#its hard to translate things from one medium to another

[sunbeargames]

As a semi-professional homebrewer, the best advice I can give to get better at homebrewing is to live through a global pandemic just as you were getting into TTRPGs, then use homebrewing as a method of escapism during quarantine and to satisfy your fixation with the game while you don't have a group, so that your understanding of TTRPGs becomes inseparable from tinkering with rules.

[sunny-knight]

@forgettable-au Babybones Fancomic ✨

“Keep Reading” for the rest :3 (10 Pages)

*deep breath*

you hear that?

thats the sound of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ok. I spent. 31 Hours of my life on this. And i dont regret. a GODAMN thing.

i will go on, but first, A N A L Y S I S

PAGE 1

The title “Radio Star” comes from the song “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles. Its lyrics I believe are absolutely perfect for this AU, Examples being “Rewritten by machine and new technology” , “We hear the playback and it seemed so long ago” , and “We cant rewind we’ve gone too far”

The title also refers to how…1, they build a radio-

and 2, Sans calls Papyrus a Star at Grillbys if you call him “uncool”

PAGE 2

Nothing to note

PAGE 3

This is the first real scene I had in mind. The entire concept came from me imagining how Sans’ memories of Wingdings got overwritten, so where in memories he’d call Wingdings by his name, he calls him Papyrus.

In an animation with audio, itd be like “Aw cmon, P A P Y R U S” and be a silly little jumpscare.

Buttttt then ofc the idea turned into a thing where I couldn’t shape it into a “fake” memory.

I wanted to play with their characters as they WERE not how they remember them being.

PAGE 4

Nothing

PAGE 5

As they travel to the barrier, Wingdings is leading, and COMPLETELY focused on his goal. Ignoring Gerson (social interaction) while Sans takes his time and looks around getting “distracted”. This exemplifies the nature of their relationship.

Them in Hotland, they’re actually right next to the lab. Taking the elevator the guards were…guarding. So Sans is looking at the lab like “hey. Hey wingdings, look, look at that building, thats so cool”

PAGE 6

At the bottom is just another example of Wingdings being deadset on his goal, while Sans is helping out but still stopping to smell the flowers

PAGE 7

This panel makes me so happy-

It works??? vs It works!!!

Wingdings doesn’t come across as the kind of guy to doubt himself, I just think he’d be shocked at himself regardless that he pulled this off. Meanwhile Sans is just thrilled 😭

PAGE 8

N/A

PAGE 9

Oh boy this is the finale of explanation.

This conversation that Asgore and Sans have. Is REALLY important to me

Asgore/everyone that isnt sans, cannot understand Wingdings. So, Sans is talking for him. It may come across as him taking all the glory or whatever, but NO. look at his dialogue boxes! they’re not blocking out WD, and he’s like “YEAH 😊 MY BROTHERS SO FUCKING COOL”

Meanwhile Asgores boxes are completely blocking WD out. He thinks Sans built it cause hes doing all the explaining, and Sans isnt getting the hint that Asgore THINKS THAT HE MADE IT its a whole thing

Wingdings appreciates Sans, but he doesn’t appreciate people thinking he did all the work-

Asgores dialogue box when asking “How did you build such a thing??” is covering Wingdings, and he’s looking at SANS. he’s asking Sans how he built it, meanwhile Sans, still not getting the clue, is looking at wingdings like “:) cmon bro, tell him, you know ill translate for you!”

PAGE 10

Sans then understands at least that Wingdings does not want to indulge this- and goes into explaining mode, as hes done it so many times before-

Sans saying “You cant understand him” instead of something like “his font is hard to understand” is important because he is putting the “blame” on you. He’s fully aware this is something Wingdings WISHES he could change about himself so badly, so he just kinda naturally changes his tone which I find really fun when writing dialogue :3

This comic, I feel is an example of how much this AU/comic series means to me-

As much as I obsess over and LOVE comics as a medium, this is the first ever I have ever properly finished. ofc there have been like 2 page ones, but YEAH this is the first BIG one i have ever finished in my entire life.

These characters- as much as they’re Tobys, they are also Sunsestarts in my opinion. The situation they are put in of JUST the font trouble alone is something i’m SO fascinated by and clearly- had the time of my LIFE writing and playing with. And thats ignoring all the other shit that happens BECAUSE of that.

Undertale is special, The Forgettable AU is SPECIAL- THESE SKELETONS ARE SPECIAL

Im on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happens next because I know whatever it is, its gonna be special

also, I made this while listening to Slipping Through My Fingers on repeat. I regret nothing

((ALSO I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TIME/SPACE BY ALEX G, ITS A GREAT SONG IM DEFINITELY GONNA STORYBOARD A FORGETTABLE AMV TO CAUSE ITS REALLY REALLY GOOD, ID TOTALLY TIE IT TO THIS COMIC- BUT ITS MORE FOR PAPYRUS AND GASTER INTERACTIONS RATHER THAN BABYBONES???)

[stardustedknuckles]

It occurs to me to wonder, like. When is the last time a fandom was rewarded so much for loving something as hard as we love critical role? I don't necessarily mean rewarded as a transactional thing, though there's no denying that love translating to funding was a big part of this - I'm talking about stories that get told again in a new way so soon after ending and which the fans are grateful to have and eagerly looking forward to. We live in a world of unnecessary remakes of old IPs as thoughtless cash grabs, where smaller projects like roundtable stories are lucky to get comic versions and little more despite the authentic love powering them from creator and fandom alike.

The Mighty Nein were over. They ended, the way all stories do. We had no reason to think there would be more (aside from oneshots, which are another unique and sustaining feature of this medium) or that they would get the same opportunity that Vox Machina did because it is so rare. Unprecedented, really. There was every chance that CR would get one or two arcs animated for their first beloved story - still further than any project like this has gone before - and that would be all.

And instead their whole world has opened up. In the days of beloved shows being canceled left and right, the love and support Critical Role has cultivated among its fanbase just by being earnest and kind has ricocheted back into the world as so much opportunity and the stories that were over and done are getting new life. The Mighty Nein aren't over. They're coming back - and soon. When's the last time a fandom was unexpectedly given the chance to rise again and grow stronger instead of being suddenly cut short?

We couldn't have picked a better horse to bet on here, and this couldn't be happening to a better group of people. I hope Critical Role's success is a marker of things to come for the other, smaller projects of this sort - and I know the CR crew hopes the same.

[wizardsvslesbians]

Isaac here, with another recommendation response masterpost! It's a long one!

Anon said:

oh my godyou guys HAVE to cover metal from heaven by august clarke as the next thing to add to the list i just saw the reviews and it literally looks like main wizlez for the first time in quite a while

We actually have had an ARC of this one for some time, and we were intending to cover it! And I bounced off it real hard. So that's on me. Once it comes out properly and there's an audiobook I'll take another crack at it.

Seiya said:

“A Sweet Sting of Salt” by Rose Sutherland is for all the girlies who read Charity and Sylvia and wanted more of that. or, 19th century Nova Scotia selkie lesbians. the wizard is less a wizard and more a condemnation of the selkie folktale in general, but also the vibes are nice and this was a nice book

We're going to need a vibes are nice book - the vibes have been either rancid or very complicated for too long and I'm missing the simple days of boat lesbians and The Duke. Also it would be nice to follow up "Selkie Stories Are For Losers" from our last short story roundup.

Spiralochete said:

Not wizlez, but if you're ever in the mood, I would love to hear you guys discuss Borne by Jeff Vandermeer. It features a non-narcissistic parent of an extremely monstrous child, and I think it would produce interesting discussions in conversation with some of the previous entries in the podcast. I also think that the ecological themes would be an interesting change of pace. There are no prominent lesbians, but there are definitely wizards. If either of you have bounced off Jeff Vandermeer previously (I know that some people do), it's definitely a bit more accessible than the Southern Reach Trilogy.

I liked Annihilation! Then Authority bored me enough that I never bothered to finish it, so I'm, like, medium interested in this as a concept. Sounds like a guest episode, and so we'd need a guest who wants to cover it.

Anon said:

i think i might have just watched the first actual bona fide wizards vs lesbians film i've ever seen other than adolescence of utena, and i'm shocked i never heard of it before: harmony (2015), but for the podcast you guys might be more interested in the novel of the same name it's based on by project itoh (who i believe is also famous for having a kojima game dedicated to him posthumously). the novel is less explicit in the romance between protagonists (antagonists?) tuan and miach, which might be a point towards reviewing the film rather than the book, but it's up to you guys! really, really interesting stuff from this film, despite its flaws. it's good scifi

Any skepticism I might have had about this went out the window when I saw that Michael Arias co-directed the film. He directed Tekkonkinkreet, which is one of my five favorite movies of all time, one of the only pieces of media that makes me cry no matter how many times I go back to it, so I, at least, will be giving this a shot. Can't guarantee any more than that.

Anon said:

i know you only rarely cover graphic literature but tbh the more i think on it the manga land of the lustrous not only counts as (enby) yuri but also absolutely fits in the lesbian space atrocities/wizlez genre, the tragedy and war and double crossing and mental illness stuff with the initial motivation for everything being a gay crush that ruins everything.

I'm gonna be real with you: I had such a viscerally negative reaction to the anime when it came out that it would take a lot for me to dive into the manga. Toooo many lovingly rendered amputations.

Anon said:

have you guys ever read stuff by qing jun mo xiao? her baihe serials all are very much in wizlez mode as far as i can tell - clear and muddy loss of love has a full english translation available online, i dunno about female general and eldest princess but it's getting english volume releases!

There is an english translation online, but it's definitely fanwork, and with all respect to the person who made it it's probably best if we wait for an official release. When that does happen, I'm all for it.

Short recs:

the passion by jeanette winterson is a vintage wizvwlw novel i found recently which is magical realist napoleonic wars in venice - it might be of interest to you guys

On the list it goes!

the women could fly by megan giddings def looks like wizles, maybe it's worth checking out since it looks pretty interesting

On the list it goes!

i've not read it, but the light brigade by kameron hurley looks like interesting wizlez to me if you wanna check it out

I suspect we haven't done any Kameron Hurley books yet for a reason, but on the list it goes!

And finally, presented without comment:

Look I'm aware that due to the time commitment which is on par with reading Homestuck and the audio format it's basically impossible to cover all of it. But fellow wizards vs lesbians listeners should know that the magnus archives probably counts as wizards vs lesbians. There are a million wizards, women fall in love, and lesbians definitely attack the wizards. plus there's an assortment of bad mothers and monstrous children. It somehow has a coherent plot and themes by the end as well, if you can stick with the motw format long enough. However it's mostly wizard pov

[moralesmilesanhour]

arachnophobia

genre: horror-ish pairings: none summary: playing with the idea of miles and miles g's fates being inextricably linked to each other. also spidey senses but make it a little weird wc: 2,072 warnings: spiders (like one spider), canon deaths, brief mention of blood...and translated Spanish for like two sentences (shout out to SpanishDict) A/N: ngl...this didn't turn out to be as scary as I originally envisioned it. but I still hope you enjoy it anyway! pls feel free to reblog and leave ur reactions in the tags/comments if you do <3

The floor. The floor was on the ceiling, though nothing was falling.

Miles blinked as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of his bedroom. It would’ve been pitch-black if not for the street lamps and traffic lights providing a dim light source.

With careful steps, he moved to where his bed seemed to hang just above him, and let himself fall back onto the mattress. Again.

The sleepwalking began a year ago.

 Miles had just come home from school, and entered the bathroom to wash his face. No sooner had he turned on the faucet, he looked into the mirror and saw that his right eye was a coppery green. Stranger still, when Miles felt himself furrow his brows in confusion, his reflection’s eyes widened in surprise instead. That’s when he felt it on his hand.

A gangly, medium-sized spider whose legs took up about the width of his palm. The thing bit him just before he could slap it, letting its body fall limply to the tiled bathroom floor.

When Miles looked up again, both of his eyes were brown.

Not long after, Aaron Davis was found dead by his brother in a dark alleyway. No one had been charged yet for the murder - at least, no one who could be charged. The news reports just seemed relieved that another “criminal” was off the streets. It made Miles’ blood boil.

After the funeral, he rushed to the bathroom to escape the litany of “I’m sorry”s and whispers of “Jefferson’s boy” so as to not lose his mind before the day’s end. His eyes were bloodshot, still stinging with tears that he had tried so hard to hold back in front of his parents. Uncle Aaron would’ve wanted him to tough it out, right?

Heaving in front of the dirty mirror, Miles blinked, and the sight before him made his blood run cold. His reflection’s right eye was green again, and this time, a pair of cornrows seemed to brush his shoulders, framing a tired and gaunt-looking face.

 His face. And he looked angry.

“What the fuck…?” Miles muttered to himself as he held his own gaze.

“I should be asking the same thing,” his reflection replied in a muted, raspy voice, making Miles jump.“You did this, didn’t you?”

��Did-did what? I didn’t–”

“You killed him. I can feel it. Everytime you get hurt, every time you cry, your fear, your guilt, all of it–I can fucking feel it!”

Miles said nothing as his not-a-reflection began to tear up. 

It was technically his fault, wasn’t it? He ran to Aaron’s apartment for help, like a coward. It all went to shit after the fact. He didn’t dare ask about the autopsy results; Miles already knew what they would say. 

He’d watched the bullet blow a hole in his uncle’s chest.

“Yeah, you look guilty as hell right now,” said the not-a-reflection, shakily. “You got bit by something, right?”

Miles slowly began to back away from the mirror.

“H-how did you–”

The other Miles chuckled mirthlessly. “Felt a prick on my hand.”

“Y’know, I wonder…” he mused, venom seeping into his voice, “if it works the other way around.”

Miles squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’m dreaming. This is all a dream. You’re not real.”

His not-a-reflection smirked.

“We’ll see.”

After that day, Miles would begin to wander in the middle of the night, and end up standing in the hallway or in the kitchen. Sometimes he’d be woken up by his mother’s startled screaming, or realize that he’d gotten himself a glass of water. 

…And that was when his newfound twin was feeling nice.

One night, Miles woke up with his father’s strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him back from where he seemed to have been perched on the edge of the roof, like a bird ready to spring into action. Or a spider.

It was now the first week of sophomore year.

Miles could hardly stay upright as he rose to make his bed. Between the blaring of his alarm and all the bustling in the kitchen, his eardrums felt like someone was taking a baseball bat to them and hitting several home runs.

He squinted, and saw that the door was opening behind him.

“Mijo–oh, you’re up already?”

“Yup. I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”

“Alright, see you then. Don’t drag your feet.”

Once Rio gently shut the door, Miles realized that he wasn’t supposed to see things that were behind him.

School turned out to be even more of a nightmare; the swarm of students passing by in the hallways felt like a million invisible strings tugging each way. He finally reached his seat in homeroom, dizzy and irate, when one particular string seemed to tug at him. Violently.

His head snapped up.

“You got a twin brother, Morales?” A girl from his cohort last year whispered behind him, soundly oddly excited about the possibility.

“A new student will be joining us this week,” the teacher in charge of homeroom announced. As she read off of the attendance sheet, her brows furrowed. The woman even adjusted her glasses to do a double take. Miles knew exactly what for.

“That’s funny. We have another Miles Morales sitting right over there!”

The boy standing to her left was already staring across the room, directly at Miles. He felt his body temperature drop rapidly the longer he maintained eye contact with the other’s blank stare, so he looked away. 

Didn’t help much. Miles could still sense where he was going. He sensed a small shift in the light at the side of his head–not peripheral vision, but something more akin to the aura that surrounds your eyes when you get a migraine–moving to the back of the classroom.

This ‘twin’ started calling himself ‘Miles G.’ as the week went on, to preemptively avoid any inevitable confusion as his new teachers got to know him. There was never a point where he didn’t need to; the two Miles had all of their classes together, all except for fifth period. 

Miles G. tapped his pen on the desk impatiently as the professor explained the process of chemical bonding. He frowned when he noticed his leg bouncing on its own. It seemed that Miles was equally bored sitting in AP Literature.

That was where their similarities ended, though.

Friday afternoon, Miles was halfway through his daily school-issued PB&J when a painful jolt in his solar plexus nearly made him vomit it back up. The boy doubled over in his seat with a pained cry, and felt a warm liquid running from his nose. He looked down to discover that his uniform blazer was stained with little red dots.

“I’m telling you, I had nothing to do with it,” Miles explained frantically to the school counselor. 

The middle aged woman looked unconvinced, hands folded neatly on the desk in front of her.

“Then can you explain why both of your noses are bleeding?”

“He wasn’t there with me. I don’t jump people,” Miles G. chimed in, earning a glare from his counterpart sitting next to him. “What? I’m tryna help you.”

The counselor sighed. “Well, your teachers told me that they only saw one of you at the fight,” she turned to Miles. “So it seems like you’re off the hook. For now. You can go to class.”

The woman waved her hand dismissively as Miles shot up from his seat and stalked out of the small office and into the now-empty hallway. 

The encounter in the mirror at Uncle Aaron’s funeral suddenly came back to him:

“You killed him. I can feel it. Everytime you get hurt, every time you cry, your fear, your guilt, all of it–I can fucking feel it!”

Miles whipped around before the other could even say a word.

“Who the fuck are you?” he hissed.

Miles G. snorted. “You know who I am.”

“Why are you here, then? What’s your deal? Since you clearly exist.”

“You think it’s fair, Miles?”

Miles’ brows knit together in confusion. 

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m asking,” Miles G. took a step closer, “if you think it’s fair. That you get to sit up here comfortable while you have blood on your hands.”

The other boy looked away.

“...No.”

He nodded curtly, then brushed past Miles to go to class. “I’m here to make things fair.”

A pit began to form in Miles’ stomach as he let the words linger.

Miles G. was nowhere to be found amongst the sea of students spilling into the hallway when the final bell rang.

“Yo Miles, where’s your evil twin at?” asked Jason, current captain of the basketball team. “He’s supposed to hoop with us today.”

Miles shrugged. “I ain’t keepin’ tabs on him.”

The captain joked, “You’d better start. He could be outside framing you for murder right now!”

The group of boys surrounding him erupted into laughter as they all turned to leave. Miles couldn’t laugh; it was a little too close to the truth. 

“I’m here to make things fair.”

‘Fair’. ‘Fair’ meant leveling the playing field, evening out the score.

…Oh no.

With his heart in his throat, he threw on his jacket and bolted out of the building as fast as his long legs could carry him.

“I don’t know, Jeff, he’s just been…off, lately.”

Rio leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder. She was hardly paying any attention to the news flashing across the television.

“More than usual?” Jefferson laughed, earning him a smack on the shoulder.

“I’m being serious. He looks dead in the eyes, like he’s not getting any sleep. I’m just worried after what happened in the summer. Scared me half to death, that boy.”

He nodded solemnly. 

“I still don’t know how he managed to even find the roof with his eyes closed.”

“You think we should still take him to the doctor’s, just in case?”

“Maybe,” Jefferson looked deep in thought. “Y’know, that reminds me: A week before school started, I was in the kitchen grabbing a mug from the cupboard. With my luck, of course it slipped right outta my hands–”

“It better not have been my good mug.”

“That’s besides the point, honey. Anyway, Miles is standing right next to me, and he catches it the moment I drop it!”

Rio’s eyes narrowed. “What’s special about that?”

“He wasn’t even looking in my direction.”

“Hm. Now that I think about it, sometimes he does this weird thing where he turns around and says ‘hi’ to me–”

“--Before you even enter the room!”

“Exactly! It creeps me out, sometimes. I thought I was going crazy.”

“At least he’ll never get robbed.”

The sound of the doorbell interrupted their conversation.

“Speak of the devil,” Rio said as she rose from the sofa. “I’ll get it.”

Her son stood in the door frame, his small suitcase trailing behind him as he waved and began to haul it up the steps.

She took it from him before pulling him into a warm hug. 

“Hola, Mami.”

Rio pulled back to get a good look at Miles’ face. She made a tsk sound at the newly-formed bags under his eyes. The pimples were another story.

“¿Qué tal te fue en la escuela? You look tired.”

“Teníamos un montón de tareas,” he sighed. “The usual.”

“And you’d better be doing all of it. Now get in here, your father’s waiting in the living room.”

Miles kicked off his sneakers at the entrance while his mother set his luggage against the wall.

“Dad…?”

“Miles, my man! How’s it–oof!”

Jefferson could hardly get a word in before Miles went in for a second hug. He gave his son a pat on the back.

“Missed you too, buddy.”

Miles quickly pulled away with an awkward smile, opting to plop down onto the couch instead.

“I thought you didn’t watch the news anymore,” Rio teased as she sat down with him. “All that ‘negativity’.”

He laughed, “I’ll make an exception for tonight.”

“You hear that, Rio? We’re cool enough for him to hang out with us again,” Jeff remarked.

Miles was soon sandwiched between both of his parents, but it hardly felt cramped. He wouldn’t have it any other way. A comfortable silence fell over the three as their faces were illuminated by the soft glow from the TV. It was Miles who broke it again:

“How’s Uncle Aaron doing?”

[starflungwaddledee]

do you have any tips for leaving compliments on other people's art ?? your tags are always so well phrased !

oooo oooooooooooooo uuhhhhhhhh hmmm!

firstly, thank you!! i'm rather glad to hear that! i try quite hard to leave meaningful comments so it's nice when folks notice or appreciate it!

outside of commenting on the work, i first consider the tone of what i'm saying and who i'm saying it to.

i always try to make sure that what i'm saying will be appreciated by the person! that's the point. for the most part i leave comments to bring joy to the op, and thank them for their hard work, for being here and sharing art that made me happy! if i'm speaking to a mutual or friend, there's gonna be inside jokes and probably an amount of casual yelling. possibly even a little friendly roast, if i know them well enough. if i'm speaking with someone i don't know as well i try to keep it a little more professional, but i keep in mind that this is a fandom so an amount of yelling and screaming is expected. i tend to think about what i would like from someone else.

also if i notice that a caption or a blogs about is not in english i double check. if english is not the first language of the artist i make sure to construct tags that are easily translated and i use only and exclusively positive phrases. saying things like "delete this!!!! /pos" or "eating my own hands" can be totally lost in translation. i also keep in mind the age of the OP. don't tag as though you're Looking Disrespectfully at the art of a minor, even if that's your favourite blorbo.

as for how to comment on art or storytelling itself, this is indeed a learned skill, and it can be helped by training your eye to understand different things in artwork. but it's easy to start practicing! this is intuitive to me now, but an easy way to begin is to pick out one or two things that really stand out to you on a piece. (examples could be line quality; is it smooth? neat? textured? full of emotion?, shading: is it crisp? atmospheric? realistically rendered?, or colour choice: is it vibrant? is it moody? is it perfectly on model?) and draw attention to them and how the artist successfully used them to make the piece work.

if the piece includes design-work, pick something of that which you like as well. (clothes, colour choices, abilities, parallels to other characters, totally new or unique concepts that you haven't seen before. if you see your favourite colour combos or notions, let them know, but if it's a stranger remember they made the design for themselves, and you just share (good) tastes!) if you really want to make an artist/designer/storyteller's day, try to find the Little Thing that they've snuck into their art or design that ties into the story or lore that they are telling. even guesses to this end tend to be appreciated!

generally useful things you can also comment on are how well an artist has utilised a medium for its strengths, especially if the medium is a little unusual. if someone @'d me in particular i make sure to acknowledge that too because they probably read me for something and i should acknowledge the effort!

another thing i also always, always encourage, is to try to periodically share and comment on the work of people who are either less experienced or who have less visibility than you. especially if you have more of a platform! if you want to keep your blog clean of too many reblogs for aesthetic or professional reasons you can even go through and remove them later, but sharing the work of smaller accounts- even temporarily- makes such a huge difference! and encouraging + supporting younger or beginner artists is something we should be endeavouring to do as much as possible!

at the end of the day, i always just try to be very earnest in my tags.

there is generally no reason to withhold any praises i can think of, because it's usually nice to have your work perceived and appreciated! i personally loooovvve long rambling tags, screaming tags, stuff like "AAHH NOOOOOOO (THE BLORBO)" and so on. i try to leave the kind of thoughtful comments that i like (and am lucky enough) to receive, and i try to share artwork from a wide variety of people!

[amazing-spider-man-book-club]

The Amazing Spider-Man #7

Published: December 1963

Containing: "The Return of The Vulture"

Synopsis: The Vulture returns with an augmented magnetic flying device immune to mechanical interference, and goes on a new series of heists as Peter has to deal with a sprained arm after blindly going into battle.

Read alongside us here:

@frankendykes-monster : This might be the lightest issue we've covered yet in terms of narrative depth. We have officially reached a point where a "standard" Spider-Man story that's easily recognizable regardless of date of origin or medium is born.

The Vulture is making his second and final stint as a solo villain in this run, and admittedly I might miss him. I think many adaptations miss something by not focusing on the fact that he's a machinist, probably a consequence of so many Spider-Man villains existing now that it's easy to shuffle around characterizations and motivations, not that this original incarnation of the character is three-dimensional or anything. I feel like this is one of the first major instances of "lost in translation" between Ditko and Lee because that's the only explanation I can muster up for me just not getting exactly how The Vulture's powers work. I assumed that the magnetic device is basically levitation and that the wings are for steering in mid-air, but the wings being gummed up at the end nullifies his ability to fly? Who knows. His hands being free and thus him being able to hold a gun is a chuckle worthy sight.

Betty Brant is thrust a bit more into the role of Peter's primary love interest of the run as of this issue, with the finale being a focus on them and their burgeoning taking-notice of one another. It feels natural as we're still in the very early stages (read: the talking stage). While the letters pages usually don't reveal anything of note that needs to be brought up here, I do find it funny that one reader asks that Peter have a proper girlfriend that's a bad bitch and up to date on the latest music trends. Give it a few years, Sidney, it's coming.

Probably the most notable thing about this issue is how much Ditko gives it his all in terms of fleshing out the environments, the fights across the skyline or inside the Daily Bugle make the similar brawl inside the high school from #4 look downright drab in comparison. There's a lot more time dedicated to onlookers unable to do anything in the face of costumed persons fighting in mid-air above them, it lends itself to a great realization of three-dimensional space even when page space only has room for the fight or the reaction to it. We finally find out that Peter lives in Forest Hills, in Queens, on Long Island, which furthers highlights how huge NYC is and how quaint it must be in some way to see Spider-Man and The Vulture fight above rooftops overhead.

@duel1971 : Fun! I think about half of my favorite Ditko art I’ve seen on this journey so far is contained in this one issue. Every panel shines with a brilliant grasp of anatomy, action, weight, proportion… it’s awesome. The Vulture is sort of a boring villain on paper, in my opinion, but his striking visual design and the incredible action sequences made me forget that entirely. We also get our best close-up yet of Spider-Man’s web shooter, showing off how nifty and clean its design is.

The best action set-piece in this story involves Peter fighting the Vulture in the Daily Bugle offices while the staff scrambles for cover and Jonah has a breakdown. If I’m not mistaken this is the first time a villain has come directly to JJJ’s office, making a somewhat historic precedent.

There’s not much to talk about here in terms of new story developments (other than Peter sharing a moment with Betty Brant) but the action and script are so tight and well-done that it’s hard to say anything negative about it. This issue to me feels like a well-earned victory lap after eight issues of consistent innovation.

[zukkacore]

I’m not opposed to the fanfic-to-romance-writer pipeline in principle bc there is literally nothing wrong with fanfic as an avenue for creativity and expression and practice and I don’t think it’s a lesser version of writing, and literally everyone is inspired by something and that’s ok for it to carry over into your original work, but what does bother me is that they are different mediums with different strengths & do different things for their audience & it is really tiresome to act like you can transpose the conventions of one medium to another with no legwork to learn the new thing and expect it to successful. You can’t just write a screenplay and expect it to translate well to a Broadway musical without learning the new medium. I think fanfic-to-book writing is the same way. Of all the “this feels like fanfic” insights you could have about a book, from it being light on worldbuilding and heavy on character interaction, to there being some self insert or wish fulfillment aspects in the protagonist, to a juvenile or conversational tone in the writing style, to the story having some clear derivative influence, I think the worst sin the fanfic-to-romance-writer pipeline has birthed is these books that are really sparse on explaining the connection between the romantic leads or really delving into what makes them work & instead rely on a presupposed & preconceived knowledge of its fanfic inspiration in order to be enjoyable at all. This is what I mean when I say fanfiction is great for what it is, but it is a medium that does not demand a lot of legwork in terms of worldbuilding (unless it’s very explicitly an AU) & allows you to presuppose a lot & also IS FREE. Whereas w/ a book I am paying my hard earned coin, so coming w/ a recommended prerequisite source material sucks ass. I can get behind a book that is clearly derivative of the author’s long time fandom interest but using that inspiration to craft its own story, but what I’ve grown tired of is the growing number of books that are coasting off intertextuality & nothing more.

[uhuraisgay]

fic writer meme

ty lore @megafaunatic for tagging meee :3c

How many works do you have on Ao3?

fifty three as of today. tomorrow? who knows.... (probably still fifty three)

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

518,435 words .... wrow.....

3. What fandoms do you write for?

historically its been all over the place but theres so much stuff rotting and dying in my gdrive that has never been posted so i feel like i have a broader actual ouvre than is represented on ao3. which is mdzs heavy at least in the past couple years

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

5. beyond all limit (wangxian i wrote for lore right after i first read the book) 4. if the story's over (moshang post-divorce get-together fic) 3. someone as good for me as you (written in 2016 for holster and ransom when i was reading check, please. LMAO) 2. at least as deep as the pacific ocean (written in 2015 in the clearest example of 'person distraught by the tragic ending of a tragedy misses the fucking point and writes a coffee shop au of achilles and patroclus after she read tsoa' ever, even bigger LMAO) 1. your name safe in their mouth (lsz gets his dad back, and other emotional adventures)

5. Do you respond to comments?

i used to try to reply to every comment i got but i stopped doing that around the same time i went to college and got more depressed. but i love reading comments and i sometimes reply if someone says something that moves me or like. asks me a question about the fic that i want to elaborate on? because i love to yap

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

i'm not really good at writing straight angst i feel like it's normally like. angst with catharsis. but i wrote some explorations on grief in the past couple years that i feel like have the angst factor (what i have of you about nhs after nmj dies, and then when your beard fell out about my sweetie pie kageyama tobio in middle school after his grandpa dies)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

i have a lot of silly fluffy fics... idk i try to toe the line mostly of like. the joys and sadnesses of human experience but sometimes you just gotta fluff it up. i'll set the table, you can make the fire, which is book verse aziraphale/crowley living in a cottage and being in love, comes to mind....i love that one

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i don't think i've ever really gotten hate on a fic? i have been extremely lucky in that regard. especially since my whole ouvre from like 2014 onward is on that damn site and much of it is very cringeworthy.

9. Do you write smut?

not well!

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you have written?

i often will do like kind of a quasi-crossover kind of thing rather than a True Crossover wherein i take characters i like from one medium and plop them into the roles and places of characters i like from another medium. i did a dragon age wangxian fic where lwj was the inquisitor from da:i called we held together the fragile sky that kind of exemplifies this dynamic

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of or that anyone has ever notified me of, but i also don't look that hard. if this has ever happened, it would hurt my feelings, so please don't do it ? lol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!!!! and i was honored

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not as such but i have one not-intended-for-posting fic which is basically just a transcription of jokes i have with my roommate about haikyuu characters LOL which i think counts as co-writing. she's my co-writer in spirit even if i'm the one at the keyboard

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

my answer to this changes with every new fixation i have. like right now it's kagehina. if you asked me four years ago i would have said wangxian. You Know?

15. What is a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

SO MANY...i think probably my fullmetal alchemist nie brothers au....i try not to post things until they are done and fully edited now, but that one was a whim-based fic that i lost all strength for as soon as i started thinking too hard about kagehina. i also had a fem nielan sci fi au that was vaguely based off beauty and the beast but nmj was like stuck in a ship and she thought she was its computer and that she was a program but she was actually a person....which i never posted any of except snippets on twitter and i think it was just too sprawling for my current skill level...i just was never able to wrangle it. but i am fond of it nonetheless

16. What are your writing strengths?

based on what other people have told me i would say the way i write sibling / family relationships, and while my prose is not always pretty i do think it can be pretty at times ...

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i feel like it's often too self-indulgent even if that's what fic is for lol, and i tend to look back on fics and think, i wrote that because i had feelings about it and wanted to say it, but i'm not necessarily sure that This Character would say/do that at this point in time....idk like i fear that when i don't think about it hard enough my characterization can be weak or guided by what eye personally would do vs. what The Character would do. but some of that is because the majority of my fics on ao3 are from years and years ago and i (hopefully) have continued to improve

18. Thoughts of writing dialogue in another language in fics?

i'm picky about it but when it's done well i think it's really fun and builds so much of the world/character. i think when it's bad it's really bad. when i go about it i try to think about like, a) do i know this language myself/do i know someone who does. if the answer is no i try to keep it really minimal. b) how do people who know multiple languages approach speaking those multiple languages naturally in real life. like (IN MY EXPERIENCE) ppl don't tend to switch languages for random words mid-sentence unless those words are like, mom, dad, uncle, aunt, ect...maybe swearing if they're less familiar with one of the languages and don't know slang/swearing in it...but again when it's done well it's really good and i'm not an expert. i just can kinda tell when it feels off when i read it, if that makes sense...(it's the same way i feel about grammar lol. sometimes i can just tell it's a little Off)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

probably either fma or soul eater or the sister's grimm book series when i was in middle school. or maybe doctor who? idk i had a lot of fanfic notebooks that i have since destroyed and then regretted destroying

20. Favorite fic you have written?

at the present moment it's in these coming years my kagehina love letter but again i feel like it changes constantly. like the more i write the better i get and the more the newest/most polished thing i've written sort of Becomes my favorite just by default of my satisfaction level with it. sorry if that's a bad answer

tagging @yuebings @dcyiyou @burins @cairoscene @cafecliche @perilously sorry if you've been tagged already also if you want to do this and i didn't tag you just say i did. I'll shut up now

[wan-pissu]

hello everybody and welcome to another MajorAutismEventTM, I'm your host and this time I searched the depths of the deities internet in attempt to make a little snese of Enels attack names, please enjoy

vaarii - means 'sacrifice' in sanskrit (classical indo-aryan language), but also 'pitcher' and 'beloved' and 'rope for fastening an elephant' so take it with a grain of salt

kari - in old norse it's 'gust of wind' but also in about bagillion other languages it's curry so yeah

i won't explain thor

雷鳥 - rock ptarmigan (a medium-sized game bird), its japanese name literally translates to 'thunder bird', also it's the official bird of three prefectures and protected nationwide

雷獣 - another interesting one! the literal translation is 'thunder animal' or 'thunder beast' and it's a creature from japanese mythology made of lighting or fire which takes on the shape of a cat, tanuki, wolf, monkey or a weasel. it's the companion of raijin (shinto god of lighting, with a ring of drums on his back) and its cry sounds like thunder. normally it's chill, but during thunderstorms it bounces all around and scratches trees and stuff. also it likes to sleep in people's navels

julunggul - one of the names for the rainbow serpent, a common deity (or a creator god) in aboriginal culture. it's associated with water and power and also is a literal rainbow

mamaragan - another aboriginal deity, a lighting ancestral being that speaks with thunder, rides storm-clouds, throws lighting bolts on people and trees and lives in in a puddle

amaru - a mythical serpent from andean civilizations, it can have numerous different heads, wings, horns and a fish tail. it's a symbol of wisdom and is associated with water. it can be protective or destructive.

this shit was frustratingly hard to find and i still don't understand the 'hino kiten' thing, so if you have any ideas, feel free to share. it's also possible that i'm trying to find meaning where it's not, but as some wise person said 'it may not be that deep, but the ground is soft and i'm ready to start digging'. that's all, thx, bye

[rxttenfish]

i think ideally i want to include more of merfolk spirituality in the way that they casually think and do things - not necessarily in an overt way, no, but in the sort of ingrained way that works its way into all that they do that shows what a cultural force it is and to help them feel unique in thought.

thats something that always sits at the back of my mind, on how to depict the thought process of an entirely different species, and its something that i never quite feel fully happy with since i worry that itll then be either nonsensical in a way that doesnt feel lived-in or that it'll just feel like a carbon copy of my own thought processes.

for merfolk, thats mostly a lack of hard borders around everything and everything being majorly tinted by their social dynamic, adding in a lot of non-linear thought. they think of things primarily as either song or as a social dance, and tend towards thinking of things in "three-dimensions", being creatures who evolved in an environment where moving up and down requires effectively the same energy as moving backwards or forwards, and being able to conceptualize things better in three dimensions helps with navigation and existence inside of the medium they live in. this also correlates to their songs, aiming for complexity with the higher amount of information they can pack into that same space and to navigate tightly around the social bounds (merfolk having very stiff, non-emotive faces for instance, with most emoting being seen with their fins, means that the majority of how they convey emotion, especially over distance, is with sound and noises.), to the point of being able to form mental maps of their area based solely off of listening to the merfolk around them and what they're saying and singing.

however, all of this means merfolk can also be extremely confusing for landfolk, seemingly leaping from one topic or another or taking great care to restate things and being highly specific or broad and unclear without much of a difference by the merfolk at hand, or just otherwise treating relatively complex topics like theyre much simpler and self-evident than perhaps they might be to others. alternatively, merfolk can end up feeling like conversing with landfolk is too slow or nonresponsive, having a harder time moving at rates that feel natural to them without having to enunciate themselves or go back and explain things that are easy to grasp. to them, landfolk entirely miss most of their emotional complexity and non-emotive, which is fair, because landfolk think the same of merfolk, when we dont really have to specify our emotional response and intent inside of what we have to say and expect body language to serve the majority of that duty. this isnt to say tone doesnt also play an important role, but merfolk are effectively playing with an advanced version of tone which doesn't always map onto ours, and is quickly lost in translation.

but one of the big things to be a "merfolk-ism" would be how much they tend to treat everything as a part of their emotional group, and don't bother drawing hard lines between entirely different objects or contexts. for them, a group might be indistinguishable from the area that they inhabit, buildings and environmental structures being just as important as living elders, or from their relationship to their neighbors, all being as much "defining traits" as the people themselves who live there. which can get confusing, as merfolk might refer to and speak of the dead or historical events as though theyre still alive or still happening, mostly expecting the other person to know that they are dead or in the past, and viewing them and their continued impacts upon the present, or even just them being used as building blocks for the present, as essentially just as meaningful as the presence itself.

[letyukisayfuck]

@moose-goosey-2-babey

okay so this is another kind of complicated question, because the answer--as is the answer to a lot of things regarding haruhi--is that it depends.

i would say yes without hesitation, personally, because while the anime is a phenomenal adaptation there are several things that are by necessity lost in translation with the adaption to screen; and some stories have minor or major changes (see: remote island syndrome being very different, due to legal issues preventing a direct adaptation from ever airing on TV).

kyon's narration in particular is something that is very much cut down in the anime, which is an obvious thing to happen when you take a first person book and make it into a TV show. namely the things he says and the fact that you absolutely should not trust him at face value get lost.

so, let me break down each storyline and whether it has major or minor changes; without spoiling what those differences are any more directly than that. if you really want to jump into a new story, this should at least help you know where things will probably be noticeably different and what you could potentially skip over (at least for now).

the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya - minor changes, outside of the aforementioned narration and book-specific quirks (something that will be true of pretty much all the light novels. if any of them contradict this i will note that instead).

the sigh of haruhi suzumiya - minor changes (though i do stand by its light novel order place of 'right after melancholy even though that's not when it takes place at all' is incredibly important and the anime moving it to the end was most definitely a mistake).

the boredom of haruhi suzumiya - minor changes. this one is more visually interesting in the anime anyway, honestly; if you're going to skip some of them, you could probably come back to this later for the couple of funny moments i don't think made it into the anime.

bamboo leaf rhapsody - pretty similar, but also why would you ever skip bamboo leaf rhapsody. it's bamboo leaf rhapsody.

mysterique sign - only minor changes. again, like boredom, this was more interesting to watch in the anime. not required reading if you want to jump ahead.

remote island syndrome - as i mentioned earlier, this one has major changes! definitely read it regardless of what you do otherwise, it's different enough; those changes don't have major effects on anything to date, but things that didn't happen in the anime do occasionally get referenced in later material (most notably in the tempo loss bishop exchange of haruhi suzumiya, the koizumi pov short story by sou sagara--as a bit of a tangent, if you want a new story, i would recommend it; it seems to take place somewhere in the vicinity of disappearance even if its canonicity is somewhat debatable). i like certain aspects of the anime's rendition of remote island better, but i also prefer certain things from the light novel; it's hard to pick a favorite.

disappearance - very minor changes, to my memory. the disappearance of haruhi suzumiya is, for better or for worse, one of the single most faithful adaptations i have ever seen; and it's nothing short of a masterpiece in my mind in either form. it is absolutely worth reading the book (and it's actually the shortest of the long-form light novel stories, which makes its status as the third-longest animated film absolutely absurd to me), but you're not really missing out on anything if you save it for later.

live alive - minor changes. this one's also technically skippable, but i would highly recommend going back to it at some point; if only because it really does function as a much more pleasant epilogue to sigh.

adventures of mikuru asahina episode 00 - minor changes. this is another one where i honestly prefer the anime version, because a visual medium just makes it feel far less tedious.

(if you're wondering why someday in the rain is absent, that's because it was an anime original. it should be probably counted as canon considering it was written by nagaru tanigawa and slots in nicely as a prelude to disappearance and nothing has ever contradicted its events to date, but it's not adapted from the light novels; so it's irrelevant to this conversation.)

in conclusion: the only one i would say is for sure required reading if you want to jump ahead is remote island syndrome, because it has notable variation from the anime adaptation; and the light novel version is, as you might expect, the one considered canon to the light novels. the rest is (for the most part) absolutely worth revisiting, but you won't be missing out on too much jumping in at the new stories in rampage and wavering. the thing they rely most heavily on is disappearance, and that was easily the most direct page-to-screen adaptation.

[walks-the-ages]

Ya know, I thought being a Faction Paradox fan meant it could be hard to find books.

But the things I'm finding while looking up Arsène Lupin books? Which are public domain, with some very rare, very expensive first editions from 1908-onward still floating around?

hoooooooo boy, some of the literal scams I've come across...

... First, there's this monstrosity.

first, you know something is up already when you see the cover:

(functional ID: ) The book itself is yellow, and the entire "cover" is just a medium-sized, plain white rectangle with plain text that reads "Arsene Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes (1910)". The only bit of color outside the yellow background is a tiny rectangle at the bottom of the white section, that has a simple red rose in it, and at the bottom on the yellow portion, it says Maurice Leblanc and Georgie Morehead; they are the author and english translators respectively.

Not only is this cover incredibly ugly and boring....

They didn't even put the accent on the è in Arsène !

Now, granted, I still don't know the key-combination needed to type out the è (on a regular keyboard, that is; mobile is much easier), but I also literally have a pinned tab leading to the Arsène Lupin wiki so I can literally just copy and paste his name whenever I need to, lol. I'm also not a supposedly wide-spread, professionnel publisher who specializes in reprinting rare books....

speaking of reprints!

This is their reprinting statement in the book.

[ID: plain text on a white background that reads: "Printing Statement: Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text, possible missing pages, missing text, dark backgrounds and other issues beyond our control. Because this is such an important and rare work, we believe it is best to reproduce this book regardless of its original condition. Thank you for your understanding. end ID]

Now, all this wouldn't be so monstrous.......

Except this is what it looks like, reading the book.

[ID: A photo of the inside of the book, showing an unnumbered page which is mostly blank, with extremely large margins around the top, bottom, and sides of the relatively tiny "inner page" of text, which is originally labeled as page 171.

So, on top of admitting they have having zero quality control for their reprints, they're also not even selecting the correct page or printer size for their "rare reprints!" Literally so much paper is being wasted here.

"Arsène Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes" is 350 pages long in its original 1910 First Edition. That's with text that actually filled up the original page. If they'd at least chosen a smaller page size to fit their clear PDF-print, it would have been fine....ish.

But they didn't, so now this book is 350 pages long, and probably wasting half of those pages on pure blank paper.

Also, they're charging $30-$40 for these, "brand-new" on Amazon; going to their publishing website just leads any search to a generic Amazon page, full of the same extremely blatant ripoffs, including "leather hardcovers" from a print of demand location they can't even be bothered to not use a stock photo that requires them to blur out three different titles on the spine for each different angle.

Oh, and the real kicker?

Here's the exact Archive.org listing they're scraping to reprint for exorbitant amounts of money:

Literally down to the exact title, without an accent.

And this isn't the worst one I've found, either; another "public domain scraper" as I've taken to calling them, has taken this book:

and downloaded the ancient, autogenerated Epub from the Internet Archive, and without any human being looking at that Epub, converted it into a PDF and sent it off to a Print-On-Demand company to make those same generic, leather-bound hardcovers for $30+.

Would you like to know what the ancient, auto-generated epub looks like for this very old, very old scan of a book looks like? The one these scammers are reprinting and selling for an arm and a leg without anyone actually looking at the contents of what they're selling?

As a reference, this is what the original, old scan looks like:

[ID: a black and white image of two pages of text from an old book, the text is cramped, slightly blurry and tilted, and is difficult to read; the scan is from an old enough time that, from the shape of the pages not being physically joined together, that the book had to be manually cut page by page to be scanned. There are artifacts, dots and smudges throughout. end ID]

So, you ready to see what these scammers are selling to paying customers with no warning?

[ID: A screenshot of the Calibre ereader app, showing a page from the auto-generated epub from the old scan described above, showing a message in bold across that top that reads "The text on this page is estimated to be only 39.04% accurate." followed by a paragraph of complete gibberish; numbers, symbols, sanskrit letters, various special characters, etc, with no rhyme or reason. End ID.]

I don't know if this scam listing is still out there, I reported the one I found on Abe books, but they're also probably out there with a million duplicate listings on various websites.

So, yeah. Please,

If you are looking for physical copies of the Public Domain Arsène Lupin books, please make sure you carefully check what you are buying before ordering, especially online.

Make sure the 'è' in Arsène has the accent; make sure there's actual quality control, and for Arsène's sake, make sure what you're buying isn't slapdash gibberish.

If you don't know already, most of the Public Domain books that are in English and are PD in the USA can be found on Project Gutenberg (18-19 are PD in the USA this year if you include the play and its subsequent novelization; Gutenberg has 16 of these (including the play) , and you can read them completely for free, 100% legally:

I highly reccomend having the wiki page for Arsène Lupin opened up as you're reading through the books for the first time, because many of the books released at various times (and in various languages) with multiple different titles, so no two reading guides use the same title and leads to sheer confusion.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1358

if you speak French, you can also read all of Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin books, barring 1 that wasn't published until 2012, 75 years after his death, which you can read in french on:

Since USA and French Copyright law are different, if you are in the USA you cannot use any books published after 1928 (except post-humous) for derivative works, as France has a shorter copyright term of 75 years after death (except post-humous), while the USA is based on 95 years after publication, so us poor Lupin fans in the USA have to wait until 2037 before they all are Public Domain :'(

TL;DR: If you're a fan of a series which is Public Domain, you can read them online for free 100% legally; if you're looking to buy phyiscal books and you're shopping online, please take care to check for quality to make sure you're not getting scammed with an extremely poor quality ""book"" which could be complete gibberish, and/or a huge waste of money and paper.

[pikahlua]

Is it just me or the flashback scenes bakugo had before his sacrifice didn't look good unlike the manga where other scenes were also included besides the sludge incident. I think this episode sucks very much compared to the other episodes.

That's just, like, your opinion, man. And to be clear, you're not alone in feeling that way, but I just happen to disagree. I loved this episode. I can also see why someone else might not have loved it. To each their own.

I watch some reaction channels, and a lot of anime-only viewers seem to have been blown away by this episode. Clearly they're getting what they needed to out of this episode, and that's basically the anime's job. So I'd call that a successful episode.

To compare the anime 1-for-1 to the manga is always a losing battle, because when an anime follows the manga too closely it adds absolutely nothing to justify why the manga needed an anime in the first place. And when an anime strays too far from the manga, die-hard manga fans will be upset. It's a thin line to walk. But it is always a mistake to compare the anime's art style to the manga's, because the manga will always win every time (at least it SHOULD). Manga is still-frame art. It's meant to be viewed at your own pace. Each panel is going to have more detail than you would ever see in an anime episode, because animation does not lend itself to lots of super detailed frames (at least not without a giant team and budget). Additionally, each animator will have their own art style they use to try to capture what they can from the manga but ALSO translate the images from the manga into an anime format. There are lots of considerations there, and some priorities will trump others when it comes down to what's possible for the animation team to accomplish.

That said, the correct things to scrutinize would be what the anime brings to the table, namely music, pacing, voice acting, editing, and animation. I thought there was some spectacular animation this episode, and the anime added some things I thought really helped clarify the action of the episode as well as drive the emotions home. From the way everyone else was reacting before I saw the episode, I was coming in with some low expectations, so I was very surprised by what a solid episode it turned out to be. If I were to criticize anything, it would probably be that I would want a little more physical impact shown when Katsuki is hit (although I do also see why they played it the way they did, so while I may have done it differently I'm not upset by what we got). Additionally, some of the still images in the rescue sequence (such as some of the flashbacks like you said) were either missing or shown too quickly to have the same impact. That said, none of these changes ruined the tone of the episode. We only can feel upset about these things because we have read the manga before this, but any anime-only viewer will not have missed anything major. They wouldn't have been able to linger on those moments anyways by virtue of this being anime rather than manga. No, I think the pacing of the rescue sequence was correct for the anime medium, even if some things I liked in the manga had to be cut to make it happen. That's how translation from one medium to another ultimately has to work.

All things considered, despite its flaws, this episode was a banger for me.

[dalesramblingsblog]

Brief Look at Judge Dredd Novels, Part X: Dredd vs Death by Gordon Rennie

So. We've... skipped ahead a bit. About eight years, to be precise. And there's absolutely nothing major that we need to talk about that happened in the interim which might have an impact on how we read the decaying urban hellscape of Mega-City One. I mean, yeah, I suppose I was born in that gap and am currently less than a year old at the time of the novel's publication, but why are you trying to pin all this post-apocalyptic stuff on me?

Oh alright, in the grand tradition of "science fiction released in the year 2003," let's stop playing coy and simply admit that it's tough to read Dredd vs Death, the first of Black Flame's newly launched set of Judge Dredd novels, without viewing it through the prism of 9/11 and the Iraq War.

The most obvious culprit here is undoubtedly the Church of Death's attempt to break the Dark Judges out of their imprisonment by crashing an h-wagon into the tower above said prison, but even the nature of the Church as a decentralised group of religious fundamentalists waging warfare in urban environments feels pointed.

Similarly, Rennie includes a moment in which Dredd ruminates on the vampires' undead status depriving them of the meagre rights possessed by an average citizen of Mega-City One, evoking Donald Rumsfeld's infamous categorisation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as the "living dead." More literally, the presence of hordes of zombies ties the novel into a post-9/11 fascination with those particular members of the undead, from 28 Days Later through to Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil films and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead.

All of this, however, makes Dredd vs. Death sound considerably more complex and nuanced than it actually is. I mean, that's not to say that it's completely without depth, but it is, first and foremost, concerned with serving as a novelisation of Rebellion Developments' contemporaneous PS2/Xbox/Gamecube/PC game of the same name.

Putting all my cards on the table here, I'm forced to admit that I've never actually played the game, but it's nevertheless quite apparent that Rennie has had to do some finessing of the narrative in order to better measure up to the different standards inherent to the change in medium from video game to prose. Some of these tricks work quite well, including giving Anderson a more active role than she seems to have had in the original game.

Particularly delicious is the reframing of the zombies' attack on the megamall from the point of view of a "living mannequin" caught up in the chaos, a nice way of adding tension to what was presumably just another level in the game itself. Added on to this is the cute touch of having the living mannequin's brother-in-law, referenced in his internal monologue, show up later in the novel for a similar sequence.

But ultimately, once it comes down to the climactic showdown with the four Dark Judges, it's impossible to avoid the impression that we're simply watching a progression of boss battles committed to the printed page. They're very well-translated, mind you, and the decision to distribute the boss battles between Anderson and Giant as well as Dredd is a characteristically shrewd one, but it becomes very clear that any post-9/11 depth one might care to read into it is largely incidental.

Still, the whole thing has an endearingly propulsive, runaway freight train quality that helps it avoid the fate of overstaying its welcome, so it's hard to complain too much. As far as novelisations of video games go - a genre in which I haven't dabbled too much, but that I find hard to believe contains too many gems - my intuition tells me that this is likely to be one of the stronger examples.

Current ranking:

Dreddlocked

Deathmasques

Wetworks

Silencer

The Medusa Seed

Dread Dominion

Dredd vs Death

Cursed Earth Asylum

The Hundredfold Problem

The Savage Amusement

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[odysseys-end]

Newbie

He could barely hold in his excitement. His senior may have to forgive his disrespectful behavior just once because this discovery is just simply phenomenal. Why, he's probably the only first-year with such forbidden knowledge! Forbidden but precious. If Tsukasa closed his eyes and tried really hard, he could just imagine Tori seething with envy right about now. He has to clasp his hands over his mouth, fearing that he may just say something to ruin this moment.

Never mind the fact that his senior looked only a second away from cursing out his entire bloodline. Judging by the way Sena Izumi's hand tightened on the book he held, he was trying. So maybe Tsukasa shouldn't tease him too much.

Sena Izumi, a former student of Primavera Institute of Magic. Expelled for practising the Dark Arts. Blacklisted by the Diviner of the Sanctuary. It's been years since his banishment from the kingdom, yet here he is, alive and irritable. The portraits of Izumi shown to them did not do any justice to his actual appearance. Yet another stigma that evil has to look ugly or plain. The youth before him is reminiscent of pure, untouched ice.

If Tsukasa were to have encountered his senior wandering the hallways of their school, he wouldn't have associated dark magic with him. Back on track, he came here to learn things from his senior. Magic that couldn't be taught in school, expressly forbidden but tempting all the same. His mentor probably wouldn't scold him, he might even say something along the lines of: magic is a medium to express one's soul and desires. easier to translate than the convoluted nonsense that is human speech!

His mentor would probably laugh like an incredibly annoying goblin.

"If you're just going to stand around like an idiot, just get out of my way instead of wasting my time." Sena Izumi growled. Right.

"Sena-senpai... eek! You don't have to look so scary!" Tsukasa protested when Izumi shot him a venomous glare. It made him want to recoil but if he backed down now, this chance would be gone forever. In record time, he immediately ducks down just as something made contact with the wall behind his head.

"You're resorting to throwing things now?! Are you not dignified, senpai?" exclaimed Tsukasa, aghast. Peeking cautiously at his senior, Tsukasa catches a glimpse of a smile on Izumi's mouth before it's gone. He's still standing there, not a hint of any movement except the book he held earlier is no longer in his hand.

"Look, I did not wake up this morning to get harassed by some rich and pampered neophyte. You're pretty daring to come in here, unaccompanied, Suou Tsukasa-kun." The air turned frigid. A few seconds had merely passed but Izumi had managed to turn this whole floor into a wintry domain. In the corner where he huddled, Tsukasa tried to summon a small ball of flame in his hands. Upon hearing his name, Tsukasa faltered, the feeble attempt at fire fizzled out.

Izumi stalked closer. Tendrils of ice seemed to spread out wherever he stepped. When he was finally in front of Tsukasa, he knelt down. with a small action, he managed to completely dispel whatever fear Tsukasa was beginning to harbor and also evicted him from his domain. Izumi flicked him.

"Go home, reckless brat."

The windows were still open in his dorm room, the curtains fluttering wildly- an after-effect from a teleportation spell. Tsukasa stared blankly at the cold, pale moon. He was sprawled on the floor, with a book in his hand. What just happened? How was he sent back here without alarming the defensive magic the school had around its perimeters? How is he not suffering from any repercussions from coming into contact with black magic when Izumi had approached him and even used glacial magic to touch him-

Oh.

Slowly, he sat up. The book he held was innocent, bound with a cranberry linen cover. The title was embossed in gold letters: Article of Faith, by Sena Izumi and... Tsukinaga Leo. Huh. Every copy of this book had been burned, the Elders claimed that it was teaching aspiring mages to reject the Sanctuary. Then this must be...

Tsukasa flipped through the pages, some sort of trepidation gripped his heart. Countless annotations made by flawless handwriting filled the paper. Most of it was directed at certain passages written by the co-author. I've got the last remaining copy, and it's Sena Izumi's.

"If he wanted to give this to me, he could've done so nicely." He pouted.