#literally just got thrown the worst curve ball by the higher ups

[bunnions]

you ever have such a bad day at work you throw up?

[simonsaidthat]

“It Gets Better Later...” JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 2 (also... Part 2)

Splitting up my written thoughts on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure into Parts, I’ve finished reading the manga and I’m listing each part from “least looking forward to sitting through the Anime version of to most excited for”. Which doubles as a “Worst to Best” list.

I’ve already listed Part 1: Phantom Blood as the worst entry (it’s not... that bad?) but we’re moving up to the next part that’s not AS bad as Part 1.

Part 2: Battle Tendency

(I have seen the opening, and the opening rocks).

As stated previously, I think the worst Part of Phantom Blood is Will A. Zeppeli, Hamon/Ripple, and basically the entire second half of Part 1. The strongest element of Phantom Blood was Dio trying steal the Joestar inheritance in the first half. The second half is about Johnathan learning random magic bullshit that wasn’t in the first half to find and defeat Dio who was now off-screen.

Part 2 is at least all in on the magic bullshit, so it can instead focus on applying it to its ridiculously escalating series of battles.

And I didn’t really go into greater detail about this, but Johnathan Joestar wasn’t particularly interesting either. He was just kind of a boring ‘good boy’ and any extended screen time made sitting through Part 1 harder and harder.

Joseph Joestar on the other hand was anything but boring. The strongest elements of Battle Tendency were the heroes Joseph, Caeser Zeppeli, and Lisa Lisa. Their dynamic is so good, that I’m frankly disappointed in every other JoJo Part that doesn’t have as strong a group pairing as these three.

After reading 8 different JoJo’s, Joseph might be my favorite Joestar protagonist.

...but Part 2 is still my second least favorite JoJo part.

Look, I’m reading JoJo because everyone keeps recommending the series (and the series they’re most fond of appear to be post Hamon/Ripple stuff), so Part 2 can’t help but be a roadblock in that way, but I attest that it’s not the lack of Stands that makes Part 2 a hard sit through. After all, the inclusion of Hamon/Ripple is what ruined Part 1 for me, and simply removing it would have made Phantom Blood easily in my top 3.

It’s not the Hamon/Ripple that makes Battle Tendency worse, nor is it the lack of Stands. Instead I’d say it’s because in execution, Part 2 is the total opposite of Part 1.

Part 1 had a great antagonist but a boring protagonist; Part 2 has amazing heroes, and boring villains (and one, sympathetic, cybernetic nazi to sour things further).

And I don’t like the Pillar Men.

Hirohiko Araki’s artwork is still a little rough during the early JoJo’s, that I wasn’t sure how large the Pillar Men were. I thought that maybe they were literal giants (which would have been interesting) but it may have just been a perspective thing...

Anyway, the first thing they do is walk through people and cause them to melt through contact. They seemed kind of boringly invincible beings which, to be fair, does lead to the one thing I like about the Pillar Men, is how susceptible they are to Joseph’s bluffs. This helps to elevate how unpredictable Joseph is (hence being my favorite Joestar) but it really hurts my impression of the Pillar Men in the process.

Other JoJo villains share a certain amount of “hubris” as a defining weakness for them, but the Pillar Men in particular come off as being incredibly short-sighted/dumb. They easily have the capacity to kill the heroes by contact and choose instead to give them a months time to “get stronger”.

Seriously? These are the LAST of the Hamon/Ripple Fighters, trained in the art of your only weakness (aside from sunlight which is only a mild inconvenience to them), and your willing to let them go because an idiot blow-hard “lesser being” claims that he can get stronger than you IF YOU LET HIM!!!

...this is probably why other JoJo villains either actively run away from the heroes or only get involved when there’s absolutely no other option and it’s the final battle.

I don’t know, maybe the anime adaption of Part 2 does the Pillar Men more justice (or maybe it’s been long enough for me to get a new perspective on them) but it’s agonizing knowing in advance that these “Super Vampires” are just one arc/part/block in the way of having Stand villains.

Granted, not all Stand Villains are created equal, and even though I’d be more excited to see the Anime Adaption of the next entry on the list... even the Pillar Men might be better than “that guy”.

Part Six: Stone Ocean

(Here comes the first curve ball)

Let me say this about reading through Hirohiko Araki’s writing: every JoJo parts  individual arcs, encounters, “battles”, however you’d describe magic people showing off their weirdo powers to defeat the heroes and the strange stipulations on overcoming those said weird powers;

Everything escalates to higher, grander, tenser encounters, that every Part becomes more lethal than the previous entry. Sure you can probably point to one particular Stand from parts 3-5 and say “nothing beats this”, and I would counter with “Rainbow Snails” and those in the know will hopefully know what I’m talking about.

(That or every subsequent JoJo part finds new ways to trigger some new phobia I didn’t know I had.)

Basically if you think that I would suggest that Stone Ocean, which currently does not have an anime, starring the first female JoJo, is somehow not worth making an anime adaption of, than you’d be wrong. I’d love to find out what the soundtrack of Stone Ocean is gonna sound like for one thing, and Stone Ocean has my absolute favorite supporting character!

...but this one was a disappointment.

There was a point while reading JoJo where I had basically given up on remembering any character names (probably started with Part 3), and instead focused on the general flow of the story beats; “what’s the objective right now, who’s in the way, and who has which stand in the party.” This does occasionally mean I glaze over the details of the Stand fights (which are the highlights), and by the end of reading each Part, I can only really remember what happened in the Story.

And the Story of Part 6 is not as good as its own Stand Battles. (Minor Spoilers from here on out!)

I remember being psyched for Part 6. Female JoJo (who was also Jotaro’s kid), Shawshank Redemption/Green Mile/Prison setting, Dio’s possible return, and some kind of “Universe Ending Climax” that I heard might put all other JoJo endings to shame. But, as it turns out, some of those very elements that I was initially excited for were either absent or turned out to be a detriment to Jolyne Kujo’s story.

(Turns out setting your location in a boxed prison in Florida Marshland is only fun at first. Which is probably why the set is abandoned for the last third of Stone Ocean.)

While reading Part 4, I remember thinking with Jotaro’s inclusion that “I hope Jotaro doesn’t steal the spotlight away from Josuke”. By the time I reached Part 6, I realized that it wasn’t strictly Jotaro that was a problem, but rather the reverence for Part 3′s Jotaro Kujo and DIO.

The STORY of Part 6 seems to be a love letter to Part 3, which actively ruins Part 6.

What was the point of introducing DIO’s additional offspring? As far as I can tell they add nothing to the main villains schemes, nor do they seem to behave in any meaningful way like DIO. Giving them the Joestar Birthmark is only there to convey to the audience that they’re a big deal, and they’re barely in it. And they’re only revealed/show up during the last quarter of the story!

They’re the “Knights of Ren” of the Joestar Universe. Their name/origin makes them sound like a big deal, and they’re not.

If I had to guess, I would suggest that the only reason we’re introduced to “DIO’s kids” is because we needed a group of bad guys with Stands to fight the heroes, but we did not want to explain/worry over how this group of bad guys got Stands in the first place.

The worry over minutia of canon was a poison slowly killing JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure; starting with Part 4′s “we need another JoJo, let’s say Joseph cheated on his wife to have an illegitimate son so we don’t skip forward too far into the future”, and “how did the cast of Part 3 get Stands? Let’s say a Magic Arrow did it, now there’s a Magic Arrow that gives people Stands in Part 4”, the virus of continuity returns in Part 5 and finally takes roost in Part 6.

All because we might’ve taken Part 3 a little too seriously.

Again, DIO’s kids are barely a plot device of Part 6, but I think it’s perfectly emblematic of the problems with Part 6.

Strangely when it came to characters that I liked/disliked, I was able to divide my feelings by gender lines: I really like the Female main cast of characters and I didn’t care about any of the Male main cast of characters. The closest Male character that I liked was “Weather Report” when he was just a stoic support guy, but then he gets his memory back, briefly gets a worse personality, and is thrown aside shortly after.

And then you’ve got the main villain, Enrico Pucci.

One of the joys of reading through each Part was figuring out limitations of each stand user, and the eventual identity/stand of the final boss that must somehow be a greater threat than everything else that came before. If we know the identity of the Villain (Part 3) there’s a dramatic build up to the reveal of their Stand. If we know about their Stand first (Part 5) then we can slowly unravel the identity/appearance of the Villain.

Or you can do what Stone Ocean does and give us both close to the start of the series.

And visually speaking, hinging the plot of Stone Ocean on collecting Memory CD-Rom’s and sending them to the right people is just not exciting. And using this power to steal Jotaro’s Stand Power (this is early enough in the series to be an inciting incident and only a minor spoiler) and NOT USE IT or give it to a henchmen is a wasted opportunity!

I honestly think we missed out on an opportunity to switch Stands among the Party, but I guess that sequence would’ve been too similar to one that played out in another Part.

I hope an anime adaption “changes the CD-ROMS” to be more alien-like. They can still be round-disks/CD-like/vinyl disks, but, I don’t know, have screaming faces of the damned fade in and out of the reflections (faces do occasionally show up, but their usually static portraits to convey to the audience whom the CD belongs to). Make them more horrific/alien to look at.

Voice acting and music may help change things; for a North American Dub I hope Pucci gets the same voice actor as Netflix Castlevania’s Isaac, Adetokumboh M'Cormack. It’s... a very similar role, which would be fun, but I think his voice would provide a lot more charisma for Pucci.

(Apparently Pucci in Part 6 isn’t black, he’s just ambigiously brown and born into a pale white family. I had forgotten about his family, but I’d still like the Castlevania Actor to play him for the previously stated charisma and the casting gag of a loyal servant mourning the loss of his vampire lord).

The soundtrack to this arc has got to be tight if it hopes to elevate itself from the impression I got through reading it.

Also maybe have a filler arc for more Foo Fighters (F.F.) content. (She’s likely the “Tsuyu Asui” of the JoJo Universe, and if she’s not now, she will be once she’s in an anime).

[anefan]

bittersweet between my teeth

Rating: T

Words: 1.7k

Warnings: None!

~

It was quiet when Stiles snuck back to the Hale house, the clearing hushed like even nocturnal birds and animals were respecting the crime scene. He wasn’t sure why Derek would still be here, but he had a hunch. The hunch was: Derek had nowhere else to go. Even after all the terrible things that had happened in this half-acre patch of burnt woods, Derek still thought of it as home. Maybe the fresh coat of tragedy and gunpowder would be enough to make the idea of sleeping here less appealing than hunting for an apartment—if Derek stayed in Beacon Hills at all. That thought had hit him like a ball of ice, had burned through his exhaustion and driven him back here, to the most recent setting of his future nightmares.

The creak of the porch steps made him freeze, skin taut over racing blood, even as he reminded himself that Derek would have heard him coming a mile away. He took another step, then two, past the gaping front door ragged with bullet holes.

Stiles cleared his throat, as if that could keep his voice from cracking. “Derek?”

Silence was his only answer, but it was a particular quality of silence, one that Stiles had become pretty well acquainted with. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

“Hey,” Stiles said to the stiff shadow above the stairs. The dull gleam of unearthly red slowly expanded from slits as the new alpha’s eyes opened just enough to glare at him.

“Go home,” Derek said.

“I went,” Stiles said. He’d changed, showered, picked up the spare key for the jeep, and made Jackson ferry him back to the parking garage where Peter had threatened and abandoned him, a lifetime ago. Jackson had been white-knuckled and silent the entire way; small mercies. That wouldn’t last. “Now, I’m back.”

The red eyes vanished, and Stiles heard a soft thump as Derek dropped his head back against the wall. “Why.”

“Um.” Stiles kind of wanted to step further in and close the door behind him, but he wasn’t sure normal house etiquette applied to half-torched, bloodstained, bullet-riddled husks. He shuffled in place. “So. You’re the alpha.”

Silence.

“How’s that… going,” he tried.

The silence somehow gave him the impression that if he had werewolf powers, he’d hear Derek grinding his teeth.

“I just ask because… well. The last guy who was the alpha, he was… how do I say this? Nuts. Totally nuts.”

“Stiles.”

“He was so nuts that the drive to make a pack had him immediately deciding that his number one priority was to bite literally the first asshole he ran into, which was Scott. And you saw how that turned out for him. Not to mention, the whole string of murders afterwards was murder on—on my dad.”

Silence.

“So you see where I’m going with this.”

The red eyes flared again, brighter. The upper floor creaked dangerously as Derek leaned forward. “Are you asking?”

“I—.” Despite the open door at his back and that half the house was ripped open to the woods, Stiles felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. He took a few deep breaths. Licked his lips. “What?”

“Are. You. Asking.”

“For—am I asking for the bite?”

“Yes, Stiles. Are you asking for the bite.”

“No!”

“Then why are you here?” The eyes rose gracefully as Derek stood up to loom harder, brightening as they caught more light, or Stiles’s eyes adjusted. Or maybe the glow burned hotter as Derek got pissed.

“I just came to check on you! God! I don’t want you to bite me, but I—”

“That’s a lie.”

Stiles felt his heart leap into his throat, shook his head against the memory of Peters teeth against his wrist. “You can listen to my heartbeat from all the way up there? That’s—ha. Freaky alpha hearing.” The sudden sweat on the back of his neck was clammy as he wiped it away.

“Stiles,” Derek snapped, and whatever it was that always drew Stiles’s attention no matter how scattered, like a magnet, like a lightning bolt, it was stronger now. It rang inside him, echoing, reverberating, so that one word had him reeling like a struck tuning fork, answering before he could catch his breath.

“I’m not—it’s not a lie. I mean, who doesn’t want superpowers, right? But I—You said it could kill me.” And so had Peter. “I can’t do that to my dad, Derek. I can’t leave him alone.”

The palpable cloud of menace slowly receded. The red vanished. “Okay,” Derek said, strangely subdued.

Stiles gaped into the darkness, thrown by the simple acceptance. But. Derek knew something about being left.

So Stiles barreled on, rather than let either of them dwell on it. “That’s a yes on the instincts, I guess. If you’re just handing out wolf bites to whoever drops by.”

“Laura fought it for years,” Derek said, and even from the upper story, it felt close. Confessional. “I’ll—I can control it.” From how he was struggling to even say it, Stiles was skeptical.

“She had a pack,” Stiles pointed out. “She had you.”

Silence.

Stiles licked his lips again, heart pounding. Closed his eyes. “I know you can have humans in a pack. I know—your family had humans. And I’ve been in Scott’s pack. Since. So far.” Derek made a dark, derisive noise, and Stiles hurried to finish before he got angry again, or laughed. “If it’s okay that I’m human—that I stay human, I could—I would—"

He barely registered the shriek of the bannister as Derek leapt over, or the displaced rush of air. The solid landing, on the weakened floorboards right in front of him, almost brought Stiles to his knees. “Whoa, hey—"

“Don’t joke about this,” Derek said, eyes like a banked fire, too close to look away from, close enough that Stiles could feel the raw heat of him, breathed in the animal musk and ash and—pond scum, weirdly, like he’d jumped in a lake. His palm was hot through Stiles’s thin t-shirt, shoving him back against the wall, splayed fingers digging in like he could pick Stiles up like a basketball, like he could tear out his heart, and maybe he could. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” he said, but it sounded like he was the one torn open, bleeding out. This close, the darkness weak between them, Stiles could see the wildness, the fear, that his whole façade was made up of cracks, barely strung together. Stiles realized with a jolt that if he pushed him just right, dug his fingers into the sensitive places, he could make Derek shatter.

Somehow, that made it easier to rest his hand over Derek’s, to lightly press that trembling power even closer to his heart. “I mean it,” Stiles said, meeting his eyes, steady, strong. “I want to be in your pack.”

Derek’s fingers spasmed hard enough that Stiles was pretty sure he’d have bruises in the morning, and the air between them was full again of that pressure Derek had reeled in earlier, the weight of his power. The scarce inches separating them were charged with a turbulent potential that Stiles could almost feel like static on his skin. Slowly, carefully, eyes burning, Derek leaned closer.  Stiles had to bite his lip and try not to hyperventilate, couldn’t help but glance down at his mouth as it opened, and he couldn’t keep in a gasp when the edge of Derek’s teeth shone in reflected starlight. The fangs. The fangs. His heart kicked into higher gear and he struggled, on instinct, lashing out, but of course he was stuck, trapped, pinned like a bug, like an idiot—

“Ssh,” Derek murmured, gentle, around his huge fucking fangs. “You have to submit.”

Stiles threw his head back with a high, sharp laugh, because what did that even mean? and then his whole body was shuddering, beyond his control, because Derek’s fangs were on him, on his neck, the barest pressure around his pounding jugular. “Ssh,” Derek said again, and the soft brush of his lips sparked a different kind of shudder entirely, the adrenaline and the heat and the way his skin always leapt to Derek’s touch crashing against each other in a way that was consuming, and mortifying, and entirely not his fault.

“Okay,” Stiles said, sucking in a deep breath, willing it to be true. “Okay, we’re doing this now. This is happening.” He squeezed his eyes shut, unclenched his abused muscles one by one until he could slump against the wall, let Derek take his weight as his warm breath dampened Stiles’s neck. Derek, the bastard, only hummed, giving him yet another sensation to try not to react to. “Ugh.” Not sure what to do with his arms, he tried awkwardly setting one on Derek’s gently heaving shoulder, wrapping the other around in an uncomfortable kind of hug.

Eventually, teeth that had gone human-blunt pulled back entirely, and Derek kind of stiffened. Stiles magnanimously decided to ignore Derek’s embarrassment as he came back to himself.

“You are rank, dude. Did you go run through a swamp?” he said instead, and the tension in his shoulders slowly deflated.

“Lake,” Derek admitted. “Shut up.” He nuzzled into the curve of Stiles’s shoulder a little, like he could do it stealthily. “Pack members should respect the alpha.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah? Well, you’ve met me, so if that was a requirement, you shouldn’t have said yes.” He risked a condescending pat on the head, Derek’s hair thick under his fingers. “I don’t think I could respect anyone who smells this fucking terrible.” He ignored Derek’s grumble. “If we’re going to get anyone else to join this pack, you’ll have to shower. Like, regularly.”

The scrape of Derek’s stubble on the delicate skin of his neck sent shivers all the way to his toes, and he felt Derek’s toothy grin in response.

This was either the best or the worst idea he’d ever had.