or kind just because. They’re selfish beings. Who take and act to help their own causes. Everyone is a monster on the inside. “...redemption, the nonexistent humanity!”

Everyone puts on a mask to hide who they truly are. Life is one big game to see who can survive. “...the world is a stage! And the stage, is a world of entertainment!”

People don’t change “...there is no undoing what is done.”

Puts himself first, and above everyone else. He also degrades others. “I don’t think there’s any hope left for such loathsome sinners...” ”Inside of every demon is a lost cause, but we’ll dress them up for now with just a smile!” “...and show these simpletons some proper class and style...” “...do I know you?” “You think I’m [husk] some kind of fuckin’ clown!?” “...maybe!”

People deserve the consequences they get for being themselves “...the chance given was the life they lived before, the punishment is this!”

He understands what society views as good and evil, but doesn’t really believe in those standards himself. What is considered evil he just views as a hobby or something fun to explore. Ex: Cannibalism is wrong by society’s standards, but to him he thinks the greater wrong is killing something and not making use of it.

He has some level of empathy. (Again, He’d never kill a child or those running away.)

People’s emotions are a fun little game to him. “...I want to watch the scum of the earth struggle to climb up the hill of betterment! Only to repeatedly trip, and tumble down into the firey pit of failure!”

Doesn’t see value in being nice or honest. (He does find it funny to watch)

Other notes/ hc

He’s knowledgeable. In more ways than one. He knows not to fuck with certain people if he doesn’t want to get hurt, he’s got knowledge on the workings/ operations of hell and deal-making.

Likes to cook

He likes bitter things (Bloody meat, alcohol, black coffee)

He’s got a party side to him.

He speaks french!

He plays musical instruments

He knows how to fight without his powers

He’s an only child

He’s part creole

He hates silence, he always surrounds himself with noise of some kind.

Husk and Alastor have a long, complicated relationship

He does things to make Nifty happy (Wearing sweaters)

He’d go out into a hurricane just to let it beat him down for fun (Why is this so funny to me)

Despite all he is, Alastor is capable of having friends and loving.

Has absolutely NO romantic experience.

He hates modern technology in general, but hates tik tok the most

The idea of Alastor cross-dressing to lure his victims in is absolutely hilarious to me, but I don’t think he’d ever do it.

[improbablecarny]

Okay so here’s my Netflix Witcher Season 2 Predictions & Speculations

Don’t place any bets on these these. I’m rambling and asking questions more than answering them. But that’s the fun part, anyway.

Putting these behind a cut because of spoiler potential and because I don’t want to subject your eyes to my rambling any more than necessary

What we know:

Season 2 will have a more linear timeline

Eight episodes, again

It will cover content from Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, The Last Wish and maybe Sword of Destiny?

There are four major threads to the plot of the books, here.

Who is Rience? Who is he working for?

What is going on with the Brotherhood?

What's Nilfgaard up to and how are the other kingdoms feeling about that whole thing?

What is Ciri’s deal and how does she fit into all of the above?

What the S2 opener will be, I’m not sure, but I have two ideas, with caveats:

Yen saves Jaskier from Rience. It’s a strong scene and sets up a lot of the season’s intrigue right away - the issue is that it skips over the aftermath of Sodden Hill, and I feel like we’re going to spend a bit more time with Yen before she gets back to the point where she’s stabbing dudes and saving bards.

Geralt visits Codringher and Fenn. I know, that scene is jumping WAY ahead, and by this point in the books Geralt has already encountered Rience -- however, I think it may work to establish C&F earlier, and have Geralt immediately employing them to spread misinfo about Ciri’s “death”. I think we could still set up Rience a little here -- ask if the name means anything to him, it doesn’t, they don’t know much either but they’ve Heard Rumours, etc. Also honestly I just REALLY love the atmosphere of that scene and think it would be a very eye-catching, moody opener.

In fact, both of these could conceivably happen in the same episode. The tricky part for me is not knowing how much of a timeskip they’ll add between seasons and how they’re going to handle Yen’s reappearance. Is she going to wake up in an infirmary somewhere and get an immediate exposition dump from Tissaia? Is she going to spend some time wandering through an interdimensional hell zone? Are we going to see that all in the present or will it be done through flashback?

How Season 2 will end, though, I have a much better sense of: all four major plotlines converge when it’s revealed that Vilgefortz is pulling the strings and Aretuza goes bananas in a strikingly obvious Season Finale sort of way. We get a lovely cliffhanger where Vilgefortz kicks Geralt’s ass before Triss saves him by shoving him through a portal, Ciri kicks Cahir’s ass and jumps through a shittier portal, Yen disappears again, and Jaskier is forced to leave on his own, again. I love pain and being in it! Of course the finer details there are all subject to change but the big picture climax is that Vilgefortz is naughty and oops, war.

So that’s the bread, where’s the rest of the sandwich?

With news that Nivellen and Vereena have been cast, we know we’re getting an adaptation A Grain of Truth from The Last Wish. I suspect Geralt and Ciri will be stumbling upon that spooky mansion on the way to Kaer Morhen, but that’s about as far as I can think on that one. But will any of the other shorts pop up? 

A Shard of Ice and Sword of Destiny have been essentially nullified by choices made by the show so far, so I think they’re safely out of the game (though A Shard of Ice sets up the Wild Hunt so presumably that will still need to be worked in somewhere)

I would LOVE to see Eternal Flame adapted because it is my exact sense of humour, and A Little Sacrifice has a great mood and freaky fish people. Both of them would be very interesting places to deal with Geralt and Jaskier’s spat -- a conflict not present in the books, but its presence in the show casts some of the events of the book in an interesting light. The primary issue I’m having is trying to figure out how to get them to fit into the timeline/trajectory of the ongoing plot (and my secondary issue is that the stuff with Essa was weird as hell, though I think it could be smoothed over).

Speaking of Jaskier, I’m quite interested in where they’re going to take his character, since the books (up to this point) didn’t really give him much of an arc, but Lauren Hissrich has noted that we’ll see more of his serious side and his struggle with what he really wants. To me, that sounds suggestive of giving him more of a role in the espionage story, and through that, better establishing his fear and guilt over his perceived inability to adequately help Geralt and Ciri without putting them in jeopardy, all while still dealing with their falling out. He’s loyal, but he’s hurt, and he’s in a precarious position that he doesn’t really know how to handle. 

The introduction of the falling out sets this storyline up into three nice beats. The first one was in the infamous episode 6, where Geralt tells him to hit the road, breaking hearts around the world. Jumping into the books, the second beat would be during the mage mash, where Geralt once again demands that Jaskier leaves -- this time, though, for his own safety. And then we get the third beat, in Brokilon forest (hopeful button for the end of S2 or moody opener to S3? Both work imo), when Geralt tries to get Jaskier to leave Brokilon, and Jaskier puts his foot down and says no. That seems like a place to aim for, and once again, make everyone cry.

The aforementioned shorts would be a great place to let that arc marinate, though the exact details are still something I’m mulling over. (Honestly I really just want big city shapeshifter shenanigans because LISTEN... listen. It’s good) More importantly, though... what kinda music is he gonna bring us next season?

Yen’s plotline is running through muddier waters for me on account of the books rarely dipping into her perspective, but she’ll no doubt be involved in trying to suss out what’s going on with the mages. She allegedly has a scene with Francesca somewhere, and Istredd and Stregobor are returning (despite being absent at this point in the books) so presumably they will also cause problems. There are a lot of different directions they can go with her here, as I touched on briefly earlier wrt the fallout from Sodden Hill, but a lot of it might have to be spun wholecloth in a way I’m not so sure I can make any truly educated assumptions about. How is Geralt going to find out she’s still alive? How is he going to re-initiate contact with her? We’ll surely get some ripe emotional conflict as her, Triss, Sabrina and Tissaia deal with the conspiracy in very different ways. Too many viable answers and none that I’m going to place any bets on but am still, of course, excited for.

Cahir is another complete wildcard for me. I haven’t seen enough of him in the books thus far to make super accurate predictions but “gets horsejacked and ass-kicked by Ciri and then yelled at by Geralt until he faints” is quite a ways away from “slaughters an entire tavern in a fit of paranoid rage” (I get the impression Show!Cahir is also much older than his book counterpart). I can’t imagine it’d make much sense in the long run for them to have actually combined he and Rience’s characters, but I almost wonder if that’s what’s going on. Presumably, Fringilla will play a part in whatever he’s up to.

The Temple is in an odd place. No mention or setup of it so far so I wonder if it’s been excised entirely for streamlining purposes. Ciri goes from studying the blade in Kaer Morhen to studying magic in Aretuza without the complication of a third location (also for magic study) in between?

Yarpen’s return more or less also confirms that the subplot with the dummy cargo from Blood of Elves will occur in some form or another, likely as a means of establishing the Squirrels.

And here’s some incomplete and assorted tentpole book scenes (that I haven’t already addressed) that we’ll likely get in some form:

Several Ciri training montages (insert Jaskier cover of Eye of the Tiger here)

Ciri parent trapping Geralt and Yennefer

Geralt vs the river monster vs Rience’s dudes

Geralt and Philippa vs Rience and more of his dudes

Basically any of the points where Ciri goes into a trance, plus the incident with the wyvern

Introductions for Emhyr, Dijkstra, and Philippa

It goes without saying but a lot of forethought has been put into the Netflix adaptation, despite some fanboy bellyaching. There were many points where, reading the books, I found myself reacting emotionally based on things that had only been set up in the show -- from Ciri and Yen’s relationship and their approach to magic, to Geralt and Jaskier’s reconciliation, to Vilgefortz’s turn, most of the changes made by the show are really there to further reinforce events from the books. And boy, are there events to be had.

In conclusion,

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 117 Thoughts

Action scenes!

All the wrong people achieving minor victories!

Fist fights that are Eren’s only means of honest communication anymore!

Brotherhood.

All this and more in another edition of Eren coming closest to checking himself while he wrecks himself.

-tosses confetti-

To be honest, the most worrying thing about this chapter to me is that Zeke shows up at the end. I figured that’s how this battle kept going, but I thought that would be the last ‘surprise’ of the volume. A next month thing.

If he’s already here, signs point to the handshake that breaks the world happening at the end of next chapter.

Even having no idea what Eren’s up to, but full confidence that he’s not a hundred percent on board with Zeke’s ideas for what they should be up to... Do Not Want. Zeke and Eren are like bulls in china shops (disregarding what Mythbusters says about that). Whatever’s coming, it isn’t going to be a tiny thing like brainwashing an entire island into forgetting their history. These are young men of vision.

That’s next month’s problem, though.

This month, we get another chapter that makes me think I’m going to go back to my Return to Shiganshina motto of wondering how pretty the anime is going to make all of this.

When we’re once again in Shiganshina. And Eren and Reiner are once again brawling.

This is not a critique, it’s just me pointing out that action scenes in this series are not the fastest way to any of the ongoing trauma elsewhere in the series being resolved. ...And my natural reaction to action-heavy chapters when I’m writing these posts is to kind of gesture at the chapter and be all, “you saw it, didn’t you?”

But that’s, of course, underselling all the emotional drama we still have to sort through. Starting with Eren’s upgrade to not just confusing his friends and the audience at large, now even Yelena is probably wanting to put her head in her hands and just wonder why the fuck.

With the answer apparently being that Eren feels like beating up Reiner.

Let’s put all that in the Later tab, because Eren and his problems of being Eren deserve a little more pondering before I say anything. ...Besides one reminder remark that Eren’s inherited the Attack Titan, and we haven’t yet really delved into hat it means that Titans seem to have their own outlines of a personality. With Paths moving to the forefront, that might be changing.

Or Eren just feels like beating up Reiner.

Moving on, it’s time for everyone’s favorite topic!

Fuck Marley.

This is one of those story elements I will be much less hissy at once the story is over. Unless the story does something stupid. But for now, every single time we focus on the non-Warrior conflicts of Marley, my only regret is that Zeke and Eren’s massacre in their country was so limited.

Hyperbole obviously in effect, but

Let me try to start somewhere that isn’t mindless screaming about how Marley can just go fuck right off, and how being relieved that a child soldier you’ve crafted has made it back to safety doesn’t actually make you a better person, you absolute fuckwit.

As the narrative stands, the people from Marley are the only ones with power who aren’t fucking over their personal allegiances. Zeke’s screwed over everyone. Eren has actively damaged his friends. The 104th is powerless unless they want Armin to start really making things explode.

The Warriors and Magath have a very straightforward mission, and they’ve kept to it. This is their military operation, and there’s a plan. It makes sense that they’re kind of rolled into the protagonist role of this battle. Eren’s being fucking Eren, the Warriors have legitimate grief, they’re trying to save a child behind enemy lines...

Here, as ever, is the problem.

Fuck Marley.

Just... just to try and find some words to my indignation that only this particular set of characters can capture so well, Helos. Helos the hero. The untainted, hollow hero.

The hero who secretly made a pact with both sides to end the violence and spend a century lying about how they found peace, leaving an immeasurable mark on the state of Eldians until Willy strolls up one fine day and decides, you know what, maybe we can cool it with all this lying, but we absolutely need to go after the same targets all that lying created.

Willy was willing to die for his beliefs.

His belief was that throwing Paradis under the bus was perfectly acceptable.

Marley is full of stubborn people determined to see their missions out, but every single time we approach their point of view, it drives me nuts that we are spending any time humanizing the desire for Marley to come out the winner here.

Galliard, you have a legit beef with Eren. He uses you to kill someone you could have counted among your comrades, and the trauma alone would make any desire for vengeance immediately acceptable.

But ah yes, your home town.

I know Marley keeps their people in ignorance. I know Eldians considering that their grandest aspiration in life is to die is possibly more dangerous than simply living that fate out. I know Galliard’s mostly been involved in wars that are about fighting people they’re at war with, and protecting his people.

Unless I’ve been paying even less attention than I think, they’re in Shiganshina.

Marley cracked the walls open like a nut. They used children to do it. They committed genocide without once getting their hands dirty in order to maybe drag out the Founding Titan.

All of this built on the backs of Eldians. Having the Founding Titan means having a compliant Eldian. Having Titans at all means having Eldians.

Eren’s assault on Liberio is awful. It mirrors the horror of Shiganshina, and nothing about how the plot progresses is going to make me okay with what he and Zeke went for there.

But in terms of the devastation caused?

Eren’s willingness to kill children to accomplish his goal of wiping out the top brass is disturbing, and can’t match Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie’s naive willingness to kick down a door when they’re 10-12.

Liberio is still only one town.

Opening up the walls kills a lot more than one town. Some of it through Paradis’ own tactics, but as much as I like Galliard, and understand how much he’s lost...

Marley destroys a third of Paradis because it can.

No declaration of war, no warning. They treat Paradis the way they treat all Eldians: As a resource Marley is so entitled to they have no need to recognize them as anything more.

What Eren does is appalling and wrong.

But Galliard’s continued focus on that is its own kind of sickening. These people have never been confronted with the horrors they’ve participated in. Your home town, Galliard? Your brother?

How about your home town, your mother, your friends, a third of your country, and watching your own government send out a further 20% of the remaining population on a suicide mission so the rest of them survive.

All from a completely unprovoked attack.

Eren at least waits to hear Willy’s declaration of war.

Galliard’s motives are honestly very understandable, but compared to the history we’ve lived through with the Paradis side, it’s nothing. It’s a whining child who hasn’t realized that a world beyond him and his exists.

Then there’s Magath, and his line about putting an end to a hundred years of resentment.

What, resenting the island? Thanks to a lie your hero agreed to?

Resenting titans? After using them as your primary military force since the second you were given back your autonomy?

You people fucked up your own world! Marley policy has kept the fear of titans alive. Marley’s current strategy is bringing the hatred focused on them back to an island that, as far as they know, hasn’t had any interaction with the outside world for a hundred years.

Paradis isn’t perfect. Entire essays written solely about how fucked up Paradis is would be very easy to write. Armin’s probably written about thirty, in-universe.

What they’ve done is still not comparable to what Marley’s done.

The characters might feel the emotional weight similarly, but the crimes are not anywhere close to the same.

So having these guys arguing that they’ll claim the Founding Titan and save the world? The world they didn’t think twice about breaking whenever it was convenient for them? The world they only now care about because the strength of titans is turning obsolete?

Fuck Marley.

Reiner’s honestly my favorite part of this chapter, even if he continues to cling to the wrong theme. He’s upset over Gabi and Falco, but he looks at Eren, and he actually sees Eren. Reiner is someone who has stopped trying to find a moral high ground in this fight. He has his mission, he has his people, and trying to work out the rest is insanity.

They’ll all be dead soon.

They’re all miserable.

“What do you get... from living any longer?! Eren... I’ll end this for you.”

I said a few chapters back that this is a series about suicide. It’s Zeke’s entire motivation; getting the rest of the world to the place he is. It’s time for them all to end. Here, Reiner, despite theoretically being on the anti-Zeke side, is expressing the exact same sentiment.

They’re all going to die anyway. They’ve all suffered enough. It can be over. Ending it can be an act of kindness.

Eren agreed with that once, too.

“At the very least… I want you to end it all for me.” --65

The answer he got then was very simple.

“When I see someone crying, saying… no one needs them… I want to tell them… It’s not true.”

What do you get from living any longer?

Whatever you want. It’s your fucking life. No one else has the right to decide when it should end.

Now we get to the fun stuff, because that look Eren has comes directly after Reiner spouts his big brother’s entire philosophy. Mentally, but this is a story. Eren’s most furious look comes from something he once asked for. Reiner trying to bring him to a peaceful end.

That thing Zeke wants for all Eldians.

That’s what comes before Eren’s emotions rise back to the surface.

Yelena and her merry crew don’t understand why Eren goes ahead and starts this fight, and really, neither do I. As a beacon for Zeke to follow, it’s a seriously dangerous one, and Marley knowing exactly where Eren is means they don’t have to worry about accidentally killing other human-sized bodies on the ground. Hiding and recollecting probably would have worked out better.

But we’re far enough into this arc that I’m really mostly fine with Eren doing things that don’t make sense. If the answer is just that he’s emotionally fragile enough that seeing Reiner meant he had to fight Reiner, I’d accept that.

Then Zeke shows up, and. Siiiigh.

I don’t know what happens next, but Eren looks so young when his big brother steps in to help. Eren’s been fighting alone this entire time. He doesn’t seem to like Yelena or Floch. He’s taken steps to make sure his friends stay away from him. He accepts the assistance freely offered, but his mission is his own.

My personal opinion is that Eren has very different plans for the Founding Titan’s powers than what the narrative has told us. His furious fight for life in this very chapter is a point in favor of that.

But whatever it’s used for, there’s one other person in the world who’s trying just as hard to reach him.

Zeke and Eren are doing, and will do, horrible things. Eren’s motives might not line up with Zeke’s, but Zeke is still his partner in this. Zeke knows what it’s like to cut off everything else except their mission. He knows what it’s like to be alone without an ally he can fully trust with his vision for the world.

They might have different visions, but Zeke understands everything Eren has gone through, and in Eren’s most desperate moment, he shows up.

Until the end of whatever happens, his big brother is fighting to make it to his side. He’s here to protect Eren and change the world with him.

Eren’s a disaster, but the look on his face sells how hard all of this has been. Since he was fifteen, he’s been shouldering the fate of humanity alone. Now, he has someone in his corner who’s held that burden for even longer.

It probably won’t go well. Even this bond might fall to pieces if their philosophical differences come out.

But for right now, Eren has his big brother.

.

Oh and in other news, Gabi paying attention to all the wrong things means that Marley knows the requirements for making the Founding Titan go zoom.

Next chapter is just going to end with Eren and Zeke’s hands finally meeting. The last page is a blank white one that says ‘the heart’.

...I do kinda love that while this is going on, everyone in the cells just assumes that the Wall Titans are now walking around. SURPRISE! you’re at war. That’s going to be fun to cope with when your building inevitably suffers a hole.

Next month is going to be... a lot.

[readingwebcomics]

Analyzing Questionable Content: Pages 1-50

And so it begins.

The very first comic of Questionable Content, posted way back in 2003 and what would eventually be Jeff Jacques’ claim to fame, the reason why everyone remembers his name and what has made him a wealthy man today.

…’s alright.

Of course, by modern standards it’s not very good. This was the early 2000s, the wild west of online artists who had nothing more than an art creation software and a dream. The Webcomic Review has a VERY good post about it right here, which explains what the landscape of webcomics were like around this time and why exactly Marten has a pet robot (tl;dr, EVERYONE had a pet robot in ye early days of webcomics because Megatokyo).

But aside from the… awkward art, this comic at least serves to set up the protagonist (as far as we’re aware right now, we’ll get into the roles of protagonists in QC later). He’s a lanky, assumedly average guy who hates where he is in life but doesn’t know what else to do or even where else to go…

…as he goes on to spell out two comics later. He’s unassuming, not really much you can say for or against him, miserable and stuck in a rut in his life that he’s too scared to escape. Sooo basically, freshly graduated college students – the exact kind of audience a RomCom like this would go after.

Oh, did I forget to mention?

Yeah, QC started off as a RomCom.

This young woman is Faye, and she immediately cuts through the bullshit with an aggressive but to-the-point introduction of herself and her intentions.

While aggressive and to-the-point, she’s also set up as someone who meshes with Marten and Steve’s interests well enough and quickly makes friends. This is probably best exemplified in the seventh page, which serves two purposes:

Purpose the First: Showcase Marten and Faye have a shared niche interest, immediately establishing chemistry between the two of them. Be it platonic or romantic, they’re quickly hitting it off and, being a RomCom, will serve as the first rope potential shippers can grasp onto.

Purpose the Second: Jeff is a MASSIVE indie music nerd and he wants the fucking world to know it.

Also Pintsize is there doing funny robot things because 2003 webcomic.

It’s not long before this initial relationship is set up that two issues serve to sew the seeds of initial conflict:

This, likewise, serves two purposes: To show where Faye works and create a believable life for her to exist in when she’s not in the story with Marten, and as previously stated to sew potential romantic conflicts in the future. Jeff employs this tactic many-a-time throughout the course of Questionable Content, beginning a conflict and letting the implications sit with the reader while life goes on in the regular comics. Is this good writing? I honestly can’t say. Is it always done well? Oh good God no, some plot beats are outright dropped or left to sit for so long the reader straight-up forgets it’s there with this method. But does Jeff make it work? It’s all on personal taste I’d say, but personally it sits well with me.

Also, for those of you wondering why it looks like the word “hump” is just pasted onto the text bubble in post… well it was. The original comic implied sexual assault much more overtly, using the R-word instead of “hump.”

*Away from mic* Wait, can-can I say [NOPE]? Better not to risk it? Alright, fair ‘nuff.

But yeah, this was pointed out by readers to be pretty fucked up and it was swiftly changed, for good reason.

Later that night, Faye asks Marten to dinner with her. Platonically, of course. And here I believe I should point out the dynamic of their relationship as it stands – Faye is the aggressor. Marten is basically a doormat. Whenever something happens, Faye is always the instigator, be it going out to dinner or tagging along with him when he’s getting shopping done. This will feed into their relationship dynamic and sets up a decent inter-personal conflict: Marten is far too passive to reach out to Faye and make the move to start something, but Faye, despite how openly and quickly she attaches herself to Marten’s life, never takes that step into making it romantic. The two clearly have the hots for each other, but their respective personalities make it so neither one crosses that threshold.

Yes I know this is basic character writing for a RomCom 101, but the fact that so much about these characters are said in 12 four-panel comics says a lot. It hooks the reader quickly and gets them on the page Jeff wants them to be, and I respect that.

And in the next page, Faye’s aggression takes on a new level, albeit extremely briefly.

This is an isolated incident of actual physical aggression rather than implications and threats in these first 50 pages, but it becomes a trend as we go along – one that feeds into Faye’s character, mind, so it’s not just physical abuse for humor’s sake – so just keep it in mind as we go along.

Also on a personal note the actual restaurant they go to is simultaneously the worst and best idea I’ve ever heard of:

This is horrible. I should not encourage this. And yet some dark part of me finds the concept utterly hilarious even though I know I’m a piece of shit for liking it.

Actually, now some part of me wants to do the exact opposite – advertise a place as a steakhouse only serve an all-vegan menu. It feels less mean but just as funny to me.

…oh right, the comic.

After sharing dinner, exchanging banter that establishes good chemistry and parting ways, we come to this comic that I’m only showing because I’m a slut for good puns and I will take any and all opportunities to share with people.

(Pintsize totally won that round with the John the Baptist zinger by the way, if I’m allowed to judge this.)

And one page later, we get the biggest shake-up in the comic thus far:

It’s established Faye herself ended up burning down the apartment because she burnt toast, but that’s not really important. I know, the fact Faye BURNT DOWN A BUILDING isn’t important sounds completely ridiculous, but follow me here – the important thing for this setup isn’t the how, but the why. “How did Faye’s apartment burn down?” isn’t the question Jeff, nor the audience, is intended to be asking, that’s merely a vessel into the situation we’re in – the answer of “Why did Faye’s apartment burn down?” which is, of course, so Marten and Faye can become roommates and facilitate future antics and further their relationship. Familiarity breeds into both affection and conflict, and the obvious case of “Well you two are already living together, aren’t you?” will serve to further the flames of their potential relationship with one another.

…granted, a better reason to create this setup would’ve been nice, and from a writing standpoint it’s ridiculous that Faye never suffers any consequences for burning an entire BUILDING down, one that had many more people than just her in it. If present-day Jeff wrote this plotline… actually. Now that I think about it, Jeff DOES re-do this plot point and make it make a lot more sense and have a lot more impact on everyone involved.

But we’ll get to that when we eventually talk about Brun…. Three thousand and something pages from now.

Either way, my point stands: This plot thread serves mostly to create the situation we’re facing now, one where Faye and Marten end up living together. This shake-up to the early comic settles us into the new status quo, one that we’ll be riding with comfortably for the foreseeable future.

Further evidence of Faye’s aggressive and troll-ish nature… one that may or may not play into future revelations about her, now that I think about it.

Remember what I said about sewing the seeds of drama? Well here we stand now – a misunderstanding, or the beginning of genuine conflict between these two?

The answer is… they talk it out like actual goddamn adults, avoiding a stupid, unnecessary fight.

Honestly? Kind of refreshing. But what makes it better is the following page:

Honestly? This moment never fails to make me laugh. The one-two punch of complete betrayal of the reader’s expectations as well as the utter dismantling and defusal of the romantic interest subplot between these two dorks – while denying some genuine romantic conflict that may force Faye into being more upfront with how she feels about the situation – is a fun denial of the kinds of RomCom clichés that one might expect to find in this story.

Sure, there are other stories that do this better, I’m not denying that. But isolated in a bubble, this stands by itself and, frankly, works well enough for the story Jeff’s telling.

Also say goodbye to Sara, once she walks out that door she goes to join the little sister from Family Matters and the big brother from Happy Days on the twisted Island of Irrelevancy, visiting the story only when she can spare the time to craft a raft out of banana leafs and... where was I going with this?

…okay, personal story time. The Walmart I’m doing contract work for this week has a CD display of new-ish albums, and honest-to-God I completely forgot music CDs were even a THING. MP3s have spoiled us, and I now feel old for some reason.

Right, getting back on track.

I wanted to show this comic to establish three things.

1) Marten is the kind of person who sits on things that bother him and lets them stew for awhile. As established in the previous image I showed with Marten and Steve at the music store, it’s been at least a day since what happened with Sara and Marten’s still thinking about it. This, for better or worse, becomes a core part of Marten’s character moving forward.

2) Faye, for all her faults, is a genuinely good friend who cares about Marten and knows when to channel her natural aggression into support rather than ribbing.

3) This is another comic that always makes me laugh whenever I read it. Yes I know that’s much less of a real reason than my other two points but let me have this dammit.

This particular page itself isn’t terribly important to the ongoing narrative but I wanted to include it because it introduces QC’s unquestionably best character, Jim. Hi Jim! I like Jim.

(He’s a minor character at best but he’s just so earnest and fun and every time Jeff brings him back he just gets better and better.)

Oh, and for those who were skeptical that the more-than-platonic interest was mutual between Marten and Faye, the next two issues serve to showcase that… yeah, both parties TOTALLY have the hots for each other.

The first of those two comics, by the way, gets called back to much later down the line. And the fact that Faye speaks in a southern accent is more than just a joke, it’s going to be touched on more later.

Jeff says in the description of this comic that this is based on personal experience, and it shows – this is the most backbone Marten displays to my memory.

And in the very next page, we’re introduced to a new character – although you wouldn’t guess it from her appearance.

That’s Raven. I like Raven. Her personality changes a ton once she’s properly introduced as a character and not a nameless employee, but for posterity’s sake: Here’s her very first appearance in the comic.

There’s only one more important comic to touch on in this batch of fifty, and it’s about both Marten and Faye’s families:

While this could be as simple as a “har-dee-har, my family drives me up the wall,” this comic serves to say a lot about both characters once we know more about their families. Both Marten and Faye actually have very good reasons why they don’t want to see their respective families or go back to their hometowns… Faye especially so. We’ll touch more on that when we get more into her backstory.

Before we wrap things up, I’d like to do a quick comparison between page 1 and 50 to see in what small, subtle ways Jeff’s artistry has improved:

There’s not a LOT of difference, but the small details really showcases just how different they look. Small changes from the placement of everything on Marten’s face, to the size of the eyes, the width of the eyebrows… It’s good shit.

Overall, what did I think of batch 1? Well… for an early 2000s webcomic, it’s engaging. The characters are likable, the plot is progressing at an enjoyable pace, and I’m already on-board to see if Marten and Faye will get together. I mean, I know the answer, but my point stands.

Also because I’m a freak or something and like data compilation I went ahead and kept track of who showed up in what comic and made some numbers for it:

Not counting the one guest comic and two non-canon pages, Marten showed up in 45/50 pages, being in 90% of the comic so far.

Faye was in 38/50 pages, taking up 76% of the comic so far.

Pintsize comes in third place being in 15/50 comics, taking up a paltry 30% of the comic thus far when compared to the screen time Marten and Faye have taken up.

Likewise, Steve has been in only 8/50 pages, making up 16% of the comic up to this point.

Sara was in 5/50 pages, making up 10% of these first 50. That percentile will grow smaller and smaller with each update, believe you me.

Jim was in 2/50 glorious pages, making up 4% of the comic up to this point. And that was the best 4% this comic had to offer, let me tell you.

Raven, although still unnamed, I’m counting – she’s in 1/50 of the first batch of pages, making up 2% of screen time.

Tune in next week as we continue onwards to pages 51-100 where we’ll be introduced to the next major character in the series, who’s mere existence will further the plot more than anyone we’ve previously met. See you then.

[sineala]

Hi! I really like your post about diffrences between 616 Stony and MCU version. Could you do something similar about Ultimates? What similarities and diffrences they have with other versions?

I’ve posted Ults meta before, I’m pretty sure, but here I go again!

Okay, so the first thing about Ultimates that you should know is that we’re not working with anywhere near the same amount of canon that 616 got. This should be pretty obvious when you consider the fact that the Ultimates universe was only around for a bit more than a decade.

And when you narrow it down to Ultimates Steve and Tony, the amount of canon gets even smaller. If you’re reading 616 comics for Steve and Tony, you can basically be assured that they will be appearing in multiple ongoing comics – their own book, and whatever the team book is of the team they’re on, because they’re probably both on a team, and if you’re REALLY lucky they’re on the same team at the same time. (Fun fact: the last panel that Steve and Tony both appeared in where neither of them were evil or dead was a Gwenpool Holiday Special from 2015. Why, yes, I have been waiting TWO AND A HALF YEARS to see them meet again.)

But my point was, the situation in Ultimates is not like that. Neither Steve nor Tony have ongoing solo titles in Ults; Steve has one miniseries and Tony has three, two of which were later retconned. When you see them at all it’s because they’re appearing together in the main Ultimates series. This does mean that, proportionally speaking, they probably interact with each other more on-panel (in terms of how much of their interaction is with each other) than Steve and Tony do in 616, but it also means that overall there is much less interaction, because there is so much less canon. My folder of Ultimates comics (the main Ultimates series and a few relevant miniseries and Death of Spider-Man and so on) contains about 250 comics, total, and not all of those have both of them in them. You could read that in maybe two weeks. I’m pretty sure I DID read that in maybe two weeks. (By contrast, in 616, Steve and Tony have appeared together in at least 1700 issues since 1964; thanks to Mucca and Vel for the stats.)

If you talk about Ults, the first thing that’s probably going to come up is the grimdarkness. The Ultimate universe is not a nice place. It was originally created to be a more “realistic” version of 616. So if you’re familiar with the basic character archetypes and arcs of 616, expect to see them exploited for maximum angst potential. It’s very much in dialogue with 616 – sometimes literally, what with the crossovers. One of the times when Ults meets 616, Ults Vision observes that “Their finest, bravest warriors are our damaged, conflicted soldiers,” which as a statement of character is basically what you’re in for for Ults. Like, 616 Steve is a man out of time, and Ults Steve breaks down crying at his family’s graves because he’s so alone. 616 Hank hits Jan, and Ults Hank beats her half to death in a sequence that is graphically drawn out over about half an issue. 616 Tony struggles with drinking, and Ults Tony raises a glass to everything and anything. They’re not as resilient as their 616 counterparts, and they experience more actual trauma rather than just bouncing back. There is character death, and it is permanent. The threat levels are generally lower – they are basically fighting baseline humans and homegrown terrorists a lot of the time – and when higher-powered threats come for them, well, that’s when you get plots like “Galactus eats New Jersey.” I am pretty sure that in 616 they would never have let Galactus get that far.

Having said that, I want to say that Ults is also INCREDIBLY WACKY. Ults 1-3 and Ultimatum are basically incredibly gritty and humorless, but from then on, things start getting weird. I feel like at that point they gave up on the idea of realism and then asked themselves, “Okay, but what if we made Captain America a vampire?” or “what if we made Captain America the president?” and they just… went with that. The grittiness is still there – I mean, Reed basically vivisects Tony twice, for example – but the plots are just off the wall in the best way. It’s… really weird. I mean, you have to get through reading comics where people get their heads bitten off and eaten, but… yeah.

Also, if you’re a 616 fan, there are some crossovers! The Galactus who eats New Jersey is actually from 616. The entire universe ends in an incursion with 616, and they all hang out with each other on Battleworld. Also, Spider-Men is a pretty great miniseries where 616 Peter Parker finds himself in Ults, meeting Miles Morales and everyone else.

If you’re an MCU fan and you’ve heard of Ults, one thing you have probably heard is that the MCU took a lot of inspiration from Ults. Which is true! You’ve got a setup where SHIELD is initially involved in the Ultimates, you’ve got Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, you’ve got the Triskelion, you’ve got Clint’s family, you’ve got Bucky as Steve’s childhood BFF, you’ve got Bruce being more important to the Ultimates than he ever really was to the early Avengers in 616. So you might think that if you don’t know comics and want to start, Ults is a good place to start, and I want to stress that this is probably a bad idea. Because they are all assholes and if you start here you will not want to read another comic, so please read some 616 first. But, even though they are all complete assholes, we love them anyway.

With that said, let’s talk about Ultimate Steve Rogers, an asshole so gigantic that you don’t even need to wonder what the A on his head stands for!

Ults Steve is a much more generally angry guy than 616 Steve – who tends to store up his anger and save it for the really important things in life, like bashing Tony’s face in – and I often think that a lot of that comes from having had more of a chip on his shoulder, pre-Rebirth. We don’t really see much of pre-serum Steve in 616, save for occasional flashback panels, and canon is vague about what is wrong with him. Ults canon is also similarly vague, but we see Ults Steve with an actual, visible disability. He has a limp severe enough where he walks with a cane. We see him pleading with the recruiting sergeant to give him a chance because he doesn’t want to stay at home and do factory work with “the dames” (yeah, yeah, more on Steve’s misogyny later). The Rebirth people recruiting him specifically mention the limp when they mention how they’ve had their eye on him. You figure that’s gotta have an effect on how the world treated him before the serum.

Also, Ults Rebirth is different than 616 Rebirth; it was a six-month period of surgeries and injections before the final treatment. Some of which were canonically steroid injections, so, uh, one theory of mine is that maybe Ults Steve has additional medical reasons for being a Giant Ball of Rage.

One of the consistent character elements for early-canon Steve in so many of his continuities is that whole Man Out Of Time thing he has going, and early Ults hits that hard, and in an entirely different way from other continuities, so as to fuck Steve up more. Ults Steve, you see, had a plan for his life after the war. He had a fiancee, Gail Richards, whom he loved very much. They were going to get married. He knew which house they were going to buy. Unlike some of the other Steves who don’t really seem to have a firm plan for when the fighting is done (looking at you, 616), Ults Steve knows. He’s going to come home.

But, of course, he doesn’t get to. He falls off a rocket while trying to defuse it and wakes up sixty years in the future and everybody else went on without him. Bucky, his best friend, married his fiancee! They’ve got grandchildren! They bought the house he wanted! (Like it wasn’t enough pain.) And, unlike other Steves, he wasn’t an orphan before the war – his parents were both alive, and he had a younger brother, Douglas – but when he wakes up, his family is all dead, and all he’s got are Bucky and Gail, who are both very old, and Bucky is dying of lung cancer. (Bucky doesn’t actually die in Ults canon, as far as I can determine; technically, I think he outlasts Steve.)

So, anyway, Steve is a wreck, and he gets to the future and he just cries and tells Fury they should have left him in the ice. Because he didn’t want this. He didn’t want to be here. And I mean, really, I can’t blame him. (Ults Steve is better with expressing feelings than a lot of other Steves, it’s just that all his feelings are TERRIBLE. He cries a lot.)

Unlike 616, Ults Steve does not seem to be quite the same kind of terrible boyfriend, setting aside that panel where he leaps off a balcony to stop talking with Jan. He seems to have been genuinely in love with Gail, and while his relationship with Jan didn’t go well, Jan was also basically cheating on him with Hank, so there’s that. To the best of my knowledge, we never see him date anyone after Jan. To be fair, if it turned out that the one time I slept with my fiancee in the 1940s had turned out to have resulted in her getting pregnant and then giving birth to the Red Skull, I would not want to have sex with another human being again.

And, of course, there is Ults Steve’s most salient feature: the fact that he’s an asshole. While, yes, everyone in Ults is an asshole, I tend to think it stands out more when it’s Captain America being an asshole. In a lot of ways he’s a lot like the guy you’d think a guy with the name Captain America would be like. Aside from the A on his head not standing for France, he… well, he insults people a lot, and often his insults are pretty misogynistic and/or aimed squarely at the masculinity of his fellow men – he calls them ladies, and girls, and sissies. He does not specifically use homophobic insults as far as I know (canonically, that’s actually Ults Tony with the homophobic jokes), but fandom tends to assume he’s the kind of guy who would, because honestly it’s the sort of insult you would expect.

(There’s a scene in one of the tie-in novels where Tony intimates that Steve is a fascist and Steve just straight-up punches him in the face. Don’t call him a Nazi. Just don’t.)

Having said that, he’s still Steve Rogers, and – like every other Steve – he still wants to do good and save the world. He still cares about people. He just doesn’t know how to express that he cares except by being an asshole, because feelings are hard. And – this is what took me a while to get about Ults Steve – the more he cares, the more of an asshole he is. I didn’t get this until reading Death of Spider-Man, when Peter takes unnecessary risks and Steve just lays into him about it, which makes Peter upset enough that he feels he has to prove himself, which in turn leads to Peter taking a bullet for Steve and dying. This hits Steve hard enough that he ends up taking a leave of absence from the team and going on a road trip. He really does care.

Tony, on the other hand… well, where do I even start? The first time we see him, he’s climbing out of the suit after zipping around Manhattan (he doesn’t have a secret identity) and waving at women, asking Jarvis for a drink, and Jarvis suggests certain assumptions about men who are trying too hard to be visibly all over women, and, uh. Yeah, that’s Ults Tony. Imagine genius billionaire playboy philanthropist MCU Tony and turn him up to eleven. That’s Ults Tony.

He is flamboyant in his dress, speech, and mannerisms. I mean, okay, at one point he describes himself as prettier than Beyonce. He does canonically call people “darling” a lot although I believe that we only see him do this to women; fandom has extended this to men because who are we to let this opportunity slip through our fingers? He’s, well, an eccentric billionaire supergenius, and it shows.

He’s also a drunk. But unlike 616 Tony, he’s a functional alcoholic. When 616 Tony starts drinking, he can’t stop, and his life goes to hell. Ults Tony just… goes through his entire life with a martini in one hand. He gives interviews while drunk. He even pilots the suit while drunk. Please note that the last time 616 Tony tried this, he nearly killed a bunch of civilians, and the guy he was fighting had to stop the fight to save them for him because that’s how fucked up Tony was. But Ults Tony just drinks, and he drinks, and nothing bad ever happens, and he never stops. Unlike 616 Tony, he drinks his way through Steve’s funeral. (Okay, he stops during Ultimate End, but that’s because 616 Tony asks him to and they have to work together.)

And he has brain cancer. Well, he starts out with brain cancer, anyway, and he has brain cancer at several points in the series, most notably at one point manifesting as a child named Anthony who talks to him. (I did say Ults was weird.) In 616, the trauma that makes Tony be a superhero is heart trauma, while he was captured by people who wanted him to make weapons, and then he builds the armor and uses it to get out of captivity. Ults Tony was never captured, and his company may or may not make weapons, I’m not sure. (They definitely make consumer goods and Tony can definitely design and build weapons as a personal skill; I just don’t remember if he’s also a defense contractor.) Tony’s story in Ults is that he gets an inoperable brain tumor, he hasn’t got a long time to live, and what he wants to do with the rest of his life is be a superhero. So he does. (Ironically, he ends up being, I think, the only surviving member of the original Ultimates.)

Much like 616 Tony, he has terrible taste in romantic partners, in that basically everyone he dates tries to murder him. Natasha. Justine Hammer. Probably more people I am not thinking of. I think the only person he sleeps with who doesn’t try to kill him is Carol Danvers (note: she’s not a superhero in Ults), and they’re not terribly fond of each other. (Most of Tony’s stalwart friends in 616 don’t really show up much in Ults. Jarvis dies pretty early on. Pepper shows up but not much. I honestly can’t remember if Happy is in Ults. Rhodey is in Ults but IIRC he works for SHIELD and has no particular relationship with Tony.)

He also has a terrible family! I am not sure how much of his childhood from Ultimate Iron Man is canon anymore, but I am pretty sure Howard was terrible, and then there’s Greg. In a plot development predating 616 Tony getting a surprise brother, Ults Tony has an evil twin. Yep. He really is evil, and the storyline with him in it is a lot of fun, and also terrible for Tony, and from what we see of Greg I am pretty sure Tony’s childhood was a living hell.

And don’t worry, Tony still hates himself! If you read Ultimate Armor Wars you can watch Tony sit at a bar with a box containing his decapitated head from elsewhere in the multiverse that he’s just had to use to murder his grandfather (look, I SAID Ults was weird) and drink and cry a lot.

(My absolute favorite Ults Tony moment – other than Head In A Box — is in the Chitauri fight at the end of Ults 1 where Tony gets downed and is lying there, having vomited in his helmet, saying desperately how he can’t do this, how he’s not as smart as they think he is, how nobody’s as smart as they think he is – and then he gets back up and gets into the sky again, because if he doesn’t fight, no one else has a chance.)

As for the Steve/Tony dynamic… well, they’re not 616. It’s clear that they’re good friends, and that they care about each other, and if you go read the Slashy Moments List you’ll see that they have a lot of nice moments with each other over the course of the series. But if you’re looking for that lifelong devotion and intensity of 616, well, you kind of have to do more of the heavy lifting as a fanfic writer to get there. You can, however, get a nice dynamic going with them where you just let Tony be his flamboyant self and keep bouncing off of Captain Grumpy Cat, and it can be a lot of fun to write… but, basically, it’s on you. Not entirely on you, but way more than in 616 where you can just grab a comic and find Tony musing about Steve’s azure eyes and handsome face.

I will say that one thing that they have going for them is that they have always had each other’s backs. Whereas 616 and even MCU have gone for Civil War, and so on, Ults never did. They’ve never betrayed each other. They’ve never even significantly hurt each other. It’s refreshing. And, okay, there was a civil war – an actual civil war, where Reed Richards bombed DC and half the US seceded and Texas had nukes – but Steve was president of the US, and Tony was working with him, and they were on the same side.

Also, you should probably know that Steve dies. While no one really makes it out alive on account of the incursions (though I think the universe is back now, Steve may or may not be alive; it’s confusing because it was in different issues by different writers), Steve dies slightly before the incursions start, fighting Galactus. Tony gives his eulogy. At that point you’ll have read all the Ults you need to read anyway; the main team disbands after that, because in the end, I guess Tony really can’t do this without Steve.

So that’s Ults! They’re my favorite assholes!

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 070

Episode: Futari wa Precure Max Heart 20 - “Tears of farewell!? Rina’s raccoon tale” Date watched: 26 September 2018 Original air date: 26 June 2005 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/kEZsCAh

“We finish each other’s-” “Sandwiches!”

This episode was..... an episode. FW has good supporting characters and I generally like Shiho and Rina but this episode, while attempting to flesh out Rina, seems to fall flat. It's also a "what is she hiding" type of episode with a really pointless payoff. Rina is acting strange and distant lately and her friends have noticed. Instead of telling them why, she pretends nothing is wrong (like what Hikari thought Nagisa was doing in the last one, which may be why this rubs me the wrong way) and attracts more suspicion. Inevitably Nagisa, Shiho, and Honoka end up stalking her after school to see what she's up to and find out she's nursing an injured baby raccoon. What point was there to hiding this? The only conflict is whether she'll do the right thing and release it back into the wild when it's recovered or try to keep it as a pet. Spoiler alert, this isn't a show with gray morality so she did the right thing. As usual for this show the villains appear out of nowhere with no motivation beyond “rrrrrrr destroy the Precure”. It’s Viblis this time. She conjures a zakenna out of a log cabin and it tosses the girls around for a bit. It’s a nice enough fight but not exceptional. The best part is when the Zakenna catches the raccoon in its attack and Black, White, and Luminous get righteously mad at it for involving the innocent (a recurring trend, I’m here for it) so they beat the hell out of it before launching Extreme Luminario.

Really the only notable thing is that the butlers actually talk to Baldez and the other servants of darkness about taking Hikaru outside. Viblis makes a passing comment about him to the cures which they, of course, don’t understand. We’re still a few episodes out from him truly exploring the world though.

I have to say it reminds me somewhat of FW 11, except the stakes aren’t as high because while the racoon is cute it’s not as personal as a family member getting attacked. There’s probably another episode it draws from, since they were so unprepared for a second season that they just tweaked plot ideas from the first, but I can’t think of it right now. A big problem with this show, and i may have said this before so I’m sorry if that’s the case, is that the villains are dull and the plot is nonexistent so it’s just a drag. In the first half of FW, we had 5 villains who each did things their own way: Pisard was manipulative, Gekidrago was straightforward, Poisony was deceptive, Kiriya was mostly observant, and Ilkubo was powerful. Their fights with the girls went in interesting directions and helped the cures develop as fighters, whereas the Seeds of Darkness in the second half were.... less of this. At least we saw them evolve as characters and mostly understood their motivations, even if their attack style was lacking. The MH villains have none of this appeal. They don’t have unique fighting styles, they don’t have distinct personalities, their motivation is vague and contradictory. They just exist because the show needs villains, but we’re almost halfway through the show now.

I realize my Max Heart reviews are getting more cynical and coming out further and further apart. I’m sorry. I think these are related. I blitzed through FW in more or less the promised timeframe but Max Heart is a struggle. I’ve been attributing it to real life events and work fatigue and the difficulty of writing an essay every day for this but honestly, I think Max Heart is hard to write about. All of these are factors in my decline. When I set out on this project I really just wanted to watch an episode every day. That grew into wanting to talk about the episodes with people. That grew into actually reviewing the episodes. That grew into taking 40-90 screenshots per episode and writing 1000 word analyses. It worked for FW, I was having fun, even when the show slumped in the second half. Max Heart is like a slump from start to finish with a few bright spots mixed in, and it’s harder to want to talk about. I remembered it being weaker than FW but now that I’m coming back to it, it’s worse than I thought. I love the world of FWPC, the characters are fun to be around and there are some truly great episodes but Max Heart overall is just..... not enjoyable? I don’t know how to describe it. The first show was lightning in a bottle, the second is not, and I think it’s a miracle it turned into an ongoing franchise that’s still being celebrated 15 years later. I vividly remember crying at the finale of Max Heart on my first watch because I was sad that I wouldn’t get to spend time with these characters anymore, but the show I’m watching now is making me second guess that feeling. I will push forward on this project, I’m not quitting, but by putting my thoughts into writing like this I hope I can convey my mentality and explain why the reviews are changing. I’ll be back soon with episode 21.

[lem-cup-rev]

4.6 | Princess Scorpia

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Ohhh this episode would be SO GOOD if Scorpia was better set up!

I honestly loved just listening to her soliloquize for a whole episode. Her voice is so low and smooth. I love the extremely sad ongoing joke of her talking about her shit life and her lost culture in extremely optimistic terms. I think I really, really like her whole thing when she gets the chance to slow down a little, and being alone gives her that chance. I think it lets her feel more mature and aware of the situation instead of purely one-note.

I love the idea of this beautiful, kind soul, who copes with her life by being optimistic to the point of self-delusion, being fanatically devoted to her homicidal best friend, and finally having her illusion cracked as she realizes the nightmare she’s living in and how many other people she cares about are being hurt. I think that’s so strong in this episode. But I think maybe Scorpia’s spent so long not seeming to evolve or respond to the changing story that it really dampens it. It feels like this arc was practically dropped between “White Out” and now.

I wondered last season how Catra was going to escalate any further, but I think she really has! She’s become furious, cruel, and demanding on a whole new level, and it’s really frighteningly cool. She just screams and claws in every scene and it feels like her screws are going to rattle off. She’s becoming an even more violent, sad person and it's thrilling to watch. We get very familiar but no less satisfying beats today of her getting a personal wake-up call that unnerves her, and her running from the feeling by doubling down on her choices.

I love the way she and Hordak are now in an unstable equal position, and she’s even pushing him to be more single-minded and ruthless. It gives us such a concrete sense of both her power and her cruelty escalating.

I really want to know what their plan is???? This is the only thing that’s really clawed at my curiosity in this show and somehow I don't remember it from my first watch????

I MISS ENTRAPTA. I can’t believe the most important character has been gone for this entire season! The flashback recording was such a perfect bite of the most charming, funny, character-driven parts of the previous seasons.

Contrary to my memory, the discord between Adora and Glimmer is working really well for me! The initial scene of them fighting soldiers immediately struck me with a different tone than previous episodes. They seem to find fighting more low-stakes and easy than they ever have, and they feel more like larger-than-life badasses. They take on a level of immaturity that I can really roll with, and their conflict feels really believable and genuine! It’s SO unlike the dreadfully common trope where characters argue because they have to and are completely deaf to each other’s words. I LOVED when Bow mediated and they talked through their stuff in a genuine, empathetic way! Not to mention having it happen during the fight was super fun. I got to appreciate Bow more than usual, seeing him shine as the mediator.

For some reason, the boarding in this episode was fantastic! It had such a unique flair for the dramatic and cool, and there were so many compositions and action shots that stood out. The awesome low pan on Bow at 2:35; Scorpia’s drink jumping out of the cup; Rogelio hanging from the box; Glimmer and Adora’s triangle framing when they argue at 9:40. I also noticed a brand new bit of anime influence, like the way Emily fluidly zipped around, and Catra’s super-tired face, and the moment where panels showing Adora and Glimmer slid in on either side of a shot of Bow.

I had a really cute moment where the Horde soldier tried to lie in that extremely cartoony, telegraphed way that always annoys me, and then Double Trouble expressed the exact same annoyance. Yes, you get me!

God damn, this is a good season!

Next time: Whodunnit!?

[paulisweeabootrash]

Series Review: Read or Die (R.O.D. the OVA)

Welcome to another episode of Paul is Weeaboo Trash! Today’s topic is a show I’ve previously seen one episode of, so long ago that I’m almost going in fresh: the OVA (what we in the US would call a “direct to video release”) of Read or Die (2001–2002)! I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where education and fun were not portrayed as opposites, and we had the means to find plenty of fun educational things to do.  My parents searched for all kinds of potentially interesting activities, and living in southern New Hampshire, the Boston area was not prohibitively far to go for them.  And so I was signed up for Splash, a program one weekend per fall in which MIT students teach middle- and high-school-age kids seminars on a wide variety of topics.

What counted as topics worthy of education was quite broad, however.  I ended up in a "class" that consisted of watching one episode each of several anime that the student running the class was a fan of.  This was back in the days where anime fandom spread person-to-person by recommendations and there was more emphasis on developing a background knowledge of "classics" among the more informed and/or snootier fans.  (I still feel this way a bit because certain tropes and references are so common or influential that being familiar with the original sources can make newer shows suddenly make a lot more sense, but I disapprove of the gatekeeper tendency to look down on people who don't yet know the things "everyone knows".)

I don't remember how many shows we sampled there, but the two that made an impact were Hellsing, which in retrospect was at best questionable for the age of the audience, and was very much not my thing because I have a low tolerance for gore, and the topic of this post, Read or Die, which was very much the kind of thing I wanted to see: a nerd being a badass in a fantastical way.  Especially since I was also really into James Bond at the time, so I was probably primed to eat up other media involving a British spy fighting a mysterious secret organization.  Since I'm incredibly averse to media piracy and had no clue where to buy anime, though, I never followed up to finish watching it, and eventually it faded from my mind.  Until I stumbled across the first volume of the manga for super-cheap at Saboten Con last year, and it flicked some nostalgia switch that reminded me how much I'd enjoyed it at the time, although I barely remember any actual details, so I am practically going in fresh here.

Read or Die follows Yomiko Readman, a teacher, obsessive book collector and reader, and superpowered secret agent who can manipulate paper in nearly any way.  Any paper available, from money to ribbons to a briefcase full of blank looseleaf she apparently just brings with her.  She uses this power in the course of her service as a secret agent, codename The Paper, working for the British Library?!  Along with Miss Deep, who can selectively phase shift, and Drake Anderson, a gruff and dismissive military type (and apparently potter in his cover job), she is assigned to a plan to save the world in a way that vaguely involves collecting books.  Saved from whom?  The I-jin, clones of historical geniuses with superpowers related to their areas of expertise, such as... knowing stuff about insects, or... uh... spreading Buddhism to Japan... who are going to flashy and violent lengths to steal books the British Library is trying to acquire legitimately.  Trust me, it eventually gets explained, and the Big Reveal, although pretty goddamn weird, fits in with the rest of what has been established.  Suspend your disbelief enough to accept the I-jin at all, and it’s fine, although still a bit ludicrous.

And I submit that all that is still less weird and ridiculous than your typical superhero or spy movie, and this show does after all have elements of both genres in one.  Or, well, more and more superhero and military action as it goes on.  Although the theme music uses 60s guitar sounds, chromatic chord changes, and blaring brass hits that are virtually guaranteed to evoke the James Bond theme, and our main cast do work for a secret intelligence agency, they are in quite open military-style conflict with the I-jin -- with the approval of the UN -- and very little that’s actually covert occurs, with the notable exception of something I can’t spoil that happens at the end of ep. 2.  And because of the superpower angle, some of the instances of weirdness are not flaws at all but pretty creative implementations of the characters’ powers (using a paper airplane as a lethal weapon?!).

This last point didn’t really fit in organically, but I'd also like to mention a couple of things about the art that I love but don't see often.  The very first shot of the series uses multiple flat backgrounds at different distances moving in relation to each other to convey the camera moving across the scene, which I have seen in other animated works (at the moment, I can only think of examples from very old Disney movies off the top of my head), but not in recent ones.  I don't know whether it's simply out-of-fashion or this is a result of the shift to CGI so animators figure "why would we do this when we can actually render a city with realistic perspective?"  This show also has a particular kind of fluid motion in characters that I’ve seen in many reasonably-high-production-value shows from the 90s and 00s, but rarely in newer shows (Space Dandy being a notable exception).  Maybe I'm watching the wrong recent shows, maybe it's just a stylistic choice that's out of fashion, maybe it's harder to pull off convincingly when you're not animating by hand.

I’m glad I finally got to watch this.  It’s even better than I remember.  Now to get to work on the rest of the manga and the other series.  Oh yeah, haha.  The abbreviation "R.O.D." stands for both "Read or Die" and "Read or Dream", which are different parts of the same larger series.  The Read or Die manga (4 volumes), this OVA series, the Read or Dream manga (also 4 volumes), and a 26-episode TV series all take place in the same narrative universe, rather than the usual model of the anime being an adaptation/retelling of the manga.  There is also a light novel series I know nothing about, but it sounds from the Wikipedia article like that is the single ongoing series that is the source for the two manga and two anime.  (There is also apparently a barely-related future side story manga.)

-----

W/A/S: 1/3/3

Weeb: I don’t think there’s much, if anything, in here that would require explanation to a typical Western audience and which isn’t also explained in the dialogue.

Ass: There is a single implied nipple in the opening sequence.  Gasp!  And Miss Deep's costume design is pretty fanservicey, but only barely more explicitly so than you're likely to get in American media deemed suitable for older children.

Shit: Until the Big Reveal, it's just unclear why anyone involved other than Yomiko should be this interested in acquiring the specific books that serve as the show’s MacGuffin, nor is it clear that the I-jin’s plans extend further than searching for them in a very destructive way, leaving me baffled that the Library immediately makes the connection that the books are key to saving the world.  There are a few minor errors in the subtitles and a visual glitch (Blu Ray remaster, please?), and a couple of places where faces just... don’t... look right.  Oh, and if you’re watching the dubbed version, add another half point of Shit for Crispin Freeman’s British accent.

And for the first time I feel the need to add a CONTENT WARNING.  Usually, I think the review is sufficient to give you the idea whether there is anything likely to be disturbing in a show, but this is different, because the first two episodes have the sort of over-the-top stylized combat you might expect from other action anime or Western superhero media, where even a death comes off as un-shocking.  But in ep. 3 of this, there is a shocking pivot.  There are several short instances of graphic and sudden violence of kinds that are quite a bit more disturbing and distressing (even when they involve the use of powers) than anything that occurred previously.

-----

Stray Observations:

- Yes, those of you who know a little Japanese caught that joke: "Yomiko" could be loosely translated as "read girl".  Her name is "Read Girl Read Man".  Because she likes to read.  Get it?  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!

- In the manga, Yomiko is also established to be a literal bibliophile.  As in "books, regardless of content, turn her on".  I'm kind of glad this is not a plot point in the anime.

- The “secret” operation in the last episode, which is conducted with UN approval and involves an actual military attack with an actual goddamn naval fleet (and collaborating with North Korea to keep the US too distracted to notice it, even though this is a British operation against an organization that literally burned down the White House in the first scene of the first episode) might actually beat the first few episodes of Full Metal Panic! for “worst undercover operation ever”.

[crystalelemental]

I’m gonna post about my separate AoCF thoughts here.

It’s a lot of fun!  I think the partner system is cool, but I do think there’s a bit of an opportunity cost there, as some characters are never the direct lead.  That’s generally not a huge problem, but...Doremy is one of them.  You have to swap in to play as Doremy.  Which means I didn’t really play as Doremy very much, which is sad.  I’m also gonna admit to being a little sad at the lack of victory animations.  Those increased the overall smug level of the previous games by like 80%, so it’s a little sad to be lacking them.

But let’s not pretend I know shit about gameplay mechanics.  I’m here for characters and story.  Story is...actually really interesting.  The Urban Legend incident is ongoing, and the antagonists, Jo’on and Shion, have spread a rumor around about Perfect Possession that allows people to do this partner system.  Basically, one person is the “master,” who is the main player, while the other is the “slave.”  Word choice, game.  But the subordinate can possess the master and take over in every way, including physically.  There are two conditions that are expressed in this.  One is that a master can select the subordinate willingly by consenting to the pairing.  The alternative is that the subordinate can possess another person if they drop their mental guard.  These two conditions set up the sisters’ plan to swap out Shion, a poverty god who guarantees an absolute loss, as the subordinate of the opponent, and makes your subordinate work for Jo’on, who throws them out to fight instead.  This way, any opponent pair beats the shit out of each other and they’re unscathed.  It’s a really clever plan!  Apparently so clever that Yukari can’t beat them and considers this a big enough deal to actually get involved.

The entire story seems to be about just beating them, but there are a lot of chapters that seem to have...nothing at all to do with them.  Instead, we focus on the Dream World.  Apparently, the Dream World is in chaos because the Perfect Possession switch can release the dream selves into the real world, where they go berserk because they’re a lot less inhibited and go berserk.  Doremy expresses that this seems to be a kind of catharsis, where they release this pent up irritation and eventually settle.  Doremy even yells at Yukari about how things are getting messed up and how she’s supposed to be fixing the problem and not be impacting the Dream World.  I love that Doremy can do that.

Ultimately, they don’t intersect much.  It’s kinda like two stories running simultaneously, side by side, but not really intersecting.  The dream world stuff ultimately has nothing to do with the whole “beat the sisters” thing Yukari’s got going.  The only real tie-in is that the Yorigami sisters’ penance is to catch all the dream selves and return them to the Dream World.  There’s also a big thing about Sumireko, her dream self, and the doppelganger that’s her urban legend all fighting each other.  That was fun, and probably setting up for 16.5 when it comes out.

Which leads into characters.  Jo’on and Shion aren’t that interesting to me.  Nowhere near like Kokoro or Sumireko for me.  Shion seems okay, but ultimately, I feel like her popularity is coming from being cute, mistreated, and generally a sad-sack.  You know, like Koishi and Flandre.  Their popularity comes from that sad history and being mistreated and cute.  She’s not a bad character, but her archetype has been done elsewhere and more interesting for me.

Jo’on, by comparison, almost got to be really interesting.  She’d be a lot more popular in my book if she’d actually stuck with her change.  See, Jo’on is a plague god, whose deal is she takes over people and scams them out of money, then uses that wildly to buy herself a bunch of nice things.  She’s got nothing save up, but is highly materialistic in that sense.  When she and Shion lose, Jo’on is sent to train with Byakuren at the temple to turn around this lifestyle (Shion lives with Reimu, because no one else would take her in, which was super cute).  But in their actual route, Jo’on starts to talk about how the material possessions didn’t make her happy.  See, the sisters, as plague and poverty gods, are pretty universally disliked and never got to know happiness.  So Jo’on, having discovered that those possessions weren’t doing it, starts to wonder if maybe Byakuren’s right.  By the end, she’s rejected the offer from Dream!Kasen to go back to that lifestyle and refuse to aid Yukari, and even tells Yukari flat-out that she’s going to go back to the temple and continue her training.  Which is really cool!  Shame that the ending explains that she gets tired of the minimalist lifestyle, and runs off back to her old ways regardless.  Oh, but she’s changed a bit in that she only steals from those who can afford to lose a little.  Which...almost counts for something?  Really, it feels like a negation of potentially really great development for a character.  She could’ve been the Kokoro...

Shion doesn’t really get that and just teams up with Tenshi to take over the world.  Which, as we see in WaHH, does not happen, but they are super cute.  Which is why I kinda like Shion a bit better.

Doremy is fantastic in this game.  She’s surprisingly polite for a Touhou, and is pretty high on the mom-scale.  She babysits the dream world selves, and is pretty indulgent with Reisen’s dream self.  It’s kinda really cute?  But at the same time, as protective as she is of the dream selves, she’s pretty intense with Yukari about resolving the incident in Gensokyo that’s messing with her turf.  Also, holy shit her portrait is adorable.  She’s so cute, it’s unbelievable.

Miko pretty much does what she always does.  She’s all about research into the mechanics of what’s going on.  Which, given that and her team-up with Byakuren and their respective subordinates, gets hilarious.  Byakuren actually stands out more for me this time.  It’s hard to exactly pinpoint why, but I feel like she just got some better moments overall?  Her placing faith in Yukari and then finding out almost immediately that Yukari withheld critical information and almost certainly knew they’d lose was an interesting view into her character.  Her dream self was also way more relatable than Miko’s.  Miko just...kinda shows that she’s a bit of a prick toward others that she looks down on.  Byakuren just confirms that the training of her disciples is just to make her life easier, which is hilarious.  Futo and Ichirin are a ton of fun.  Their usual banter gets way more intense when they’re teamed up, and their ending is them thinking they’ve surpassed their masters as a duo.  Miko’s surprisingly cool with that, almost proud in a way.  Which I didn’t expect, but it’s nice.  Honestly, Miko’s public face is great, it’s just the introspective to her thoughts that shows she’s got some problems.

Reisen continues to be underwhelming as a playable character.  Really, her dream self is an interesting introspective, but that’s about it.

Kokoro gets a fun thing where she’s analyzing emotions that tie people together as partners, ultimately to be used as part of Nitori’s latest invention.  Mostly I just love this because Kokoro’s getting better about reading emotions.

Koishi’s got fun banter and, once again, accidentally bumblefucks her way to being first to the plot.  Marisa helped.

Sumireko gets her interesting conflict between herself, her dream self, and her doppelganger, with a weird philosophical stance of who’s the real one and whether it matters.

Sukuna continues to be the least interesting character in these games.  She doesn’t really do anything too interesting, aside from partnering with Tenshi.

Tenshi is a fun character always.  Her nonsense is eternal, and she does explain why she got kicked out of heaven.  That said, a lot of her interactions with Sukuna do not carry the same level of engagement as her interactions in the manga.  Personally, I blame Sukuna.

Mokou and Mamizou is a partnership I never would’ve expected, but it’s great.  They’re just aiming to be the strongest, and when they lose to the sisters, they’re amazed at their strategy and are hyped to work to overcome it.  I really liked that.  It’s unusual for Mamizou to not be more in the know than she is, but it worked out well here, and being early in the game, sets up the Yorigami sisters as a bigger threat.

Which I guess...leads us to Yukari.  Yukari can be fun, but as far as the role of “Boss before the final boss that knows what’s going on” goes, she’s not as engaging as Mamizou.  I think a lot of it comes from how she approaches it.  She gets all her information from others, which irritates me even more because I just read CiLR, where her chapter focused on trying to get Ran to answer questions under her own power rather than giving computed answers.  For being focused on finding your own answers, you sure did rely on others to tell you all the fine details of this incident.  Hell, it even feels like she set them up to fail just so she could learn things, going so far as to withhold information from Miko and Byakuren to let them lose and see what happened.  It’s fine, but not as much fun or as well explained.

Nothing that changed my perspectives all that much.  Really, it’s a good collection of new interactions, but I’m not as engaged with Yukari’s performance this time around, and Jo’on losing character development really bothers me more than it probably should.  Still fun, always great to see new interactions, but ultimately not my favorite.

[minijenn]

That actually helps a lot. In regards to outlining chapters, would it be possible to see an example? I think I remember you posting a partial outline for Scary-oke a few months back?

Yeah sure! I’ll give you an example of what my notes look like for Sock Opera, seeing as how my notes for that chapter were, in my opinion, very thorough and good (warning this is in a bunch of parts because my notes for that chapter were VERY long, hence why they’re under the cut). But let me just say that I structure my notes in OneNote, just like how you see them here more or less. It helps keep me fairly organized. But the big thing that I do is that I structure my notes by beats that I have to go through, and generally give myself a little wiggle room to work with when it comes to things I won’t come up with until I’m actually writing. Still, I hope this helps! ^_^

Characters: Dipper, Mabel, Steven, Connie, Bill Cipher, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Gabe, Candy, Grenda, Stan, Soos, Wendy, various GF and SU characters, Lapis (dream), Jasper (dream), Malachite (dream)Settings: Mystery Shack, temple, theatre, some others Episodes to look at: Sock OperaTone: BIG drama, action, angst, horror, family, hurt/comfort, foreshadowing, some humor (dark humor)

• Start the chapter off more or less the same as the episode, with the kids at the library; the laptop from the bunker has been fixed and Dipper is determined to uncover what secrets it might hold (Connie is pretty much just as resolved in this, Steven and Mabel a bit less so, though make it clear they still want to help)Side note: Make sure there’s a good bit of underlying tension between Dipper and Mabel throughout much of this chapter (and make it come to a head later on)• Extend this intro a bit, and drop the implication in here that Dipper’s intention in figuring the laptop out is twofold: to not only find more clues about the author, but also to look through his research in the hopes that he might be able to find something that can help free Lapis from Malachite (angst)• However, their attempts are quickly halted upon discovering that the laptop is protected by a password (maybe through some humor in here as the kids make initial guesses about what it might be)• Not too long into this, however, Mabel is distracted by a show being put on by a young puppeteer, Gabe; of course she instantly falls for him, so she asks Steven to be her wingman as she goes over to talk to him• Make this part appropriately funny, though it eventually leads into Mabel panicking and telling Gabe that she’s going to put on a puppet show at the end of the week (make sure to give Steven dialogue in this)• Cut back to Dipper and Connie as they’re trying to crack the laptop, only for Mabel and Steven to return and beg for their help in putting the show together; Connie mostly agrees (she doesn’t think its going to be that big of an undertaking) and while he’s much more begrudging about it (since he believes time is of the essence for helping Lapis) Dipper agrees as well• Cut after some more interactions as the kids leave, though imply that an ominous, familiar shadow is lurking right behind them… (but don’t imply too much)• Cut to the temple as the kids rush in, with Steven and Mabel on the hunt for supplies that can be used during the show; the Gems are naturally confused by their excited panic, so they explain about the puppet show, which only ends up bewildering them even more (humor)• Also include a bit in here where Dipper asks the Gems if they might know what the password is (given their apparent connection to the author), but of course they don’t have a clue; in this, maybe show that they’re supportive of Dipper taking this mission on (they want to know who the author is too, of course), which will ultimately set up for irony later on (while also bolstering Dipper’s resolve to figure it out)• From here, go into something of a descriptive montage as the kids work on the puppet show (with help from Soos and Wendy; in here also mention how Dipper and Connie are still hard at work on the laptop, though Dipper more so• Generally in this part bring up several things, including Dipper’s near obsessive drive to unlock the laptop and his reasoning for doing so (mainly to help Lapis (maybe include some retrospective bits in here, including the pictures (for later on))) and how that drive is depriving him of sleep because he refuses to rest until he’s solved it (also highlight his frustration at being unable to do so thus far) (basically just set up the reasoning behind why he would make the deal with Bill in the first place) (make this angsty)• End this bit off the night before the show, with Mabel being content in how things are coming along for it (she’s on the phone with Steven discussing it); meanwhile Dipper and Connie are also on the phone, discussing their bafflement at how difficult figuring the password is going• After a bit of this, the twins both end their calls and so have some somewhat fun dialogue in here, but again, use this as a chance to foreshadow the conflict between them later on in the chapter• Still frustrated, Dipper goes up onto the roof to keep working with the laptop (maybe include a brief callback to Dipper and Lapis in here, (pictures!) for angst); have his irritation continue to grow until of course, the scene leads into Bill’s appearance (be descriptive with this)• Extend this scene quite a bit and keep all of Bill’s usual humorously twisted beats (maybe add a few) as he offers to give Dipper some help with the laptop in exchange for a “favor”; in this, have Dipper adamantly refuse (recalling Dreamscaperers), claiming that he doesn’t need Bill’s help• Of course, Bill counters this by claiming that the Gems are pretty much useless in helping him with this (again implications), as is pretty much everyone else; have him also be a bit manipulative in here by bringing up Dipper’s resolve to help save Lapis• Though briefly conflicted by that, Dipper still refuses, though Bill tells him the offer will still be on the table (make this ominous, maybe foreshadow more) before making his abrupt exit• Give Dipper a little introspection here before cutting, show that he’s still resolved to do this without Bill’s help, knowing that making a deal with him couldn’t possibly end well at all (though imply that he’s still a little conflicted about actually being able to do it on his own)• Have some humor the next day between Stan and Mabel for a bit as Steven and Connie show up; after a little of this, Dipper pulls them aside and tells them about his confrontation with Bill the previous night, so give the others appropriate interactions to thisSide note: Be sure to show that Dipper is sleep deprived in here, don’t just say it• Still, Mabel assures Dipper that she’ll be able to help him with the laptop after handing her materials off to Candy and Grenda; in the midst of this, however, Gabe shows up, so have a bit of humor as Mabel realizes she’ll have to up her game in order to impress him• Bring the underlying tension between the twins to a head here as Dipper angrily protests Mabel putting him off again; this of course, leads to an argument between the two (give Steven, Connie, Candy, and Grenda somewhat humorous reactions to this)• Make sure both of the twins abnegate their goals in here (with Dipper claiming that Mabel will quickly get over Gabe anyway, while Mabel calls Dipper’s ongoing obsession out); either way, make sure both of them are equally in the wrong against each other here• Still, have Mabel go a little further by claiming that Dipper should slow his search down because Lapis can wait (and have her regret saying that instantly); also, make Dipper’s reaction to this shocked and tranquilly outraged• As Steven finally intervenes in the argument, Dipper bitterly storms off to figure the password out on his own, leaving Mabel feeling pretty guilty about what she said (though not guilty enough to call the show off); still, before cutting, have some dialogue between her and Steven, where she asks him to go talk to Dipper in her stead• Cut to the attic, and have some introspection in here as Dipper’s not just frustrated with the laptop anymore, but also with Mabel; include a bit in here where he notices one of his pictures with Lapis and his resolve starts to crumble as he fears he’ll never be able to help her (PICTURES HERE)• In the midst of this, Dipper’s lack of sleep finally catches up with him and he gradually nods off, leading into a dream where he sees Lapis again, though keep their interaction very brief before she disappears and Jasper shows up in her place• In this, Jasper both mocks and threatens Dipper, telling him to give up on trying to save Lapis because he’d never be able to do so anyway (make this REALLY dramatic and dark); the dream of course ends on Malachite showing up (again, make this dramatic, kind of a parallel to Chille Tid later on)Side Note: Imply Bill induced this nightmare as an attempt to further manipulate Dipper into making a deal with him (don’t outright state this)• As Dipper wakes up in an abrupt panic, he’s of course met with none other than Bill, who makes a few snide remarks before casually informing him that the laptop’s about to erase all its data from too many failed entries (make this part a little different from the episode)• This is enough to convince Dipper to hear Bill out; the demon claims that all he needs is a puppet, and implies that he’s just going to use one of Mabel’s; of course, Dipper is hesitant to relinquish one, since Mabel worked so hard on them• Before Bill can counter this, however, he’s interrupted by Steven knocking on the attic door, having come to talk to Dipper as he promised Mabel; Bill lowkey panics at this but he’s quick to regain Dipper’s attention by reminding him about the laptop counting down, forcing him to put Steven on hold• Build tension in this part as Bill continues his appeal, reminding Dipper not only of how Mabel failed to help him, but of the fact that Lapis is still trapped at the bottom of the lake, essentially because of him• Remember to include Steven outside the door, continually worried over Dipper not responding (imply that he can he can kind of hear Bill talking to him, but he can’t really tell who it is, implying that Steven sort of defies the mindscape)• And so, as the laptop counts down its final seconds, on a burst of mere impulse and desperation alone, Dipper agrees to Bill’s demands (make this MOMENTOUS, as this moment alone changes a TON in UF as a whole)• Keep this tension high as Bill suddenly turns the tables, and be VERY descriptive and dark as he rips Dipper’s consciousness out of his body and possesses it in his place (again, draw this out, make it very dramatic)• As this is happening, Steven breaks into the room just in time to witness Bill possess Dipper, so of course show his shocked, horrified reaction to this (include Dipper’s as well); also remember that Steven can’t see/hear Dipper in his incorporeal form• Of course, Bill only welcomes Steven’s intrusion as he smashes the laptop right in front of both of the boys, while also tearing up the pictures of Dipper and Lapis, just as an added measure of sadism (make this hit Dipper hard)Side note: Make sure to have Bill’s dialogue switch to normal text and Dipper’s to italics post-possession and for the duration• Have some dark humor in here as  Bill experimentally messes around with Dipper’s body, intentionally injuring it (more so than the show, again, make it darker) just for fun and to also psyche Steven out; however, when Steven tries to heal these self-inflicted wounds, his powers do nothing, much to his confusion and Bill’s sadistic delight Side Note: Make sure that Bill addresses both Steven and Dipper (and yes, make sure to have Steven be confused by this) in a lot of theses scenes• Needless to say that Steven’s still in a panic in all this, since he really doesn’t know what’s going on, but he resolves to tell the Gems so they can stop Bill and save Dipper; of course Bill casually blackmails him, saying that if he does that, he’ll destroy (kill) Dipper’s body, so that of course forces Steven to remain silent about it (even if Dipper tries to tell him not to, but of course, Steven can’t hear him)Side note: Also imply (from the journal) that Dipper (or at least his body) might be dead while Bill is possessing him (again imply, don’t state) (possibly do this through Steven being unable to heal the injuries Bill inflicts)• Keep both the suspense and humor going as Bill inquires about the journal, claiming that his intention is to destroy it to keep the kids from getting answers (that might stop his plans, but only imply this); of course both boys refuse to divulge where it is, only for Connie and Mabel to innocently pop in (hint that she still feels bad about earlier but she’s had time to get over it) and Mabel says that she’s going to use it in her show• Extend this scene as Steven attempts to warn Mabel about Bill, only for Bill to remind him of his ultimate; still, even though Steven remains silent, Bill ends up inflicting a pretty sizable cut on Dipper’s shoulder all the same, much to Steven’s (and Dipper’s distress)Side note: Be sure to have Connie in specifics notice how strange both Steven and “Dipper” act in this brief scene, though it goes over Mabel’s head• As everyone heads off to see the show, Bill takes the time to mock and gloat at Dipper specifically, claiming that he won’t be able to stop him because he effectively doesn’t exist anymore, cap this part off with some pretty heavy introspection for Dipper, show the severity of his situation here and his desperation to fix it• At the theatre, a huge audience has shown up to see the show; give some interactions between Mabel, Stan, and the Gems in here (have some humor with the Gem’s confusion as to what this show is)• Also include some interactions between Bill and Soos, Wendy, and the Gems (the Gems in particular, use this to imply/foreshadow a bit, but not too much); have the Gems (especially Garnet) pick up that something seems off with “Dipper”, but none of them can really pinpoint what (though it does seem somewhat familiar to them)• Bill’s plans are aided along when Mabel recruits him to be the reverend in her play, which will get him even closer to the journal; Steven fearfully attempts to protest this, but once again, he’s forced to say nothing (much to Connie’s continued suspicion)• From there, the show starts, to have it be appropriately humorous (include cuts to the audience reactions, including Stan and the Gems being somewhat weirded out by it); but for the most part, keep this relatively close to the episode and keep it short• Amidst all this, Dipper’s still trying in vain to get the attention of anyone who could possibly help him, but as Bill told him, he can’t interact with the physical plane without a vessel, which gives him the idea to use one of Mabel’s puppetsSide note: Make the implication throughout the chapter be that no one can notice stuff like the eyes or Bill’s voice coming out of Dipper until they are aware that he’s possessing him (Steven can though cause he knows about it from basically the beginning) • As the play reaches its intermission, include a scene in here of Bill confronting Steven, reminding him of just what will happen if he doesn’t keep up their “bargain” (imply that Bill kind of does want Steven to break it, but only after he’s destroyed the journal and won and its too late to do anything to stop him anyway)• Amidst this however, Connie comes in and acts just as smooth in her suspicion as Bill does in his “innocence”; have a bit of snappy dialogue in here (while Steven’s lowkey panicking all the while), and have Connie come very close to breaking Bill’s ruse, only for Mabel to call Steven and Connie into the nearby dressing room for their help• Of course, Mabel hardly notices the ongoing tension as she shows her excitement for how well the show is going so far; amidst this, Gabe pops in and compliments her while also putting the pressure on for the rest of the show to be just as good• After she leaves, Connie mentions that she thinks something’s up with Dipper, only for Steven to adamantly refute that (out of obvious fear); however, right before the girls can break him down into telling them about what’s really going on, they’re interrupted by Dipper (the real one), who’s using one of Mabel’s puppets to communicate with them• While the girls are aptly confused, Steven’s overwhelmed with relief that Dipper’s still technically ok and finally, the boys tell the girls about what happened with Bill, shocking them both; Connie’s resolved to do what she can to help, but Mabel’s hesitant, not wanting to ruin the rest of her show• The others scold her for this, however, which gets her to compromise and agree to secure the journal along with Steven and Connie while Dipper finishes off the show for her• So the kids split up, with Mabel, Steven, and Connie heading to grab the book from the stage catwalk; however, before they can get it, Bill confronts them (make this really dramatic and intense); give him dialogue with each of the kids, chastising Steven for breaking their deal, “praising” Connie for nearly figuring things out on her own, and threatening Mabel with ruining the show if she doesn’t hand the journal over to him• Give Mabel some conflict here (even as Steven and Connie are arguing with her to keep the journal away from Bill) as she doesn’t want all of her hard work to be for nothing; however, at the same time, she knows that she can’t let Dipper down like this, especially considering all he’s done for her in the past and since the consequences of doing so could be very severe• Still, it seems as though Bill manages to convince her before, suddenly, she turns the tables on him, pulling him down with the journal; make this a bit different than the episode, as instead of falling to the stage, Bill catches the journal while Steven catches both the catwalk railing and the girls• For a moment, Bill gloats his apparent victory over the kids, only for Mabel to cut it short by throwing one of her spare puppets up at him, knocking the journal out of his grasp; of course he thoughtlessly dives after it, but not before knocking the kids off the catwalk• Make this fall intense as Steven barely manages to catch them all (including Bill) in a bubble that cushions the fall a bit as they land on stage, crashing right through the play, much to the shock of the audience (have the Gems hint at intervening, though none of them are sure what’s even going on, much less how to stop it)Side note: Imply during this part that Dipper’s ribs get broken from the fall, something that’ll come into play in the next chapter• Chaos unfolds as the kids all fight against Bill for the journal, and extend this part a bit from the episode, as they all essentially play keep away with it, much to Bill’s growing frustration (make this somewhat funny, but also climactic)• Bill almost manages to overpower Mabel and get the journal back, only for her to utilize Dipper’s weaknesses against him, such as his ticklishness and his exhaustion, have Steven and Connie join in on this and add an element of fun to it• After a while of this, the kids finally manage to wear Bill out entirely, which in turn finally forces him out of Dipper’s body, allowing Dipper to rightfully reclaim it (be descriptive in this)• Of course, while the kids are all exceedingly relieved and overjoyed by this, their levity doesn’t last long as Bill leaves them all with one final, ominous warning (one that divulges a bit more than the episode does, specifically about the SU side of things)Side note: Possibly foreshadow to chapters such as Pyrite, Rifts/Memories/Dimensions, ect in here• This is cut short, however, as the kids light the show’s pyrotechnics, effectively destroying all the puppets (make this both dramatic and hilarious, show audience reactions to this)• Of course, the audience is anything but pleased with how the show ended up being a bust and they all storm out; Gabe breaks things off with Mabel (make this kind of funny), leaving just the kids, Stan, Soos, Wendy, and the Gems behind• After this, have Mabel apologize to Dipper for her selfishness, though Dipper apologizes for his obsessiveness too; give a few good feelings in here, and incorporate Stan and the Gems as they wonder what just happened; of course, considering what did just happen, none of the kids really no how to explain, so they lowkey unanimously decide not to • However, not too much longer after this, Dipper’s various injuries (specifically his shoulder cut and broken ribs, among others) finally catch up to him and he ends up passing out from them before they can even leave the theatre (much to everyone’s surprise as they realize this was more serious than they thought)• Give Mabel plenty of guilty introspection during the rushed trip home to get Dipper patched up, especially as she finds a note that Bill wrote while he was still in Dipper’s body on the floor of the car (don’t show what it says yet)• Steven lamenting that he tried his best to keep Bill from hurting Dipper, only for him to fail completely (the girls try to reassure him, but it doesn’t really work)• After a while of this, Dipper finally wakes up, in a lot of pain and still rather exhausted (give him some introspection); Steven hesitantly offers to try and heal his wounds again, but Dipper quickly turns him down (he claims that he’s not sure if it would work, but its mostly because he thinks he put Steven through enough during what happened with Bill)• As everyone voices their concern for him, Dipper staunchly assures them that he’s fine, hugely underplaying his injuries, both inside and out; still, show that he’s mentally shaken from it all, beginning signs of PTSD, trauma, ect, but he forces himself to suppress all that as he goes upstairs to rest• Cut back to Dipper (give him pretty much continual introspection by this point) as he goes upstairs and stumbles across both the broken laptop and the torn picture, which he desperately tries to piece back together as he realizes that he lost what was likely his only chance at helping Lapis while also partially losing a bit of himself (metaphorically) in the process, and all because of him making a choice that nearly cost him so much more • End the chapter on a very sad, angsty note, with Dipper finally breaking down over both what happened to Lapis, but mostly over what just happened to him (imply that he’s deeply traumatized by what just happened, and that that trauma likely won’t go away any time soon)Side note: End on the imagery of the light from the triangular window falling upon Dipper (ominous, angsty foreshadowing)

Cryptogram (keyword: SOCK):He claims to see all with his ancient eyeHe works in flattery, deception, and liesDon’t take his deals or play his gamesOr all you know could go up in flames

Untranslated: WY RAEBBM ID WXT UAA ABIB WXW TCWXTRM TSTWI WTUAH MG UFPIXXGS, STGXENXDR, TCX AXILSIC'I XTZY WXW WTUAH SK EFPN LBH APBILDL PAP RDO ZCSP RIJAH ZD OE XR YAUBTW

Part 2 (keyword: PUPPETS)A pine tree has burnedA shooting star’s fallingA sword swinger’s been spurnedA rosebud’s remorsefully calling

Untranslated:P JXCI MJTY WPW UMGHTSE LZDIIXRZ KIUG'H JTDACCVE LODLS HABFVYG'H FXWC MEJVGWSU GDWXTJX'H GIFGGMTUYEDN WPAPBFV