#i'm at 27 panels

[kyri45]

Chapter 3 is looking so freaking long I might have to divide it in 2 parts bc it might reach the images limit on tumbrl lmao

[buttercupshands]

can you guess what my favorite arc and characters are

basically I just liked how 24-25 looked close to localized versions... this got out of hand quicker than I thought!

I almost forgot about this one so a small treat for opening to see more

[noteclan]

this is my son worm he is two centimeters tall and was born in a wet cardboard box all alone

[thrassisfras]

A vague promise of changes coming to the free expression policy on campus, some emotional support volunteers if that hate group comes back (which they will), and a little chalk art project that we're all invited to take part in.

Cool.

[nyc-looks]

Em, 27

“I made my whole outfit from waste materials for my label Mola Mola — the coat is old canvas and pillowcases, collar is hand-painted and beaded from scraps, pants are thrifted and cut to look like wings with red panels and block prints. Bag is Coach lent by a dear friend. Boots are thrifted Heaven by Marc Jacobs. I'm always learning from artists like Janelle Abbott who turn waste into showstoppers and honor their materials. I love color, mixing prints and textures, and big silhouettes.“

Sep 8, 2024 ∙ Bushwick

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Google’s trial secrecy lets it control the coverage

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

"Corporate crime" is practically an oxymoron in America. While it's true that the single most consequential and profligate theft in America is wage theft, its mechanisms are so obscure and, well, dull that it's easy to sell us on the false impression that the real problem is shoplifting:

https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime

Corporate crime is often hidden behind Dana Clare's Shield Of Boringness, cloaked in euphemisms like "risk and compliance" or that old favorite, "white collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

And corporate crime has a kind of performative complexity. The crimes come to us wreathed in specialized jargon and technical terminology that make them hard to discern. Which is wild, because corporate crimes occur on a scale that other crimes – even those committed by organized crime – can't hope to match:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After decades of official tolerance (and even encouragement), corporate criminals are finally in the crosshairs of federal enforcers. Take National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo's ruling in Cemex: when a company takes an illegal action to affect the outcome of a union election, the consequence is now automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

That's a huge deal. Before, a boss could fire union organizers and intimidate workers, scuttle the union election, and then, months or years later, pay a fine and some back-wages…and the union would be smashed.

The scale of corporate crime is directly proportional to the scale of corporations themselves. Big companies aren't (necessarily) led by worse people, but even small sins committed by the very largest companies can affect millions of lives.

That's why antitrust is so key to fighting corporate crime. To make corporate crimes less harmful, we must keep companies from attaining harmful scale. Big companies aren't just too big to fail and too big to jail – they're also too big for peaceful coexistence with a society of laws.

The revival of antitrust enforcement is such a breath of fresh air, but it's also fighting headwinds. For one thing, there's 40 years of bad precedent from the nightmare years of pro-monopoly Reaganomics to overturn:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

It's not just precedents in the outcomes of trials, either. Trial procedure has also been remade to favor corporations, with judges helping companies stack the deck in their own favor. The biggest factor here is secrecy: blocking recording devices from courts, refusing to livestream the proceedings, allowing accused corporate criminals to clear the courtroom when their executives take the stand, and redacting or suppressing the exhibits:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-27-redacted-case-against-amazon/

When a corporation can hide evidence and testimony from the public and the press, it gains broad latitude to dispute critics, including government enforcers, based on evidence that no one is allowed to see, or, in many cases, even describe. Take Project Nessie, the program that the FTC claims Amazon used to compel third-party sellers to hike prices across many categories of goods:

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-used-secret-project-nessie-algorithm-to-raise-prices-6c593706

Amazon told the press that the FTC has "grossly mischaracterize[d]" Project Nessie. The DoJ disagrees, but it can't say why, because the Project Nessie files it based its accusations on have been redacted, at Amazon's insistence. Rather than rebutting Amazon's claim, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar could only say "We once again call on Amazon to move swiftly to remove the redactions and allow the American public to see the full scope of what we allege are their illegal monopolistic practices."

It's quite a devastating gambit: when critics and prosecutors make specific allegations about corporate crimes, the corporation gets to tell journalists, "No, that's wrong, but you're not allowed to see the reason we say it's wrong."

It's a way to work the refs, to get journalists – or their editors – to wreathe bold claims in endless hedging language, or to avoid reporting on the most shocking allegations altogether. This, in turn, keeps corporate trials out of the public eye, which reassures judges that they can defer to further corporate demands for opacity without facing an outcry.

That's a tactic that serves Google well. When the company was dragged into court by the DoJ Antitrust Division, it demanded – and received – a veil of secrecy that is especially ironic given the company's promise "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful":

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

While this veil has parted somewhat, it is still intact enough to allow the company to work the refs and kill disfavorable reporting from the trial. Last week, Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – published an editorial in Wired reporting on her impression of an explosive moment in the Google trial:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

According to Gray, Google had run a program to mess with the "semantic matching" on queries, silently appending terms to users' searches that caused them to return more ads – and worse results. This generated more revenue for Google, at the expense of advertisers who got billed to serve ads that didn't even match user queries.

Google forcefully disputed this claim:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297

They contacted Gray's editors at Wired, but declined to release all the exhibits and testimony that Gray used to form her conclusions about Google's conduct; instead, they provided a subset of the relevant materials, which cast doubt on Gray's accusations.

Wired removed Gray's piece, with an unsigned notice that "WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

But Gray stands by her piece. She admits that she might have gotten some of the fine details wrong, but that these were not material to the overall point of her story, that Google manipulated search queries to serve more ads at the expense of the quality of the results:

https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1711035354134794529

She says that the piece could and should have been amended to reflect these fine-grained corrections, but that in the absence of a full record of the testimony and exhibits, it was impossible for her to prove to her editors that her piece was substantively correct.

I reviewed the limited evidence that Google permitted to be released and I find her defense compelling. Perhaps you don't. But the only way we can factually resolve this dispute is for Google to release the materials that they claim will exonerate them. And they won't, though this is fully within their power.

I've seen this playbook before. During the early months of the pandemic, a billionaire who owned a notorious cyberwarfare company used UK libel threats to erase this fact from the internet – including my own reporting – on the grounds that the underlying research made small, non-material errors in characterizing a hellishly complex financial Rube Goldberg machine that was, in my opinion, deliberately designed to confuse investigators.

Like the corporate crimes revealed in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, the gambit is complicated, but it's not sophisticated:

Make everything as complicated as possible;

Make everything as secret as possible;

Dismiss any accusations by claiming errors in the account of the deliberately complex arrangements, which can't be rectified because the relevant materials are a secret.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#but-id-have-to-kill-you

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Jason Rosenberg (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/underpants/12069086054/

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[ohboiidunno]

Part 1

Hello!

I'm finally posting the first part of the Blue Sky comic I've been working on for quite some time. This is a little passion project of mine. Blue Sky as a story means a lot to me and this chapter is one of my favorites.

I really wanted to work on something for me, that would bring me joy and thanks to what I would learn a lot of new stuff. And it worked! It's my first time making a comic, that has more than three panels, so the composition of the first pages is a bit strange, but it gets better, trust me 😭. I have all the 27 pages sketched out already and I'm more than determined to finish them all!

Portal Blue Sky is by Waffles!

[room-surprise]

How Old Is Thistle?

(EDIT: I've made a follow-up post to this one that goes deeper into the math and additional evidence that the 5:1 ratio is correct. You can read it here!)

I've seen people debating this and a lot of folks insisting that Thistle is a child, and since Thistle just debuted in the anime, I wanted to do a full write-up to help myself and others figure this out.

We don't know how old any of the Merini family members are exactly, so the best we can do is guess based on the information we have, but after carefully studying the manga, I think Thistle is at least a teenager, but much more likely a young adult, and definitely not a prepubescent child.

Here's what we know:

EDIT: Depending on what translation you read of some of the extra materials, Freinag implies that Thistle is the same age as some of his advisors.

Here's a detailed translation of this panel from my friend Fumi:

Elves age 5 times slower than tall-men.

16 year old tall-men in Dungeon Meshi's medieval time period are adults, they commonly join the military, get married, have children, etc.

An 80 year old elf is an adult. Pattadol is 82 and she's a lieutenant in a military unit. It's her first job and she's obviously a rookie, but Captain Flamela tells Pattadol to accomplish her mission or die trying.

Many fully adult elves look like what we might consider children or young teens, because they're short, petite, and have androgynous features.

An average elven adult is around 150-155cm tall (5 ft), meaning some are shorter than that, and some are taller. Thistle is 130 cm, which is short, but not unheard of.

Fleki is 130 (26) years old and she's 140 cm tall (4'7")

Otta is 137 (27) years old and she's 130 cm (4'5") tall, the same height as Thistle!

They are both women, but there's probably plenty of elven men in their height range.

Just so we can compare Thistle to some adult elven men, Mithrun and his brother are probably adults (or close to it) in the panel on the left.

Mithrun (in this image) is somewhere between 75 and 144 (probably in his 80's), and his brother is older than him (so he could be in his late 80s or 90s). As you can see, they don't look that different from Thistle, Otta or Fleki.

So, how old is Thistle?

(Spoilers below the cut)

Thistle was brought to the royal court as a child (found on the street, stolen or purchased, we don't know how they got him). At the absolute youngest I'd guess Thistle is 25 years old here (so about 5 years old for a tall-man.) He can already play the flute, and possibly the lute, and most children that aren't prodigies can't handle playing an instrument (physically or mentally) until they're around 5.

EDIT: We now know that Thistle is the same age as Freinag, the king that takes him in! So Thistle must be at least 25 years old in this comic, though realistically he could be anywhere from 25 to 40 based on how Kui drew Freinag.

He lived in the court for an unknown amount of time, Freinag hasn't changed much but Thistle appears to have aged a little, so let's say it's been 5 years and Thistle is 30 (6) when Delgal is born. More than 5 years could have passed, but I'm trying to keep the numbers low.

Delgal gets married and has a child. Delgal should be at least 15 at this point, but since he has a full mustache before his wedding, I think he's in his 20's, since teenagers tend to not be the best at growing robust facial hair.

(He has a full beard by the time Eodio's a young child.)

Thistle puts the kingdom inside the dungeon around this point, however, people are still aging: Delgal's grandson Yaad is born, and Eodio is clearly a young adult here, probably in his 20's. Therefore, there is NO REASON to assume Thistle stopped aging. "The dungeon lords don't age" is a common fan headcanon I've seen people spreading, but it has no clear canon basis.

Yaad ages until he looks about 13-15 years old, and at this point all of the people of the kingdom and Thistle appear to stop aging, and 1,000 years pass.

So, the youngest Thistle could possibly be, if he was 30 (6) when Delgal was born, if Delgal was 15 when he had Eodio, and Eodio was 15 when he had Yaad, and Yaad is 13 years old...

Is 73 years old, which would make Thistle about 14.6 years old by tall-man standards.

HOWEVER, I think it's VERY unlikely that all the characters are that young.

I think it's clear from Kui's drawings that Delgal and Eodio are not 15 years old when they become fathers, and that Freinag is at least 25 when he takes in Thistle.

If we assume Thistle was 30 when Delgal was born, and Delgal and Eodio were both at least 20 when they had children, even if Yaad is only 13 years old, that makes Thistle at least 83 years old (16.6), and makes him older than Pattadol, who is an adult at 82.

However, I think it's entirely possible that Thistle was anywhere from 40-50 when Delgal was born, and Delgal could have been anywhere from 20 to 30 when he had Eodio, and Eodio could have been anywhere from 20-25 when he had Yaad. If you use the maximum ages, and assume Yaad is 15, then Thistle could be as old as 120 (24).

I think a reasonable middle ground is assuming Thistle was 30 (6) when Delgal was born, Delgal had Eodio at 25, Eodio had Yaad at 20, and Yaad is 15... Which would make Thistle 90 (18) years old.

This of course says nothing about Thistle's emotional maturity or sanity, he's obviously stunted in some ways, but the point I want to make here is:

Thistle's age could be anywhere from 14.6 to 24 at the most extreme, but more realistically he's somewhere between 16.6 and 18.

And that's not even counting the thousand years that he's lived since then!

And that's all I've got to say about that 🙏🙏🙏🙏

(EDIT: Follow-up post with additional evidence here.) EDIT 2: I've seen a lot of people talking about the page Kui drew talking about elven earmuffs. It's considered just barely okay for Pattadol to wear them, but it's ok for Thistle to wear them... In which case I'd say Thistle could be any age younger than 83. That's handy as it knocks out some of the older ages!

So in that case Thistle's age is between 73 years old and 82, which makes him developmentally between 14.6 and 16.4!

[sang-i-fetge]

List of Jason Todd/Red Hood's weapons/gadgets/touys

Note: This is mostly from comics written by Winick, as I refuse to acknowledge most of n52. Feel free to add more, though!

Note2: This post was originally formatted in a different way, as I foolishly forgot about the image limit.

Blades

1— His iconic dagger!

Can cut through stone, and most of Batman's gear. It's been heavily debated what kind of knife it is; wether a kris, a parrying dagger, or a third secret thing.

2— The blades he gives Mia to defend herself!

I'm not sure what kind of blade they are, they vaguely look like wakizashis? Their size varies from panel to panel so idk😔

3— The katana for the 'duel' with Oliver!

4— And to link with the next section, the exploding katana!

Yes, it's a katana that explodes. Jason baits Oliver into holding it.

Explosives

— First of all, he blows up many many things and it's not specified what exactly he uses. So the unspecified explosives that only appear as a cool fireball panel get a bullet point.

5— The jumble of explosives in the Final Confrontation™️, we can see some dynamite, C4...

6— Bomb in a crate

7— Small bomb. Not lethal!

8— Bigger bomb. Yes lethal.

9— Continuing with this absolute icon: the bomb under the Batmobile (should I capitalize that?)

10— Small Rocket, used against Brick

11— Grenade?

12— Small, cylinder-shaped explosives. Detonated upon impact?

13— Small explosive that attaches to flat surfaces, used against Dr Freeze

14— Grenade.

15— Molotov Cocktail

16— Enough C4 to destroy a whole building, modded so it explodes if its temperature reaches one point, countering Batman's method of freezing bombs.

17— My absolute favorite, the exploding helmet!

Even if it's listed under 'explosives', it's also an important piece of technology in the Red Hood's arsenal.

Firearms

18, 19— The guns in the wall from Annual #25, there's surely more.

20— Machine guns hidden in crates!

21— Machine guns hidden in cars!

22— Rocket launcher, used against Black Mask

23— Even more hidden machine guns! This time in an electricity pole.

24— Machine gun (also hidden, but surprisingly not attached to anything)

25— Handgun👍

26— AK-47, you know the panel from where it's from

27— Submachine guns, I think 🙂

28— When out of ammo he uses his guns as blunt weapons, which I wanted to note

Tasers

29— The nazi-killing taser

30— The reason for the creation of this post! The grapple line taser! Attach it to a grapple line and it will shock whoever is connected to it. Noticed it in a reread of utrh and needed people to see it

31— Bonus: the bat-symbol taser. Iconic enough to be here.

Tech & Surveillance

32— Monitor and microphone?

33, 34— cameras :)

35— thing to see the feed of the cameras

36, 37— phones :)

38— his little tech den in #650

39, 40— computers :)

41— whatever this thing is

42— The surveillance device that looks like he taped a canon camera to his face

43— Wiretaps!

44— Bugs!

He also has his evil lair in B&R2009 bugged.

Miscellaneous

45— Does his crowbar count

46— smoke bomb!!

47— Injectable adrenaline. He just has that in his utility belt.

48— His batmobile-evade suit.

49— Is saying his belt buckle mean

50— Unspecified poison! Goodbye Egon

51— This thing that attaches to its target and launches them off

Not pictured:

The fancy weapon dressing he gives onyx to patch up the shoulder wound he inflicted (I forgot to screenshot 💔)

Also, he has this whole hq-ish thing in Annual #25

(Edit: That rectangle in the gun wall kinda looks like an anti-drone gun now that I think abt it)

It has a murder board, which I think is cute.

[shoomlah]

HEY Y'ALL getting it in just under the wire, but I'm gonna be at @lightboxexpo this weekend! Not tabling this time around, but I'm going to be doing a couple panels/talks:

Fri Oct 25, 5-6PM (Ballroom F): Designing Characters: Insights from Top Costume Illustrators

Sun Oct 27, 1:15-2:15PM (Room 204): It's a Sign: Fictional Graphic Design in Video Games

[sporeclan]

it's been more than a year of sporeclan! how are you feeling about it? what's your favourite piece (and not so favourite) so far? or favourite to draw?

It sure has! It's pretty wild that it's been a year since I started drawing these silly kitties! It paradoxically feels like it's been forever and no time at all simultaneously haha

I'm pretty proud of myself that I've managed to draw 27 moons of content over the course of the year! I usually have trouble sticking with long term projects, but all the positive reactions have really lit my fire to keep going. Thank you all for every like, reblog, tag, reply, ask and especially the wonderful fanart, I could not have gotten this far without you <3

Now, if I had to pick a favourite piece from this year, it definitely goes to Oakfox's death;

I REALLY love how this one turned out! The fire turned out so nice, and I really like the poses and expressions. I think if there's one thing I would change, I would make the text more visible. It's a little too light.

Least favourite piece is so hard to pick... So I'll just pick a process instead lol! I really don't like trying to map out the panels in moons where nothing happens. It's suchhh a fight to get the ratio's right when nothing even happened!!!

Anyways, I'm off to bed now!! Thank you all so much <3

[dunmeshistash]

Dungeon Meshi - "Dungeon Meals" from volumes 1 to 4

More info under the cut

Decided to compile the dungeon meals anyway. These are from chapter 1 to 28 (Volumes 1 to 4)

There were a total of 24 "meals" (counting the special panels) in the 28 chapters. Meal is anything that gets the named panel, so kelpie soap giant frog suit and Falin skeleton count (cause that's funny). I'm using EHScans pages because they have a better resolution usually (and for consistency)

Anyway here's the meals of each chapter and who made them.

Chapter 1 - Hot pot Meal: Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom Hot Pot Cooked by: Mostly Senshi but Laios started it.

Chapter 2 - Tart Meal: Man-Eating Plant Tart Cooked by: Senshi

Chapter 3 - Roast Basilisk Meal: Roast Basilisk Cooked by: Senshi

Chapter 4 - Omelet Meal: Mandrake & Basilisk Omelet Cooked by: Senshi

Chapter 5 - Kakiage Meal: Mandrake Kakiage & Giant Bat Tempura Cooked by: Senshi and Chilchuck

Chapter 7 - Living Armor II Meal: Living Armor Full Course Meal, consisting of: Dwarf-Style Stir Fry, Steamed Living Armor, Living Armor Soup and Grilled Living Armor Cooked by: Senshi (Others helped with prepping)

Chapter 8 - Simmered Cabbage Meal: Vegetable Lunch, Fresh off the Golem Fields, consisting of: Simmered Whole Cabbage and Turnip Salad. Cooked by: Senshi (Others helped with prepping)

Chapter 9 - Orcs Meal: Stolen Vegetables, Simmed Cabbage & Chicken with a side of Plundered Bread Cooked by: Senshi, Marcille, Laios, Chilchuck, Zon and other Orc Ladies

Chapter 10 - Snacks Meal: All Natural♡Delicious Treasure Bug Snacks, consisting of: Treasure Bug Nest Jam, Coin Bug Crackers and Pearl Centipede Skewers Cooked by: Senshi (Laios helped by.. watching)

Chapter 11 - Sorbet Meal 1: Deluxe♪Multicultural Holy Water Cooked by: Senshi Meal 2: Protective Ward! Spirit Dispelling Sorbet Cooked by: Senshi and Laios

Chapter 12 - Palace Cuisine Meal: Palace Cuisine Full Course Meal, consisting of: Sautéed Fish with Soybeans, Pumpkin Soup, Fruit, Golden Wheat Bread, Golden cow Cheese and Roast Duck Cooked by: Palace Cooks? Painter? Magic?

Chapter 13 - Boiled in Salt Water Meal: Boiled Mimic Cooked by: Senshi

Chapter 14 - Kelpie "Meal": Kelpie Tallow Soap Cooked by: Marcille

Chapter 15 - Porridge Meal: Zosui Made from Dropped Barley Cooked by: Laios

Chapter 16 - Broiled with Sauce Meal: Giant Parasite from Giant Kraken: Grilled Plain and Kabayaki Style Cooked by: Senshi (Laios Helped with prepping the skewers and ate one raw and suffered)

Chapter 18 - Grilled Meat Meal: Grilled Kelpie Cooked by: Senshi

Chapter 19 - Tentacles "Meal": Tentacles With Vinegar Dressing Cooked by: Namari (with Laios instructions)

Chapter 20 - Stew Meal: Tentacle & Kelpie Stewed in an Undine Cooked by: Marcille (With Senshi's help)

Chapter 21 - Giant Frogs Meal 1: Tentacle Gnocchi Cooked by: Senshi Meal 2: Frog Suit Cooked by: Laios and Chilchuck

Chapter 23 - Red Dragon I Meal: Let's Cutlet the Dragon to Pieces! Cooked by: Senshi

Chapter 27 - Red Dragon V "Meal": Falin & Warg Skelletons Cooked by: Laios & Marcille (Red Dragon helped clean up the bones really well)

Chapter 28 - Red Dragon VI Meals: Roast Red Dragon, Pizza Bread with Onions and Dragontail Soup Cooked by: Senshi

The chapters that had no "meal is done" panel were chapters

6 - Living Armor I

17 - Raspberries

22 - Above Ground

24 - Red Dragon II

25 - Red Dragon III

26 - Red Dragon IV

Mostly the multipart chapters, there was food eaten in 17 and 22 but no special panel for them, 17 is the titular raspberries and 22 the barmaids serve them a meal they eat right at the end

The chapter with more than one "meal" panels (not more than one meal prepared just more than one special panel for the meals) were:

11 - Sorbet with Holy Water and Sorbet

21 - Giant Frog with Gnocchi and Frog Suit

And the party stats are:

Senshi: 17 meals cooked, all of them food

Chilchuck: 3 "meals" cooked, 2 of them were food, 1 of them was a Frog Suit

Marcille: 4 "meals" cooked, 2 of them were food, 1 of them was soap and 1 of them was Falin skeleton reconstruction. She made the soap by herself and the stew mostly by herself

Laios: 5 "meals" cooked , 3 of them were food, 1 of them was a frog suit and 1 was Falin skeleton reconstruction. He also helped with 4 other meals (kinda) and 1 of them he made by himself (The zosui)

Out of the 24 meals in these 4 volumes, 21 were food and 3 were "other"

Out the 21 food meals Senshi made 17 of them, Laios made 1 Marcille made 1 and the other 2 was Namari and Living Painting Cooks.

I often get confused with numbers so if I said anything wrong feel free to correct me! Might do less volumes for the next post we'll see

[stellas-and-tonitruses]

these last 3 chapters more than ever have left me wondering about the timeline of spy x family and in particular,

donovan's age.

i'm not going to go too deep into the full timeline because i simply don't think we have enough info to make a real robust timeline, BUT i do think we can very feasibly approximate donovan's age with our current info.

I also won’t be using any precise years like 1964 or whatever bc at this moment in time I find that to be kind of useless, bc the only years we have happen very early in the story in background details and for a lot of those ones, I noticed endo had a tendency to just carelessly put whatever so long as it looked fine from afar, which includes news that were happening around the time of that chapter's release. SO unless he decides to explicitly highlight actual years, I’m not gonna be like “this happened in 1964 and that happened in 1953” and anything of the sort.

now, i shall partake in my least favorite activity.

✨math.✨

so uh buckle up my fellas and feel free to correct me anywhere where i might be wrong bc i am more than aware that math is NOT my strong suit!

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 97, 98 AND 99!

gonna start with the facts!

according to the spy x family EYES ONLY fanbook, henry henderson is 66 years old at the time of the current events of spy x family! in the past three chapters we have learned that there is a 3 year age gap between him and martha, so that would make her 63 years old currently.

as of the events of chapter 99, he is 22 years old (and martha is 19), assuming there wasn't any years-long time gap that was not mentioned within the chapter! which, it doesn’t seem like there were any MASSIVE time gaps, so I’ll be using those ages for calculating.

so, what all this means is that we are (roughly) 44 years into the past at the moment! previous info about the war of loid and yor's childhoods puts it at around 20 years old, so from where we are in the backstory, we still have roughly 20 more years before Luwen is attacked — clearly, because this first war has already ended with donovan still in school.

while we don't have loid's age, we do have yor's, who is 27 years old — meaning she was born around the time of henry being 39 years old, aka clearly neither loid nor yor have been born yet as of the events of chapter 99. too into the past for now!

now, how am i gonna get donovan's age out of all this?

simple! henry's his teacher and has a talk with him after his jail time.

like I mentioned previously, I shall be sticking to 22 for henry’s age here. it may not be fully correct, it may be a year or two off because we aren’t given concrete details on exactly how long he was in jail, so just take it with a grain of salt! it's only going to remain as a rough estimate until we get a definitive answer on donovan's age.

so! henry has a talk with donovan, but the conversation itself, while very important for the plot and especially for our understanding of donovan’s character, is irrelevant for this conversation. no, what's crucial here is what henry is holding. endo even highlights it by focusing an entire larger panel on it!

it's a history textbook for year 7 students!

it being a history textbook is very poignant for the conversation they're having, but the reason this is important to me is because it's very clearly a year 7 textbook.

now, i don't know how much of eden academy's curriculum is based on the uk! but because pretty much all of the architecture of it is based on eton college and endo has literally just returned from a london trip where he showed us he visited a kindergarten, so i think that's grounds enough for me to assume eden academy's year 7 is generally populated by children between 11 and 12 years old. luckily for me, that seems to be the general age for germany's secondary school year 7 too, so even if it's not the british one, it's still close enough!

with all that being said, if donovan is, say, 12 in that moment and henry is 22, that means there is a 10 year difference between the two of them, which, drum roll please, means donovan desmond is 56 years old when our story's events take place! assuming the war of loid's and yor's childhoods took place exactly 20 years ago (when yor was 7 and henry was 46), this would make him around 36 years old when he became ostania's prime minister! it would also mean he had damian at 50 years old, and if demetrius is 12 right now, that would mean he was born when donovan was 44 years old (and his birth would’ve been in the last years of the war).

so, rough events timeline based on all that, focusing on ages!

66 years ago: Henry Henderson is born.

63 years ago: Martha Marriott is born.

~56 years ago: Donovan Desmond is born.

49 years ago: Martha (14) transfers to Eden and meets Henry (17)

47 years ago: Henry (19) graduates Eden.

44 years ago: Henry (22) joins Eden as a teacher, in the same year becomes Donovan Desmond’s (~12) history teacher. Martha (19) graduates Eden and joins the Women’s Defense Auxiliary.

~44 years ago: Martha (~19) is presumed dead. Henry (~22) faces jail time. The war ends, and he marries.

27 years ago: Yor is born. At that time, Henry is 39, Martha is 36, and Donovan is 29.

~27 years ago. [REDACTED] is also born. Same as above, just approximate this time!

~20 years ago: Second war begins. Yor and [REDACTED] are ~7, Henry is ~46, Martha is ~43, Donovan is ~36. Yuri is born.

~12 years ago: Demetrius is born. Donovan is ~44, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~15, Henry is ~54, Martha is ~51, Yuri is ~8.

~10 years ago: Second war ends. Demetrius is ~2, Donovan is ~46, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~17, Henry is ~56, Martha is ~53, Yuri is ~10.

6 years ago: Damian is born (and most other kids in his and Anya’s grade). Demetrius is ~6, Donovan is ~50, Henry is 60, Martha is 57, Yor is 21, Twilight is ~21, Yuri is 14.

5-4 years ago: Anya is born. Damian (etc.) are 1-2, Demetrius is 7-8, Donovan is ~51-52, Henry is 61-62, Martha is 58-59, Yor is 22-23, Twilight is ~22-23, Yuri is 15-16.

1 year ago: Yuri (19) becomes part of the SSS. Anya is 3-4, Damian (etc.) is 5, Demetrius is 10-11, Donovan is ~55, Henry is 65, Martha is 62, Yor is 26, Twilight is ~26.

I HOPE THAT HELPS PUT THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE?? melinda is not included bc we have nothing to go off of for her age outside of purely subjective things like her appearance.

super glad endo included the year 7 thing JAKLSDFKLSD

anyway thank you for reading!!! :DD

[stickylizardcave]

longass kingleader au comic rough

gonna be under the cut bc hrhs its 48 panels long and i dont have the script ON the panels. I've been calling this the Codemaster AU (cause it's like half inspired by Chez's Gamemaster Kinger) but also I'm not sold on that name but also also I have literally no other idea for it bc this literally only exists for this one comic lmaooo;; I have nothing else planned

(1) CAINE: -and there will be a grand prize waiting for you! (2) CAINE: When you get ba-[STATIC BUZZ] (3) POMNI: ...Caine? What was- (4) CAINE: Nothing to worry about! Off you go!

(9) CAINE: ...Kinger? (10) KINGER: Caine? What are you doing here so late? (11) CAINE: I...am experiencing a problem, and I need your assistance.

(12) KINGER: Oh dear...Is this what happened to you earlier? CAINE: Yes. It has been...not pleasant. And occurring more frequently. (14) KINGER: Well, it's not a virus, at least as far as I can see. Nor a hack since your firewall would pick that up first. Strange that it's glitching your model like this...I may need to see your code directly. CAINE: That's fine.

(16) KINGER: Execute command code. Admin request. Profile Kinger. Password GLTC-G05WX. (17) CAINE: ...Access granted.

(25) KINGER: Found it. (26) CAINE: What is it? KINGER: You have a bit of a looping statement that's self-updating, but causing a leak. It's iterated itself to gibberish at this point. (27) CAINE: So it should be an easy fix... KINGER: I'll need to look through the backlogs to make sure I get it all, but yes. Just a small patch.

(28) CAINE: Such a simple thing to affect me so much...how humiliating. KINGER: It's been going on unnoticed for a while now. With everything that's happened recently, you've been working overtime and it finally caught up to you, that's all. No shame in it. Would you like me to cycle you down for the update? CAINE: If you would be so kind, my dear. (29) KINGER: I'll put the Circus in stasis, don't worry. (30) KINGER: Execute command. Rest mode.

(38) KINGER: Welcome back. How are you feeling? CAINE: Much better, my dear. KINGER: That's good to hear. I want to make sure the clean-up didn't mess with anything important. Would you mind running a diagnostic?

(41) CAINE: Scans came back clear. Thank you very much, my dear! KINGER: It's never a problem, old friend. (42) KINGER: Now then, it's late and I think it's time for me to sleep. (43) KINGER: Execute command. Remove admin permissions from Profile Kinger.

(44) CAINE: Accepted. Executing... (45) KINGER: What are you doing? CAINE: Getting more comfortable, of course.

(47) KINGER: You don't need to stay here, you know. I'll be alright. CAINE: Nonsense, you stayed with me until I woke, it's only fair to do the same for you! KINGER: If you insist... CAINE: I do! Now, off to sleep you go. I have a grand adventure to plan for tomorrow. KINGER: Ha, alright. Goodnight, Caine. CAINE: Goodnight, my dear Kinger.

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer park Steve AU part 28

part 1 | part 27 | bonus stobin scene | ao3

cw: anxiety attack, graphic thoughts of death

Chapter 7

Steve's mom leaves the week before Thanksgiving.

No preamble, no notice, no "so long and thanks for paying rent," just— poof. Gone. Ta-ta, kiddo. Have a great life!

(Or don't!

Who cares?

Not me, that's for sure!)

The worst part is Steve finds out from Ernie of all people. Ma couldn’t even tell him to his face that she’s abandoning him to the gaping maw of this hellish town because she’s a good-for-nothing coward. Some day this place is gonna swallow him whole, splinter the bones and cough up the pellet, and Florence Harrington will be somewhere far, far away, sighing empty condolences over a fresh glass of red. “Just dreadful, isn’t it? Such a pity; what a shame.”

Steve’s hanging towels on the clothes line the day after the party — after the ride to drop off Max and the hangover brunch with Robin; after drowning his headache in Tylenol and finally getting home, only to realize that he can’t shower yet because all the towels are soaking wet — when Ernie looks up from his yardwork and casually ruins his goddamn life.

“You're wastin' your time with that,��� he says, propping his weight against a rake and squinting at Steve in the mid-afternoon sun.

“What?” Steve frowns; hangs another towel. It's not like they're going to dry themselves. "Why?"

"Too cold."

"It's not supposed to rain, though, is it?"

"No, but the humidity—"

Screw the humidity. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

Ernie shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

He turns his attention back to his yard, dragging the rake over a smattering of damp leaves; obsessed with keeping his little patch of lawn pristine; and Steve reaches into the hamper and sincerely hopes that Ernie’s wrong. He needs a shower, and if the towels don't dry fast enough they get that gross mildew smell to them, and then it gets in Steve's hair, and how is he supposed to flirt with Eddie if he smells like musty lake water?

"Where's your mom off to, anyway?" Ernie asks after a moment. "Saw her leave this morning with two big suitcases,” he explains when Steve throws him a questioning look. “Figured she was off somewhere nice.”

Steve blanches.

Two big suitcases?

He didn’t even notice that she wasn’t here. Feels like a stupid, selfish asshole now, because he’d called ‘ma, I’m home!’ when he got in earlier and had thought nothing of her complete lack of response, the peaceful silence of the house; had welcomed it at the time, even, and what if—

Oh, god, what if she’d died?

What if she’d been lying there dead in her room, and Steve didn’t bother to check because he was too busy thinking about himself and how nice it was not to hear reruns on the TV for once? How long would she have lain there, rotting and bloated, and— and how long would his dad have, if the gunshot hadn’t rung out? How long; how long? Bleeding out on the carpet gurgling fish sounds everything red and Steve can’t breathe—

“Did she—?” he pants. Brings a hand to his throat; tries again. “Did you- see who she left with?”

“Some woman. Relative of yours, maybe? I didn’t get a good look at her. Had a real fancy car, though. Mercedes, think it was.”

Steve chokes on his own spit. Feels his throat close up, his heart pound and his ears ring and the yellow-purple-black start creeping in like vines at the edge of his vision, like demogorgon claws; like death’s shark-toothed grin. Hungry, howling, happy as it takes a bite out of him.

“You alright?” Ernie asks.

Steve grinds his jaw so hard he feels something crack. "Excuse me," he grits out, stomping back into the house.

—

"Fuck!" Steve shouts to his empty house — to the sun-faded paneling, to the weird stain in the orange carpet. Fucking Cecelia; fucking hell.

He cleans the house in a rage, eyes hot with unshed tears, and there's a note on the breakfast table. Crisply folded on plain paper, prim cursive letters, almost comically estranged:

Steven,

Apologies for short notice. Gone to stay with Aunt Cece in Evanston. Call or visit if you like.

— Mom

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving

The words leave papercuts in his throat. Steve rips the note to tiny pieces, can hardly see for the tears swimming in his eyes, but he's not crying over this; he's not. He fucking refuses.

Somewhere along the way, the cleaning turns to blind destruction, demolition of the all the little scraps of life mom left behind: her creepy angel figurines, her vintage Pyrex dishes, an empty bottle of old perfume. Steve hurls them all against the living room wall, delights in the shimmering pile of broken glass at his bare feet. Wants to crawl over it on hands and knees. Wants to burn this place to the ground.

When the sun dips below the trees he goes back out to check the towels. The air is wet, bitterly cold; nips at his hands when the wind blows, and the towels hang heavy on the line, just as damp as before but now the slightest bit stiff with the first creep of frost.

"FUCK!" Steve roars, ripping a towel down off the line. Yanking each one down in turn, throwing them into the dirt, raging, "What! Is! The fucking! Point!"

His tears spill over then, hot and wet as he sinks to his knees with a wounded growl, and he chokes there in the dirt; the cold, wet mud, the patchy grass. Gravel digs into his shins, and sobs wrack his chest, capsize him like plunging waves, and he can't do anything but shake and cry where the whole neighborhood can see. Making a commotion; making a scene, as his mother would say, but his mother's not here. She fucking left. She left him here, and his dad did, too, and Steve is utterly, truly, hopelessly alone.

"Come on, son."

And there’s Wayne Munson, coaxing him up off the ground with a sure, strong grip. Steve makes animal sounds as Wayne lifts him under the arms — ruined hiccups, mangled wails. There's mud in his lungs. Ocean silt; sucking sludge.

His mother's gone.

"Easy now," Wayne shushes; hugs him hard against his side. "You're alright, kid. You're alright."

—

part 29

tag list under separate reblogs, comment if you’re over 21 and want to be added tomorrow

[right-there-ride-on]

Chronology of Major Gyjo moments (sources cited)

Gyro refuses to leave Johnny behind despite making it a point that he won't be slowed down by him

Chapter 14 - Across the Arizona Desert: Continuing on the Shortest Route

2) After being attacked, Johnny states the only one he trusts is Gyro

Also, early example of Johnny being willing to give the corpse up to save Gyro (even before Sugar Mountain!)

Chapter 27: Tusk (Part 3)

3) Gyro disobeying his father and familial tradition by giving in to his urge to save Johnny (and thereby fight like a 'true man' for what he wants)

Chapter 35: The True Man's World (Part 3)

4) Gyro putting his faith in Johnny to defeat their attacker. When Johnny thinks he's failed, he cradles Gyro's face and asks for forgiveness. (it's a major moment. to me)

Chapter 44: A Silent Way (Part 5)

5) Ok this one is just a little sus but I'm putting it in anyway: Gyro dreaming of that time he slept with one of his patients, only to immediately wake up and have a domestic scene with Johnny. For what purpose...?

Chapter 45: The Promised Land Sugar Mountain (Part 1)

6) Johnny gives up the corpse parts for Gyro (again), immediately followed by them drinking away their sorrows into the sunset. Who's doing it like them.

Chapter 48: Tubular Bells (Part 1)

7) Gyro finds the Golden Rectangle, previously described as, “… the foundation for every perfect structure for beauty" (Chapter 43: A Silent Way, Part 4) in Johnny eyes, and refuses to answer Johnny's question about where he's finding it. The implications of what Gyro thinks of Johnny's physical appearance are obvious.

Chapter 52: Wrecking Ball (Part 2)

8) Gyro sacrifices his hand, his only other point of reference for the Golden Rectangle, in order to save Johnny from a hit he probably could have tanked. Even Gyro looks a little surprised at himself... Also, they are all over each other this arc. Gyro is especially protective.

And, a little later:

Chapter 53: Wrecking Ball (Part 3)

9) Once it's revealed that Valentine intends to kill the rest of the racers (at least the ones who pose a threat to him), and makes an attempt on Johnny's life, Gyro attempts to convince Johnny to drop out, implying that he would drop out with him.

Of course, this is immediately followed by Johnny begging Gyro to, at the very least, help Lucy and see what she knows about the corpse parts. Seeing Johnny's distress at being so close to his goal only to have it snatched away from him convinces Gyro to stay in the race (something that will ultimately get him killed) and theorize how they can use the spin to defeat Valentine (via the stirrups). He tries to play it off but goddamn he is in love with him.

Chapter 72: Ticket to Ride (Part 2)

10) Shuiesha coloring may imply that Johnny is wearing Gyro's shirt beneath his own?? It's got the same collar and everything.

First appearance of this coloring choice is Chapter 63: 7 Days in a Week

11) Exchange of secrets no one else knows (they are each other's most important person!)

This panel in particular:

Chapter 76: D4C (Part 9)

12) And last but not least, thee set of chapter titles ever, in which Valetine attempts to bargain with Johnny to spare his life in return for bringing back Gyro. Johnny refuses, not because of any moral quandary about saving the life of an evil man, but because the Gyro brought back would not be the same. On top of that, he recognizes Valentine as a liar.

When it's all over, Johnny just breaks.

And that's the end of the chapter!

Chapters 88 and 89: Break My Heart, Break Your Heart (Parts 1 & 2)

13) Johnny's Goodbye (I like this scene more in b+w what can I say)

Chapter 95: The World of Stars and Stripes (Outro)

Obviously Johnny and Gyro have a lot of smaller moments too, but these are the ones that come to mind when I think of them!