#imagine showing this to me in 2021 i think i’d genuinely die

[transbeeduo]

ranboo instinctively eating tubbo's placenta (<- sentence i'd never thought i'd type) is both so deeply meaningful and also insanely hilarious to me which i think fits them perfectly. of course ranboo would do that of course he'd eat his lover's organ!! what better way to connect them ESPECIALLY after such immense vulnerability? but also the image of ranboo walkin in the room and just immediately goin to town on that thang is sending me into hysterics

WHY DIDN’T TUMBLR NOTIFY ME OF THIS FUCK YEAH THIS IS SO REAL

I feel like the reason Ranboo ate it was due to

A.) Omnivore leaning heavily into more Carnivorous tendencies

B.) Enderian Instinct (+ tradition?)

C.) STRESS

Like I think the stress and the carnivorism kinda go hand in hand because. Ranboo was SO unbelievably stressed because he couldn’t stand to be in the same room during the C-Section because like. Bad memories from literally DYING that one time. Plus I think like. For Enderians, since any of them can give birth they all have those instincts hard-coded into them yk? And since Enderman babies are usually a LOT fucking bigger than Bug was, the one who just gave birth will usually eat the placenta as a way to regain strength? If that makes sense? (Or the other partner(s) will eat it as like a bonding/connection kinda thing like you described that’s more of a tradition thing but it’s definitely baked into instinct)

So what happened is that Ranboo went in the room post C-Section, smelled blood and checked to make sure his tiny baby and Tubbo were doing okay, Ranboo just like. Suddenly grabbed the placenta and ate it I don’t think they even were thinking about it It was literally ALL instinct

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

AIGHT Y’ALL I wasn’t tagged but I’m doing this anyways because f u c k  i t

It's the year 2021 and you're obsessed with The Karate Kid. How are you feeling?

Deadasss weird as fuck, my dude. Like...out of all the things I could’ve predicted happening in our lord’s year 2021, it definitely was NOT getting hyperfixated on a hammy gay ship with a punk and a nerd from a goddamn karate soap opera. And yet...here we are??? I will never understand hyperfixations, my guy. But I’ve met a lot of really cool people in this fandom, so I can’t really complain.

Did you grow up with TKK or are you new to the series?

I have never seen a single Karate Kid movie in my entire life. When I was a kid, it looked kinda dumb so I never got into it XD But then I saw my roommate watching Cobra Kai on Youtube Red one day (he has every streaming service known to man) and I was hooked. And...here I am!

We gotta do the basics. Favorite character:  

Literally EVERYONE except for Kreese, Yasmine, Kyler, and Tory, sorry stans

Okay but if we gotta pick, Johnny Lawrence is my Problematic Fave. Also I love my boy Daniel, he’s trying his best!!! And Amanda LaRusso, we stan a queen!!!

Among the kids, definitely Miguel, with Demetri as a close second. I also love Sam, Aisha, Moon, and Hawk (pre- and post-Bastardization Arc, anyways XD)!

Favorite ship:  

Take a look at my username and take a WILD FUCKING GUESS lmao Yes it’s Eli/Demetri because DUH, every interaction they have is so fucking gay and Eli fucking saved him!!! And came back to him!!! And betrayed the world’s most terrifying dojo with a WAR CRIMINAL SENSEI all for Demetri!!! And how Demetri was willing to forgive him for everything at the drop of a hat because he always had faith there was still good in his best friend??? That’s TRUE LOVE motherfuckers. Please let them kiss in Season 4. I will sell you all of my limbs. Sam/Miguel is a close second because they’re cute as shit and it’s just so lovely to see two people so unapologetically smitten with each other. They are in LOVE, and I will RIOT if they break up again!!! Keep Sam and Miguel together 2k21!!!

Underrated character:

SAMANTHA LARUSSO!!! The amount of hate my girl gets for acting like a normal teenager and fucking up occasionally JUST like the rest of the cast makes me want to start punching things. She cares SO MUCH about her friends!!! And she loves the shit out of Miguel!!! She hasn’t always been the best friend but you know what??? Neither has Hawk, and we still forgave his ass!!! Also LET HER BE FEMININE but also kick utter ass, my god!!! Femininity should not be synonymous with being weak, y’all! ALSO DEMETRI, like yes, he likes to complain and occasionally run his mouth, but guess what else he likes to do??? Never give up on the love of his life his best friend Eli Moskowitz and refuse to lose faith in him no matter how much of a little shit he’s become, and I for one think that’s very badass of him. Also the way he takes care of Eli pre-Cobra Kai in his own snarky bastard way makes me absolutely Weak and needs more appreciation. Like the dude has charisma and COULD have probably made other friends and left Eli behind if he wanted, but did he??? No, he wants the weepy loser with the lip scar in the polo shirts and dorky sweaters and will protect him as much as his wimpy ass is able!!!

Underrated ship (don’t say therapy, lol):  

Among the adults, Daniel/Amanda!!! Like maybe I just don’t watch that much tv, but it seems kinda rare to me to see a happily married hetero couple, and it’s just nice to see a married couple who genuinely love each other and where there’s not like...lingering resentment or some shit. I feel like this ship gets overshadowed by Lawrusso a lot (which like--okay, fair!!! Daniel and Johnny do have a ridiculous amount of chemistry, and the gay undertones are undeniable, so I get it), and it makes me kinda sad. I do love Lawrusso, but I don’t like when Amanda has to get her heart broke for it to happen, you feel? Among the kids, honestly YasMoon. Like I really love the idea of Yasmine trying to better herself because of Moon’s influence on her and because Moon like...inspires her to be a better person, I guess? With their pretty strong friendship, it just makes more sense to me for Yasmine to get a redemption arc through Moon than through Demetri. ALSO girls DO often pull the whole “mean girl” shtick to cover up being closeted lesbians, and Moon IS canonically bi, so it could work!!! I just think this one could be a really interesting Friends to Lovers take, and could make a really nice coming-out arc for Yas. And MoonPiper too, honestly!!! Like they only got 5 seconds of screentime so I understand WHY it’s underrated, but I still love what we DID get and loved that there was a canon gay ship (even if only for 1 scene lmao). I’m really excited to potentially see more of them in Season 4!!! Please, I’m begging!!!

Wax On, Wax Off or Sweep the Leg?

Sweep the Leg because it will always be deeply hilarious to me how Demetri took note of the first move Eli ever used on him and spent presumably weeks perfecting it OUT OF SPITE just to get him back with it at the soccer game MONTHS later. Just goes to show how OBSESSED Demetri is with Eli and their little karate rivalry which is just NOT straight, I’m sorry

Which of Daniel’s dumb little outfits is your favorite?

There’s something so funny about this pretentious little fuck walking around in fancy suits once he becomes a #SuccessfulBusinessman, and still occasionally trying to do karate in a full-ass suit (take THAT, Tom Cole’s boba!!!) I’m also a big fan of how he looks in his gi with his little headband. Still killing that look as a 40-50-something!!!

Character from the films you most want to return, who’s not Terry Silver:

Tbh I have still never seen a single Karate Kid movie (they took them off of Netflix, RIP), so...I don’t really care if they bring anyone else back??? I’m invested in the characters we already have in the show, I don’t need some rando from the movies to make a cameo to have a good time XD The only character I really wanted them to bring back was Ali, and they already did, so like...I’m good??? That’s all I really needed, I can die in peace now XD

Scene that lives in your head rent-free:

Basically any fluffy Elimetri scene, but 5 in particular: ~Miguel first meeting Eli and Demetri at the lunch table, and Eli looking at Demetri like he hung every goddamn star in the sky ~Demetri going off at a terrifying, “unhinged” karate sensei on the first day of Cobra Kai because he made fun of Eli’s lip and Demetri is not about that shit ~ELI STEALING DEMETRI’S NACHO AND SMIRKING AT HIM, LIKE EXCUSE ME SIR PLEASE BE A LITTLE LESS HOMOSEXUAL IN FRONT OF YOUR GIRLFRIEND ~Eli yanking Demetri onstage during Valley Fest to hold a board, and Demetri being visibly like...extremely turned on when Eli breaks said board ~ELI SAVING DEMETRI DURING THE CHRISTMAS FIGHT, ELI APOLOGIZING, DEMETRI AND ELI KICKING COBRA ASS TOGETHER AKSBDCUWYVCBU

Will Anthony LaRusso ever be relevant?

I hope not! He’s kind of a funny meme character to pop up now and again but I don’t think he deserves a serious plotline when there are so many more interesting characters to follow.

You live in The Valley and are forced into the karate gang war. Which dojo do you join?

Miyagi-Do because Cobra Kai would eat me alive. Also I’d probably straight up get stuck and die in that cement mixer, if I even made it that far XD Besides, being salty that your friend who you have a crush on likes martial arts better than you and starting martial arts to impress them but also being too lazy to join anything TOO intense is a Big Mood and I am certainly not speaking from personal experience here, no sirree

What’s your training montage song?

"Shut Up and Drive” by Rihanna for a weight-training and bicep-flexing montage, “Whatever It Takes” by Imagine Dragons for a more intense punching-and-kicking-shit montage. I don’t know why this is, I just feel it in my heart.

It’s the crossover event of the century! Which TV show are you combining with Cobra Kai for an hour-long Saturday night special?

*Briefly panics because I don’t actually watch that much TV and most of the stuff I do watch is fantasy/sci fi shit that absolutely would not work for a CK crossover*

Hmmmm okay but ACTUALLY

You know what would be fucking funny as hell would be an It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia crossover. Allow me to elaborate: ~The Gang goes to LA on vacation during the height of the Karate Dojo Wars. They literally can get barely anything done without all these goddamn karate-fighting teenagers getting in the way. ~They are all very annoyed by this. Even the most obscure of tourist attractions is eventually intercepted by karate fights. ~Mac tries to join Cobra Kai because he sees all this karate fighting on, and wants to unquestionably prove both his badassery and masculinity. Both Johnny and Kreese are like “Wtf are you doing here? Aren’t you like 30?” ~Mac gets a planet-sized crush on Johnny after all of 5 minutes and endlessly gushes to the gang about him. The gang mercilessly roast him about this and about how much of a pathetic loser with his life together in no way whatsoever Johnny sounds like. They proceed to have exactly 0 self awareness about this. ~The Waitress is in town visiting family or something, and Charlie is stalking her, as per usual. However, every time he’s about to go up and talk to her, a pack of battling Miyagi-Dos and Cobra Kais throwing punches and kicks everywhere blocks his path. One times, Mac is among one of these packs and Charlie is like “???? He didn’t get kicked out of that teen karate dojo yet???” ~Seeing how much the Kids These Days seem to like fighting, Charlie drops by a local high school to try and sell Fight Milk to the kids doing karate. Only Kyler and Brucks buy into it, and subsequently get the entire West Valley High wrestling team sick. Charlie is inevitably arrested, as Counselor Blatt thinks he’s selling the kids drugs. ~Dennis makes a plan to have sex with every hot chick he can in Los Angeles. He meets Ali on a dating app post-divorce, and inevitably tries to bang her. It doesn’t work. ~Frank crashes the rental car, and inevitably the gang ends up at one of Daniel’s dealerships. Dee quickly takes a liking to Daniel and is like “Watch, assholes--Imma homewreck this guy’s marriage.” She starts frequenting the dealerships to attempt to flirt with Daniel, until one day she walks in on him having sex with Johnny in a back room and she’s like “Is that the guy from Mac’s goddamn dojo?!?!” ~Dennis, of course, tries to sleep with Amanda. Amanda is not having it, and rebukes him in the most snarky, Amanda-esque way possible. Dennis is just like “Oh not AGAIN--the women in this goddamn diva city have too high of standards!” ~Later on, the gang is at the beach and Dennis spots the blonde lady he went out on an ill-fate date with, and decides to give it another shot--that is, until he sees her go up and kiss another woman and he’s like “IS THAT THE LADY FROM THE CAR DEALERSHIP??? STUPID-KARATE-KICK-COMMERCIAL’S WIFE?!? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.” ~Dee complains to Dennis about her lack of luck getting laid, and Dennis is just like “Oh come ON, is everyone in Los Angeles gay???” Smash cut to Hawk and Demetri having sex, Moon and Piper making out, Bert and Nate holding hands, Chris and Mitch doing oral, and Amanda, Ali, and Carmen having a threesome. ~Frank tries to scam Kreese into buying cheaply-made karate equipment for his dojo. The gang ends up having to leave LA because Kreese is quite literally plotting all of their murders.

For tagging, uuuuhhhhhh @jackonthelongwalk @soe-leo @max-eagle-fang @cc-tinslebee @backawayfromthegay @asphodel-storm do the thing, if y’all haven’t yet!

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (7/14/2021)?

Anonymous asked: How’s the comic-booking been this week?

comics-and-videogames asked: Comics this week?

X-Men #1: Actually just plain forgot about this last week, and this was a lot of fun! Trying to do the post-Hickman version of 90s X-Men comics as drawn by Larraz, and it turns out I like that pretty well. To my surprise definitely sticking with it.

Iron Man #10: Thinking I'm finally gonna drop this soon - thinking the time is coming to drop a number of on-the-bubble books.

Captain America #30: My dad wanted to check this out and obviously a lot of it is incomprehensible because it's the final issue of a run I jumped off of over a dozen issues ago, but the central Red Skull confrontation is solid. Even without context though, there's an unavoidable feeling of anticlimax here.

Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow #4: Expanding the breadth of the idea significantly, and I'm very curious how radical the 'changes' in the wake of it will be - will our boy Pete triumph over the worst in himself, or rocks fall and everyone dies in the traditional fashion? I guess that question is the charm of making What-If? longer than an issue as a time.

DIE #18: I suspect this is an issue that'll hit harder when I can sit down and reread the series as a whole, but it still hit pretty damn hard.

Haha #6: Well this book ended up a disappointment. Ice Cream Man itself may face accusations of being a one-trick pony, but it's a lot more inventive with its trick than this ever got. Did laugh at the cheap bit with Arty though.

6 Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton #2: "He was the actual worst person who ever lived, genuinely not a single redeeming quality, absolutely biblical in his petty devoted vileness" shouldn't be a gag that can deliver these kinds of returns when he's not even around in the story built around him but here we are.

Rorschach #10: Liked it.

Infinite Frontier #2: An excellent cross-section of the DCU, in that here's cool pretty stuff starring interesting characters in interesting situations, and here's the JSA and Roy Harper doing the stuff they do in the parts Xermanico doesn't draw.

Wonder Woman #775: Increasingly ambivalent on its take on Diana - worried they really were only letting her have fun because of the amnesia - but everything surrounding her remains interesting. So weird seeing the 'classic' post-Crisis version of Olympus where people are still acting like she's Zeus's kid though.

The Joker #5: This felt a little off and seeing Rosenberg cowrote at the end explained it, but it's still Tynion and Francavilla doing Year One-era Gordon so of course it's good.

Batman: Urban Legends #5: Lead is as good as it has been from the beginning, Batgirls and Grifter stories are fine, increasingly angry at the Tim Drake story because plain and simple WB is not going to allow a story where Robin says he likes boys - even Bendis as I recall clearly got it spiked - so what the fuck does this think it's playing at.

Justice League: Last Ride #3: I don't understand how Zdarsky is doing character-defining work for a character who's been around for almost 40 years and had an ongoing for a decade of that as a feature in an anthology title, while the standalone Justice League perennial mini he's doing at the same time is...fine. Nothing wrong in here but it could come out any number of C-tier DC writers were ghostwriting this and I'd barely flinch at the revelation.

Action Comics Annual 2021: Even with the added space this felt like it was crying out for room to breathe, especially for some of the concluding beats, but this was a really fun issue with a crew of characters I'm happy to see used again; even if they somehow don't end up playing into the megaplot I hope PKJ can keep finding excuses to show what the House of El is getting up to. And of all the figures to apparently turn out to be the big bad of the whole run that's a deep cut even for ME, I imagine it won't even register to a lot of readers as an existing thing and they'll assume this is an entirely new piece of mythology.

[365days365movies]

February 24, 2021: Annie Hall (1977) (Part 1)

Well...Woody Allen.

I, uh...OK, look, I could get into the whole Woody Allen thing, but INSTEAD of me doing that, I’ll just say this: look into it. Because there is a LOT on this subject, and it’s controversial as HELL. At the end of the day, I’ll recommend this upcoming series on HBO, and just recommend that you look into it.

Because, uh...yeah, it’s not great. That’s all I’m gonna say, because I need to educate myself on it more as well. Instead, let’s talk for a few seconds about divorcing the art from the artist. But ONLY for a few seconds.

I understand why some of you might be surprised I’m doing this one. Because, again...Woody Allen. But, yeah, I always try to do my best to divorce the art from the artist. Because some people suck, but they still make nice things, or at the very least, things that should be open to interpretation and appreciation.

“Superfreak” is a classic song of 1981, and everybody’s heard at least some of it, but Rick James fuckin’ kidnapped two women and kept them in his basement, WHERE HE TORTURED THEM. Edgar Degas made beautiful paintings of ballet dancers, and was also A MASSIVE ANTI-SEMITE. And before he was (RIGHTFULLY AND JUSTIFIABLY) outed as a roofie-ing piece-o-shit...I grew up with - and genuinely enjoyed - this guy’s comedy.

And you can judge me for this, but...I still think his stand-up was and is genuinely funny, and I still appreciate the cultural impact that The Cosby Show had on society’s perception of African-American families, divorced from the stereotype of the ghetto. Fact of the matter is, works themselves deserve to be separated from the artist who made them. That’s my philosophy, and I’m sticking with it Entirely fine to disagree with me, by the way, I get it.

But in that spirit, I’m watching Annie Hall, despite its creators likely transgressions. After all, this is technically his magnum opus, and it’s a good look into the man himself. And so, with that in mind: Annie Hall! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is talking directly to us about his outlook on life, and his view on the potential future. He tells half of a joke, then an amusing anecdote, and a bit more until telling us that he’s broke up with Annie, and he’s still thinking about it, trying to figure out exactly where things went wrong. He goes back to the beginning, which is punctuated with flashbacks.

He grew up in Brooklyn in World War II, and a young Alvy (Jonathan Munk) is with his mother (Joan Newman) at the doctor’s. He’s depressed after learning that the universe will one day end after a period of expansion, and is having his first real existential crisis. I had mine around the same age, actually, went I learned that the Earth will one day get swallowed by the sun. And THEN came the realization that I’d be dead by that point. AND THEN came the realization that I’d die one day, and that was a WHOLE NEW crisis to...anyway.

He grew up under the Coney Island rollercoaster according to him (although his analyst says that he exaggerates), and that’s what he blames for his “nervous personality. He’s also got an active imagination, often blurring fantasy and reality. His Dad ran the bumper cars on Coney Island (a place that I’ve never been, but desperately want to go).

He continues on talking about his former schoolmates, and not really that well. While in class, young Alvy kisses a...little girl...ahem. And then, when reprimanded by the teacher, current Alvy notes that he was always...like that...and he also says this to the little girl, and they talk about Freud’s latency period, and Alvy said he never...had...one...that’s uh...that’s fuckin’ SOMETHING, now isn’t it?

OK, well, shoving that forcefully aside as hard as I can, Alvy wonders aloud on where his classmates now, and one of them says this:

This also involves a little girl saying she’s “into leather,” which is...awkward as FUCK, but WE’RE GONNA MOVE THE FUCK ON. Alvy recounts his paranoia, and was so even after he became a famous comedian (which we say after a VERY good joke about qualifying for the army as a hostage). He speaks to a friend, Rob (Tony Roberts) about potential anti-Semitism from a person in a passersby meeting, then heads to meet Annie.

Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) arrives at a movie theater, late and in a bad mood. The two are late to their intended film, argue briefly, then head to another film that they’ve already seen, The Sorrow and the Pity. In line, they’re in front of a man loudly soliloquizing on film, much to Alvy’s annoyance.

Annie and Alvy continue to argue a bit, while Alvy openly berates the casual film critic. In the middle, he talks to the audience about it, only to be followed by the crtiic himself, who also acknowledges the audience! Huh! Anyway, he’s a professor at Columbia, and starts continuing his line speech, this time on the work of Marshall McLuhan, one of the most important early media theorists ever. And then, Alvy brings out Marshall McLuhan (Marshall McLuhan) to debate him on it, only for Alvy to turn to the audience and wish aloud that life could really be like this!

I’m beginning to understand why people like this film. It’s metacontextual before metacontextuality was really a thing in film. It’s a fourth-wall breaking movie in some fantastic ways. But will it still hold its muster after breaking the fourth wall’s become so commonplace? we’ll see, I guess.

After a showing of the film, the two return home, and Alvy tries to initiate sex. But Annie’s not really into it at the moment, and Alvy complains that they used to have sex all the time, and it’s been a while since. So, I guess that retroactively awkward scene at the school was meant to foreshadow Alvy’s high libido, that will probably cause some conflict in the film. Anyway, Annie notes that Alvy once went through something similar with Allison, his first wife. Who’s Allison? Flashback!

Allison Portchnik (Carol Kane) is a graduate student in political science, working for a campaign that Alvy’s about to perform for. He’s nervous, as he’s going on after another comedian. She comforts him by saying that she thought he was cute, and he does well. But we flash-forward to a night after they’re married, shortly after the death of JFK, which Alvy’s obsessing over, entertaining various conspiracy theories.

However, Allison rightly points out that his obsession is simply a way for him to avoid having sex with her, which mirrors the present-day situation him him and Annie. Flash forward TO Alvy and Annie, and there are just lobsters...everywhere, on the floor in their kitchen. After that commotion, they talk about Annie’s past romances.

And by talk about, I mean they LITERALLY WALK THROUGH her memories. And I gotta say...I fuckin’ love this method of storytelling. One of her previous boyfriends is an actor (John Glover), and his over-dramatic prose sickens Alvy. We see a second marriage of Alvy’s to New Yorker writer Robin (Janet Margolin), who’s dragged him to a stuffy high society party of intellectuals that he has no interest in going to. Same her, Alvy. I bet the caviar’s canned.

He tries to initiate sex with her - in the middle of the party, mind you - and she turns him down. later, when they get to it in their apartment, she’s unable to, uh...reach satisfaction. From there, we flash-forward after that marriage ends to a tennis match with Rob, where he meets one of his mutual friends: Annie Hall.

And for the record, Annie’s pretty obviously got a crush on him, and she’s adorable as fuck. Also, that outfit, real talk...that outfit rules. She offers to give Alvy a list, during which he’s quite worried about her driving, but the two still get along well enough. Annie’s an amateur photographer, during a time period where photography is considered a relatively new art form. The two go to her apartment, and share familial anecdotes and personal stories about themselves. And as they talk, we also see a set of subtitles on top of each of them that betray their inner feelings and thoughts.

I do genuinely like the stylings of the movie, goddamn. This conversation leads to Alvy asking her out on a date, although they end up scheduling it after Annie auditions at a nightclub as a singer. And while it doesn’t go great, Alvy tells her she was fantastic, and they share a kiss before they head to dinner. They head to her place afterwards, and we cut to later that night, post-coitus.

And then, we get a flash-forward back to the next day, where the two are at a bookstore, and Alvy speaks on his personal philosophy of life.

I'm obsessed with uh, with death, I think. Big - big subject with me, yeah. I have a very pessimistic view of life. You should know this about me if we're gonna go out. You know, I - I feel that life is - is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories, you know. The - the horrible would be like, um, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else. That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life - you should be thankful that you're miserable because you're very lucky to be miserable.

Iiiiinteresting.

Shortly into their relationship, they admit they’re in love (or “lurve”, as Alvy says). She moves in with Alvy, which he initially isn’t the biggest fan of, having been burned in two previous marriages And already, their relationship is showing a few bumps. Alvy’s also always trying to push her to take college classes, while she uses mariuana whenever they have sex, which Alvy doesn’t agree with.

But as they have sex one night, without the marijuana at Alvy’s urging, Annie’s mind wanders - LITERALLY.

This film...this film has a VERY unique style of visual storytelling, and I am HERE for it! Seriously, I genuinely love this method of storytelling and comedy, it’s extremely engaging to me.

Soon enough, Alvy gets an interview to write for a talk show host, which he ABSOLUTELY despises. But in doing so, he decides to go into stand-up for himself, and is actually quite successful at it! But before we get to that, we’re at the halfway point! See you in Part 2!

[dontasktheradiodemon]

Ghosts and Guns (4/23/2021)

Alastor a.k.a. Leal @usedhearts and Alastor a.k.a. Astor talk about their experiences seeing ghosts when they were alive, which is a great conversation.

And then they talk about how Astor keeps getting stuck third-wheeling with Leal and Alastor a.k.a. Alexa, which is not a great conversation.

usedhearts

He'd popped around a couple places in the hotel, looking for Astor, and finally found him. Leal stepped out of the shadows into the mini makeshift greenhouse.

"You remember when we talked about ghosts? Back when you taught me about the internet? I've been thinking about that lately!" Yes, no preamble, no hello, just straight into it without announcing himself. But he DOES have two thermoses in his hands, wonder what's in there. Probably something for Astor.

"I brought soup!" Definitely something for Astor.

dontasktheradiodemon

"Oh, delicious!" He held out a hand for a thermos. Who needs a preamble? Clearly this show has been broadcasting all day and he only just tuned into the middle.

Astor himself had been in the turned-sideways ship annexed onto the hotel, where he's been keeping his garden: a grand total of two okra plants and one bell pepper plants. They really don't need a whole lot of fussing at, but he feels neglectful if he doesn't do a bit of fussing anyway.

But it certainly left him time to entertain a guest. "Yes, I vaguely recall! Why?" He opened his thermos to inspect the soup.

usedhearts

Upon inspection he'd find Creole style Yakamein soup, with extra meat. Leal summoned himself a chair, settling into it. He gave his own soup a sip before he started.

"You told me abou your experiences with spirits when you were young and it got me reexamining some of my childhood and I think I may have been seeing ghosts before I was haunted personally!"

dontasktheradiodemon

Ooh, delicious. He sipped at it like it was just a cup of coffee.

"Really!" His brows went up. He wasn't surprised to learn his alternate was more sensitive to spirits than previously thought, but he *was* surprised his alternate was figuring it out so long after the fact. "Well, do tell me about them!"

usedhearts

"I think the reason I never noticed was because I would _see_ them but with my attention span, I wouldn't think anything strange about it. I remember a few incidents clearly though-- like this one time when I was out in the bayou when I was a child, I came across a gentleman who I now know was wearing a confederate uniform. He was just staring off into space. I asked him if he was alright and he didn't respond-- so I just turned and left."

Leal shrugged, taking another sip of his soup. "The things children will overlook, huh?"

dontasktheradiodemon

“The man lost his cause and has been dredging the bayou for it ever since.” He scoffed derisively. “Now, that’s interesting, though! I only rarely ever saw them! I almost always heard them—that was usually how I could tell the living from the dead, I didn’t see them.”

usedhearts

"Yes, that's why I think I mistook them for living people! All the times I remember, before I was being haunted personally, they never spoke. I only saw them." He  shrugged.

"Perhaps that's one of the key differences between us, the way we experienced hauntings."

dontasktheradiodemon

"Perhaps so!" He paused thoughtfully. "Or maybe you were also surrounded by invisible ghosts you couldn't hear and I was surrounded by silent ghosts I couldn't see? Maybe we both had twice as many ghosts as we thought we did! Hah!"

It wasn't easy to drink noodles out of a thermos, but by god he was finding a way. "Did they ever approach you? Interact with you?"

usedhearts

"Hmm..." His head tilted and he took another sip of his soup-- sluuurp there goes a noodle of his own.

"There was one time a woman approached me, and seemed to be trying to ask me something, but she had no voice. I tried to help her and I ran to get a pen and paper, but when I returned she was gone."

dontasktheradiodemon

"Only once? Huh. The rest must have realized you wouldn't be much help to them." Huff. "I wonder if she's one I ever met. Did she look like she might be a relative?"

usedhearts

"Only once that I recall so far, who knows what else my memory will dredge up!" Leal laughed, then tilted his head. "She did look vaguely like Maman, but there were a lot of women in the neighborhood that looked vaguely like Maman, so..." He shrugged.

"Now I'm wondering if I saw any during the war-- one would think that would be a hotspot for hauntings, hm?"

dontasktheradiodemon

"Oh, was it ever! I tried to talk a couple of fellows into spying on Jerry and reporting back! They said they were officially off-duty and they weren't going to fight any German ghosts for me." He laughed. It was the laugh of somebody who had taught himself through deliberate effort to find this funny.

"I had a friend named Joseph who died on the first day of shelling. He stuck it out the week with me before moving on. Now that was a dependable pal."

usedhearts

That caught him off guard, and Leal blinked. "Wait, Joey? Didn't he die on the last day of shelling?"

He was a little shocked that they'd known, possibly, the same man. But they _were_ the same person, he really shouldn't be surprised. "You know, I probably saw tons but never registered it, because anyone covered in blood and staring into a middle distance would've just looked shell shocked to me!"

dontasktheradiodemon

Astor gave him a surprised look. "Joey Landry? Never stopped talking about his fiancée what's-her-name, started with a D? No. First day. At least, in my spin on things." But if Leal knew who he was talking about, Astor doubted it had been different.

"That really was what it was like. I heard so many screams I couldn't locate, I never knew if I was hearing the dying or the dead. Sometimes I had to ask if anyone else heard that scream too, and they'd ask, 'which one?' It's the only time I ever wished I couldn't hear spirits."

usedhearts

Leal snapped his fingers, his brows shooting up as he pointed at Astor. "Yes! That's him, the very one! Joey Landry with the fiancée! Oh, always felt for that poor girl after he died....you SURE it was the first day?"

He stroked his chin as he thought. "I saw him around but he got real quiet after the first day....didn't jabber anymore. I just thought he was shell shocked at the time, not shell _dead_. But then he disappeared."

Leal took a breath and then another sip of his soup. "You know....I think you're right."

dontasktheradiodemon

Astor nodded. Yes, he was sure it was the first day. “He spent the next week grieving for himself. He made me write down a whole list of things he wanted me to do on his behalf. I think I only did three or four of them. He dictated a letter to his girl, I made sure she got that.”

usedhearts

Leal's smile tightened and he looked down, arms crossing over his chest. His thermos floated next to him, as if he never let it go.

"Well, that puts a whole new spin on things. I didn't do anything for him, I didn't even know he was dead until he disappeared at the end of the week. But now I definitely know that I saw ghosts on the front. A lot of them. Maybe I'd repressed some of it before this, but I sure do remember it now."

dontasktheradiodemon

“Well, you didn’t do anything, but on the other hand you didn’t promise him a dozen things and then break three-fourths of your promise, did you?” He laughed ruefully. “Did you repress it or did you just not understand it? Everyone saw hellish things out there, after all—if you don’t have experience with ghosts, how do you sort them out from the rest? I imagine most times they looked better than their corpses.”

usedhearts

"Exactly-- I saw so much horrible shit, how was I to sort through it to find that some of the shit was actually from cows instead of pigs?" That was a messy metaphor, but it had been a messy time.

"I think I'm only able to sort through it now, some hundred years after the fact, because so much time has passed." He took his thermos back from the air and took another drink of soup. That helped, good food always did.

"I think I fired on some German ghosts, too. I remember a couple shots that I _knew_ were dead on, but there wasn't confirmed hits...."

dontasktheradiodemon

He let out a genuine laugh. “Oh! Those fellows were having the worst time out of anyone! Imagine being one of those boys: not only are you on the frontlines, not only are you *dead,* but some stubborn doughboy is *still* shooting at you! Some days you just can’t catch a break!”

usedhearts

Astor's laugh made him laugh too, a surprised noise at first, and then a few more natural noises. "Oh, yes, that would be terrible wouldn't it? They think they're out of it and then ZOOM! There's a bullet whizzing through their ghost-head!"

dontasktheradiodemon

“Just when they start thinking, ‘Well, at least it can’t get any worse’...!”

His laughter slowly petered out. “It’s a pity you didn’t get the nice side of seeing spirits. I’m surprised Ma didn’t raise you with that.”

usedhearts

"Well, it was hardly her fault-- Catholic school does that to a boy." He snorted and shook his head.

"After a year of that, I didn't want to hear anything about _anything_ spiritual. She did teach me things, but I made it clear that I didn't want to hear about that. She, being the loving mother she was, agreed to not talk about it with me." He sighed.

"Nowadays, I wish I had let her."

dontasktheradiodemon

He nodded deeply. “That’s right, I remember you mentioned that. Funny, the big differences little changes can make. Spirits were just a fact of my life long before I started school. Even if I *had* been turned off of religion like you—well, what does religion have to do with the fact that great-grandma sang to me when I couldn’t sleep, or that my father’s kin thought my French sounded funny and old-fashioned because in between visits I practiced with a spirit? To me, the difference between a ghost and the Holy Ghost was as big as the difference between a bite of flesh and a communion wafer. But would that have been the case if I’d only seen them instead of hearing them?” He shrugged.

usedhearts

Leal nodded in turn. "See, I never had that. No one but Maman sang to me, no phantom voices talking French. I had things a child's mind wrote off as 'weird but whatever'. It just goes to show that maybe if I _had_ heard them, I might've trod a path closer to yours."

He sighed, finishing off the last of his soup. The thermos disappeared into a portal as his head cocked.

"I don't think I've shown you the rifle, have I? Not after our...tense chat. Here." He flared a bit of magic, and pushed it into the ring hidden beneath his glove, and-- poof! There it was, a lovely, alien, magic sniper rifle. He held it out to Astor. "Here, hold it, it's got a good weight."

dontasktheradiodemon

Tense chat. His smile wilted slightly. Right. He’d nearly forgotten all about that.

All the same, he accepted the rifle. “Well, now, that’s an interesting contraption, isn’t it?” He hefted it up. “This is one of those ones built to shoot people a mile away, isn’t it?”

usedhearts

Leal noticed that wilt. He made a note of it. "I haven't tried firing it THAT far but it does get good distance! The way you fire is that you charge it up with your magic and then just shoot it out! Makes reloading a hell of a lot easier."

He took a breath. "And, apparently, you _can_ make it non-lethal. I didn't know that at the time, and my magic tends to make the 'bullets' rather explosive. Hence, why I didn't want to fire it at you."

Another breath. "I'm sorry, again, for not being clearer about that. I didn't mean to muck things up, it all just happened so fast. Have you spoken to Alexa about it?"

dontasktheradiodemon

“We’ve talked.” He offered the rifle back. “Magically charged. What do you know, a gun that makes the gunman do all the hard work! Still, interesting concept for a magical focus. And I’m sure you can do some interesting tricks with the ‘bullets’ that way.”

usedhearts

That didn't offer Leal much in the way of _what_ they talked about. "Talked like our talk that happened right after, or a talk like we're talking _now_?" Might as well ask for clarification.

"Yes! I've got the 'explode on contact' thing down, I've been trying to see what else I can do with them." He took the gun back and dismissed it back to the ring.

"I also wanted to apologize if Alexa and I have made you feel...awkward, when around us."

dontasktheradiodemon

“We talked about it the day of.” And Astor didn’t intend to offer Leal much in the way of what they talked about. It wasn’t his business to share if their alternate hadn’t shared it.

His smile thinned further. “Yes, well. Unless being a pest is my goal, I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like my presence is the only thing preventing my current companions from doing whatever it is they’d rather be doing.”

usedhearts

He glanced down, his own smile thinning, his hands folding in his lap. "I know it was never _my_ intent to make you feel like that. And I doubt it was Alexa's either."

Leal took another deep breath. "I like having you around, I like being around you, you're my friend, and Alexa and I should have thought about that before....thermoregulating around you like we do. We're an odd bunch, us Alastors, but I think _that's_ probably a little odd to see, even from us." He laughed humorlessly.

dontasktheradiodemon

A long, slow blink. “‘Thermoregulating’?” Let’s just get that out of the way first.

usedhearts

Oh. Yes, there was that. He hadn't explained it yet, had he?

"I run hot, Alexa is always cold. When we....." God, he didn't want to say the word. "_Cuddle_, it evens us both out. It's nice."

dontasktheradiodemon

Another, slower blink. “And... short sleeves and long johns weren’t solutions you thought to explore first?”

usedhearts

At that, Leal rolled his eyes. "Why do you think I toss off my coat at the drop of a hat? It's not just that, it's...." He huffed a bit.

"You know that feeling, when someone touches you and your skin wants to jump ship? With Alexa, there is no _that_ feeling, at all. It's just....it's nice." And he crossed his arms again. Don't mind that blush dusting his cheeks, he's not embarrassed at all.

dontasktheradiodemon

“So, the ‘thermoregulating’ bit is a convenient excuse to cuddle without openly admitting that you want to cuddle.” He spread his hands and shrugged. “It’s actually very obvious that what you’re doing is cuddling. There’s... I’m afraid there’s really no ambiguity.”

usedhearts

"It's more an excuse for cuddling and the reason we started cuddling in the first place. But that's what we're calling it, our Thing, thermoregulating."

He took a breath. "We've both agreed to stop doing it around others, though. It was--" He gave a brief nod toward Astor. "Making things awkward and neither of us want that. So next time all of us are in a room together, me and he will be on our best behavior, I swear." He held up his hand, the other over his heart.

dontasktheradiodemon

Their *Thing.* Astor nodded. “Well, I’d hate to impose on your Thing! Particularly if this means that you’ll be spending dinner parties wishing you were somewhere else where you felt free to cuddle?”

usedhearts

"No, it's not--" Leal took a breath again. "You're not imposing on us, Alastor. Both of us _like_ spending time with you. We just....got preoccupied. It's our fault, not yours."

dontasktheradiodemon

A nod. “All right.” Like he doesn’t quite buy it. “Whatever you two feel is appropriate.”

usedhearts

Leal stated at him, eyes narrowed just a tad.

"Are we...okay? Do you want to, I don't know, share your feelings, or anything?"

dontasktheradiodemon

His brows knit. “*Share* my *feelings*—? Who in the world have you been talking to?” That was some therapist shit right there. “You’re still invited to the holiday potlucks, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

usedhearts

Oh look at that, the blush is getting worse, his smile twitching.

"Good, good. I'm going to still send you fresh seafood and bug you, too, you know. We're still _friends_."

dontasktheradiodemon

Astor studied his alternate’s face critically. What *was* all this?

He’d always taken it as an unspoken given amongst alternates that getting cagey meant *back off.* They were entertainers, not journalists. If an interviewee balks at a question, a good talk show host redirects the conversation to something more free-flowing that the audience can enjoy; he doesn’t prod deeper and drag out more tight-lipped answers while the audience loses interest. A half-assed answer *is* an answer: it says *change course.*

And any alternate of Alastor’s ought to know that. So why was Leal pushing about Astor’s *feelings*?

Neutrally, he asked, “Would you like to share *yours*?”

usedhearts

Leal's brow furrowed-- he hadn't been expecting that. Share _his_ feelings? There was nothing in the world he wanted to do _less_. He just wanted to be sure that things were alright between him and Astor-- maybe Val was rubbing off on him.

"Not particularly, no," He said, giving a wry chuckle.

"I just...want you to be reassured that you don't have to--" He shrugged. "-- sit out or anything when I invite others into shenanigans. I'll be sure to be clearer about things in the future."

dontasktheradiodemon

He gave Leal a meaningful look—yeah, well, there you go, nobody wants to talk about their feelings.

"Duly noted." Noted and discarded. He couldn't imagine attempting that again.

usedhearts

"Good." He took a breath and stood, his chair disappearing.

"Then I think I'll be on my way. If I remember more ghost encounters I'll be sure to let you know."

dontasktheradiodemon

"Do! I'd be interested to hear more about your experiences." Finally back to a safe topic—but he feared the damage was done.

"Oh! Do you want your—?" Alastor held out the thermos he'd been drinking. About a quarter of the soup was left.

usedhearts

Leal held up his hand, shaking his head. "Oh no! You keep that, it's fine."

Leal gave a little nod. "So long, Alastor! Until next time!" And he melded back into the shadows whence he came.

dontasktheradiodemon

"And to you, Alastor." He tipped his thermos to Leal.

And then he was alone. He sighed and sipped at his soup. He had the sinking feeling that could have gone better.

[knifeonmars]

Capsule Reviews, February 2021

Here's some things I've been reading.

The Curse of Brimstone 

DC's New Age of Heroes books, emerging from the beginning of Scott Snyder's creative-flameout-as-crossover-event Metal, mostly constituted riffs on Marvel heroes like the Fantastic Four (in The Terrifics) or the Hulk (in Damage). The Curse of Brimstone is a riff on Ghost Rider. It's... uneven. The first volume is generally pretty good, and when Phillip Tan is drawing it, as he does the first three and a half issues, it's gorgeous and unique, when he departs though, the quality takes a nose dive. None of the replacement artists, including the great Denis Cowan, can quite fill his shoes, and the story gets old fast. Guy makes a deal with the devil (or rather, a devil-like inhabitant of the "Dark Multiverse" as a not horribly handled tie-in to the conceits of Metal), realizes it's a raw deal, and rebels. The characters are flat, lots of time is spent with the main character's sister haranguing him to not use his powers (it is, in my humble opinion, something of a cardinal sin to have a character whose primary role is telling other characters to stop doing interesting things), too many potboiler "I know you're still in there!/I can feel this power consuming me!" exchanges, a couple of underwhelming guest spots (including a genuinely pointless appearance by the old, white, boring Doctor Fate) too many flashbacks, and not enough of the action. There's potential in the classic demonic hero rebelling plotline and its link to the liminal spaces of the DC universe, forgotten towns and economic depression, but the wheels come off this series pretty much as soon as Tan leaves. The really disappointing this is that the series is clearly built as an artistic showcase, so after Tan's shockingly early departure, the main appeal of the series is gone and there's nothing left but the playing out of an obviously threadbare story.

Star Wars - Boba Fett: Death, Lies, and Treachery

I don't care much about Star Wars these days, and I think that most of the old Expanded Universe was, as evidenced by Crimson Empire, pretty bad. Death, Lies, and Treachery, is that rare Star Wars EU comic which is actually good. John Wagner writes and he's in full-on 2000 AD mode, writing Boba Fett as a slightly more unpleasant Johnny Alpha (who is like a mercenary Judge Dredd, for those unfamiliar) right on down to the appearance of a funny alien sidekick for one of the characters. The main attraction is Cam Kennedy's art though, along with his inimitable colors: this might be the best looking Star Wars comic ever. The designs are all weird and chunky, with an almost kitbashed feeling that captures the lived in aesthetic of classic Star Wars, and the colors are one of a kind. Natural, neutral white light does not exist in this comic, everything is always bathed at all times in lurid greens or yellows, occasionally reds, and it looks incredible. In terms of "Expanded Universe" material for Star Wars, this hits the sweet spot of looking and feeling of a piece, but exploring the edges of the concept with a unique voice. It's great. I read this digitally, but I'd consider it a must-buy in print if I ever get the chance at a deal.

Zaroff

Zaroff is a French comic (novel? novella?). It's like 90 pages and it delivers exactly on its premise of "Die Hard starring the bad guy from The Most Dangerous Game." It's pretty good. Count Zaroff, he of the habitual hunting of humans, turns out to have killed a mafia don at some point, and after miraculously escaping his own seeming death at the end of the original story, finds himself hunted by the irate associates of this gangster, who have brought along Zaroff's sister and her kids to spice things up. Zaroff not only finds himself the hunt, but he also has to protect his estranged family as they struggle to survive. Nothing about this book or its twists and turns is likely to surprise you, but I don't think being surprised is always necessary for quality. Zaroff delivers on pulpy, early-20th century jungle action, is gorgeously rendered, and the fact that Zaroff himself is an unrepentant villain adds just enough of an unexpected element to the proceedings and character dynamics that it doesn't feel rote. There's a couple of points, ones typical of Eurocomics, which spark a slight sour note, such as some "period appropriate" racism and flashes of the male gaze, but for the most part these are relatively contained. It's good.

Batman: Gothic

Long before Grant Morrison did their Bat-epic, they wrote Batman: Gothic, an entirely different, but then again maybe not so different, kind of thing. It starts off with what must be called a riff on Fritz Lang's film, M, only where that story ends with a crew of gangsters deciding they cannot pass moral judgment on a deranged child-murderer, in Morrison's story they go ahead and kill him, only for the killer to return years later to rather horribly murder all of them as a warmup for a grandiose scheme involving unleashing a weaponized form of the bubonic plague on Gotham City as an offering to Satan. Along the way it turns out that said villain, one Mr. Whisper, is a former schoolmaster of Bruce Wayne's, who terrified the young Batman in the days before his parent's deaths. It's an earlier Morrison story and it shows. Certain elements presage their later Batman work; Mr. Whisper as a satanic enemy recalls the later Doctor Hurt, and the cathedral Mr. Whisper built to harvest souls recalls what writers like Morrison, Milligan, and Snyder would do concerning Gotham as a whole years later.The art, by Klaus Janson, is spectacular. If you're familiar at all with his work collaborating with Frank Miller you'll see him continuing in a similar vein and it's all quite good, even when he stretches beyond the street milieu which most readers might know him from. There's one particular sequence where Janson renders a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine in motion that manages to work despite being static images. The writing by Morrison though, is not their finest. The M riff doesn't last as long as it could, and Mr. Whisper's turn in the latter half of the story from delicious creepy wraith to a cackling mass murderer who puts Batman in an easily escaped death trap feels like something of a letdown from the promise of the first half of the book. Gothic is good, but not, in my opinion, great. It's certainly worth checking out for Morrison fans however, and I imagine that someone well-versed in his latter Batman stuff might be able to find some real resonance between the two.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters

For a long, long time, Longbow Hunters was THE Green Arrow story. It is to Green Arrow as TDKR is to Batman, deliberately so. Mike Grell wrote and drew the reinvention of the character from his role as the Justice League's resident limousine liberal to a gritty urban vigilante operating in Seattle over the course of these three issues, which he'd follow up with a subsequent ongoing. Going back to it, it certainly merits its reputation, but its far from timeless. Grell's art is unimpeachable absolutely incredible, with great splashes and spreads, subtle colors, and really great figure work. The narrative is almost so 80's it hurts though, revolving around West Coast serial killers, cocaine, the CIA and the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Yakuza, and it's hard to look back at some of this stuff without smirking. The story begins with a teenager strung out on tainted coke sprinting through a window in a scene that's right out of Reefer Madness. In the cold light of a day 30+ years later, parts of it look more than a little silly. The 80's-ness of it all doesn't stop with that stuff though, even the superhero elements smack of it. Green Arrow realizes that he's lost a step and has be to be shown a way forward by an Asian woman skilled in the martial arts (recalling Vic Sage's reinvention in the pages of The Question), and Black Canary gets captured and torture off-panel for the sake of showing that this is real crime now, not the superhero silliness they've dealt with before. The treatment of Black Canary here is pretty markedly heinous, it's a classic fridging and Grell's claims that he didn't intentionally imply sexual assault in his depiction of her torture is probably true, but still feels more than a little weak considering how he chose to render it.The final analysis is that this book is good, but it exists strictly in the frame of the 1980's. If you're a fan of Green Arrow, there are worse books to pick up, or if you're interested in that era of DC Comics it's more than worth it, but as a matter of general interest I wouldn't recommend it very highly.

SHIELD by Steranko

Jim Steranko is sort of the prodigy of the early Marvel years, a young guy who came up through the system, blossomed into an incredible talent, and then left the company, and by and large the industry, behind. He would go on to dabble in publishing, work in other mediums, and generally kick around as the prodigal son of Marvel Comics. This collection, of both his Nick Fury shorts in the pages of Strange Tales and the four issues he drew of the original Nick Fury solo series, charts Steranko's growth as an artist. The book starts off with Steranko working from Jack Kirby's layouts with Stan Lee's dialogue and writing, and Steranko might be the one guy in history for whom working off of Kirby's blueprints is clearly holding him back. The first third or so of this collection really isn't much to write home about, as Steranko is obviously constrained by someone else's style, and at the end of the day those early stories still read as somewhat uninspired pulp compared to the highlights of early Marvel. There are flashes though, of techniques and ideas, which foreshadow what Steranko is capable of, and when he finally takes over as solo writer/artist it's like he's been unleashed. He immediately has Nick Fury tear off his shirt and start throwing guys around over psychedelic effects. He writes out most of Kirby and Lee's frankly uninspired boys' club supporting cast, he makes Fury visibly older, wearier, but also so much cooler. It's the birth of Nick Fury as a distinctly comic book super spy.By the time he finishes wrapping up the previous writers' plotline with Hydra and Baron von Strucker, Steranko is firing on all cylinders. By the time it gets to Steranko's Fury solo series, he's somehow surpassed himself, turning in effects, panel structures, and weird stories which make the earlier installment about a suit-wearing Man from UNCLE knockoff and its strict six-panel layouts look absolutely fossilized.I can't recommend this collection highly enough for any fan of the artform, even if the stories themselves might not be everyone's cup of tear. It's truly incredible to watch Steranko emerge as an artist over the course of this single collection. The book itself has a few problems, it's not the most elegantly designed in its supporting materials and index, but the content of it more than outweighs that. It's great stuff.

[theastrophilearchitect]

March TBR/W.

Every book, audiobook, tv show and movie I want to consume in March 2021.

-Hence ‘TBR/W’ - to-be-read/watched.

I’m not usually a fan of pre-planning my media for the month - I plan out all my media obsessively, but doing it by month seems a little too much like setting deadlines for my taste, and I’m sure I’ll somehow manage to turn watching tv into a chore. Regardless, it’s worth a shot, so this is going to be a rough guide - I’m going to pick four of each category, one per week, because I’d rather underestimate and surpass than overestimate and have to defer things to the next month. So let’s go.

Books

1. Skyward and 2. Starsight by Brandon Sanderson

Skyward is set in a future where the human race is on the verge of extinction, trapped on a planet constantly attacked by alien warriors. Spensa, a teenage girl stuck on the planet, wants to be a pilot, but it seems far-off. Then, she finds the wreckage of a ship that appears to have a soul, and she must figure out how to repair it, and persuade it to help her navigate flight school.

In truth, I mainly want to read this because of how highly it’s been praised by Hailey in Bookland on YouTube. I actually tried reading Sanderson’s Mistborn series a couple years ago, and just didn’t click with it. I love fantasy, but I can pretty confidently say epic fantasy just isn’t for me. However, Sanderson’s work is adored by many, and Skyward and its sequel Starsight appeal so much more to me, and I can’t wait to get to them.

3. House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas

This is Maas’s first technically-adult book; Throne of Glass is young adult, ACOTAR being classed either as young or new adult. I’ve been a fan of Maas for a long time, and, though I enjoy her books less now than I have in the past due to how seriously they tend to take themselves, I’d still love to read this one. Where her previous series were both fantasies, this sits somewhere between that and a sci-fi, but I can’t say as-of-yet what I think, because I haven’t read it yet.

Bryce Quinlan finds herself investigating her friends’ deaths in an attempt to avenge them after they were taken from her by a demon. Hunt Athalar is a Fallen angel, enslaved by Archangels, forced to assassinate their enemies, when he’s offered a deal to assist Bryce in exchange for his freedom.

4. Scythe by Neal Shusterman

I listened to this as an audiobook in 2019 as part of BookTuber Book Roast’s Magical Readathon, and didn’t hugely get along with it in truth. The audiobook was excellent as an audiobook, but the story Ian’s I just didn’t really vibe. I think I just want to like this book, so I think it’s worth a reread to see if my opinion changes.

This follows Citra and Rowan, a reluctant pair of apprentice Scythes - in a utopian future where humanity has the means to live forever, it is the job of the Scythes to control the population by essentially reaping the souls of those they choose to die. Neither Citra or Rowan want it, but I don’t remember enough about this book to say any more.

Audiobooks

1. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

This is the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy, and you either already know what this series is about, or you’ve been living under a rock for the last thirteen years. I read this book for the first time nearly seven years ago, and it’s stuck with me. It sent me into a phase of only reading dystopian books (The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken was part of this, and was the series that really got me into reading), but this was the main one that stuck with me. 

It contains a powerful message about capitalism and discrimination, and this is the second time I’ve listened to the audiobooks, though the god-only-knows-what time I’ve read the series. I listened to The Hunger Games and Catching Fire in February, which automatically puts this on my to-listen for March.

2. Ghosts of the Shadow Market by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Kelly Link and Robin Wasserman

This is a novella bind-up set in the Shadowhunters world, that I would imagine has quite a bit to do with the Shadow Market, an aspect of the Downworld introduced in The Dark Artifices, which I finished in January.

In truth, I’m mainly planning to listen to this audiobook because it’s the only Shadowhunters novella bind-up with an audiobook, and I’d just rather read additions to the main Shadowhunters series in this format rather than physically.

3. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

This is a Hunger Games prequel that was released early last year, and I just wasn’t going to read it. I heard several reviews, the general consensus of which was basically that it’s not as good as the trilogy and is somewhat unnecessary, but, in truth, my curiosity’s got the better of me, especially since I started listening to the trilogy’s audiobooks again.

This prequel follows Coriolanus Snow as a mentor in the Games before he became President of Panem and the wonderful villain of the original trilogy.

4. Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

I mentioned this in my physical TBR post a couple weeks ago, but have decided to listen to the audiobook instead. A few weeks ago, I’d started to run out of audiobooks I wanted to listen to, and didn’t want to read anything on my regular TBR in this format, including this book. But, I went through a load of audiobook recommendations, and this was one of them, so it joined my to-listen.

I’m not hugely into contemporary books, but I’ve wanted to get more into the genre for a while, and this was the first one to join my TBR.

This novel follows Eliza Mirk, your typical high school outcast, who publishes a hugely popular web comic under the pseudonym LadyConstellation. Then Wallace Warland, the biggest fanfic writer of her comic transfers to her school and begins to draw her out of her shell.

TV Shows

Before I go into my list, I’d like to mention that I am currently watching WandaVision and am definitely planning to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+, but both come out on a weekly basis, so aren’t being included on this list. Also, I’ve been watching way too much YouTube recently, so I’m not sure I’ll get through all of these this month, especially since I’m watching the Arrowverse shows, which have such long seasons.

1. Love, Victor Season 1

This Love, Simon spin-off follows a character named Victor at Creekwood (I think that’s the name?) High School. I saw Love, Simon twice in cinemas when it was released, and, miraculously, it made me cry. I love that movie.

This series was released last year on Hulu, which is only available in the US, but as of February 23rd, it’s one of the shows that came to Disney+ as part of Star.

2. The Flash Season 1

As mentioned, I’ve started watching the DC Arrowverse shows. I watch tv shows through alternating seasons - as in, I watch season 1 of show A, then season 1 of show B, then 2 of A, etc., then when I finish one, I start watching show C - but I’m treating the Arrowverse as one show (even though it isn’t) so it’s not the only thing I’m watching. So this is technically Arrowverse S3, preceded by Arrow S1+2 (though I haven’t actually started S2 as of writing this because of how much YouTube I’ve been watching, so I’ll be finishing that first).

I genuinely don’t know that much about most DC superheroes, Flash included, but I’m going into this having been assured it takes itself less goddamn seriously than Arrow. It’s my sister’s favourite Arrowverse show, and I can’t wait.

3. Dare Me Season 1

I added this Netflix show to my watchlist when it came out, and my basic understanding is that it focuses on the cheerleaders at a high school, and begins when a new coach arrives. It focuses on the psychological damage behind competitive cheerleading, and I’m not convinced I’m going to love it, but I think it’s worth a shot.

4. Arrow Season 3

I’m so confused by this poster. This is specifically the season 3 poster, and I’m so confused, but I’m sure it’ll make more sense when I watch the season.

I explained the weird way I’m watching Arrowverse (named as such because Arrow was the first show in it) already, but Arrow follows Oliver Queen, the son of one of the billionaires of Starling City upon his return after being stuck for five years on an island when a cruise ship carrying him and his father sunk. His father left him with a list of names of the people ‘corrupting’ the city, and Oliver takes it upon himself to assume a vigilante identity and take them down.

Movies

I’m not a huge movie-watcher, but I end up compiling so many to watch that, to ensure I get round to them, I watch a movie every time I finish a tv show season. I’m also currently re-watching the MCU movies in chronological order.

1. Instant Family

This is just something that came onto Netflix recently and I thought might be entertaining, and so it joined my list.

This follows a couple who decide to adopt a teenager, only to find out she has two more siblings.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 

This is just a continuation of my MCU re-watch - I love this movie. I love Guardians of the Galaxy, full stop (on another note, I just generally don’t understand why British people call it a full stop and Americans call it a period. Neither name makes particular sense). 

3. Avengers: Age of Ultron

And here we have another continuation of my MCU rewatch. I honestly think this is my favourite Avengers movie, because the whole teams actually together, and Wanda, Scarlet Witch, is introduced - I love her. I really didn’t like Vision until WandaVision came out, though.

4. Behind The Try: A Try Guys Documentary

Not technically a movie, but still. (Are documentaries movies? I tend to think of them as separate categories, but I guess they’re both movies. Hm.) I’ve been watching the Try Guys for years, which means I need to convince my sister to give me her Google password so I don’t have to pay for this.

I’m probably not going to stick to this list, and even if I do, I’m either going to also consume things not on it, or just not finish it. But, you’ll have to wait for my March wrap-up to find out.

[crimsoncarcass]

Hello I logged in on 1/11/2021 by accident but here are some feelings

This is not the blog I wanted to find. This is not the one I thought I’d log into. This is not the account I hoped to remember or to write in, but my thoughts are important, my feelings are important, and recently pain soars through so much of my mind that I forget and shut down. It’s like everything leaves me, my mind, in a wisp of the wind, and the numb feeling of all those emotions of pain, hate, is all that is left with the tear thaat welled up in my eyes, that couldn’t drop for some reason. Why is it? That ever since Kuro left, I’ve stopped something inside that could still change and grow? What is it that I fucked up in myself to have a fake girlfriend, a fake romance, and fake emotions? I am lying to myself, I know, but about what? I can’t even tell. There’s nothing here for me at the age 24. There is nothing here in this whole world because I have hid myself from everyone, even myself, to the point that maybe there’s no way to open up again. To me, I have always separated, segregated, and kept them away; those people that cared and the friends and people who actually reached my heart-- even those people, are something that I try to erase from my heart every day. I try my best to open up physically, to be more present, to be more honest and to be genuine and myself, and yet, every few days when my repressed emotions surface, I find myself deleting myself, deleting the memories, deleting people, and in one way or another, distancing myself. 

Even when I look back on the good memories, I smile at it like a parent to a child, somewhere inside me, it says “We all grow up and leave some day”, and there’s a warmth behind all those words, but it sounds so cold. It sounds so cold to my soul that the tears that well up, sometimes drop down my cheek. Sometimes it makes me scream into my pillow because I can feel my skin, my extra fat on my chin wrinkle up and my nose scrunch up, and I don’t want to imagine what I look like. Sometimes I can let my voice out if I unwire all the way, sometimes, actually most of the time, I am silenced. Muted. 

Yes, that’s how I cry. Why do I write this? I don’t even know, maybe I think someone will read it one day. Maybe I think the pain I hold inside will be noticed one day, and even understood. Maybe I think someone who knows a similar pain will approach me one day -- and I won’t be so alone. Maybe I will find someone I can relate my trauma to, my despair with, someone I can truly connect with like Sophia was. Maybe all I’m looking for is a way to ask for help, someone to show up and prove that surviving was worth it, that the suffering I went through in life was something I wouldn’t regret or cry about. Maybe one day I will wake up in that dream I had in my happiest moments... Do you want to hear the dream I had? I had it one random night I stayed on call with Kuro. We slept on phone calls all the time, it made me feel safe, it made me feel like someone was actually paying attention to me, even when they weren’t. I didn’t feel abandoned, and I never thought he’d abandon me, and it was the best time of my life. Sometimes, he would be so exhausted, but we always laughed, whether it be the bad Vietnamese I practiced to tell him “Good Night” or “Thank you”, or just a random thought. I have seen happiness, and perhaps I should be blessed enough from that.

In the dream, I’m sitting on some random window with my violin in my hand. Whether or not there is an actual seat is unknown, but whether it be comfortable or uncomfortable. I looked hella cool. I had no trauma playing my violin, it was like I practiced 8 hours a day again, but from my own will. And I was doodling my own composition, I was spaced out and unfocused but i was inspired. There’s a kettle blowing in the back of the house, the kitchen, and I hear a female voice yelling in the background. It’s almost exactly like my mother, perhaps it was her too, but before my mom, out of the hallway comes another, a better and more familiar voice-- Kuro’s voice. “GIN OH MY GODD” is all I could make out of the yelling and the distant kettle stops its high pitched drone. I stop playing and turn around and yell “IM SORRY” and despite a happy undertone, I feel my face holding an “oops” expression on my face. My mom comes out from the hallway too with her high pitched yelling, she’s always like this but her voice along with Kuro’s scolds me and somehow, it’s all good. I feel a warmth in the way they scold me and at this point the dream is so fuzzy I don’t know if I had any visuals, but I remember the bright white screen in my head, and the simple warmth and relief in my chest that tomorrow will be an okay day. It was so nice, it was the best dream I’ve ever had in my life. If I died, I’d want to live in that moment forever. Even if I don’t die, I want to feel like that once in real life.  I don’t know what I felt. I don’t know if it was love. I don’t know if it was affection. I don’t know if what I felt was acceptance. I don’t know if it felt so good because I left all my trauma and depression behind, maybe I got over my exes in that moment. Maybe I --- I told Kuro so many things, near the end I had so many delusional dates I wanted to do, I told him everything I wanted to do with him...and yet, I was probably the one who broke his heart.  I wish you could tell me. What do I do now? What should I do? I know what you said, you told me to take care of myself, you told me to put myself first and to make myself happy. You told me to do all of these things and I’ve been working, working so hard. I have been doing everything you told me to, I promise. I just haven’t gotten to the brushing your teeth thing yet, I can’t do it yet, and sometimes I even think that you don’t come back because I can’t even brush my teeth by myself every night yet. But I don’t because what if ...what if I do get myself together, and you still don’t come back? How will I ever get better if I lose hope? I know you don’t want me to coin you as my life’s hope, I know you probably hated it and it weighed you down so much that when everything broke, you quickly found a way out-- and I respect everything you’ve done and do, I don’t think you’ve done a single thing wrong and even if it hurts, I know you must be in a better place by now, because that’s how you are. You never go anywhere that isn’t better. But with you gone, I can do anything I want with you in my memories can’t I, even if that means turning you into some miracle, some deity in my book that I can obsess over?  Kuro I’m not better. I’m not sure if I’m getting better at all. Sometimes I feel like my life is coming together, and then I remember it’s all going to fall apart, and it hurts and hurts so I shut it away like you did, because negating your feelings was what you were good at, and I couldn’t understand until recently I met Jessi, and she has taught me how to do it and even enjoy the process. I wish you can come and stop it, because right now you have such power over me that if you said one word I’d do anything to obey your wise words. Please, just please. I wish you’d let me forget to wait for you. I wish you reply one day, I wish one day I forget all of this. I don’t even know how anymore. I don’t know what to do with your memories Kuro. I can’t change maybe. Maybe this is really where I end at age 26. Did you know? The zodiac readings from the japanese blogs and professional fortune tellers all say that 26 for my year, is actually a Huge bad luck Year? I really think it might work. I really think that this will happen. But atleast I had you once. I fucked up Kuro. I get it now. After so much remorse and overthinking, I stopped thinking in details anymore. So now the answer is simply, I fucked the fuck up. And this is it. I’m going to die at age 26. And so far, everything is confirmed and it seems no one can really stop me anymore. I keep waiting for a sign, a message, a symbol, or an experience, that can keep me alive and going, to not kill myself at 26. But I think...so far, its not going so well.  The only person I feel sorry, and truly truly sorry for, is Vally. I don’t know how much time I have left, but I know for sure, that the time provided between Vally and I, were probably meant to be longer-- but I’m not sure if I can make it through my 26th year. I’m planning to do a phone call this weekend with her. I don’t know what I’m going to tell her, everything is such bad thoughts and bad endings, I don’t know what to say. I dont want to tell her anything that isn’t confirmed yet, but maybe its better for her to hear it early? But who can really tell her, a true companion, a true trauma-bonded victim, a true compassionate ally of yours, the most trustable person in the world, even more than Kuro at times,... that so far, it’s about 87% confirmed that I will kill myself in 2 years?

[reconditarmonia]

Dear Chocolate Box 2021 Author

Hi! Thank you for writing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3. I have anon messaging off, but mods can contact me with any questions.

Elsinore | Fullmetal Alchemist | The Locked Tomb | Motherland: Fort Salem | Simoun

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships; unrequested trans versions of characters.

Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity.

Requesting fic; open to art treats!

—

Fandom: Elsinore

Relationship(s): Hamlet & Ophelia; Hamlet & Horatio & Ophelia; Bernardo & Hamlet & Laertes & Ophelia

I found the friendships in this game, and the different ways that characters can reconcile or try to find a way forward together, to be really sweet and moving, and I'd love to read something that focused on those relationships of trust and support. I like how important Ophelia and Horatio's counsel and friendship is in timelines where Hamlet becomes king; I like Hamlet regretting how he behaved towards Ophelia and striving to live through his depression and find out what it is that he wants, not what everyone else wants of him; I like seeing childhood friends Bernardo and Laertes and Ophelia and Hamlet, whose growing-up has stretched them so far apart, taking time to catch up and enjoy each other's company a little.

So, futurefic in one of the timelines where everything doesn't go to shit? A timeline that we don't see? (There is something narratively interesting to me in Permanence/Passion in that the entire plot of Hamlet ends up as a distant backstory to someone's full life; I don't know how compatible that idea is with these requests, but if you want to write any of these groups fucking off to Italy or Constantinople or London and living until the Elsinore pressure-cooker is a distant memory, I'd be just as happy with that as with fic about them building some kind of future together still in Denmark, trying to make it better for its people and to hold on to who they are as individuals, and friends, beyond their roles.) If you want to write Hamlet/Ophelia, Hamlet/Horatio, or for that matter Horatio/Bernardo as shippy, I'm fine with that, but I don't want a focus on the romantic aspects of their relationship.

Fandom-Specific DNW: death of requested characters within the timeline being explored, or focus on death of requested characters. These characters die in this game a lot and I don't need you to pretend entirely that it's not a time loop game, but I would like them to be happy. If you write the Bernardo & Hamlet & Laertes & Ophelia request, I'm fine with either or both names/pronouns for Bernardo|Katherine, but I don't want to read a story focused on their gender or coming-out. Please don't include Peter Quince as a character (you do not need to retcon, you know, the existence of the time loop).

—

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

Relationship(s): Maria Ross/Olivier Mira Armstrong

I'll admit: I am a shallow, shallow person who loves the heartwarming and id-satisfying Briggs loyalty-kink complex (The watch! Buccaneer handing Olivier a clean pair of gloves after she kills Raven! Constant and deeply sincere saluting! Olivier’s explanation of why she wants Miles around and her lack of patience for anyone’s shit) but would like an f/f manifestation of it for actual shipping. Post-canon or AU where Maria is assigned to Briggs, or works for Olivier in Central? Does Maria foil a plot against Olivier, or Olivier save Maria's life in battle? Does Olivier order Maria into a firefight? Hit me.

Fandom-Specific DNW: Olivier/men, even mentioned.

—

Fandom: The Locked Tomb

Relationship(s): Abigail Pent & Dulcinea Septimus; Gideon the First & Matthias Nonius

Dulcie and Nonius were two of my favorite additions to the cast in Harrow the Ninth (and Dulcie in "Doctor Sex" via letter). I loved everything we learned about Dulcie - her wit, her quick thinking in a pinch when confronted by Cytherea and her secret to Harrow. I found her "The only thing preventing me from being exactly who I wanted..." speech both genuinely moving and very funny, and I love her thirst for revenge. What else might she and Abigail Pent, "independent research? it isn't even my birthday!" daredevil spirit-talker par excellence who has just conjured up a ghost out of an epic poem, get up to after Harrow's bubble collapses? Or what were they up to when they weren't on screen in Harrow's dream, putting together this whole, well, play?

Nonius's arrival, entire scene, and departure to fight the Beast made me very, very happy on levels I have trouble explaining. It was so heartwarming?! Because it was impossible, and because poetry won, and because they went off to do the best they could...I don't know, exactly. I'd love to read either more about his mysterious past with Gideon the First, or about their second encounter as allies (throw in Marta, Ortus and Pro if you like as well!)

Fandom-Specific Exception: to my unrequested ships DNW, Dulcie/Cam & Dulcie/Pal. I love their three strand thing.

—

Fandom: Motherland: Fort Salem

Relationship(s): Abigail Bellweather/Raelle Collar

I fell hard for this show and Abigail/Raelle is the ship I’m most excited about - they get off to a bad start for all kinds of personal history reasons and have problems with each other, but when it gets down to the wire Abigail would do anything for Raelle and is very gung-ho about having Raelle’s unconventional but extremely powerful magic under her leadership, regardless of Raelle being a loose cannon. She told her she loved her!! <3 And by the end, Raelle also clearly knows what Abigail's going through (like when she talks her down in "Citydrop"), respects her leadership, and cares deeply about her and wants to protect her in return. I love that loyalty dynamic, and their competence as fighters/witches.

Physical combat, strength in general, magical strength, ability to work magic together, knowledge of the magical canon vs. out-of-the-box techniques...what parts of their skills and their bond could be challenged in the weird dimension that the end of season 1 leaves them in? Or when they get back home and new challenges await? (In my head, the decision not to send them to War College is not revoked; the unit becomes some kind of special-forces secret strike team rather than cannon fodder.) Maybe something where Raelle goes/has gone into a fight as a berserker-type for Abigail and then comes back to her, or where Abigail protects/has protected her soldier (her girl!! I love her protectiveness of Raelle towards the other cadets, imagine it in a battle!)? Or an arranged marriage AU where it's usual for witch soldiers to marry to combine their magic power or something...

I would also be up for smut for them, especially something d/s-y where the loyalty-kinky dynamic of Raelle being Abigail's weapon, at her command, is echoed in sex!

Fandom-Specific DNW: sex solely for magical purposes without an emotional connection (sex for magical purposes is fine), focus on Raylla (I don't need you to retcon it, but please don't dwell either on Raelle still having feelings for Scylla or on her getting over Scylla for Abigail), Scylla bashing, Abigail/Adil (I would prefer to imagine, if he is mentioned in the fic, that they’re just friends).

—

Fandom: Simoun

Relationship(s): Aer/Neviril; Aer/Neviril & Neviril/Paraietta; Aer/Neviril/Paraietta; Aer & Floef & Neviril & Paraietta & Rodoreamon & Vyuraf

Aer, and Aer/Neviril, really grew on me on my recent rewatch. I appreciated her more as the determined bit-of-a-loose-cannon, who grows into a respected role in the choir, than the manic pixie this time, and noted Neviril's comments about how she was drawn to Aer's determination. (I've written a lot more about what I love and am interested in about Neviril and the show in general, her journey of figuring out what it means to her exactly to lead an air force, here.) I'd love to know what happens to them post-canon - what is the "new world" and their travel in it like? It's an escape for them, sure, but what are they escaping to, not just from? Are there problems there, too?

I'd also be up for a poly situation where Neviril is involved with both Aer and Paraietta, her long-loyal second-in-command whom she's blessed and forgiven, as a V where they're friends or as a triangle where Aer and Paraietta are also involved (I don't quite know what that leg of the triangle would look like but I do like how they work together in battle even when they're shown as having personal issues.)

If Neviril and Aer make it back to the main world when war is brewing again, as at the end of the series, but their old cohort can't fly anymore, what do they see their role as being? Does Neviril see herself as a leader for peace, for war, for something else? How do they interact with their former squadmates, whether as part of a more plotty piece or not?

I could be interested in explicit fic for this canon, as an option - the series is, on some level, about the contrast between the reality and physicality of their bodies and the general perception of what they do (which even in its non-spiritual military capacity is removed from a connection to their bodies via the Simoun aircraft), about becoming an adult, and of course about gender.

Fandom-Specific DNW: I'm not really interested in Kaim and Alty and would prefer for them not to appear or for their backstory to come up. I would also not like to see pre-timeskip Dominuura/Limone.

[brokenhayatim]

the projectionist

[now playing: the projectionist & north by sleeping at last]

this has been a long time coming but i couldn’t put my words to paper screen.

when hands are tied and clocks are ticking an audience convinced: we’re leaning in  holding our breath again

i can’t wait to go back to my place. i used to say that a lot, not out of spite or rudeness but because i genuinely couldn’t wait to be back to my own calm. its hit me now how i’ll no longer have that. and i wish i could feel finally sad or even say i’m still overwhelmed and confused, but it’s this sense of somber longing i guess. longing to keep something so good and somber at the reality that i just..won’t have that soon. i began calling this place home years ago and not because of the state (please, i would’ve anywhere but this state if not for the people i’ve met here) but because it’s my home. i more than just studied here, i built a fresh start, a life here. and i feel like i won’t have that again. is this what people feel like when they move out of their home of like 14 years that they raised 4 children and adopted 3 dogs in. it’s more tough than i thought, you know. every lease i’ve signed (shaking bc commitment may i add) i’ve always know i would be here the next, even though not in the same place and living with the same people, i’d still be here. i get emotional and nostalgic thinking of my former places every time i move, and i still think back to my first. i remember moments so vividly and what the apartment looked like from every square inch. but this is different. i moved an entire state away, essentially to be alone, and i love it. i love that i don’t depend on people for the simple things and less for the difficult things. i love that i have a routine. i like that i come home and i’m alone (roommates, i know, but it’s different). i go to the grocery store alone, i’ve learned the way and i’ve walked. i like that i could walk to target and walgreens, because i’ve learned the way. i like that i don’t have to depend on driving especially, i take a few ubers but even then, i’m comfortable doing that. something new york asiya would never have been. i go for mri’s alone. i walk to uni alone and back (except when i take the bus bc gurl i would sweat). i go the airport and fly alone, something i’ve loved. don’t get me wrong i love my siblings and miss them dearly but that’s what visits are for, and we have those every few months. no one has also came to visit me except my sister twice, and would i really want them too..i don’t know. **to expand on that first time at a later date** but now my brain is like ‘come. see the life i’ve made for myself. i want to show you all i’ve built’.

we'll tell our stories on these walls. every year, measure how tall and just like a work of art we'll tell our stories on these walls

i’m not ready for so many unknowns. where will i live soon? how many jobs will i have to apply for and which ones? even simplest things like where will i do my laundry? i’ve babbled about this but i’m so incredibly grateful for the apartments that i’ve had with amenities. my sisters are always shocked to know how i live at such a small price, but student housing [chef’s kiss]. but things like central ac and in home laundry, i’ve never thought of that, but new york i’ll have to. i’ll probs have to buy my room ac and walk for laundry if i live in the city. i can’t imagine i’d get a graphic design job or something similar anywhere near where i live, so the city i shall be. how far will i have to go to the store? what may happen on the way? i’ve sometimes worried about walking to the store here, mostly when they have kidnappers on the loose, but i always feel more safe than not. i walk 20/30 mins to target and walgreens on foot on the side of the main road and i’ve taken public transportation too. story on that, i told my first roommate how to get to the store from the bus and she was terrified so i went with her and she was like ...i can’t do this alone, i’ll just call a car. would new york asiya have done that too? probably not. because florida me is more independent (idk if bold or courageous is the word) and probs just a little crazy. ubers also are way more expensive in new york, just to add on that. i’ve taken the subway and train alone in new york and have walked blocks alone around nyu and parks. i know new york well, where i live and a bit of the city, but it’s not the same. my dream would be like keeping what i have here and copy and pasting it into the state of new york. i’ve always been and felt like a new yorker here, not once a floridian. i definitely don’t even do that school pride thing, some people actually never knew where i went to college. new york is also home for me, but it’s like my baby home. sometimes i think i was genuinely crazy coming here alone and not even knowing anything about the state nor ever seeing the university. but it was the best thing. i’m always depressed, yes, and i hate people, yes. but despite all of me being a constant emotional tragedy, i really love what i have here. it’s my own. i’ve become that person that tells you directions or tells you where to get what where. and now i’ll have to go back to someone that has to ask 89 questions and gets lost 14 times. ah, but if only i was rich and i could have it all. 

so we’re leaving,  we’re leaving our shadows behind us now we’re leaving, we’re leaving it all behind for now

i can’t wait to go back to my place. i’ll no longer have a home to run off to for months when i don’t feel right. i’ve actually booked flights earlier than i and my family planned/expected just to jet sometimes. i always come back with my suitcase(s) and feel at home walking into my place. i know, inshallah, i’ll have that again in new york or wherever i am, but i HATE CHANGE. its such a big shift that i’m like..can we do baby steps?? i haven’t even been avoiding it for months, i’ve genuinely forgotten until like march when i had to decide on graduation stuff. and now i’ve opened my suitcase and feel like i’m doing my my clothes wrong by putting them in a suitcase to travel a state away and not a few streets. my 3 apartments have essentially been in between two streets, you see one, turn right and drive down, there’s another, turn left and then another left, drive down the road and there’s my current one, which is about two minutes from the first if you drive up a little down. it’s legit a square..but irrelevant. i know i can always come back to visit, but it won’t be the same. my social interaction meter already runs out in like 24 hours as it is then i need to come back home, imagine if i have to stay at someone’s house for like 3 days, lord. i don’t really know if it’s leaving that’s unsettling or going back knowing i won’t be fully alone from people that know me. 

(not so) tangent I: i always daydreamed of traveling to another state and getting a place there. my friend is thinking of coming from germany to practice dentistry here and we could find a place together. i know moving half way across the world for someone seems like a terrible idea, and i’ve lowkey done that coming here between states, but almost seven years of adoring each other’s existence makes you mushy and a little crazy. i feel like i’ll be awkward living with friends bc i’m such a loner, but who knows. the only thing getting her through these months of her final year in dentistry school is this idea and we’ve said inshallah every other week basically so inshallah, if it’s best for us. wild also that i knew her before she even started uni, way before she started dentistry school, like damn i hadn’t realized it’s been that long. 

ACTUAL tangent part II: late 2020/2021 was gonna be my planned travel year. rose was gonna have her dentistry school graduation in february so i was gonna go with more bouquets than my hands could hold. but before that i really wanted to see noor in like late december/january (shoutout to her getting her license i will never not be proud. am i smiling right now typing this? yes). i would find a way to not die in one of those taxis for this surprise, wait outside in the rain (if the sky allows) and play a neighbourhood song outside her window with my iphone that would get water damage and die, then i would sing it (i memorized the lyrics on the flight over, duh). point is, i wanted to see her first and also in one of the least hottest months bc although i would die for her, i’m not going out from heat stroke. thank you miss covid-19, i must postpone that to 2041. i would say i could move to dubai, but i love wearing black and not like..oh yeah..dying. with germany, (ironically enough where my cousin and i were gonna go, me for uni) i can barely speak english let alone learn another language. i wouldn’t subject anyone to murica so alternative options are encouraged. anyways, it’s like the virus knew i was an absolute loser. and it’s as if i have a bug to just keep hopping on planes to avoid having to deal with myself for more than twelve minutes. additional tangent, sometimes i think about how i’ve known noor for five years and like four of those years, we’ve spoken like every day..like how the hell do we do this??? we’ve exhausted every topic humanly possible and still find something new. imagine if we met and it was just [crickets] jhfghfg. i would say we share a braincell and she has it, but i feel like she has five at least. i always have the same tangent topic that literally should just be it’s own solo post..ANYWAYS. 

let the years we're here be kind, be kind let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide settle our bones like wood over time, over time

i’m gonna continue this later bc the tangent sent my mind in a whole different direction ,, what are thoughts

[entergamingxp]

Could the next-gen Switch use Nvidia DLSS AI upscaling? • Eurogamer.net

That rumour didn’t last long. Stories last week suggested that the long awaited Switch Pro would arrive in 2020, with Nintendo bringing the fight to the next-gen Microsoft and Sony console launches. It all sounded rather unlikely and Nintendo was quick to dismiss the story. The current Switch range continues to sell relentlessly and there’s no substantial commercial reason for Nintendo to release a more powerful model quite yet – nor to go head-to-head with PS5 and Series X with what would almost certainly be less capable hardware. However, the firm’s partnership with Nvidia is likely to continue and three years on from the Switch’s release, plans must surely be afoot for a next-gen system. On top of that, looking at how Nvidia’s tech is evolving presents some mouthwatering opportunities for a new, more powerful Nintendo console hybrid.

Expectations should be tempered if the plan is to produce a more powerful console and nothing more. Fundamentally, compute power in a mobile device is limited by the need to accommodate a relatively small processor running at relatively minimal clock speeds. If we get anything close to the kind of performance we’ve enjoyed from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, we should consider that a minor miracle for a system derived from a processor designed primarily for mobile gaming. However, with that said, a new Switch based on more recent Nvidia technology opens the door to the firm’s impressive AI upscaling techniques – and I decided to put them to the test in scenarios designed to more accurately represent Switch-level gaming.

I attacked this challenge on two fronts. First of all, AI upscaling technology is already available in a Tegra X1-based product – the newly revised Switch Android TV, a tubular revamp of the powerful streamer that Nvidia continues to support and upgrade. AI upscaling is exclusive to the new versions of the Shield, and works on any video content running on the machine – the only limitation being that anything above 30fps content is not supported. And this led me to wonder: what if I fed the Shield with Switch capture? How would that look?

I also thought about approaching this from the opposite direction. We’ve been quietly but cautiously excited by the DLSS AI upscaling tech found in recent games – it’s a vastly improved proposition over some already impressive implementations in key PC games. As we’ve already showcased, Wolfenstein Youngblood performs brilliantly under DLSS and in some scenarios, the upscaled version looks cleaner than the native presentation. So what if we dropped resolution to the Switch version’s max 720p and used DLSS performance mode on the lowest settings? How would this compare with the Switch version?

Our video breakdown in testing out AI upscaling of various flavours. Can machine learning work effectively in improving next-gen Switch visuals?

The reason I’m excited about DLSS is remarkably straightforward. We want to push visual features to the next level with technologies like real-time ray tracing, but we don’t want to lose too much performance for the privilege. Fundamentally, why use GPU resources to paint every single pixel when AI upscaling can ‘infer’ a lot of those pixels instead? Wolfenstein Youngblood and other freshly baked DLSS titles are showing some remarkably impressive results and the tech has a lot of potential. If the performance uptick is substantial and the quality is there, it could also be deployed in a mobile device where compute resources are extremely limited.

Instead of using DLSS to mitigate a performance loss from high-end features like ray tracing, instead we’d be using it purely to improve image quality – and it’s no secret that Switch’s most ambitious games do tend to be rather blurry, a factor of the low resolutions required in many cases. Even first-party Nintendo titles are affected here – Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey use dynamic resolution scaling and often reside in 720p territory. Meanwhile, the UE4-powered Yoshi’s Crafted World can even hit a minimum of 576p in docked mode. In the age of the 4K TV, docked play can look a little lacklustre in some cases.

The first order of business was to check out the new Shield’s AI upscaling technology. As far as we know, the latest Tegra X1 doesn’t feature the tensor cores designed for accelerated deep learning functions, so the process would likely be running on the X1’s standard CUDA cores instead – which lie dormant otherwise during video playback. Full-fat DLSS reconstructs images based on a training algorithm derived from super-sampled images taken from each supported game. I’d imagine that Shield’s AI upscaling is something very different – and this is borne out by the results I received.

If I had to guess, I’d suggest that the Shield AI upscaling blows up and attempts to intelligently sharpen the image, letting that extra ‘detail’ bleed out onto a 4K canvas. You may see from the Doom 3 and Dragon Quest Builders 2 images below (upscaled from native 1080p) that there is more detail resolved – but at the same time, I achieved very similar results from a Photoshop upscale and sharpen filter. I also tested the scaler by comparing the original Switch capture to the Shield’s output, downscaled back to 1080p. Here, the differences were very difficult to notice. If there were any improvements they disappeared in the double-scaling process (1080p to 4K back down to 1080p again).

There is value to the Shield’s AI upscaler (a quick google reveals that some people are genuinely amazed by the results) but it’s clearly not designed to process game footage. Jaggies become jaggier when upscaled and sharpened to 4K, while there simply isn’t enough core detail at low resolution games to deliver any kind of meaningful improvement. I don’t think there is much relation to Nvidia’s PC-based DLSS here as while quality varies on its older implementations, it always adds extra detail – something that isn’t happening with the Shield’s algorithm. There can be some big differences in TV and movie content, but I do feel that the sharpening halo artefacts are just too strong, even on the lowest setting.

However, I am excited about the potential for Nvidia’s DLSS technology in a future mobile platform because the results from my testing with Wolfenstein Youngblood are quite remarkable. Previously, we’ve run the game maxed at high resolutions and found that without ray tracing features enabled, a 260/$299 RTX 2060 can run the game at DLSS 4K at 70 to 90 frames per second. The visual quality is just superb too to the point where I think that if DLSS is an option to you on this title, you’d be nuts not to use it.

But what happens when you run Youngblood at 720p on the lowest settings in DLSS performance mode? In effect, what if we try to make the PC version run as close to Switch settings as possible? This is a fascinating test because in this scenario, the PC version is rendering a framebuffer that’s just 640×360 in size – a 50 per cent resolution scale and well into the kind of pixel-count ballpark employed by the Switch version. I’ll let the screenshots directly below tell the story, but it’s fascinating to see how well the DLSS version retains detail and easily outstrips the image quality delivered by the Switch version. DLSS upscaling isn’t just about getting more from higher-end hardware – it could play an important role on a mobile chipset too.

By switching things up to 1080p DLSS and engaging medium settings, the GPU load obviously increases, but I thought it would be fascinating to see how a native 540p image with AI upscaling compares to the PlayStation 4 version. While 60fps might not be achievable on a prospective Switch Pro at these settings, the increase in resolution and a bump to console equivalent medium settings should be. The results are even more impressive, in my opinion, and further cements my opinion that incorporating hardware-accelerated deep learning features into a next-gen Switch could yield real benefits.

Nintendo itself has categorically ruled out a Switch Pro for a 2020 release and our understanding is that there are no references to any kind of hardware upgrade within current revisions of the Switch firmware – which is how we discovered the existence of the latest models based on the ‘Mariko’ Tegra X1. The Korean report on the new model talked about a processor using Nvidia’s Volta technology – which would likely feature deep learning accelerated support. The firm already produces the ‘Xavier‘ Tegra processor, but with a 350mm2 die size at 12nm, it’s almost as large as the chip in Xbox One X and entirely unsuitable for a handheld.

With that in mind, it looks like it’s the end of the line for ‘off the shelf’ Tegra parts making their way across to Switch, with future processors likely to be custom in nature and probably using a 7nm process technology – factors that make a Switch Pro more viable for 2021 (or perhaps even later). And even then, there may be other approaches Nintendo may prefer to take instead of creating new silicon. The new Mariko-based Tegra X1 in the new Switch models could potentially deliver around 60 to 70 per cent more performance on both CPU and GPU – Nintendo chose enhanced battery life and new form factors over performance upgrades with the new Switch and Switch Lite. Boosting clocks to max (or near to it) may not be ideal for a handheld, but it’s certainly an interesting prospect for a Switch micro-console, perhaps.

In the here and now though, DLSS results on Wolfenstein Youngblood have proven rather impressive. For PC users who may have overlooked DLSS after some not-so-favourable press, I’d strongly recommend checking it out if you have the means. I was concerned that the results in Wolfenstein Youngblood may be a one-off, but having also sampled the same new revision of DLSS in Deliver Us The Moon, image quality is still extremely impressive – even at the lowest quality/highest performance setting (there are some sample captures in the embedded video above). We’ll be following the progress of AI upscaling with much interest – it’s clearly paying dividends in the PC space and could prove to be a key technology for the next generation of console gaming.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/could-the-next-gen-switch-use-nvidia-dlss-ai-upscaling-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=could-the-next-gen-switch-use-nvidia-dlss-ai-upscaling-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net