#i’m gonna assume subway is included as train?

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Moriarty 8 - 11 (FINAL) | HypMic 12 - 13 (FINAL) | Taiso Samurai 7 - 9 | Akudama 9 - 12 (FINAL)

Hopefully I’ll be able to get on to all that backlog soon, because...I don’t want it to keep accumulating and Skate-Leading Stars (first winter 2021 anime) already has an advance 1st ep. up...

Moriarty 8

(Moriarty 8 notes deleted accidentally…)

Moriarty 9

If you want a modern equivalent to the Baker Street Irregulars, then I’d suggest you look this way *jabs finger at Odd Jobs Yamada (from HypMic)*.

These CGI background horse and carriages are…kind of distracting…

I’m guessing back in those days, the Irregulars were better than Google at finding info…because Google didn’t exist until the internet did.

Moriarty 10

Just this ep and one more until the end…at least, until spring 2021.

Wow, the use of colour here is really striking!

White lilies mean…purity/chastity…?

I’ve never heard of “bending someone’s ear” until now. It means to talk to someone, especially to ask a favour or to talk at length.

Probatio diabolica: the devil’s proof. I didn’t even know that was a concept until now…(I never once studied law, as you can tell.)

“William” isn’t normally shortened to “Liam”…It’s normally “Will”…also, notice all the footprints on the floor…

Moriarty 11 (FINAL)

Last ep. before spring 2021.

LOL, kabedon.

The fishy thing about Brits is that they’ve named things across the world names from Britain. I know there’s a Doncaster which isn’t anywhere near Britain, for one thing…

Observe the weird finger-like marking made by one of the bloodstains and the scratches on the suitcase. The latter was probably forced open.

Considering the number of signs the killer left, he was clearly in a hurry…

Well, based on that shoeprint we can find the killer if we can find traces of blood on his shoe.

“Duram” (sic).

Ah! If it was raining in Durham, then there would be traces of mud on the killer’s shoes. I remember early on in Detective Conan Shinichi, then newly shrunk, deduced Agasa was running in the rain based on the mud on his pants…this is similar.

Chloral (hydrate…?).

The “washroom” (apparently a Canadian term, the British term is “water closet”) has privacy and a place to get rid of the evidence, to some extent.

What about the rest of Eddie’s clothes?

Considering there are still 5 minutes of the ep. left…there’s going to be some kind of stinger for the next season. I can feel it.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait…Director Holmes??? Y’mean, Mycroft?! That is a good stinger! See you next time.

HypMic 12

“Ever since I was born, there was never a time I’d felt I’d accomplished something.” – Aw, Doppo, sweetpea (<- this blogger calls people “sweetpea” when they’re feeling lots of moe feels for them). Please don’t say that. You’ve accomplished more than enough in your life!

…Oh, almost didn’t notice it until Hifumi hid behind Doppo and the angle changed to confirm the jacket was on the bed, but Hifumi doesn’t have his jacket on.

I think I saw a tweet that said something about a wall being wrecked (specifically “Wall: Ow…”) but I wasn’t sure of the context, so I saved it in my bookmarks…LOL, so that’s what it means?

Samatoki, I know you don’t like Ichiro…but please stop trying to preach what his 2nd character song says in the title…(i.e. Break the Wall, LOL)

Jyuto’s very much a “I’ll leave this problem to the other guy” guy.

When the Funi subs say “dame”, I think Samatoki is just referring to an “onna” (woman). It’s a bit of an odd choice, really…although I can’t go and interrogate whoever was responsible for it. I don’t have the authority or the contacts that will allow me to.

This is not the time for fighting one another!!!

Notably, in the manga, Jakurai was going to chaffeur Hifumi and Doppo to their place, but then he had to go to work and so they rode the train with their prize money. This “run from Special Forces” ending is better, I think, since people got grumpy at Jakurai for having to abandon them with the money.

“…permission to cover a story.” - Permission from…who?

*screams* I was thinking Tom, Rex and Iris worked for a foreign government! They work for Ichijiku – why didn’t I think of that?!

LOL, I couldn’t even tell what Tom was saying until I played it back…it’s English, just…said in a spot where you don’t expect it.

“…that scares me.” – This may be nitpicky of me, but osoreru is actually a derivative of osore (fear), so “it strikes fear in me”…? “It strikes fear in my heart”? What would sound right…?

Go, host mode Hifumi! (...but does that imply host mode Hifumi is the only “version” of Hifumi able to rap? Certainly, he was able to do Wrap and Rap without his jacket, right…?)

You can tell Tom still respects Jakurai after all this time because he (the former) calls him (the latter) “Sensei”. Also, this’ll be interesting, we haven’t seen many mics and speakers beyond the standard bad guy ones (depicted in both the anime and the manga).

My gosh! All I knew of this song was that m-flo, also responsible for Human Lost’s theme song (and notably they’re a hip hop group with techno influences), was responsible for this song. Man, this s*** slaps! It’s great! (Sorry, I’ve just never really had the chance to capitalise on all the info I gathered on EDM DJs when talking in terms of things from Japan…m-flo is basically the only act I know which does that, so I’m really excited…can’t you tell from how verbose I’m getting in this note?)

That’s interesting that Matenrou won and Tom still took the gold chair symbolism to represent him and the Secret Aliens as the victor instead.

Iris’s parts are awesome. M-flo has a female vocalist and so I’d assume Iris takes on Lisa’s (m-flo’s vocalist’s) parts.

…Hmm, Gentaro’s made a reference to the track “Me Against the World”, has he?...Maybe.

I’m not quite sure, but I think Ramuda said “majo” (witch) when he was referring to Beauty and the Beast in the English subs.

…gosh, what is up with that airhorn…? Still, next time is the last time. See you on Christmas…no, Boxing Day.

HypMic 13 (FINAL)

This is the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning…y’know, considering how stuff trended on Twitter, I’d say this anime’s gonna get a 2nd season, but you can’t really say that until it actually happens. I mean, Boueibu is much less popular than HypMic and that got a 2nd season…

This is the 1st episode where I woke up early enough to watch without spoilers and had no obligations to place over it, so…this is exciting, in its own sense, but in a sense, it could also be called “profoundly disappointing” because this experience is only available to me as of the final episode.

One of the tweets I saw a few weeks back came to mind – someone became interested in sakuga houkai (terrible animation, literally “animation collapse”) because of HypMic…I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing…

…Dude, you probably shouldn’t answer a call from someone who just revealed themselves to be a traitor last episode…*sweatdrops*

(Spoiler for rest of franchise) Hmm…Dice’s face is pretty straight. Assuming at this point we knew Dice was Otome’s son, this is a good poker face from him…!

This thing about gangs was mentioned in their profiles (although the words used implies they “went delinquent”), so it actually doesn’t surprise me.

I wonder if this subway exists in the mainline story…?

According to the next ep. preview I saw on Twitter, TDD will reform to take down the Secret Aliens. I’m not sure if that was a guess or whether that’s true, so I’m waiting for the shoe to drop on it.

Samatoki-san, not -sama. Hmm…

There was definitely the word “team” in Dice’s line, so it’s “what the legendary team was made of”.

…oh gosh…they’re still using that airhorn…?

Again with the play on “lonely thunder”. It’s a really fun pun, but one I’d like to see in the rest of the series more.

Notably, Iris’s rap in English missed the word “charisma” where it could have fit (unless I missed reading it the first time).

Note Samatoki does actually use the word “shinsensa” (freshness), so there’s no lie there.

I still love how much they went in on Rex’s theme, even in his raps.

Huh, that’s new. Never seen a tag team like this before.

It seems Tom’s signature is using a lot of English, which makes it easy for us English/Japanese pair translators.

Saburo didn’t actually say “Ichi-nii”, did he…?

…based on the rock intro, this is Rhyme Anima, the OP, or something that sounds similar. What I’d need to confirm this is the “nautilus” line and the “ends corruption” line, which are the OP’s two biggest tells for AMQ.

“rainmaking” – Hmm, another link from Gentaro to Rei. This might be a different part of Rhyme Anima (OP) that wasn’t used as the OP proper.

“this white light invites and heals” (<- paraphrased) – Sounds like Sensei, alright!

…now that (rainbow bit). That’s sakuga!

*a silhouette appears* - Oh nooooooooooooooo! Now they‘ve done it! They’ve included Rei! That’s more than enough spoilers to last a lifetime for y’all anime-onlys!

I wish someone would work on this collaboration between Saburo and Riou…

Hmm…what is the series endgame? Putting in Dice as the new ruler??? I mean, Dice is the worst possible politician ever. He’s far too lax about things.

*Nemu enters* - No! Nemu!

Not only is Iris a “ramen shop owner”, it’s Tom’s favourite food…No wonder ramen has significance to her.

…ooh! A new song! Update: I don’t know what this song’s name is, although it probably will become clear what its name is on the 13th. I’ll keep my eye on Twitter in case the answer is there.

…I knew it was far too early to say if there was an s2 – the DVD’s live events go until September 5th and the 2nd DRB finishes in March. That almost felt like a stinger right there. Oh well, I’m more than happy to call this anime a success, even if I would call it the worst of the arms of the franchise. All HypMic’s anime had to do was deliver fun, before anything else, and it delivered on that front. See you around!

Taiso Samurai 7

Anime burnout means I’m coming back to the anime after the day it finishes.

This dancing scene is kind of like the one at the start of ep. 2 of IWGP, except it has the owl to represent the setting as well as the dance stage.

Leo doesn’t seem to know kanji or katakana, only hiragana.

Even though this part of the anime is set in London, the characters are still speaking Japanese (lel…?).

LOL, Edward Scissorhands much?

LOL, these background gossips are like the Plastics from Mean Girls…haha.

…LOL, that’s not one of those dismounting moves, is it? It’s just kind of…jumping off the bar.

Lookit how Leo’s sticker is 90 deg. sideways from what it should be, haha.

I don’t think it’s true that Olympic gymnasts have never failed. Like other people at the top of their game, they’re probably failed millions of times, but only outside the view of most of the world. Persistence and passion are what’s key to becoming the best at what you are, no matter what field you’re in.

Now Aragaki’s what I call a “determinator” (see TV Tropes on what that is).

Taiso Samurai 8

Notably, the word used for “clothes” is specifically for Western clothing, like dresses.

Well, now we know why Leo can do those stretches…

They’ve clearly sped up the dance here, but…it’s basically the same sort of movements Yuri on Ice used to suck me in. I’m here for it!

Leo seems to be the type who tries to push away his worries by distracting people (including himself) with other things…I see. I didn’t have much of a grasp of his character beforehand.

Britney! F*** you, Britney!

Ah, that must be the (a?) fabled owl of Ikebukuro. I’ve never actually been to Ikebukuro…the closest I got was Akihabara (to memory) and even then, that was for electronics, not anime…so I’ve never seen the owl statue I’ve been talking about close up.

Rei does kind of look like her mother like this.

Ah! Rei and Kitty have a pair look now! “Twinsies”, they call it.

Amakusa’s head is located right next to Leo’s butt, so I end up staring at it…LOL.

The Hoover mission.

“I <3 Ninja”, LOL.

LOL, “Nyapoo!”

*sighs* The problem with being multi-talented is that you’re going to be told to one day put one passion above the others, even if you don’t want that.

LOL, you can be a ninja with this WikiHow article. (I was looking for Kitty’s quote, but found that instead. It seems to be a quote from one of Tomoyo’s movies.) Update: I was right.

There’s a movie in the back where the title is “Black Rainmaker”. (Tomoyo, I presume) Mifune is the 1st person credited.

Considering this is 2003…you won’t be on Mars in 2013, Kitty.

Wow, a tape! That brings me back to 2003, indeed.

Charlie’s Angels…so that’s what the tape was.

LOL, a shoebill.

“blade in your heart” – That would refer to the character for “ninja”, which has a blade over a heart. Y’know Kiss Shot Acerola Heart-Under-Blade (from Monogatari), yeah? Like that.

…you might think emails were out of place in 2003, but a virus from an email caused me to be an avid reader and that virus was unleashed around the late 90s – early 2000s.

LOL, Kitty’s cat belt buckle.

You said it, Rei. You said it.

Taiso Samurai 9

Lausanne, Switzerland.

I noticed one of the boxes at the start of the OP says “Horizontal Bars”, rather than some random name to make the boxes look like they were discarded.

Someone encoded the video funny…

LOL, BB’s getting possessive of his territory.

Fuku-chan the fukurou (owl) in Ikebukuro…LOL.

LOL, randomly there’s a skeleton with a hat in the background of Britney’s clinic.

Notably, one of the wall hangings says “heart” on it – alternatively, “soul”.

Notably, Atlanta was the 1996 Summer Olympics…there is no 1997 Lausanne Olympics, as far as I know.

Akudama 9

I watched the part where it glitches twice and I can’t quite figure out what that circular symbol is…maybe it’s Hacker’s symbol…?

Ah! Only now they properly confirm Swindler used to work in the Seal centre.

“Life that never dies is defective.” – Doctor

Does that mean Doctor is actually older than she looks, due to plastic surgery…?

Marker? What marker?

Apparently that flower is a cherry blossom…according to Detective Conan.

…I know this anime wasn’t made in America (it wouldn’t be “anime” otherwise), but Anime Feminist is going to have a field day with this one…if they haven’t abandoned it already due to their idea of morals.

…now I can even see parallels between HypMic’s authorities and Akudama’s. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

“Why did this have to happen when I’m chief?” – Sounds like…basically every authority during COVID and BLM, to be honest.

See? Akudama likes the S word. I told you.

I haven’t watched The Shining, but reading the synopsis, you can figure out why Cutthroat is the way he is…sort of.

How does the iconic quote go? “Heeeeeeeeeeeere’s Danny!” (or something…?)

They even copied the iconic eye shot! There you go!

Way to take a guy out (with the door, LOL).

…with all this killing, I can see why Akudama Drive was only in one magazine now. (Then again, HypMic was in basically all of them and that also has a tonne of problems…)

Akudama 10

万死 literally means “10000 deaths”.

Babel.

That police chief is such a mood, LOL.

I can see why people didn’t recognise Swindler, but Courier never changes his look, so…uh…

You can’t become a police chief without a sense of justice, no?

“Since when did you know that I’m not-“ - *facepalms*

Is this what they call an “ass-kickin’ Christmas”? (LOL)

Y’know, Sister, you could just do the whole “wherever you are, I’m also seeing the same sky as you” thing some other anime do.

Notably, there are shide (the paper strips) and a rope over the vault…they really do treat the shinkansen and its immortal children as a single god, huh?

Hmm? They don’t care about Sister anymore? Just Brother? (Somewhere along the way, the priorities must have shifted.)

In the end, the best ship is Brawler and Hoodlum (lel).

Akudama 11

One more ep after this. I’m gonna miss this anime, even if it was crazy over-the-top and I didn’t finish it until after the day it ended.

I think the scariest scene in all of Akudama Drive is the one where the “cleaner” tosses the girl aside.

“This nowhere place!” – Around this time, the bunny and shark’s shirts say “morning”/”afternoon” (shark) and “evening” (bunny).

The blue bird of happiness…literally. That character on the birds is the one for “happy”.

…LOL, that one glitched Courier looks more like Cutthroat.

Hacker’s drone matches Courier’s head angles, LOL.

I guess if you think you’re falling in Kanto, you’re falling in Kanto and if you think you’re floating (like Courier did), you float. I always liked that concept.

War Games. Now the title makes sense!

…but they can be together if they stay here in Kanto as vessels for the citizens? (That sounds mighty antagonistic of me, but…that logic does compute.)

Maybe swindlers play games with the truth…? (What an interesting concept.)

“Just fine.” – I think Hacker needs a “This is fine” meme.

“We can hear your heart talking.” – It means something like “We can hear you spouting your true intentions.”

“…worth every last penny…” – That’s a weird thing to say for someone whose life got changed by 500 yen…Just goes to tell you how American the subbers can be sometimes.

Swindler’s smug face is so good, LOL.

Akudama 12 (FINAL)

This episode isn’t named after a movie. It’s named after the anime itself.

The TV says “Please watch away from the TV”, i.e. stand back from the TV while you watch.

“They came and stole the offerings…” – At this point, bunny’s shirt says “freedom” and shark’s says honpou, meaning “wild, uninhibited, rampant, extravagant”.

…where did Shikoku come from? Is that where Swindler and Sister landed after they tried going to the moon?

Ohh! That Christian imagery! That’s scary!

Is Akudama Drive a tragedy? No, I think…on the contrary, it’s a story of hope.

LOL, “s*** guy”.

I thought the girl had a bomb. Turns out she has a gun, which is…far worse, come to think of it.

Instead of red characters which say things about the situation, now Shark and Bunny have Hacker’s symbol on them.

There’s no way anyone who wasn’t immortal would survive the attack Courier took…

…why is it that falling over represents vulnerability in children in all of these stores where a war has happened and/or there’s a chase? Hmm?

Wow, Sister did everything with heels on…?!

Anyways, that was a fun time. See you next time!

[shadowthrone-ammanas]

So the first thing with the tiny Hat Kid/Borrowers AU that I came up with was that originally it was based off of the visual of a mod level I was playing where there was a lantern the size of Hat Kid. I didn’t start it thinking about the Borrowers as “humans but tiny” I was thinking of them as like Hat Kid’s species. 

So when I later decided Mu was also tiny that resulted in having Mu be also distinctly not just a tiny human and it had ripple effects on the borrower species design

So, background details: Most of the characters are still the same. However, the locations are different. Mafia Town isn’t on a little island, it’s on a larger one with both underground-undersea Metro tunnels and shipping routes. There is a large forest- Subcon- and some mountains, the Alpine Skyline, which then have a desert in their rainshadow. 

So that’s all the chapters except Arctic Cruise on one reasonably sized landmass, instead of scattered all over the planet, much more accessable to tiny Hat Kid

I’m gonna put a ‘read more’ right here for the sake of people’s dashboards. I hope that’s okay.

Borrower biology notes: inspired a little bit by ruffs and also my attempts to work out having Hat Kid, Bow Kid, and Mu as members of the same species

3 or 4 sexes in a similar way to ruffs or white-throated sparrows; about all I have pinned down is that Mu’s facial-hair-no-ponytail-and-long-bangs/tendrils/flaps combo is associated with one of them, bow kid’s no-ponytail, no-hair-flaps, no-facial-hair combo is another, and hat kid’s ponytail-and-flaps-but-no-facial-hair is a third (yes this means two of them are trans)

The Borrowers, as they sometimes call themselves, are the result of an incredibly powerful spell a few centuries back. They used to be about the size of humans, before the spell; and pretty much all of them lived on two islands.

The Mafia wanted to move to those islands, so they gathered up all the Time Pieces they could get into one spot on the island and had a sacrificial Mafia member do A Thing involving the time pieces and a great deal of other magical items to remove the islanders; faking a wild magic surge. The result was that as far as the rest of the world was concerned the entire species simply vanished, turned into these tiny little echoes,and also this was much less scary than it should have been. There is still a spot on the island Hat Kid is from that will likely have nothing grow there for thousands of years.

The Time Pieces exploded into much smaller fragments, time shards, which scattered all over the world, and the shrunken islanders started to try to adjust to their new lives. 

Which was made a lot harder by the Mafia moving in; they spread false information claiming that the tiny post-transformation islanders weren’t sapient anymore and were pests, like large mice, to be dealt with with poison and rat traps. 

Some Borrowers start using time shards to power things; others do the dangerous thing of tapping electricity from wires; others use tiny candles and other pre-electric style technology or magic.

Their society adjusts to a world where “eaten by a seagull” is a plausible cause of death, everyone can double-jump, most people can carry more than their own weight, and an umbrella is easily enough to completely stop all fall damage. Square-cube law! Luckily the magic helps keep them warm, but Borrowers still have a faster metabolism than they did pre-spell and need to eat more often. 

Amongst other details, it’s common for a Borrower to end up on their own due to being separated from their clan or having the rest of their clan die. Solitary borrowers don’t tend to last long, so they generally try to get adopted by the first clan they come across, basically just showing up and starting to pitch in; there’s always something to be done.

Also Borrowers are a little more scent-focused than humans, most noteably being more able to notice the scent of borrowers than a human is able to notice the scent of other humans; this is really helpful for lost borrowers finding other clans.

Hat Kid is the kid of someone relatively important in a borrower community on the other island. They treated her poorly/were neglectful, so she ended up falling in with, basically, the local borrower criminals. (Not many places have enough clans living closely enough together to really have borrowers that are criminals by borrower standards; stealing from the taller folk is not considered a crime but rather just survivial, and attacking the taller folk is basically considered lunacy.)

Eventually Hat Kid, at age 11 (okay actually older, like 16 or so, but she maps to a human 11 year old), decided to fake her death and entirely leave her old clan. Due to various shenanigans including her not being out to her old clan, the fake murder, a real murder done by Hat Kid, and paranoia she managed to be accused of murdering herself and got exiled which is a Big Deal. She stole the one local aircraft (that she had helped build) and fled, exploring far beyond her family’s reach (especially now they didn’t have a timeshard-powered aircraft).

In between her ‘ship’, her skills with an umbrella and movement, audacity, and sheer dumb luck Hat Kid managed to live alone for quite some time, eventually landing in Mafia Town due to an incident involving a Mafia with a bugnet, losing the time shards that powered her ship in the process. She meets up with Mu and is like. FRIEND! Sure, I’ll join up with you!

…aaaaand then Mu wants to use the time shards that powered Hat Kid’s airship thingy to hurt the Mafia more. And Hat Kid is like, no, no I need those. Result: Mu leaves in a huff, Hat Kid is alone again. 

Hat Kid’s ship, by this point, has been repaired enough and has enough time shards to fly a little, so she goes and recklessly lands on the local above-ground train and hitches a ride, ending up at Dead Bird Studio. Grooves finds her and is like, this borrower-mouse is wearing decent clothing and a hat. Whose escaped pet is this.

Hat Kid is semiverbal but definitely literate and manages to get her hands on a writing implement and explains that she is nobody’s pet. The Conductor and Grooves decide to hire her for movies.

Directors: a sapient borrower-mouse who wants to be an actress and is actually good at it just when we need a new actor and fresh movie ideas! Perfect!

Hat Kid: This weird clan has lots of infighting and mostly trades in movies? I get to be adopted and to use my skill in acting for things that aren’t lying to people? Perfect!

So that’s a good month or so for Hat Kid, with the culture clash never being clarified, whoops. Both the Directors think Hat Kid is going home to her family when really she’s doing stuff like looking for that time shard she thinks might be present or fixing up her ship more or getting food that isn’t provided by the Directors. (At least they recognize that providing lots of snacks to the tiny child is a good idea.)

Then the movies (both of them) are finished, and the directors are like. Thanks for working with us. There’s no more movies for you, kid, stop showing up to filming there’s no more filming involving you. (Grooves never really started seeing Hat Kid as fully a person and is pretty cruel about kicking her out from his side of the studio, too.)

In the Director’s culture: “Seriously kid contract is done, the movies you starred in have no more filming, wouldn’t mind working with you again later but uh we are not currently working on a movie right now why are you here?”

In Hat Kid’s culture: “We’re exiling you. Again.“ 

So she goes to Subcon Forest. Yes, this is stupid and risky. Hat Kid does not care.

Snatcher sees this absolutely tiny person and is like. You’re too small to be a threat. Also too small to have a soul worth the effort of eating it. 

So he hires her to do stuff like detail work on repainting the Subconites’ houses and other stuff a tiny person can do. 

He proceeds to assume she’s being cuttingly sarcastic when she calls him "dad” or “dadcher”. Instead of 100% serious. (Her perception of this as an adoption is helped by Snatcher making an effort to dig out old books and old memories on what of the local flora and fauna is edible and provide Hat Kid with fresh local food, which is a Special Effort as, well, subconites and dwellers feed off of ambient magic and abstract stuff while Snatcher eats souls.)

After maybe about two weeks he’s out of work for Hat Kid and tells her so, like, “No more work for you, kiddo. You’re free to leave.” Then is mystified when Hat Kid leaves in tears. Like what did he do wrong??

I have no clue what Hat Kid would be up to in the Alpine Skyline. Something. Probably trying to impress random nomads and goats and not understanding why they’re impressed but still leave her. 

Eventually she finds out that Mu has gotten her hands on time shards and is managing to use them to set places on fire. Hat Kid goes to stop her because no!! You do not just indiscriminately set Mafia Town on fire! Even aside from all the tall folk living there you don’t know how many borrowers are living in the walls! 

So she stops Mu, then realizes that pretty much everyone watching her has either ‘exiled’ her or has been known to hunt borrowers before (eg the Mafia) so she flees down a subway tunnel and lives in the Metro for a few days before meeting the Empress. By this point Mu’s very public yelling about how the Mafia were killing her people has gotten on the news, so she’s aware that at least some borrowers are sapient and people, and is like. You work for me now.

Hat Kid is like, my greatest fifth chance!

Eventually, though, Hat Kid manages to annoy the Empress. By this point she’s gotten used to the idea that something is wrong with her, people really don’t care about her, and at any point she could be abruptly betrayed and exiled, so she panics, assumes she’s going to be kicked out very soon, and ends up deciding to preemptively betray Empress by stealing her time shard. Empress is throughly baffled and also very upset and puts out a bounty of a few thousand or so on Hat Kid’s head; time shards are valuable damn it but also…only one?? she’d been known to bring back five or six at once? 

(Time shards aren’t very tangible to most people by default. Borrowers can interact with them always and make them solid to everyone. Hat Kid could’ve easily reversed that and forced Empress to use magically charged tongs to pick up her time shards and hire another borrower to fix them but she didn’t. The longer Empress thinks on this, the more confused she gets.)

At some point during Hat Kid’s time in the nyakuza Mu ends up adopted by Cooking Cat. She shows up on TV sometimes, joining in an episode with stuff like running commentary while perched on CC’s shoulder or butting in to help frost cakes or whatever. 

Hat Kid’s confused upset post-nyakuza wandering ends up leading her to where the Conductor is just coming back from a cruise. Conductor is like LASSIE I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER! Hat Kid is like ??? and then decides that maybe…maybe kicking her out was entirely Groove’s idea and Conductor still likes her? Maybe?

And then in the ensuring confused discussion Conductor begins to realize the culture clash. Conductor ends up adopting Hat Kid, and later takes in Bow Kid as well because she was separated from her family and saw Hat Kid riding on Conductor’s shoulders and just sort of. Jumped on his other shoulder, startling him, and was like “HI”.

At some point Hat Kid and Bow Kid end up guest starring alongside Mu (they made up) on Cooking Cat’s show. Possibly several times. Hat and Bow are adorable and while they don’t really say much unscripted and it’s usually sentence fragments they’re still popular for a mixture of Adorable and their sense of humour eg Bow Kid insisting that duck is actually “quackers” in a dish involving duck and cheese to set CC up for a terrible “cheese and quackers” pun. 

Mu, Hat Kid, Bow Kid, and the TV Trio end up working together a lot to try to change things for the better for the Borrowers. Meanwhile Snatcher is off doing his own thing, having heard of the culture clash (Mu explained it on TV at some point) he works out a schedule for when Hat and Bow are staying with the Conductor and when one or the other or both are staying with him. He ends up with a few borrower clans living in his forest (they followed Hat Kid) and is just like, sure this works. 

I greatly admire people who can just come up with AU ideas and build on them and then come up with a whole story for the AU. I love that it has a happy ending too. :)

[vio1315]

Copy and pasting what I sent to my friend this morning about a dream I had

(Took me 50 minutes to write apparently ha)

” I had a dream with you, oh myy goodness. It was so stupid detailed So I got a call from the job who fired me and they were willing to rehire me, and you decided to ?? Come with me ?? or something (I don't remember what you wanted to do) But you could drive so we were going separate, and I was right behind you all the wway sown [road near my home]. We had a lot of times where we could have separated or passed, but chose not to and had a good time. [It was summer?? There were palm trees??] (Your car could jump like in Mario Kart despite being a real car, and you kept doing it and I got upset cuz I didn't want you to get pulled over) We stopped at a mall and watched a movie in the theater. I don't remember tons about that, but we used a vending machine afterwards, and there was something important about it. So we continue down [That road], but it's entirely wooded and not at all developed, except for this one building. (Irl it's a little past Taco Bell) And we stop there. I check my phone and see that it's 3PM and I was supposed to be there at 8am. You feel bad but I'm like 'nah, I'll tell them I thought they told me to come in tomorrow?' Even though they didn't even text/call. (At one point I say 'I'll say I thought they meant Renaissance, not medival' to express this

so I ask you if you want to go to the gas station because it has a Taco Bell in it (this was vivid. I had my arm propped up on the pole to the overhang, and was resting my forehead in the crook of it while thinking) And you felt bad for me and were just 'No...' You mentioned that the gas station didn't used to be there like even a month ago, let alone a Subway, it was all woods. And I was like 'weird, I ate at this Subway a bit ago' (and I actually did earlier in the dream, but that's all I remember) (Yeah the dream only called it a Taco Bell once, but it was Subway the rest of the time. Not just in name onl either) And you went to your job interview inside. At this point in time, idk who interviewed you, but it was an?? Animal? But pokemon ish Def legendary vibes (And it cut away to Doug an Scott Walker and us eating at a Subwaay and it was the best thing we'd ever experienced? And it was the Taco Bell gas station, but Subway now and in the middle of a beautiful town. My mom mentioned that there was no Subway there, but she was in our living room, and I don't know if it was even a phonecall or not)

Anyways, so they tell you they wanna hire you like right then and there, and so you start training. There's one other girl with you in the gas station in the Subway segment. It has a few desks and chairs, and the legendary has a teachers pointer while a video plays on an old TV which is mounted above where the Subway and gas station connect. (The Subway has Nothing, no signs/decoration/food, and the gas station does have shelves but they are all empty. Nobody is at eiither but you three. But it's so glossed over I didn't nnotice in dream. Though "I" was still outside.) And you're shown an overhead map of the gas station with surounding woods on  the TV, and its pointed to, and explained that long ago there was a ?? fire or something which destroyed the front of the store (I forget this part exactly) but then not long after a nuke was dropped on it, so the whole building was wiped out, and the surrounding forest took over again before they rebuilt. (The map kept up to date with all this ye) 

WHile this was being explained, irl me/narrator me vaguely wondered at the importance of this kind of training, ultimately deciding it was useful to know the place you work fors history, in case a customer has questions.So you have the job and the legendary just ?? Adopts you. I don't remember how it was decided, or if you had a choice, but you were happy about it. Outside I was stressing about commission stuff and how to balance it with the new-old job, assuming I kept it after such a day 1 blunder. 

Your new mom starts showing you around the house which has replaced the Subway, but also hasn't. Because at one point we're like 'when did this gas station get stain glass windows?' and the two slowly morphed, or grew from each other. It is still refered to as a Subway after this, and /sometimes/ the inside is still the empty Subway. But you follow your new mom outside and around the now cathedral-y building and up some new stairs which lead to a deck and back inside. I'm reflecting on how I even ate at this Subway when it didn't exist a month ago. (I think this happened during training but I forget. They let you and the girl (and I was there for this bit) decide on a logo for the Subway, since they are renting it and so can decide their own details)

And so we're all discussing it, but legendary-mom is like 'no you're right, we have to go in a new direction' and I predicted th one she'd pick, because I swore I saw it at the Subway I ate at back when it wasn't supposed to exist, and I was right, she picked that logo. Dream me is very suspicous. 

 Anyways so you go up the stairs and are shown around. You meet the dad and two other ??? people??? who will be your siblings. Everyone's really cool. You come tell me goodbye, and I'm happy for you, and we discuss life plans and our next meetup a bit. I seem to realize that lying is a sin, so I can't tell my employer I got the day wrong, and I decide to pray about what to do, thinking I'll be fired again. So I leave conflicted. 

You go back with your new family and take pictures of the outside of the place at your new brothers request. You notice the lights turn on inside as it gets darker, and this spooks you for some reason. It's all stain glass though so it looks cool. You see your sibs walking in the hall, casting shadows. The mom says something that you hear. Eventually you decide it's too dark to keep taking pictures and go inside. 

When you do there's a giant glowy portal which looks like a Halloweentown effect kind of. Red is the dominant color though. A giant creature comes out which looks mildly like the X legendary [Xerneas], but real, plain horns and more realistic legs. (But it's blue and glowy and impressive feeling. The horns especially /feel/ glowy. As the lighting gets more intense, they especially look red) Honestly the visuals get crazy weird and reminds me of Thumper a bit.

I think this startles you and you think you're being chased or ?? Anyways you get spooked and skedaddle. I forget how, but you realize there were 3 possible ways to get to that scene, and somehow you're able to play another, where instead of going throgh the front to an interview, you go to the back door where you get adopted faster and so get to bond more with your siblings before this. I forget the bonding scenes but they were really good and you ended up liking them a lot by the time you were done. 

So you're back at the scene where this creature jumps out at you, but this time you notice something off, and see your adoptive mom hanging out, who by now looks veery like this new creature. And you're a little confused, but then you see the creature coming again, but this time it has subtitles, and you realize you're lookin at a TV screen, and you keep trying to look at your new family who is by you, trying to convince you it's Really Real despite how they don't know how to turn off the subtitles. (This all has a playful mood now, like a 7 year old failing at a prank) 

You realize your dad looks a lot like the creature but smaller, and so figure out it's just been them basically. It then cuts to you going to sleep at this new house, and despite its size, you're laying on the ground by the bedroom door (there is a bed right next to you. This whole room, bed included is pink. It has some bows on it) Your new brother is laying by you, and in between you is a tiny doll cradle. In the cradle is an egg the size of your head, pink, and with an actual face. This is your mom. Dream decided this is just who she is now.

You guys discuss stuff but I forget what. You deecide you like being adopted though and are happy. You leave the room, and it plays the scene with the giant creature even though you're not over there, but you notice puppet strings now, and soon it's a photorealistic muppet show (none of my dreams have a realistic aethstetic, they usually appear at least a little bit drawn, so this is especially weird looking. All the muppets are giant) You watch, kind of acting in on it by now, like you get what this is. You figured it out. 

It cuts to a sun mascot who laughs at a groaning audience, as this audience also figured it out. He laughs a really dumb kids show laugh and is like 'don't be mad at us! Now you can rewatch and look for clues!' [I swear to you it’s the Raisin Bran mascot]

Then it cuts to me, Doug and Scott Walker outside of the town-Subway we were in earlier. We're walking around the back. We were discussing how amazing that Subway was, and how it was the best food we'd had in our lives, but now we see the whole town was a computer 3D model (shown by seeing it unrendered on a computer. [a really oldschool computer too] Forget if it appeared that way irl or not while we were walking around it) 

Scott is kindaa laughing but goes 'DANG IT! That was all from my mind! That's why it was so good!' And we all have a good laugh. And that's about where the dream ends

There was the stuff that came before which is majorly blurry. Basically I was following my dad around at a party, and I'd see some woman who was gonna try to stab someone, and I would jump in to stop them way before they could do any harm, and my dad never noticed, though I sometimes needed help 

A lot of times I was a cat at these times, and thinking back to these human memories, in order to help me know how to take down evil cats for my clan (very warrior cats)

Oh yeah, the dream ended with my sitting by a car repair, studying the logo (which I thought sucked) and stressing about going back to the job

[stubbornattempt]

I guess I'll tell the story going backwards. When I first moved into the place with my dad I was worried about being in the same town as John. I didn't know if he was going to fuck with me or not. There was a kid's mouse ears headband in the freezer and a USB chord tied around the refrigerator door handle and I was freaked out that John had broken in and was leaving threats. When I lived at the house where you and I first "met" and the whole John thing broke open he had come into my house and left threatening things around including a toy in the freezer. At least I'm pretty sure he did because there was a pic on Tumblr of that yellow character from Adventure Time in the freezer. So anyway, I thought I'd need to get extra security on the house. I texted my sister and asked her if she knew anything about the headband in the freezer and the cable on the refrigerator door and she did. The headband was in the freezer to make it glow in the dark and the cable had been used to secure the door closed. I assumed that my phone was bugged and that those texts were read by others. I got a job at Kroger and on my very first day there John came into the store. He looked at me sympathetically but I was spooked and ran and hid in the back. That made me think that he was aware of the texts and knew that I was working there. When I left work that day there was a plastic bag that said "Pilot" on it, and it was under my car right in front of the rear tire so it couldn't have been there when I parked. Someone had intentionally placed it there. I thought it meant that you were coming for me. John came into the store several times. He had earbuds in and that made me think he was trying to show that he was listening. I was working in the meat and seafood department, as I'm sure you know, and John came up really close to me one time and so I decided to talk to him. I followed him into an aisle calling his name and he finally looked at me and said, "You work here!" and I said, "Yeah I live in ***** now. Well I just wanted to say that you know where to find me if you ever want to talk about anything." And he smiled very brightly at me and nodded as he walked off. I found him extremely attractive, as I always have. I got hammered one night and was texting my mom about homophobia and I said something about how penises were desirable. (I have no fucking clue why I texted her this, I was shit faced really.) The next day in my parking space at work there was this St. Patrick's day thingy on the ground. I started seeing clues and messages in the groceries at work. I thought that John was offering to take me back and I wasn't really interested because I wanted you. Then I thought the messages said that I could have both, so I began thinking it might be nice to reconcile with John and finally tap that even. Then it seemed like you didn't want me to be with John so I wasn't going to but he kept trying to convince me. Sometimes customers would say things to me that seemed like code. One time this old woman wandered into the back of the meat cutting room and this old man told me that he "lost his wife." I began to evaluate every customer interaction as a potential message and also every misplaced piece of merchandise. I thought that you were mad at me for talking to John and made a mean comment about my weight. I thought that John tried to convince me that you were abusive to me and that he would treat me better. I got a little firm with you and threatened to break it off, but I couldn't do it for real. So its entirely possible that all of this was completely in my head, but I thoroughly believed it was happening at the time. I was very stealthily scavenging the store for products to place around and deliver my messages. I thought there must be people coming in and looking around and reporting them back to you guys. It started to get super stressful. I thought that John kept harassing me and I really only wanted to be with you and I told him so. Then I thought his wife got involved. I thought I saw her come into the store one time. In my mind they started threatening you. The messages at work were supplemented with perceived messages from Pandora and also the various screen savers on the computer. I thought that John and his wife were actively trying to sabotage you from getting to me and so I agreed to give them what they wanted if they would leave you alone. I have no idea if any of this was real at all or completely in my mind. I suspect that at least most of it was in my head. Eventually I became afraid of every misplaced product and read grave messages in everything. I don't remember what was the straw that broke the camels back but I walked out one afternoon and never went back. I thought that the Pandora messages told me that my car was tagged by you guys and so I drove off to another town and spent the night in a store parking lot hoping you would meet me there. Later I came to believe that my car was tagged by the bad guys, which led me to ditch it. Somehow I got it into my head that I needed to leave my dads place, and that's when I got that cheap used car and drove off to another state. I wanted to hide my car so I drove off into a wealthy residential area, and that's where it broke down. I spent the night in the car but in the morning I was worried about the cops showing up since I wasn't allowed to drive a vehicle without an interlock so I walked back into town. I went to a bar and had a beer. Then I went and got sushi and had another beer. Then I napped in the grass. At night I slept in this gazebo that was by the road. A car pulled up next to the gazebo and stayed there. The person didn't get out. The car was there for hours. I didn't know if I was bugged or not so I was talking to you a lot. I asked if the car behind me meant that you were on the way, and when I said that the car drove off. I didn't know who might be able to hear me if I was bugged, whether it was just you guys or some bad guys too, so I abandoned my shoes in the bushes by the gazebo and went into a CVS or something and bought some other shoes. I hid my old shoes rather than throwing them away in case they were the only way you could find me. In the morning I thought about buying a bunch of Benadryl and ODing in a hotel. I took a taxi to a larger city and used up almost the remainder of my money on a hotel room. Then I went to a waffle house to get something to eat and I had a few mimosas. It was too early to check into the hotel so I laid in the grass next to the restaurant. Some woman got out of her car and asked if I was alright, so I left and meandered on. I decided to cancel the hotel room to save money, but they said that the money wouldn't be refunded to my card for several days. I only had like $50 left but it was super hot and I wasn't dressed appropriately. I was wearing my binder and it was really uncomfortable so I went to a clothing store and bought some shorts, a bra, a t-shirt and a cap to keep the sun out of my face. I didn't really have any money after that. I got on a bus randomly. I slept that night in the grass near a McDonalds. I went to a gas station and asked for a piece of cardboard and a pen to make a begging sign. I thought I could beg at an intersection near a main highway at night and that way it would be easy for someone to swoop me up as they drove by. I didn't make very much money doing that and people are kind of dickish. That night I slept on a bench at a bus stop. Early in the morning this guy woke me up and talked to me. He was very nice and kept talking about the ants on the sidewalk and I thought maybe he was trying to say that I was bugged. I'd bought all new clothes but maybe someone tagged me while I was asleep. He asked me if I wanted to get a coffee with him so I said yes and we took a bus to a Starbucks and sat outside next to a fountain drinking them. He asked if I wanted to shower and we took another bus. We arrived near the metro station and sat on some steps across from a big sign that had your name on it. The guy told me that he didn't want me to shower because he was worried that other guys might watch me showering and he asked me if we could just go to a bathroom and clean up there using the sink instead. So we went to a Subway. We talked a lot and he said things that made me think he was an avatar for the theater guys. Their avatars seemed to always be trying to convince me that you were bad and that they could help me. I appreciated their concern very much but nothing would keep me from getting to you. That guy had an EBT card so we went to CVS and he bought me some food. We were walking along and he wandered off and I kept walking. Then he caught up to me and asked why I wandered off and said that he was worried about me. Eventually we did part, and I slept on a bench outside of a women's shelter. There was a dumpster that was very convenient for peeing behind. I'd go to the bathroom at McDonalds when they were open and put TP in my pocket for later use. In the morning this black guy walked by and gave me $10. The other guy who I thought was an avatar was a black guy too. Eventually I came to think that their avatars were always black because of our Scandinavian thing. Anyway, I located the soup kitchen and stayed near to it during the day so I could get my meals. I still thought I was finding signs from you about picking me up. I thought I got a message from the Guys that it wasn't safe and that we were gonna be busted, so I tried to tell you that by going into a record store and leaving a message in the records. I was running out of money so with the last of it I bought a train ticket home. On the way home I was stopped in another city with a metro system and was trying to lose my tail and get to you. I had bought a train ticket back home but it wasn't until the next morning so I decided to make them think I was simply riding around the metro checking out the city and eating and drinking. I said something about riding the metro out loud so you guys would hear my plan. I went to buy my metro card and this woman came up to me and started asking me questions about how to get a metro card. She pointed to the line she wanted so I decided that I'd ride around and eventually get on that line and ride it to the end. I rode around various places eating and drinking, and I thought my wallet might be bugged so when I transferred to the final line I left my wallet on the train so if they were tracking it it would look like I was still riding on the other line. I ended up making a run for it again once I got off the train. I skulked around in the shadows and hugged buildings and zigzagged for a while until I was certain that I'd been elusive enough. I laid down underneath the trees at the edge of this abandoned parking lot. I heard a really weird noise and looked and it was a deer. After some time a car slowly pulled into the parking lot and turned off its lights. I waited but it just stayed there. I skirted around the edge of the parking lot remaining under the cover of trees to get closer to the vehicle. I saw a person in it briefly and then the head disappeared down. I thought it had to be you. I thought we would wait again until morning so they would think we were already gone and stop looking. I peeked a few times during the night and the vehicle was still there. I didn't sleep at all but when it was light I looked and the car was gone. I was crushed completely but I figured I must have been bugged and it wasn't safe. I was gonna stay in the city and keep trying to get picked up by you but I received a message to go home so I did. The station was within walking distance of my dads house so I just walked home. I told him that I'd run into some friends from high school at Walmart and that we decided to go to the beach for a few days and that I'd left my car in the Walmart parking lot. I don't remember what I eventually told him about the car. More time passed and while watching TV I thought I got the message that I needed to leave again and that the authorities were after me. So I left on foot one morning and went to a dollar store and bought new clothes and a backpack so I could be sure they weren't bugged. I went into a fast food bathroom and changed. I was looking at cars and license plates driving by to see if anything seemed like instructions. I went into the woods and drank a few spiked seltzers. I thought it would give you guys time to realize what I was doing and give you time to plan. Then I walked to the interstate to hitch a ride. An old woman stopped and I told her I was going to the hospital. I think she said her name was Mary Anne and I thought that might be code for "ma" and that she might be an avatar for John's wife. She asked me if her driving scared me. If she was an avatar I think she was trying to convince me that there was no danger and that I should return home. But I didn't trust her. She dropped me off at the hospital and I went in for a minute and then I went back out. I walked to another intersection after getting some food from a gas station. I hitched again and another woman picked me up. She was really nice and cool. She said something that made me think my backpack had been tagged by the previous woman. I told her I was going to a city slightly south to visit my boyfriend. She said she could take me about half way there. She said she was going to drop me off at this one exit so I said ok. She dropped me off by the side of the road and I walked to the exit. There was a car parked by the side of the road that started driving once it saw me and the black guy stopped and asked if I needed a ride. I quickly ditched my backpack and got in the car with him. He introduced himself using the name of my ex-boyfriend who I was pretending to visit. He said for me to tell this boyfriend to thank him and that he was giving me a ride because he didn't want to see me wind up dead on the news. I think he was again an avatar for the Guys. He drove me to a certain truck stop after making lots of unnecessary turns and loops. He went inside the truck stop and came out telling me that he found some people who would give me a ride the rest of the way to my destination. They were a really redneck couple with a young child in the back and apparently they were on the way to score some heroin. They asked where I wanted to be dropped off and they left me in the city. It was starting to get dark and I looked for a hiding spot. I found this little caul de sac outside of an apartment building. I laid against the wall so that satellites couldn't spot me. I had a little bit of food left. There was a radiator thingy that I peed behind. After I found my hiding spot a car drove up and honked two times. So I decided to stay hidden for 2 days. I thought they would give up looking for me in that city after two days. So I waited and no one bothered me. After it got dark for the second night I started to wonder if I was supposed to emerge or wait for another sign. I don't remember what made me decide to come out but I did and immediately I felt as though I'd blown my cover and fucked it up. I went to a bar so I could pee and I drank a beer. My shorts smelled like urine because I hadn't had any TP. I walked around and everywhere I went I thought I saw signs that I'd fucked up and you were mad at me. I was so distraught that I contemplated jumping off of this very tall bridge. Then I decided to go to the hospital instead so I started walking towards the direction I thought the hospital was in but I realized I wouldn't make it because it was very far away. So I found a secluded area of land and went to sleep. I talked to you on the off chance that somehow you could hear me and I cried about messing things up and told you that I couldn't live without you and begged you please not give up. In the morning I walked back into the city. I stood by the intersection and tried to hitch a ride. I didn't know where I'd end up but I thought I needed to keep moving. The intersection was too awkward for anyone to stop though. So I took a taxi about 30 minutes outside of the city to a truck stop. I hung out in the grass behind the truck stop for a while crying and talking to you. I was going to hitch another ride but I wanted to be safe so I bought new clothes again. They only had flip flops. Between melting down I asked one or two truck drivers for a ride and they said no. While I was sitting on a bench a woman got out of her car and had lots of envelopes that she was depositing in a FedEx box. I thought maybe that meant the Feds were trying to make arrests. Some security guard type of guy approached me and told me that I couldn't hang out at the truck stop and that if I didn't leave they would call the police so I left. I asked him if he knew where a bus stop was and he told me there was one at the McDonalds but I went there and there wasn't one. I went to a restaurant to get something to eat. This group of people came in and sat in the booth next to mine. Their conversation made me think that they were coming to arrest you and I couldn't hold back the tears. I left the restaurant and laid in the grass weeping with my arm over my eyes. Some guy started talking to me asking about if I wanted to hang out with him in a hotel room and how he would paint my toe nails. It started to rain really hard so I set off walking down the road. This woman pulled over and asked if I needed a ride. I got in the car and asked her where she was going and she said she was just going to give me a ride to a motel. I got my motel room. The guy asked if I wanted a smoking room and I said yes. There was no ash tray in the room though. Because that guy had said something about painting my toe nails I thought maybe my flip flops were bugged. I don't want to talk about when I figured out you were in the room next to me because what happened between us is intensely private and I don't want another soul to ever read it. It's just for us. When we decided to run for it, I slinked off into the woods and stayed put until dark. This car started honking insanely and I started to creep towards it but then I thought it might be ruse so I stayed hidden. As it got darker this man and woman seemed to be looking for their dog Marco. They had flashlights and were in the woods. I started to follow them out but they were walking too fast and I was wearing flip flops and couldn't keep up. Eventually they broke and I went barefoot. I had trouble getting out of the woods because of a very dense wall of thorns but I did and I hid behind a dumpster. I wasn't going to fuck it up this time. The man and woman continued to call out for Marco. It seemed like this went on for at least an hour. I tried to get their attention. I was hiding behind the dumpster and I heard a car honk once so I emerged from hiding and started walking towards it. It was an SUV with a black man and woman in it. Once they saw me they drove away and I thought maybe I'd been tricked by the bad guys again. I went back behind the dumpster and this homeless looking guy comes up and starts peeing right in front of me. His pee almost sprays onto my bag on the ground. I said "Hello" but he didn't respond. And he had a raccoon on his shoulder. I thought maybe the raccoon meant "coon" like a black person and that those people had tricked me. The guy turned and went back into the woods so I followed him. I went deep into the woods and there were a lot of neat bioluminescent plants and critters. I was thirsty so I opened my little fruit packs and drank the juice. I thought I was supposed to wait the night out in the woods. Then I thought I was supposed to leave my bag behind the dumpster so it would look like I'd been picked up. It was too late to go back though, so I left the bag hidden in the woods and walked away from it. I decided to take no chances and left absolutely everything behind including my ID and keys. I found a cozy little place underneath some foliage and settled in for the night. It was a little chilly so I put my arms and legs into my shirt. I dozed off then a stick hit my head and I heard someone say "Move!" so I sat up. This bird sounded funny and the more I listened it sounded like "NEV-ER GET BACK" and the more I listened the more I could hear it. I looked in the direction of the sound and I heard "Don't look at me." So I started to find my way out of the woods. The thorns dictated which direction I could go, and sometimes I'd be going the wrong way and I'd hear "GET BACK" until I course corrected. When I emerged from the woods I knew I had to run to the interstate but I didn't know if you'd ever be able to find me again. I said in the direction of the bird, "Find me!" As I ran off I could hear the bird saying "Thank you." I wanted to stay off the roads and I climbed over this fence into someones yard and ripped the back of my shorts. It took me a long time to get to the highway. At one point I was forced to be on the open road, but a car drove by and put its blinker on but it didn't actually turn, so I turned and went into the woods. I heard more bird noises but instead of words they were being rhythmic and I started crawling on the ground to a rhythm that would make me seem like an animal. I had lots of thorny encounters and at one point got entangled with some barbed wire. I was getting nearer to the highway, I could hear it. Then I heard a voice call out, "Hello? Is somebody there?" And I was deep in the woods so I knew it couldn't be innocent. I ran like motherfucking hell. I ran as fast as I could through dense walls of thorns and lost them. The entire time all I could think about was how upset you would be if I didn't make it out of there. I was running on pure adrenaline and I didn't feel any fatigue. At one point I was running through some vegetable field and I hopped a fence and walked along in a creek. I kinda twisted my ankle. Eventually I spilled out of the woods and into the highway. I flailed my arms maniacally for someone to stop and pick me up. Then a truck stopped and I ran to get into it. The driver was this very nice Indian man who asked me what happened and I made up a story about getting car jacked. I was dying of thirst and he gave me water and Doritos and Starbursts. Then he said I could sleep in his bed in the back and put bacitracin on my cuts. I was laying there when the cabinet door opened and there you were, tiny and hunched up in the dark. Again, I don't want to discuss our personal stuff where there is a chance someone else could read it. I want you to know that as I drifted off to sleep, listening to you, I was the happiest I've ever been in my life. We had been victorious, I thought. I didn't care where in the world we went. I was so happy. And also incredibly tired. My whole body shut down and I slept. Unfortunately you know the rest of the story. 

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Born Again, Part 1

And we’re back!

Now I tried, guys. I really tried to condense this down as much as possible. But Born Again is the most famous Daredevil story - and one of the most famous comics - of all time. There’s so much to talk about: the plot itself, the craft, the impact, the character analysis, the religious symbolism. Parts of it really are That Good, while others are...less so (there are plot holes, and it pretty much falls apart at the end).

I had to break it up into two posts, and they’re gonna be long ones, but please stick with me - it’s worth it. (And of course, the comic itself is worth a read, for its landmark status if for nothing else.)

So. When last we left our hero, Nelson and Murdock had gone under and things were tense between Matt and his nearest and dearest - Foggy and Glori at this point, basically. It’s at this point that Frank Miller comes back to the book, teaming up with David Mazzucchelli, who frankly doesn’t get enough credit for the sheer beauty of his work.

We start in Mexico, where we see...Karen Page, who has been AWOL for nearly a decade at this point. When we last saw her, her Hollywood career was taking off, but...things have changed:

Karen is now a junkie, eking out a meager living by making really low rent porn, because in Frank Miller’s world, all women eventually become sex workers. It’s less the sex work that bothers me - though it’s part of a gross pattern for Miller - and more how low Karen’s morals have sunk here, and the abuse she suffers in this storyline. She’ll turn it around, though! (P.S. Deborah Ann Woll’s absolute disdain for this plotline brings me so much joy.)

Back in New York, Matt is blissfully unaware that his life has just been destroyed:

These opening splash pages of the first four issues, all of Matt asleep, are famous and with good reason. If you took out the rest of the comics, they’d still tell a story. Anyway, even though his full bed is oddly narrow, please take note of how sprawled out he is. He’s still twisted in the sheets, but he’s taking up horizontal space as well as vertical.

(Also, this is just gorgeous. Look at that lighting!)

But Matt wakes up to a very bad day:

Those last two panels are, of course, the machinations of Fisk, who is using his knowledge of Matt’s secret identity - and his enormous behind-the-scenes pull - to systematically destroy Matthew Murdock’s finances, credibility, and life.

To add insult to injury, that cassette tape is Glori breaking up with Matt for being flaky and emotionally unavailable, which...legit, honestly.

And the hits keep coming:

Matt’s never really had financial problems as an adult - even when first the Storefront and then Nelson and Murdock were struggling, Foggy insulated him from that by taking on all the bookkeeping responsibility himself. (Whether or not Foggy wanted to do that, or whether either of them ever acknowledge that that’s not fair, is never addressed.) Even though he’s unemployed at the start of this story, you can see how cocky he is about how quickly he’ll bounce back in the first panel of the page above this. Born Again never really delves into the class issues at play here - nor do any Daredevil comics, really - but for someone who has been tremendously well off for his entire adult life but who grew up in poverty, this must be even more of a nightmare.

Meanwhile, Glori’s apartment gets broken into and trashed. Uncomfortable calling Matt, who she just dumped, she calls Foggy instead (remember, he’s an ex-in-law as well as a friend). He rushes over, helps her file the police report, and gives her a place to stay when she’s too freaked out to sleep at home. And, well...

This is a little fast, yes - and it’s a rebound for the recently-divorced Foggy as well as for Glori - but hey, they’re both free agents and she’s not Matt’s property. (Foggy is a perfect gentleman and sleeps on the couch while Glori takes the bedroom, btw.) But as far as I’m concerned, Glori has the right idea: ride the Murdock train as long as it’s fun, then hop off and let Foggy comfort you and ply you with coffee in front of a cozy fire.

Meanwhile, the cruelest blow of all strikes Matt: a cop named Manolis, a former witness in one of Matt’s trials, comes forward and says Matt bribed him to lie on the stand. Matt stands in very real danger of losing his freedom, let along his legal license. Fisk is gleeful:

Please note Fisk fanboying over Foggy in that last panel. Please also note how gorgeous that last panel is. I want to see a whole comic in grayscale from Mazzucchelli (and colorist Christie Scheele).

Foggy manages to get Matt’s sentence reduced to being disbarred and not fined or jailed. And, well, I could’ve probably cut this next page but I’m always gonna include avocado hugs:

Aw. P.S. Foggy why do you look like you’re going to the opera right now.

Devastated, ruined, and barely clinging to sanity, Matt returns home - but here’s where Fisk screws up. He can’t resist that final grandstand play, even though he knows he shouldn’t do it:

He blows up Matt’s house.

Despite having someone to blame, Matt’s sanity is fraying even faster, especially since he’s effectively cash poor and homeless. (SWEETIE. GO STAY WITH FOGGY.) And so we get the opening of issue #2 (yeah, that was all one issue up there!):

Compare this to the first issue splash and you can see how much more twisted and compressed Matt is, how tangled around himself he’s become. (This pose in particular is homaged again and again, especially by Samnee.) When he wakes, his thoughts are equally tangled:

In his rambling, broken thoughts you can see that he’s losing it - struggling to follow the thread of what’s happened to him and what his plan is. I love the way Mazzucchelli draws his arms up like that, held up for a block but also like he’s trying to figure out a way to fit into those compressed, claustrophobic vertical panels.

And then:

This is the very next page, and I honestly gasped aloud the first time I saw it. It’s such a brilliant visual contrast - Matt in tight, twisted red verticals; Fisk in these expansive blue horizontals. Fisk fits perfectly in his panel. He has plenty of breathing room. He owns the whole city. It’s so wonderfully, masterfully done.

Matt pulls it together enough to call Foggy for help, but Glori answers at 7 am - remember, she spent a chaste night at Foggy’s - and Matt, already paranoid to the point of irrationality, snaps further. He starts calling over and over again, veering between threatening them and begging Foggy for help because there’s definitely something wrong with him:

He makes his way outside, vaguely on his way to kill the Kingpin, but goes into another paranoid funk on the subway and attacks a cop. He leaves more pleading messages for Foggy from a pay phone - but without putting any money in, so he’s hallucinating a lengthy conversation with the operator - and finally makes it to Fisk’s.

(Side note: Matt’s “insanity” is never specifically diagnosed as any particular condition and comes on very fast (though believably, in context). Take the depiction of mental illness in this story with a thirty-year-old grain of salt, please.)

Meanwhile, what’s up with Karen? Well, she’s still strung out, and now Fisk’s assassins are trying to kill her, so that he’s the only one alive who knows Matt’s secret. All Karen knows is that she needs to get to New York, where Matt can protect her.

Simultaneously, Matt makes it to Fisk’s:

It doesn’t go well for him. (And yes, Fisk wears a speedo a LOT in the comics.)

Fisk kicks his ass, then has his underlings douse Matt’s unconscious body with whiskey, stick him in a stolen cab, and push it into the river, so that the cops will assume Matt got drunk in the aftermath of his ruined life and drove blindly off the docks.

But.

Now in these panels Fisk’s blues are giving way to red, and though they’re still horizontal, they no longer have the peaceful majesty of the ones above. He’s too big in the second and too small in the third; he doesn’t fit comfortably in his space anymore. His control is crumbling. #VISUALSTORYTELLING

Anyway, Matt survived! He makes it from the East River to Hell’s Kitchen (which is on the Hudson, but whatever), where he is promptly hit by a cab, then passes out in the garbage, because he is Matt Murdock.

In his little garbage nest, he dreams of a mysterious woman who came to him in the hospital, right after he was blinded:

And so we begin issue #3:

IN THE LITERAL GARBAGE. #trashpigeon Curled tighter and tighter because he’s still on his downward spiral. In fact, he is promptly stabbed after this. Because why not, at this point?

Meanwhile, Ben has started to investigate Matt’s disbarment, because he knows Matt wouldn’t bribe a witness. He goes to talk to Officer Manolis, the witness in question, and discovers that Manolis has a sick child and that Fisk is paying for his medical care...conditionally. But the son dies, so Manolis agrees to spill to Ben:

Matt collapses at Fogwell’s.

Meanwhile, that nurse, Lois, is actually one of Fisk’s enforcers:

Ben is effectively silenced for a few terrified issues, and the Manolis lead is dead in the water (and literally).

But salvation is coming! Literally, because Matt is found by a nun who brings him back to her church and nurses him back to health:

This is the start of issue #4. I’ll get into the rest of the issue in the next post, but I wanted to include this with the three splash pages above (and the last page of #3 ends with an equally religious pose, with Maggie holding Matt Pieta-style. Here we see Matt almost-but-not-quite in the crucifixion pose - his arms are down but held awkwardly out, his legs together in a way no one would ever sleep, a wound in his side. He’s even got a Jesus beard.

[EDIT: @lifted-nevermore helpfully pointed out to me that "the pose in the last splash reads a lot more as Jesus rising from his tomb to his disciples after his three days of death. Less crucifixion and more resurrection” which of course is a far more logical interpretation, given the story context. Whoops!]

This is the heaviest religious imagery we’d get in Daredevil until “Guardian Devil” 25 years later, and honestly the show hits that note harder than the comics ever have. But here’s where Catholicism and Matt Murdock become inextricably linked. (Obviously there have been religious themes throughout the story, they didn’t start with this page.)

But who is Maggie, and why did she come looking for him? How does Matt get his life back together? What will happen to Karen, and Ben, and Foggy and Glori? STAY TUNED.

[captainignatiuspigheart]

I’m now three days into a mostly well-earned week off and have no real knowledge of what came before… We’ve been trying to do more things, or at least more things that involve the outside world. It’s been a fortnight of new firsts. I’ve finally been into Nottingham city centre for the first time since mid-March. It was very strange to wheel back in – I only visited for an eye test – and see what seemed like millions of people. In retrospect it was probably the equivalent of a disappointing Tuesday morning. I went back in a week later to pick up my new glasses  and it was certainly a lot busier. I cycled around for a bit, and there’s just nothing there I need any more. My desire to wander round a shop is at a new low (unless it’s a charity shop, bookshop, or LEGO shop. And there were none of those available), and I find it hard to imagine that changing much. I guess I’m not gonna be the shot in the arm our economy needs… We’ve also finally been to a pub, for a spot of birthday lunch with my mum. It was great to see her, because it has been ages, but the weirdness of being back in the Victoria was overwhelming. Not just having to wait to be seated, and leaving my name and phone number, but its gaping emptiness. We were the only people dining inside on a Saturday lunchtime, except for the group that briefly ate directly behind us (there was so much other space!) and perhaps fifteen people in the beer garden. I didn’t feel unsafe, just a little weirded out with thinking “what’s the point of this place?” I imagine some of this feeling will fade as these places become normal again with more activities being arranged in them. 

Oh yeah, and I’ve been swimming! My beloved Lenton Centre is open again, and I am delighted. I’m not a huge fan of evening swims, since I’m normally well into wind-down and the sleeping drugs are kicking in, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity. They’ve done what they can for safety: super-wide swimming lanes, restricted numbers, widely spaced changing rooms, and (alas) no showers. Mind you, can you be safer than when immersed in a giant tank of coronavirus-murdering chlorinated water? I did the full hour, taxing muscles which have been utterly forgotten for four months. The next day I felt like I’d been crudely hewn from wood. It was a joy to be in water again. So much so that I’m getting up before midday on my birthday to do it again! Plus, we’re going to the cinema this week – The Empire Strikes Back is available on my birthday, and that’s the kind of normal I can’t resist. I’m even contemplating a trip to a real live LEGO store this week, though I may not if I don’t have my AFOL flag added to my card for the VIP day next Saturday. Who knows! It’s not like I’m short of LEGO at home…

LEGO: Merging Hidden Side Sets

I’ve been really happy with LEGO’s Hidden Side line, even though I’ve little interest in its augmented reality play features – the sets are just really cool! I was very taken with the Shrimp Shack Attack and Wrecked Shrimp Boat, which were both a delight to build with nifty techniques and great colour scheme. They seemed to have that same nice subdued sand-green/blue vibe as the stunning LEGO Ideas Old Fishing Store, so why not combine them… Originally, I wasn’t going to change very much at all. I wanted to retain the fantastic shrimp shack sign and the generally grungy vibe of the shrimp shack, plus the whole shrimp boat. As you can see, it did get a little more complicated. I ended up curving the shack round so it could fit in a corner of the baseplate and leave room for the boat, but it didn’t leave enough room, so… the boat became part of the shack, and into a nice little cafe. Making a floor I could tile around the three sections of the restaurant was challenging, but I like how it turned out. Inevitably, including the boat meant taking it apart and rebuilding the underside with different elements. There’s an awful lot of junk under the pier which was a nice chance to use my many crates and lobsters. I had a little fun making an ice-cream stand too, with a rather nice LEGO Friends sticker. I’ve hidden many things in the build and intensely enjoyed its construction. I reckon it looks pretty sweet next to the Old Fishing Store too. Hurray.

Watching: Snowpiercer

I expected to have a lot to say about this TV show, but I… don’t. It’s a good, more detailed, and fuller version of the movie that came out a few years ago, but it doesn’t really add anything. It’s equally bonkers – the conceit being that a super-train 1001 cars long that continuously circles the ice-choked globe – but has more detail, like seeing more of the engineering and a slightly better sense of this ten mile-long train as an environment. The story is much the same too (I guess that’s not surprising), it’s one of social revolution as the tailies (the “freeloaders” who jumped on the train without a billion-dollar ticket) seek to escape their appalling conditions and democratise the train by uniting with third class (who keep the train going – wait, that might be second class… doesn’t really matter) against the total wanker rich class who live in luxury in first. It’s fun, violent, fast-paced, and has many things to make you shake your head at the excesses of the wealthy. Jennifer Connelly is excellent, as is Daveed Diggs in the two (mostly) opposing leads, and the rest of the cast is well chosen. It works! I assume we’ll watch season two, even though we got confused about whether we’d actually finished season one.

Reading: Djinn City by Saad Z Hossain

I’ve continued to struggle with reading, and I think this was a change in pace that really worked for me. Djinn City has a familiar setup: Indelbed is a sad lonely kid living with his alcoholic father, who discovers that his dad’s actually a magician deeply involved with the djinn we’ve shared our world with for millennia. He only finds this out when his dad ends up in a coma and he’s kidnapped by bad guys and dumped in a magical oubliette filled with horrifying flesh-eating dragons and an utterly sociopathic djinn who kinda befriends him… This is profoundly weird reading, both funny and very grim at the same time. There are lovely splashes of Bangladeshi society alongside the wildly arrogant and powerful djinn cultures, against the really awful things that happen to Indelbed (experimented on and then burned alive…), and the fantastical worlds and creations of the djinn themselves. Super-dark, full of intrigue and deep dark conspiracies, there is a huge amount to love and get into here. I am… perplexed that this isn’t book one of a series (or isn’t yet) as the ending feels an awful lot like it needs to continue. Read it, even if there isn’t a book two!

We Are What We Overcome

We met up again for our last fortnightly webchat. Much sadface for me as this has been one my anchoring events through lockdown. However, it’s quite a time commitment for those of us with exciting new jobs, so we talked about how we feel about the future. Not just our post-COVID future, but how we look forward in general. It turns out we somewhat suck at it. I’ve always been bad at imagining the future – I just can’t see myself in it. Still, interesting to ponder on, and I found it both thought-provoking and reassuring to hear the others’ attitudes. We’re planning to meet up in person late in August and get back on track with the regular podcast. Speaking of which, I keep forgetting to mention that new episodes are going quite regularly. Check ’em all out here: https://anchor.fm/we-are-what-we-overcome. 

Workstuff

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, especially running up to a week off (to continue being at home, without work to do…). Much finalising of cover art, preparing books for print, for very soon our first books will be published! September sees the first two – Wrath of N’kai and Tales from the Crucible: A KeyForge Anthology, but we sorted those out months ago, before the whole pandemic thing flipped the world upside down. It’s October I’ve been working on, and will hit November’s books the second I return! In the last week we’ve finally been able to show off the first two Marvel novel covers we’ve been working on: Domino: Strays and The Head of Mimir – check ’em out at Marvel.com. Full credit to the wonderful Joey Hi-Fi and Grant Griffin for the two covers. 

We followed that up with a little chat about how they came together on Facebook Live:

Watching: Preacher, season three

I’m not sure I know how to summarise Preacher. Ex-man of the cloth / career criminal Jesse has the voice of God (the power to command anyone to do anything) but dark super-Catholic religious corporation, Grail, wants that power so they can invest it in the actual descendent of Jesus – a heavily inbred idiot. In this exciting season of insane and hilariously grim adventures, Jesse and his best friend, the vampire Cassidy, bring the recently killed Tulip to Angelville, the hell hole where he grew up because his grandmother can save people’s lives, by eating their souls… It’s a very over the top show, with great fight scenes, lots of swearing, blasphemy and gore. All the good stuff. I’ve given up trying to understand what’s really going on and am just here for the ride. The return to Angelville explains a great deal of why Jesse is such a mess, while Cassidy’s adventures in New Orleans both delightfully mock The Vampire Letsat etc and subvert it. A lot of what I like is the largely British cast having an absolute whale of a time. Also, Hitler working at Subway and using that to restart the third reich is kinda special…

MissImp: Making Monologues Work for You with Jon Nguyen

We still can’t do proper in-person drop-ins and it looks like there won’t be much in the way of live shows this year, so we’re continuing with our video series inviting great improv humans to share their brilliance with us. These are now fortnightly so we can do a live online Gorilla Burger on alternate weeks! Jon is splendid.

  Last Week: Preacher, Snowpiercer, Djinn City, LEGO Hidden Side, Aconyte Books, “leaving the house”, LEGO building, more MissImp improv and y’know the usual ramblings. #TV #books #LEGO #podcast @aconytebooks @missimp_notts https://wp.me/pbprdx-8HZ I’m now three days into a mostly well-earned week off and have no real knowledge of what came before… We’ve been trying to