#jojo retrospective

[incorrect-jojolands-quotes]

If I did monthly notes on The JOJOLands chapters, would y'all read it?

Not necessarily a full-on review but I'm thinking about posting random tidbits about the chapter that I think not a lot of people might have considered or background on certain things that occur in the chapter.

[i-am-trans-gwender]

I was surprised by animal hrt when I first found about it. In retrospect considering the overlap of trans people, furries and therians the surprising part is that it took this long for animal hrt to become popular. It was only a matter of time.

Also animal hrt has definitely brought out the furry and/or therian of a good chunk of trans people. Myself included.

[randomnumbers751650]

Fanfic idea: a group of outsiders end in Gensokyo and can't go back, but they don't know Japanese. Everybody is busy in the village, so they assign the task of teaching them Japanese to the taoist with funny hat that volunteered. What could possibly go wrong?

[chacerider]

お誕生日おめでとう、良太郎 🎂💖

[minnesotamedic186]

HUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuugh I just made a horrid correlation-

[dailyjolynekujo]

[highdio]

Translation and graphic via twitter.com/jojo_wiki and jojonews.com, Araki made a “new” Character History sheet for Dio Brando.

Araki explains that he lost/threw out the original one after he wrote the character into his manga, so maybe consider this Araki revisiting Dio in retrospect. From Continued - Hirohiko Araki's Manga Techniques (JOJO Magazine Winter 2022).

[garmanarnarr]

Rickorty Week Day 4: Mythological Creatures

vampire morty | 2k words | Rated M for blood drinking and sexual content

@rickortyweek

Morty’s getting pretty good at asking for it. 

“H-hey, Rick?” 

Rick doesn’t look over from the TV, which is currently playing a rerun of a JoJo Siwa political documentary in a universe where she’s the president of the United States. It’s a miniseries, a retrospective, and they’ve been powering through episodes all night. Everyone went to bed long ago; Mom, Dad, and Summer had started to give Morty a wide berth after ten PM. But he doesn’t mind not sleeping, now, because Rick doesn’t sleep either. Only in fits and starts. Sometimes over his work bench, face mashed into mechanical junk, or passed out on the couch. He snores, but only when he’s really drunk– not that Morty’s watching. 

“Um,” Morty says, picking at a thread on the couch cushion. 

“What?” Rick sounds too distant to be annoyed, just flat and tired.

“M’ getting kinda, you know.” 

“What?”

“Hungry?” Morty’s voice cracks on the last part. 

Jojo screams something excitedly on the TV, pointing at a diplomat from another country and waving. Her facial rhinestones match her power suit. 

Rick’s still watching, glazed eyes flashing in the TV’s glow. “Her foreign policy sucked,” he mutters.

“I’m hungry, Rick.” 

“Want me to order some fucking sugar chicken, then?” Rick asks, finally swiveling to actually look at Morty. “Huh, Morty? Want some Panda Express?”

Morty’s throat feels so dry it crackles. He thinks of the pool of sunlight that’ll be creeping towards them through the glass patio doors when the sun rises in a few hours, ready to burn him. His vision blurs a little and he gives a painful swallow. 

“Y-y-you know what I mean, Rick,” he whispers. It isn’t fair that Rick always plays him like this when he’s fucked Morty up in the first place. Experiment gone sour, vampirism— Morty had to pick that term up– spreading too aggressively to be cut out, too deeply to pull the plug and hop to a clone. He rests his hand on the couch next to Rick’s leg. Not touching it, but just, you know, next to it. He can feel the heat of Rick’s body beside his own like he’s sitting near a radiator. Throbbing is such a weird word, but that’s the only way to describe it. Rick is throbbing with heat. Morty runs his tongue over the stubs of his teeth. 

“You know, my blood is probably some of the nastiest shit you could put inside you,” Rick’s saying. “Got yeeears of k-lax and alcohol abuse in here. And some other stuff. I think one of Unity’s non-humanoid bodies might have had–”  

“I don’t care. E-everything else tastes like ass and I don’t want to drink it.” Morty makes a face, saying that out loud, but it’s true. The bags of O-positive Rick had pulled out of his lab freezer after he’d just turned Morty had tasted like the equivalent of soggy pizza cardboard. Real pizza– all normal food– also tastes terrible. Animal blood has a funky, earthy smell and a worse flavor, when he’d tried it. And he isn’t about to make anyone else let him drink their blood.

Rick made his own bed. He can lie in it. 

Rick watches his face for a moment, expression unreadable. Then he sighs, and rolls up his sleeve. 

“Not on the couch, you little moron. Or, you wanna g-get b-blood everywhere?” 

“I won’t get it everywhere,” Morty whines. He did the first time, when they fed in the garage, but he’s neater about it, now. He’d been so new, then, and dying for it, ready to rip Rick’s veins right open, ready to swim inside him to make the pain of his thirst go away. Now, after two weeks of feedings, he doesn’t waste a drop. 

Rick tries to stand, but Morty catches his wrist. He’s taken aback at his own strength; that’s still a surprising perk. He keeps accidentally breaking doorknobs off of classrooms in school. Denting his locker door when he closes it with a slam so loud it echoes through the hallways. Shattering glasses. Jerking his own dick too hard and too fast by accident. 

Rick pauses, looking down at him. He seems like he’s weighing making his grandson let go with words or by force. But Morty doesn’t let go. He can feel the throbbing of Rick’s blood now, pulse pressed against the circle of his fingers. His stomach twists with a tortured sounding gurgle. 

“Please,” he says. 

“Alright. Jesus,” Rick says, sitting back down with a roll of his eyes, yanking his wrist out Morty’s grasp quickly enough to break his hold. “Just a second, A-A-Augustus Gloop.”

He reaches into the breast pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a little packet, which he rips open with his teeth. Morty’s chest thuds because it looked kind of like a condom. He probably shouldn’t have thought that. Rick unfolds the moist towelette inside and uses it to briskly swab the inner part of his forearm. The pale stretch of it gleams up under the light of the ad that’s playing on TV, riddled with blue and green veins, skin going translucent with age. Morty’s mouth waters. 

“You– you just carry a swab with you?” he asks, licking back drool. It’s a genuine question. Did Rick want to– was he just waiting around for Morty to—

“More for my benefit than yours. Human mouths are one of the diEUUGHrtiest parts of our bodies, Morty.” 

“That doesn’t seem true, but okay,” Morty says. 

“I’m not fucking with you. Humans are filthy.” 

Rick throws the used wipe over the back of the couch, then pats the space beside him, like they’re going to cozy up and watch more TV together, easy as anything. Morty crawls over.  

Rick offering his skinny-ass forearm to him like this in the middle of the house is insane. They usually feed in the garage, sitting clinically in separate foldable chairs, lights flipped on. It’s dark in the living room, and it should be hard to see—should leave Morty fumbling and awkward, unable to function—but it doesn’t. Morty’s different, now. Darkness is easy. This close, he can sense all the sweet spots where the most blood flows in Rick’s body and where to land the best bite; he would have liked it a lot better if Rick let him feed at his neck, or at the top of his thighs, or even near his armpits, he thinks, but he’ll take what Rick will give him. 

“Don’t– don’t rip my fuckin’ arm off here, Morty, I need it.” They’re so close together that Rick’s voice is quieter than normal. Maybe he’s a little scared. Morty likes that; the idea of being able to scare Rick, a bit, for once. 

“I won’t,” Morty says with a lisp. His pointy canine teeth are getting longer in his mouth and making it hard to talk. Carefully, he takes Rick’s offered arm into his hands. His left one, the one with less cybernetic shit in it, flesh and blood around a hollow titanium bone that sheathes a grappling device. He smells kind of bad but also kind of good, like he always does, like alcohol sweats and a familiar old man powderiness. Morty darts his tongue across his lower lip. Rick’s chest is rising and falling gently, calmly, as he waits for Morty to start. 

“M’ just– don’t mind me, Morty, just watching TV, here. Just gonna finish this show, or whatever.” 

Rick claims he’s a god-robot-monster all the time— won’t shut up about it. But it turns out he’s still human, Morty thinks, a little vindictively, as he bites down. At least, still human enough to feed him.  

As he adjusts his bite to get the blood flowing, pressing against the smooth, hairless slip of Rick’s forearm with his tongue, he wonders if this was why people like wine. He’d always hated it, and spat out the mouthful of Mom’s that he’d snuck when he was ten and she was on the phone, because it was nasty, but maybe there’s something more appealing to it than he thought. An age and bitterness, in a good way, the kind that gives it a lot of different and interesting flavors at once. That’s what Rick’s blood tastes like. It tastes really fucking good. 

The TV’s making more sounds, but Morty can’t hear them anymore. He’s way too busy gulping Rick’s blood. Distantly, as if it were happening to someone else, he realizes he’s getting hard. Vaguely, he tries to direct his thoughts towards Jessica, but it’s tricky, considering he’s touching Rick and smelling Rick and drinking from Rick’s body. That Rick’s delicious blood is filling his mouth and sliding down his throat with every swallow. 

The flow stutters, so he pressed up all along his grandpa’s side to get a better angle. For a second, his dick brushes against Rick’s leg, hot and obvious. He tenses. Rick doesn’t say anything, though, just keeps sitting there quietly, so he relaxes again. Whatever, if Rick doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, and everything feels good. This is so fucking good. It feels right. He keeps feeding, actively sucking, now, because the flow is starting to taper off, blood only coming in hot spurts when he coaxes it out. He rocks his hips, a little, getting some friction on his dick, because he’s  so warm and full, and that feels good, too—

“—orty. Morty, that’s enough. Stop.”

Morty doesn’t stop. He swirles his tongue needily around the bite marks, pleasure unfurling up from his stomach and over his whole body, from his scalp to the bottom of his feet. Feeding from his grandpa like this is euphoric. 

“M-Morty, stop.” 

A hand pushes him back, roughly. It could be anyone’s hand. Morty is longer tethered to earth, fully. Suddenly, Morty’s laying on the floor by the coffee table, panting, ass sore from falling on it. His chin’s covered in own spit. His cheeks are flushed. There’s a definite tent pitched in his jeans, and everything is cold with the lack of a body to be pressed up against. When he looks up, Rick seems pale, even by his own standards, and his hair’s wilder, too. He’s blinking kind of a lot, staring down at Morty with fury on his face despite his heavy eyelids. He looks like he’s having trouble staying awake. 

“You– you don’t know how lucky you are that my cybernetic enhancements will start injecting substitute into my bloodstream if I lose more than a quart of blood, Morty,” he says in a low, deadly voice. Morty hears the edge of a wheeze in it. “A quaAAAUGhrt. Do you know how much that is? You fucking, you fucking numbskull braindead idiot?”

“No?”

“That’s what I— that’s what I thought,” Rick says, getting unsteadily to his feet with the help of the couch arm. “I’ll be in the garage. Don’t follow me.” 

Morty watches as his grandpa woozily makes his way out of the living room. He’s actually a little worried Rick’s going to pass out, or crash into something, but he doesn’t. He’s gone. Morty rubs the back of his hand across his mouth, and when he looks at it in the TV’s half-light, it’s smeared dark with Rick’s blood.

“S-sorry,” he says, late. 

–

Morty climbs upstairs to his room even though it’s more like roleplaying someone that needs to sleep than an actual need. He lays down on top of his covers next to his closet that’s now full of hats and sunglasses and UV-protective long sleeve shirts, above a kitchen filled with food he can’t eat, and a hallway mirror he can no longer see his own reflection in. 

He lays there quietly and waits, full-stomached, giving Rick a little privacy. Some time to cool off. If Rick noticed Morty’s hardon, he didn’t comment on it. 

But Morty had seen where Rick’s blood went, while he was feeding. 

He could sense it, the thick coursing of it, even in the dark.

[lurkingshan]

Once again I'm here because I'm angry. There's been a lot of talk about Boston and what Jojo wanted or not to say about sluts and whatever. I, and other people I think, were struggling with the idea that Jojo would actually want that message out. So I went to see some interviews. And got kinda shocked about one thing that he said. (btw this is an actual quote.) He was talking about Boston reasons for his behaviour Jojo: Bad people don't need to have a backstory. They are just born sluts. A bad character doesn't need... (and then the interviewer says - he doesn't need tragedy to be bad) Exactly. And then he gets asked if he thinks Boston needs redemption and he emphatically says NO. And then talking about how much fun is writing the character he says this: Boston is such a fun character to write. yeah unpredictable he's like, he doesn't care. he doesn't have morals so we just like goes with the flow. bad people? no morals? humm... i don't know... So yeah, now I don't really know what to think about it. I was wondering what are your thoughts about this. I'm still gonna watch some more of this, because I'm a masochist that needs all the information, but yeah, I thought I would share. Thanks for the space

Yiiiiiikes. Okay, first let me preface this by saying that whenever I am reading/watching something that was either translated to English or spoken in English by a person with a different first language, I try not to get too hung up on specific word choice. By necessity we tend to go for the simplest possible words to convey meaning in those situations, and thus a lot of nuance gets stripped out.

That said, the sentiment is clear: Jojo saw Boston as a villain character without a moral code that he could deploy to cause chaos wherever he liked in the story. And he is definitely conflating his villainy with sexual promiscuity, which is the worst part of this quote and unfortunately aligns with the way that finale, and ultimately the themes of the show, were written. It definitely makes me side eye Jojo and as I’ve already said, I won’t be so inclined to trust him nearly as much next time.

Only Friends, however, has more than one writer, and I don’t think they all see it this way. If you think Boston is purely an irredeemable slut, you don’t write his breakup and reunion with Nick in the way that this show did. You don’t give depth to his situation with Atom. You don’t show his sincere emotion, his hurt, and his earnest desire to be with Nick while he can. With all the info we have now and in retrospect, it kind of feels like there was a bit of a tug-o-war going on with Boston’s story.

My understanding is that Den Panuwat, one of three writers on the show, is the one who adapted the novel version of the story, and there he changed Boston’s final arc significantly. Rather than Boston fucking Atom, he made his final conflict about his dad’s political career with Boston’s sexuality being used as a weapon against him. He wrote Boston and Nick ending on good terms. And he wrote a final chapter for Boston where he arrives in New York, finds a more accepting society and queer community who accept and understand him, and thrives.

I’m sure there were some non-artistic reasons why we couldn’t get this version of the story in the show (the politics story was likely vetoed for censorship reasons and they probably couldn’t afford to show us Boston in NY, for example), but the fact that Den wrote it signals that his perspective on Boston is not fully aligned with what Jojo said in that quote above. Perhaps we have him to thank for the empathetic portrayal and humanity we did see in Boston despite Jojo’s perspective on him. And Den has another show coming soon, so maybe we’ll see a clearer read of his own perspective on queer sexual politics without the GMMTV restrictions when we watch Playboyy.

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Friday, November 8th

Buffy: There is only one thing on this Earth more powerful than evil, and that's us.

~~Showtime~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Buzzkill by veronyxk84 (Spike, Dawn, PG-13)

Tonight and the Rest of My Life by anr (Angel/Cordelia, T)

Bewitched Bimbos by TiffyB (Buffy/Willow/Xander, Explicit)

Burn by buffytargaryen (Buffy/Angel, G)

A New Dawn by Sasusc (Buffy/Angel, Dawn, Joyce, G)

Escape to Capri by melodys_muse (Buffy/Angel, G)

will we find this light by bonniesfire (Buffy/Angel, T)

Wherever You Go by a2zmom (Buffy/Angel, Lorne, Dawn, Faith, G)

Haikus: Inca Mummy Girl, Reptile Boy, Halloween by Senorpuddin (Scoobies, worksafe)

[Chaptered Fiction]

Shadowed Suspicion Omake 12 by madimpossibledreamer (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure fusion, Teen)

Dreams of Home - Chapter 1-4 (COMPLETE!) by Liana_Medea (Buffy/Angel, G)

The Watcher, Ch. 34 by In Mortal (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Great Escape from Oz, Ch. 7 by Melme1325 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Science of Being Yours, Ch. 7 by Maxine Eden, ClowniestLivEver (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Bad Penny, Ch. 1 by OffYourBird (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

With Sprinkles, Ch. 43 by dogbertcarroll (anime crossover, Xander, FR15)

[Images, Audio & Video]

Drawings: xander is the #1 willow simp by hamspamandjamsandwich (Willow/Xander, worksafe)

Vid: Caronte by mycatismyfriend (Angel/Wesley)

Gifset: Between Good and Goodbye by peeta-mellark (Buffy/Angel, worksafe)

moodboard: fred x wesley by courtillyy (worksafe)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Walkthrough Part 4 (XBOX) by ★WishingTikal★ ()

A Tribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Show). A Tribute Fan song. by EpicTributeTunes ()

Vid: Always an angel, Never a god by Lov3ly Day (Buffy, ensemble)

Manip: Rip Tony Todd aka Candyman (Tony Todd, worksafe)

[Reviews & Recaps]

Mothman's Buffy rewatch: Season 4, episodes 9, 10, and 11, "Something Blue", "Hush", and "Doomed" by mothmans-wedding-photographer

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Series Retrospective (Review/Recap) by JB's Spooky Review

[Boom] Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1. | 60 second comic Book Review by WithoutaPanel-t8x

Which single-episode bad guy creeped you out the most? by MountainFig7244

The Cinematography by Outside-Cabinet1398

Best episodes to watch on an edible? hosted by RafRide

[Recs & In Search Of]

alas-poor-cesario is looking for an old Giles/Xander fic where Spike was used as a cooling mat

Buffy podcast recs by CraftyDependent5283 and others

YouTube channel Episodic Analysis recced by wolfotwindsor

[Community Announcements]

Revamped I Will Remember You Marathon — week one masterpost (Buffy/Angel fan fiction)

[Fandom Discussions]

Images: wedding cake toppers... that would fit Spuffy better than the one Buffy picked out by aphony-cree

stray thought but why didn’t they just let giles die in spiral? by camellcat

respectfully disagree that faith and spike would be kismeses by lesbianmarrow

What I want to know is how Angel and Spike got to the point of arguing about cavemen vs astronauts by thequeenofsastiel

Spangel captivates me so much more, and I’m not sure why by thequeenofsastiel

Re: “Chloe was an idiot. She was weak.” by theredpharaoah

I think the Slayer Activation Spell is kind of lore-breaking and doesn’t make sense by theredpharaoah

Another one of my favourite Buffy headcanons (The Dark Age) by duckwnoeyes

strange that Spike is shown to be someone who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking complex thoughts or focusing on any self reflection, while Angel/us is - by thequeenofsastiel, everythingeverythingeverything

The Kendra/Faith dynamic that exists only in my head by finalgirl1984

having some twisted and somewhat possibly perverted thoughts about spangelus by xaeyrnofnbe

Diagram: behold, my buffyverse ship thoughts by xaeyrnofnbe

RIP Tony Todd by burrunjor and others

RIP horror legend Tony Todd (Candyman). He played Vyasa in The Shroud of Rahmon - by InfiniteMehdiLove

Would Anya be a better character if... by debujandobirds

Innocent victim of the day (in Storyteller) by timmorris82

Does anyone know anything about this spell? by KaleidoscopeNo1263

DVDs… to Keep or Not to Keep… by AornisHades

checkpoint lesson [American politics] by ersimon417

Happy birthday to Azura Skye who played an amazing Cassie/The First by PinkPashaTS

Inncoent(?) victim(s) of the day (in The Pack) by timmorris82

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

James Marsters Brisbane Supanova Expo 2024 Reports, Pics & Videos via dontkillspike

Todd McIntosh Makeup Secrets from Buffy and Beyond by PopGeeks

Embracing Stillness: Discovering the Power of the Pause. Ft Rob Nagle [who played Robson] by The Aftermath

I ask Amber Benson for her opinion on Taffy (Tara x Buffy) by Matanza Mafia-Fedora

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

[saltydkdan]

Thanks for making the Part 1 Retrospective video, as it was one of the reasons I started watching jojo.

Jojo gooooood

[abuddyforeveryseason]

It's the Buddy for April 22nd! He's wearing the Capricorn Cloth (being a capricorn himself) of the classic Masami Kurumada manga Saint Seiya.

I loved Saint Seiya. I have all the paperbacks, even, I liked it when I was a kid. It's an interesting manga, in that it doesn't make much sense in retrospect, but when you're reading it, you're more interested in the beat of the plot than in the big picture.

The plot, as I understand, is that this rich girl Saori is the reincarnation of the goddess Athena, so her dad arranged for ten boys to get trained to be her protectors (the saints), wearing bronze armors based on traditional constellations. Then they get into a martial arts tournment to win an actual gold cloth, but complications start making it so they need to stop fighting amongst themselves, and start fighting actual bad guys.

In a way, it's a very toyetic story - each character has their own unique armor (or cloth) which is fits both them, and can be assembled to resemble its constellation, so kids had a lot of expensive toys to collect. And since the golden cloths (belonging to the strongest saints) are based on the twelve zodiac signs, kids already have a favorite character picked out for them.

Me, I'm an Aquarius, so my favorite was Aquarius Camus. The one with the ice powers. He also won a Literature Nobel, you know. But I never related to him, really. He's an ice guy, which is cool I guess, but, not the power I'd choose.

The manga's also very camp. The art's really old-fashioned, looking almost like sometihng from Tatsuo Yoshida's generation. Not a lot of attention is paid to proportions and depth, and the fight scenes are not dynamic. But that's one of the things I like about it, to be honest. It feels like there's a closer dialog between the artist and the reader when the art is so direct. It's the opposite of something like the manga version of One-Punch Man, for instance.

And the designs of the cloths, characters and enemies is also pretty unique, it's got that simplified design quality of eighties manga that's not as popular anymore.

One aspect that Saint Seiya, like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, isn't shy about is the gay subtext regarding some characters... it's most obvious with Andromeda Shun and Pisces Aphrodite, but also Virgo Shaka, Aries Mu... it's an intentional aspect of the story, but when me and my friends were kids watching it, we thought it was pretty "gross".

Even though it doesn't really make sense and it's pretty much designed to appeal to kids' love of shiny stuff and fight scenes, Saint Seiya is one of my favorite franchises. I'll be honest, I didn't know much about greek mythology when I first watched the anime, so I assumed a lot of the stuff Kurumada made up was actual part of ancient Greek myth. Still makes no sense why Capricorn Shura had the power of Excalibur, though... what does Excalibur have to do with Capricorn? Should be a Draco thing, or even Ursa Major...

The Capricorn print in the background is a public domain image.

[rainbowgod666]

Ok look imma cut to the chase and skip a lot of things. Also these are my abilites. Idk about my OC and its 100s of versions. Be aware that im going off the fucking Alien X Retrospective video cause The Ink Tank is based.

Autism: "but autism isnt a power" shut the fuck up you wish you knew half the shit in interstellar. I can understend every rick and morty joke from the lowest fart joke to the Multiversal Fracking done by rick prime. As we say in italy, you can attach yourself to it and pull hard.

Functional Immortality: gamers dont die, they respawn (doesnt mean you cant win you floppycock)

Metaphysical Awareness Disorder: apparently being near Me means people feel like widdle bunnies near me... unless theyre on a higher tier than me. And I can list like 3 people here on tumblr (@itsapmseymour, @pukicho, @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses) that im pretty sure would go like "dude you look like you smoked the entirety of mandela catalogue are you ok" i have an ability where i can look at LITERALLY ANYONE so hard they start becoming crying, babbling messes of Being Sorry For Their Actions.

References: all of them. JoJo. SCP. Undertale. Lancer RPG. Maybe one day even homestuck! Gimme a fucking minute here.

Command Prompt: sometimes the above isnt enough. This isnt a combat ability because i have no fucking reason to use it in combat. It would be stupid. I would just get down to the level of the average wizardposting poster. And im above such cringe.

Overly specific weaknesses: Cimmerian telling me im wrong. Not being able to truly tank Hollow Purple. Im not immune to everything no matter how much autism i slap at it. Good grief

Isolation: i can shut off like a computer and have a space, called Reference Space, where nothing ever no matter what can reach me without my permission. Reference Space however is also the deepest insides of this blog. Its basically my office, where i work tirelessly to make sure none of the fandoms im in... misbehave

To anybody having a problem with this:

Get a fucking life.

[velvetvexations]

Like, the majority of Chapter Black makes no fucking sense because you can tell how hard it's trying to be JoJo (which is obviously something I've only come to understand in retrospect) with Territories, but like, the mind-reader has zero powers beyond mind-reading! The fact that he can read minds and aspires to be a dirty boxer should mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to Yusuke, who punches hard enough to throw people through solid rock and create craters, and fast enough that he can't be tracked by human eyes. JoJo works because it's characters are normal humans with highly specific superpowers that have to work within the confines of only having those superpowers. You can't just move DBZ-tier characters into that sort of context fighting enemies who are specifically noted as being completely normal humans outside of their specialized abilities.

But none of that really matters because if you just forget the scaling it all kicks ass.

[mzannthropy]

Reading The Rose and The Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott aka Agatha Christie. Here's the thing: We have the narrator, Hugh Norreys, who tells the story in retrospective. He was on his way to marry the woman he loved when he got into an accident and was injured, and confined to a wheelchair. His bride-to-be was willing to stand by him, but they broke it off bc he suddenly realised he didn't know the real her, they had nothing in common etc (but the woman is not in any way presented in a negative manner, just that the narrator's feelings changed). Hugh stays with his brother and sister-in-law, who inherited a house on Cornish coast. It's not specified how disabled he actually is, he seems to be able to move his arms alright, but he needs care. Mild spoiler: it's revealed at one point that he planned to take his life--he's been saving sleeping pills. Prior to his injury, he used to be active and athletic. Which he now, understandably, cannot be any longer, plus he is dependent on others. But weeks into living in his sister-in-law's place, after he meets some local people and gets to know the candidate for upcoming election (story takes place in 1945, general election took place that summer in UK), he no longer wants to die. He tells his sister-in-law (who actually knew what he wanted to do all along; she's a smart, capable woman, a really good character) that he's "actually interested in waking up tomorrow morning". A wedding is to take place between two members of aristocracy who live in the castle, Hugh is invited. The groom's name is Rupert.

Sounds familiar?

You know, Me Before You is my most hated book in the universe, but I had no idea that its writer straight up stole things from my favourite author! I mean, that fucking bitch has been accused of plagiarism, so if she did it once, it's possible she has done it more times.

I fucking hate Jojo Moyes.

[squadrah]

Not a request but in retrospect I find it really funny how much merch fanservice La Squadra had back in the day because I don't think I've seen any other Jojo minor villain recieve the same treatment, not to this extent.

Like DavidPro/Lucky Land really said "Hey LS fans, we know you love La Squadra unity, so we're gonna make new anime art of Sorbet and Gelato for merch purposes, AND Pitter Patter Pop art." I didn't fully grasp the significance back then but we had it good 😭

Oh mannn, I am not very knowledgeable about JoJo merch (despite very luckily owning some), but you are absolutely right! There must have been something about La Squadra compared to other minor antagonists or groups from earlier, something that told DavePro and Lucky Land that broke kings can be cash cows - I still remember how I learned that Prosciutto was voiced by Tattsun and I was like holy shit, this guy must be super important, this has to be fan service, and I was right on the money. Risotto might be winning sexiest or favorite La Squadra member in the polls, but nobody can tell me Prosciutto didn't pull this train till his dying breath. (And then they botched up his sexy pen and my wallet gasped in relief as I cried in agony. His face looks like thirty-something Fugo doing Mista's mafia taxes... Seriously how could they get Bruno and Diavolo looking perfect and then fuck up this guy... Travesty I tell you.)

And damn I miss Pitapop. I have so many screencaps saved on my phone, maybe sometime I'll put some on the blog (if I can sift through them because there are a LOT.)