#i'm giving it a shave

[thickenmyblood]

hi maca :) do u already know when you can post chapter 20? im so sad about hiuh ending but also so excited for some happiness :( also, will it really only be 20 chapters or will you add one or two more? in any case, thanks so much for all the time and effort you put into this! I loved every second I spent reading this fic <3

hello!!! well, i was supposed to post ch20 on feb 1st . . . but that obviously did not happen. this month is the month though!!!! I'll try to make it happen before march.

about the chapter: yes, it's the last chapter ever. there will be no more. ever. honestly, I don't think you'll want another chapter after this considering the rough draft I'm working with is 250 PAGES

[uncanny-tranny]

I love love love when trans women* give advice to trans men* about """manly""" things and when trans men* return that kindness with advice about """womanly""" things. I love the intracommunity commitment to supporting each other <<3

[tomwambsgays]

that new android doesn't have a sense of personal space, huh?

[abalidoth]

I wish so much that I didn't care so much what people thought of me. I wish I could just be the kind of gives-no-fucks, takes-no-shit transfem that I see around me and admire. But I'm in this stupid cage of perception, one that I forged myself, and I can't break out of it.

[two-wizards-in-a-trench-coat]

tbh when ryoko kui said senshi is actually hairy i'm just too lazy to draw it i felt that. that's so real i might cry

[etirabys]

I've failed at "eat meat once a week" reducetarianism but I've been drifting towards "only eat meat I'm excited about", and now I've articulated that explicitly as a direction I think I can go further in it

[prudencepaccard]

really really sick of randos having opinions about my body hair

[glurblr]

I love having enough facial hair to shave even without being on T it feels so nice and smoooth afterwards

[cat-brrr]

[lucas-grey]

Every time I play with Grey's model, I want to cut off those few strands of hair hanging out of the back of his head.

What is this? Who even cuts this mans hair??

It's even worse from the side. They are sticking out like they don't belong there. Someone give me a scissor!!

[queensparklekitten]

time princess players how do y'all picture the MCs of every story

like since every set and piece of official art has a different hair colour, length, and style with every picture of them, and sometimes there's descriptions that don't match the images, which one do you go with

and do you make half of them look like your avatar or have your own designs

[manglednatalia]

Collecting the people's opinion bc I don't know how to draw my trans guy Sigma's chest hair

[hautsreadsmarvel]

“Fantastic Four” (issues 22-24, +1 Human Torch issue)

In these issues, the Four come to more closely resemble their modern-day incarnations in terms of catchphrases, powers, and rivalries.

“The Return of the MOLE MAN!” (1961)

This issue is pretty hype. The Mole Man is kind of the least important part of it, especially since his plan is more or less the same as last time (sinking cities instead of sinking atomic power plants), but at least he’s campier about it. As for the hype parts:

After Reed uses a gizmo to evaluate Sue’s invisibility powers, he determines there is more that she’s capable of, which conveniently gets proven right afterward as she interrupts an argument between Torch and Thing with a forcefield! Her invisibility is apparently some kind of energy projected over herself, and now she can give it form. She can also turn other things invisible.

(Wait, the Thing has to shave?? Doesn’t his hair get disappeared by his transformation? Like, whenever it gets shown over multiple panels the process always involves him balding just before his signature rocky exterior kicks in. Where would he… hm.)

Sue’s expanded powerset makes her markedly more useful this time around. It even lets her escape the Mole Man’s incredibly silly traps (and I do mean silly: while Johnny gets stuck in a room that reacts to flame by shooting out an extinguishing gust, Sue gets stuck in a room that’s just half-visible and half-invisible stuff, and she opens it by finding the door hidden under the illusions. Why not just put her in a normal room with a sturdy locked door? The Mole Man is too clever for his own good.)

I can’t stress enough how delightful I find the day-to-day of superpowered folks, and the F4 serve heavily on that front.

Thing banter continues to be on point. It does feel weird for him to make fun of Reed’s Captain Obvious exclamation when literally everybody in these comics narrates everything that’s happening all the time, but he gets points for being the first one to do so.

He said the thing! Thing said the thing!! It’s clobberin’ time!!!

“The Master Plan of Doctor Doom!” (1961)

I’ll frontload the stuff I didn’t like in this issue: a weak starting plot thread, and least-grade Indian racisms (as in vs people from India, not vs native Americans).

In this one, Reed becomes really curmudgeonly because he’s been working so long while it feels like everyone else is slacking off, so the Four bicker with each other and nobody can agree on who should be the leader. Reed’s insults and temper seem to come from nowhere, there’s a lot of “nobody can understand Sue because she’s a female! A ~feeeemaleeeeee!” stuff going on, and at the end everyone agrees Reed should be the leader while he reaffirms his need for and friendship with the others, so it’s a real nothingburger of a plot motivator.

The Indian racisms once again include “Indians are drawn as white people with turbans” and Torch referring to an Indian guy using Rudyard Kipling-isms.

Setting those things aside.

Sue is useful! (The dinosaur is an escapee from DOOM’s time machine, which they relocated to their HQ)

DOOM bails out three criminals and gives them each a superpower (low-tier superstrength, enhanced hearing, and fireproof-ness), and takes advantage of the Four’s temporary schism to have each of them capture a member of the F4 w assistance from DOOM’s technology.

DOOM gives his very first “I must best Reed!” speech, and captures him himself. He then seals away his henches in another dimension (for villain reasons), and prepares to kill the F4 now that they’re imprisoned (instead of having killed them when they were unconscious during the trip to his prison, both because villain reasons and because “escape room that takes you to space” is a very cool execution method).

He fights the F4 and loses, but not before demonstrating his new flight and defensive cryo-field technology.

Also he trapped Johnny by luring him into a car that turned out to be lined with asbestos. I think he knew by this point that the Torch can nova flame his way out of asbestos traps, but also that Johnny wouldn't dare hurt a good-looking car.

“The Infant Terrible!” (1961)

I was fairly whelmed by this one, so I’ll keep it brief. A strange alien is going around doing big reality warping feats, like making the streets overflow with giant humanoid constructs, conjuring giant milk bottles, creating soda tap fountains, etc. Reed deduces from the things it’s conjuring and the way it’s behaving it’s essentially a baby. Some gangsters learn about his theory from the news and lure it away with candy, and try to make it an accomplice in their crimes, but the baby keeps screwing up their crimes and the F4 beat the gangsters. However, the gangsters antagonize the baby, and it becomes afraid of humanity, causing disasters in its superpowered tantrum. Reed sends a signal to deep space to find its parents, its parents come pick it up.

I have very few thoughts about this issue, except to say that some of the art looks weird. This contains some of the worst illustrations of the F4 I’ve seen so far, including some pretty weird head and eye shapes for Sue.

“The Torch Meets the Iceman!” (1951 1961)

The Travis Starnes reading order claims this was published in 1951, but clearly whenever it makes such a claim it’s off by a decade. Whatever.

Anyways, the reason I actually bothered covering this Human Torch story is that it’s… actually enjoyable? There have been a few others that were promising, but they were usually brought low by fakeout cameos (such as an advertised Spider-Man only showing up for one inconsequential panel) or by the Torch’s gratingly overbearing ego. Neither of those things happens here. We’re promised a meet up with the Iceman of X-Men fame, and we get it; and the Torch is mostly in action mode the whole time, rather than incessantly going “hey, everyone, look at me, I’m so cool (yeah really cool slick just like ice)”.

Ah, that’s why the Thing is so strong. He carried everyone during group projects.

Johnny goes on a date on a boat, and Bobby Drake decides to land a date as well, coincidentally ending up on the same boat. (Fun fact: Iceman can get cold when he’s not in snowman mode)

Villains are rarely wise, but yeah, random citizen, how do they expect to get away with piracy on the Hudson? Notwithstanding how difficult that would be in real life, astute readers will recall the US gov’t was willing to nuke New York City just to obliterate an unidentified flaming object*. The moment the Barracuda is away from any other boat, FWOOM, right?

The Torch and the Iceman initially have a little trouble with their anti-synergies…

…but they rescue each other several times, even when the dread (snort) Captain Barracuda (snerk) comes up with plans to disable individual heroes, such as spraying hosewater over Iceman to freeze him into an immobile lump or forcing the Torch to put out one of his own fires to avoid burning the ship down.

The action in this ish was pretty good, elevated by the frission of two heroes falling into sync pretty much immediately, and more importantly, by the Torch not being a fucking ass to another hero for stepping on his turf (as he acted priorly w Spider-Man).

It’s really hard to take Piracy on the Hudson seriously. It was helped earlier by Captain Barracuda being a clever man, as previously mentioned, but then at the end he just like… spontaneously forgets? About the Iceman? He spends four panels being confused about the ice??

*See the very first issue of the Fantastic Four! (Man, I’ve always wanted to do one of these asterisks)

[slettlune]

i straight up delayed the gwent tournament until geralt had just the right amount of beard growth i like since i knew i'd be looking at him a lot in cutscenes

[insertpinkchiphere]

//Now if I said that Lambda liked seeing hair on people though-

[tecchan]

So I finished Room No.9 yesterday, and boy am I thankful for the option to turn off scat stuff. They really had to make the enema scene slightly different in each route so you'd have to read the whole thing again every time huh?