#lot of leadup lol

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Abandoned

For Angstpril, Day 6

cw: aftermath of torture, mentioned hand whump, death mention

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hero was troubled.

It wasn't the fight. He'd gotten better of the five supervillain-wannabes without breaking a sweat, stripped them of the tech they were using, and watched as they were all led away in handcuffs.

He'd dusted himself off, briefed law enforcement on the scenario, then started collecting the gear the criminals had used so it could be turned in as evidence.

It wasn't until he was holding the first piece—a cuff that let its wearer manipulate electricity—that Hero's blood ran cold. It was inch-for-inch identical to something he'd seen Villain use.

He collected the rest of the gear in a hurry, giving each item a quick once-over, and each piece further confirmed his suspicion.

Villain had made the tech that outfitted the aspiring criminals of the day. Dammit. He should've realized this was bigger than an attempted robbery. Villain was always a step ahead.

And he'd been missing for months. Plenty of time to plan something big. How many other petty criminals had he outfitted in that time? Would the city see a spike in crime? Or…

A chill washed over Hero as he remembered the last time he'd seen Villain. Running away, tail between his legs after a crushing defeat at Hero's hands.

Was this revenge? Had the robbery been a distraction?

He handed the rest of the gear off quickly, trying not to let the worry show on his face as he took off. 

What if Villain had attacked his base? His team? His family? Even in route, he called back to the team's headquarters in a hurry.

"Hero?" Sidekick sounded half asleep.

"Sidekick! Are you… tell me you're okay."

"M'fine. Why? What's going on?"

"Check the perimeter. I think Villain's up to something."

"What? I mean, okay."

"I have to go. I'll be there soon."

"Hero?"

He hung up before she could finish her question. First he had to check on his parents. His brother. It felt unlikely, unreal even, that Villain would be able to find them, but he couldn't risk it.

It wasn't as if Villain wouldn't stoop that low. He'd taken hostages before, and had proven time and time again that he didn't make empty threats. If he'd hurt any of them…

But he hadn't. 

A thorough search of his parents' house, his brother's apartment, even the surrounding block, yielded nothing.

Nothing at home, nothing at his base.

So what was Villain planning? It was so unlike him to do anything without it being part of some grander scheme.

Maybe he'd just handed off the tech to a random gang and told them to go wild. Spread some fear. A promise of a chaos that would plague the city.

Or maybe it was all a mind game, a way to get back at Hero without ever having to touch him.

Dammit. If that was it, it was working. Even after assuring the safety of his family and friends, Hero couldn't sleep. He had to get to the bottom of this. Find Villain and imprison him for good. Prevent any further weapons dealing. Protect the city.

Hero got in contact with the police first thing the next morning. They'd managed to get an address from yesterday's delinquents, and it was as good a starting point as any.

Before taking off, Hero got one more look at the gear the group had been using. If nothing else, it would give him an idea of what he'd be up against in the weeks to come. Villain was an engineer. An innovator. His only power was his intellect, but that was enough to let him go toe-to-toe with the likes of Hero.

The police had locked everything up in a vault, but he had no trouble convincing them to grant him access. After all, this could finally lead to Villain's arrest. An end to a reign of terror.

There were five items locked away, one for each criminal. Two electrokinesis cuffs. One pair of vision-enhancing goggles. A pair of boots designed to increase speed. And a belt that equipped its user with near-invisibility. 

A collection of Villain's favorites. Hero could identify all of them on sight. None of them seemed new, but why would Villain bother making petty thieves custom stuff? He'd probably just tossed them his hand-me-downs.

Or more likely, he'd given one of them his hand-me-downs. The collection seemed more designed to outfit a single person, not equip a full team.

And wasn't this the exact setup Villain had used in their last encounter? An odd coincidence, but Hero tried to shake it off. Once Villain was safely behind bars, he'd ask about it directly. Right now it was time to investigate the address. Maybe by the time he returned, the police would have more information for him.

The address didn't lead to some secret base, or shady warehouse; just a one-story house on the edge of city limits.

It felt a little odd to knock on the door, knowing who this place was affiliated with, but Hero was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. What if it was just one of the robber's mothers? A grandparent? He wasn't about to bash in the door and give some poor old lady a heart attack.

After a few tries with no answer, he forced the door open. A standard deadbolt was no match for superhuman strength, and if the homeowner did end up being an innocent bystander, a lock would cost him less than the whole door.

Inside… there was no one. All the lights in the house were off. The front room held nothing but a beat-up easy chair, and the rooms beyond didn't offer much more. No spare tech, no mysterious notes, not even an unlabeled phone number or address. Before Hero could call it quits, a shed in the backyard caught his eye.

Not much, but it was worth a look.

He tore away the padlock that held the shed closed, taking a chunk of wood with it. The door swung open, sunlight spilling in to illuminate the area. There was a tool chest against one wall, with a workbench directly across from it. A wooden chair sat beside it, speckled with something that looked suspiciously like dried blood.

Hero stepped inside cautiously, wanting a better look at the part of the shed where the sunlight didn't quite reach. A small scraping sound stopped him short, and he held his breath and listened.

Whatever the noise was, it was coming from the back corner. A box. No, a large dog crate.

Did the bastards from the robbery keep their dog locked up in here? Stale air and darkness, no protection from the elements… He muttered a curse under his breath, and the thing in the crate let out a quiet whimper that sounded almost human.

No way…

Hero reached the front of the crate, letting his eyes adjust as he peered through the metal bars, taking in a silhouette that was definitely not a dog.

He knelt, a little too quickly, and the figure inside flinched back, as far as the cramped space would allow. The scraping noise followed them, a sound Hero now recognized as chains.

"Dammit… don't panic. I'm going to let you out," Hero said in a low voice, crushing the locking mechanism with one hand and pulling away the front of the cage. What the hell had the bank robbers done? He knew they were reckless. Stupid and selfish enough to put people in harm's way in order to get what they wanted. He never would've guessed they'd be keeping a person in a dog cage? And who…

He clenched his jaw. No. He already knew the answer to that.

"I won't hurt you," he said. "Just come out, and I'll get you out of here, okay?"

He couldn't bring himself to think about it. Not right now.

The figure in the cage began to crawl forward on bruised, bony limbs. A short length of chain linked their ankles together, and a longer one hung from their neck, like some kind of leash. A muzzle glinted from somewhere beneath their dark, matted hair. Hero took a step back, giving them room.

He could leave now. Call the police. Call an ambulance. Leave and never confirm what he already knew to be true.

"Come into the light," he said instead. "Let me get a look at you."

The captive seemed to be in pain as they crawled to the other end of the shed, stopping just short of the door and staying there, head bowed.

Daylight reflected off of their chains and lit up the bruises scattered across their naked torso. A few sloppily-stitched gashes cut across their legs, and welts ran across their shoulders, but the worst of it was their hands.

Bloodied bandages wrapped around mangled fingers, most of which looked like they'd been broken or dislocated.

Hero knelt next to them. He could still go. He could still get away with pretending this was someone else, some innocent victim—

"Look at me," he said, trying to soften his voice.

He wasn't surprised when it was Villain's eyes that met his own, half-shrouded by dark strands of hair.

Villain, who'd once held a daycare hostage to get the City Council's attention. Villain, who'd murdered the mayor's wife to get her to take his threats seriously. Villain, who now looked up at him with tired, fearful eyes.

Whose body was a testament to the cruelty he'd lived through.

Who was chained and muzzled and broken.

Dammit, why couldn't it ever be easy?

"I'm going to take the muzzle off okay?"

Villain nodded, eyes downcast as Hero tore through the leather straps like they were pieces of paper.

Villain reached up, rubbing his jaw awkwardly with the back of his hand.

"Please…" came his voice, rusted with disuse. "Please, Hero, just arrest me. Please. I'm done. I c-can't—"

"You're okay. I won't… I won't hurt you," Hero said, the words coming out stilted and wooden. How was he supposed to comfort someone like Villain? He'd made his fair share of assurances. Accident survivors, rescued hostages, Villain's own victims. But they were always innocent, undeserving of whatever misfortune had befallen them. Villain on the other hand…

He took in his nemesis. Gaunt frame, hunched shoulders, unable to stand, barely able to crawl—

Did he deserve this much?

"Let me see your hands," Hero said quickly. He was no healer, but damage assessment was better than contemplating whether or not the man before him deserved his pity.

Villain shifted, holding both hands out, wrists bared. Like he was expecting to be cuffed, Hero realized.

"I'm not arresting you. I just want to see them," he clarified, reaching out to unwind the bandages, one-by-one. Both hands were spotted with deep puncture wounds, some of which looked infected. The marks were strange, and Hero was unable to guess at the cause until he removed the last bandage, revealing a small screw still embedded in Villain's palm.

"Dammit—!" he almost dropped Villain's hand.

The hand of an engineer. Someone who tinkers and builds, someone who uses their hands to create— The notion sickened him more than anything else he'd seen today.

"Why?" was all he could say. 

Villain didn't answer.

He couldn't sit here and dwell on this. Villain needed a healer, or at least a hospital. And then— and then, he'd need to be arrested. He'd pay for his crimes, but not like this.

But what if it happened again? Villain had plenty of enemies. Rivals and ex-henchmen who were in prison now, ready to take revenge. Guards and cops who'd been personally wronged who would look the other way. He'd have to take preventative measures against that.

"Alright," he sighed. "Let's go then." Hero knelt, taking Villain into his arms and cradling him to his chest as he took off. The beaten man curled in on himself as they flew.

"Please…" he said, barely above a whisper.

"No one will hurt you," Hero replied. "Villain, you're under arrest." After a moment, he added,

"And under my protection."

[sparksterssillysongs]

Pokemon X & Y - Title Screen

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Empire Wars

brutal YA dystopian fantasy, start of a duology

set in a future climate-ravaged world taken over by a white supremacist empire

a girl raised feral has to survive being hunted along with other foreigners and political enemies on a deadly magical island

and a princess of the Makari-African people newly married into the regime, intent on bringing it down if she can find a way

[irrealisms]

Hey so I want to get into lifesteal. I don’t exactly feel like watching hundreds of hours of vods. I did also watch one of the three hour long summaries by one of the members but most of it went right over my head. At this point I’m mainly interested in watching pangi’s and clown’s pov. Could you catch me up with the lore and maybe recommend a few vods?

absolutely!!! the first thing i'll say is that lifesteal is sort of like hermitcraft or the life series (if you're familiar with those), in that it has multiple seasons, each of which is on a different server and comes with new teams/plotlines/builds/etc., although they do sometimes reference past seasons. so if you want to only watch some seasons and not others, that's an option! both pangi and clown joined in s2 and are still members today in s6; clown is imo most famous for his s3, which is where clownzy comes from.

(if you don't want to watch hundreds of hours of vods but don't mind watching like a hundred hours of edited videos i also have playlists of all the edited videos buuuuuut i assume that you do not want to do that either lol. i'll link the playlists of Just clown and Just pangi povs though bc those should b shorter!)

the good news is that clown doesn't really stream and does make edited videos, and pangi is also pretty good at making edited videos. the bad news is that pangi streams a lot. the other good news is that i love Talking About Lifesteal.

uhhhh first off. some edited-video playlists:

clownpierce s2 (11 videos, 2.5 hours)

pangi s2 (2 videos, 15 minutes)

clownpierce s3 (9 videos, 3.5 hours)

pangi s3 (5 videos, 45 minutes)

clownpierce s4 (3 videos, 1 hour)

pangi s4 (10 videos, 2 hours; has some videos not by pangi if they are relevant to pangi's story)

clownpierce s5 (7 videos, 3 hours)

pangi s5 (2 videos, 30 minutes)

[there are no clownpierce videos for s6]

pangi s6 (16 videos, 2.5 hours)

general overviews of the seasons and whether/how much i recommend them:

i quite like clownpierce's s2; it's kinda old and a bit messy, it's from when he and lifesteal really blew up as youtubers, and also from when he was cracked at crystal pvp. he's very involved in the ~main plot, between the M.O.B. (clown's team) and the Poggies (parrot's team). he gets some delightful monologues and fun moments. if you have derangements about Content and Narrative within mcyt the way i do i definitely recommend his s2. pangi ... only joins halfway through s2 and doesn't really do much lol

clownpierce's s3 is REALLY good. there is a reason that clownzy is the #1 lifesteal ship on ao3, and it's because of clown and branzy's s3. i personally prefer branzy pov of s3 tbh but clown pov is also quite good! evil clown runs casino, falls in love, does a lot of scamming and murder. very good imo. pangi's s3 is good but kind of forgettable imo, although it (especially the last video) is good as leadup for...

pangi's s4! once again i REALLY like pangi's s4. (not to brag but you can spot me in the twitch chat of one of his videos.) he gets very involved in the plot this season; he starts shit with the NPPP, clownpierce, and team awesome, in that order, and has a deeply messy relationship with princezam, including "princezam literally flying to the netherlands and using pangi's minecraft account to give pangi's hearts to his enemies", "princezam pretending to be on pangi's side when pangi declares himself king only to actually be double-agenting", and "pangi traps a suicidal princezam in bedrock". love those guys. and pangi's s2-3 (but ESPECIALLY the princezam empire) sets up their friendship a bit more if you end up interested in them! you can skip the valentines date & escape room if you are primarily watching for major plot events, they're very filler-y, but they're a fun time and they were pangi videos from s4 so

clown's s4 is. fine? it's got one video of "this event is also covered in the pangi playlist" (shades vs clown duel) and two videos that are fun for clown but pretty disconnected from The Rest Of The Server. that said if s3 got you invested in clownzy you should check out I Trapped Him In Minecraft's Safest Base. clown basically did not log on for most of s4 and it shows ToT

pangi's s5 is another. it's fine? it's really really short. it is literally two videos. one of my favorite s5 streams that never went anywhere or got made into a video is related to pangi but it, uh, never went anywhere or got made into a video lol. tl;dr: he and zam are teammates this season! for real this time and they aren't going to have a big dramatic breakup!!! this lasts...about half the season until they have a big dramatic breakup (not shown in the youtube videos, which are all set before that). he also got involved in some Dragon Egg Shenanigans and started some shit with subz early-season but nothing huge.

clown gets more involved again in s5! he's not quite as involved as he was in s2-3 but he is There for a lot of stuff: he makes the PMC with Minutetech, Leowook, and Sort Of Branzy, doesn't log on for a while, logs back on to help with the scavenger hunt during void arc (aka "do our scavenger hunt or else we turn all of spawn into void"), and then betrays the PMC for end-of-server. there's some good stuff in there imo.

pangi's s6 is ... mostly just Silly Bits rather than Getting Involved, both in videos and vods. that said it might be worth watching some of it as a realm viewer bc it's the origin of his current bits--eg the therapy thing is a lifesteal s6 original!

in terms of character stuff about the two of them:

with clown there are a couple things i want to talk about. the main thing everyone talks about is clownzy, and i'd also like to talk about the broader phenomenon that creates clownzy, which is that clown really loves having a Little Guy: someone who's kind of pathetic and bad at pvp, so that clown can Protect Them and be a little threatening to them and even more threatening to their enemies. the other thing i want to talk about is actually not clownzy-related? clown likes (and is quite good at!) playing evil menacing villains, but he's in many ways a believer in politeness and fair play; he's a very gracious loser, to the point where lifestealers have said before that they feel kinda bad when they win against him, and he tends to strongly favor fair fights over traps or exploits. which is interesting to me! uhhhh another thing that's interesting is that (as is the case with many/most lifestealers) his videos tend to editorialize; his s3 especially stands out to me for this, for a few moments but one that stands out to me is that when mr. cube successfully rigs the casino against him he just cuts this out of his video even though he's got the moments right before and right after it in his video.

with pangi something that sticks out to me is .... well first of all i could talk about his relationship with zam for aaaaaaages. there's a thing there of. he and zam are quite close ooc, and so zam tends to take him for granted as an ally, even when zam treats him quite poorly and doesn't prioritize him? this was most obvious in s4 but i would say even in s5 when they teamed up again uhhhhhh zam does very much (a) find another team that zam ends up much closer with (b) plan to spawnkill pangi. but pangi's still very much in a position where his strongest/closest relationship is usually zam. there's also a thing where he's currently known as a Silly Lighthearted Bits guy and not someone who gets seriously involved in the LoreTM and i think sometimes people forget that this wasn't always true? but even in s4 when he was much more involved in things there's some level of disconnect; in late s4 there was a lot of "major developments happen while pangi's asleep, the next day zam catches pangi up on everything that happened". and i would also argue that all of this is v related to pangi being european time zone and lifesteal being overwhelmingly american. it's harder for pangi to form strong bonds or get super involved in things when people are just... not online at the same time as him.

uhhhh also if u just want to jump in w s6 u can do that. pangi hasn't had any Big Lore this season you can just start watching him. go for it. clown doesn't really stream it bc he hates us but he hasn't done much in s6 so far so if he starts doing stuff, again, you won't be missing things, u can just jump in

i was going to talk more about the lore for each season beyond whether i recommend it, since you mostly wanted me to give summaries that catch you up, buuuuuut this post is already absurdly long. most of my favorite pangi vods either got made into videos or i mostly enjoy them for other characters (e.g. there are at least three pangi s4 vods i really like because zam is being incredibly suicidal in them lol) BUT. have the princezam-pangi divorce vod from s5 in which zam tries to spawnkill pangi bc zam needs hearts and pangi gets away and then they argue for like an hour. this is the aforementioned stream that never got made into a video. i know it is a zam pov stream but i really like it for pangi as well :3

if you prefer vods to edited videos and want me to recommend a few others that did make it to videos, or if you want a more in-depth summary of any of the seasons: just send another ask and i will happily yap more!!! this is kinda all over the place bc i'm sick rn but i will do my best. i am torn between "i hope this wasn't too long" and "i am worried it should have been significantly longer in order to actually answer your questions abt lore instead of just linking videos" lol but ! as i said feel free to just, send another ask, u have no idea how excited i was to get this ask, i love talking about lifesteal ^w^

[aihoshiino]

chapter 154 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 11

Aqua Hoshigan Status: (Still) white

man

This is one of those chapters where, technically speaking, I should probably be tearing it to bits (AND I DEFINITELY WILL) - it represents a pretty substantial break in or retcon to the series continuity as it's been presented to us thus far and the actions of certain characters in the lead up to this event don't quite make sense if they've had access to some of the information that's seemingly been in their hands for a while but… would you guys forgive me if I said I didn't really care LOL. As I've said before, I'm the sort of reader who can excuse a lot of raw Plot Bullshit so long as I feel like the hearts of the characters are intact and for all its fumbles, this is a chapter I think is unerringly dedicated to the hearts of its characters. I've made no secret of the fact that Ai is and always has been my main avenue of investment in Oshi no Ko as a series and in this chapter, we uncover the final secret in her heart in particular after having the entire series thus far dedicated to laying it bare to us.

We pick up exactly where we left off last chapter with the reveal that the HKAI breakup was indeed founded on Ai's pregnancy, as a lot of us had predicted.

This, uh, does not quite line up with previous events!

From what we'd previously been told, in terms of placement in the timeline, the death of Airi and her husband happened after the twins were born and sometime in the leadup to the Dome concert, which would put it in the ballpark of Ai's 18th to 20th birthday depending on how long it was in the works for. But based on how this flashback section is structured, it seems to place their deaths before Ai even knew she was pregnant, let alone giving birth. If it was just clashing with 15YL's retelling then I could dismiss that as an element of the movie's fictionalization that we've seen and Kamiki alludes to but this also clashes with where this event was placed temporally by Ichigo, when remembering a real life event. So… What gives!!!!

Like, at the end of the day, the exact placement of Uehara's death only matters inasmuch as it needs to be before Ai gets her new apartment, since the point Ichigo is really making is that Aqua is pinning his hopes on a dead man who was dead before he could have ever contributed to Ai's murder. But placing it that far back in the timeline - before the twins were even born! - just makes Aqua's willful ignorance in relation to it come off as a lot sillier and more difficult to swallow than if it happened closer to Ai's actual date of death.

I'm also a little disappointed that we really quickly breeze past Ai revealing she's pregnant - it's not the point of the scene overall and it would be weird to go really deep into her POV in the middle of a Kamiki flashback but one of my big issues with the Movie Arc was that it ripped past anything and everything to do with Ai's pregnancy, including how she herself felt about being pregnant. Like I said in my 145 review, skipping over the parts of it we've seen makes sense but I think there's still a bunch of really fascinating potential in exploring how Ai felt when she realized she was pregnant - how did she hide it for long enough that she was almost halfway through her pregnancy and getting fucking enormous before her first checkup? How did Ichigo and Miyako react when they first got the news? There's so much juicy character and relationship work you could mine out of that but the story fails to do so. We sort of get a crumb of this in the DVD but her feelings there are all centered on the pregnancy in relation to Hikaru and even then she breezes past it so fast it's clearly not meant to be the focus of any of what she's saying and idk. For a character whose entire hook is her struggles with motherhood, familial love and all the rest of it, that's a little disappointing.

THAT SAID!!! All that makes me sound like I didn't like what went on with Ai this chapter but I actually loved it. It's so painfully in line with everything we've been told and shown about her thus far in the manga and in this chapter, we see all her strengths, weaknesses and human contradictions laid bare in a way I find incredibly rewarding and compelling.

The HKAI breakup especially is just soooooo deliciously cringe inducing. It's an echo of the argument with Nino that 15YL portrays, where Ai's good intentions, avoidant tendencies and absolute absence of tact all snowball and end up ruining one of her most important relationships. Like… I can't believe I'm about to say this about a conversation in which Ai is one of the people talking, but she really is the reasonable one here! She's right to identify that their relationship is not working, that adding babies and marriage to the mix will only make things worse - her intentions, as they always are, are good and she's making her decisions with Kamiki in mind… her delivery is just absolutely dogshit!!! GIRL, PLEASE, YOUR WORDS!!!! USE YOUR WORDS!!!!!

For all my issues with Akasaka's writing lately, I think he portrays these kinds of two sided failures of communication so well, where you can see exactly where both characters are coming from and why they are failing to get their feelings across to each other. From an outsider's POV it's clear as day that Ai views herself and her children as the burden, one she doesn't want to put on Kamiki for the sake of a girl who doesn't even know if she can love him… but is it any wonder why Kamiki took it the way he did and why his guts were so utterly wrenched out as a result?

Kamiki's attempted proposal and Ai's immediate rejection of it are really interesting with the context of 45510 in particular. Extrapolating from her talk of marriage there, she brushed him off so quickly because she simply didn't believe he was serious… and yeah, he's pretty clearly not fully cognizant of the weight of what he's trying to propose, never mind that he's meeting "let's break up" with "LET'S GET MARRIED" lol.

Also interesting to extrapolate from both 45510 and other material surrounding Ai is that, at that point in her life, she simply didn't understand what the point of marriage was. On top of her being Literally Sixteen And A Child right now, Ai is said to have come from a deeply dysfunctional home where her mother engaged in a number of equally dysfunctional relationships, at least one of whom was with a man who was creeping on Ai even as he was working up to marry her mom. It's no wonder she doesn't really take the idea of marriage seriously, but it still hurts so see her reject Kamiki so bluntly - even more bluntly in the Japanese text somehow, simply chirping 無理! (Muri!) in response, i.e, not just "no way" but telling Kamiki to his face it's impossible.

Honestly this whole breakup scene is so darkly hilarious just in terms of how bad Ai is completely beefing it. Congrats babygirl that's the worst anyone's ever done it!!!

And we finally get the "I can't love you" drop after just shy of 25 chapters of buildup…….. And honestly, it feels a little hollow.

I talked about this a little before so forgive me for repeating myself but that line - or rather, Aqua and Ruby's implied misunderstanding of it - from Ai to Hikaru was given a huge amount of weight in the story when it was first introduced. It was implied to be the lynchpin in which everything else about the HKAI romance rested only for the story to go UH WELL ACTUALLY IT'S ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT AI FORGIVES HER KILLER which is like… fine, it just feels very jarring on a reread or when trying to sew together a plot thread like this. It especially feels strange because the emphasis is placed on them not getting it right or at least that Gotanda disagrees with their interpretation, only for the manga to whip back around and not only return this line to its previous heightened importantance but also to largely not line up with what was established about this line and its place in the narrative when it was first introduced. It's just more evidence that Akasaka's plans for the Movie Arc and its resolution changed in some way during serialisation because these inconsistencies are pretty glaring.

Not just that, but like… it's hard to feel impacted by this line when we didn't even see it in the Movie Arc. In general, it's so fucking weird that so much about the main emotional resolutions going on right now revolve around Ruby's performance in the movie when most of the big emotional moments people are reacting to are happening entirely offscreen. This would already be bad even if it wasn't taking place in a manga like OnK with its increasingly frustrating habit of offscreening more and more bits of the story that are extremely important for the characters. Before this chapter I would've said that maybe we'd see some of it after the movie released but given that Kamiki's arc and the revenge play as a whole is pretty clearly wrapping here, what would even be the point of it?

Idk. It's just increasingly obvious (and just as frustrating) to me just how much of the Movie Arc was wasted time and how much of the setup that needed to happen to make what follows really land just… didn't. This chapter's resolution for Ai and Hikaru, both separately and as a couple, is still excellent, but it could have been a lot better if its foundations weren't so meager.

We also finally get concrete proof from the horse's mouth that Kamiki was the one who deliberately leaked Ai's address and……. honestly this is kind of a wet fart too lol. OnK has previously very strongly implied that "Kamiki is Ai's killer" was a red herring or that we should at least be slightly skeptical of Aqua's assertions and conclusions but… nope, he was right all along, I guess?? Alright………………………… I certainly don't believe his insistence that gosh he totes didn't think Ryosuke would go THAT far and I'm still wondering wtf the two of them were doing at the hospital the night the twins were born but like. Honestly at this point, I don't really think it matters and I care much more about emotional resolutions than I do granular plot details - and boy do we get one hell of an emotional resolution.

I haven't shouted her out yet because I was saving it for this section but fuck, man, Mengo's expression work told chapter is killer as usual but this final stretch of pages is just gutwrenching. Ai's gentle, rueful smile on the DVD contrasted with the look of shocked, dawning understanding on Kamiki's….. Jesus Christ.

And at last, we uncover the final secret hidden at the bottom of Ai's heart. The entire manga thus far has been a process of stripping away the viewer's willful ignorance with regards to Ai's humanity but the DVDs had been an oddly ominous mystery box floating around, containing some implied dark secret that would change the entire trajectory of Ai's character as we knew it… but of course, the person who tells us that is Ai herself, a girl who hates herself, thinks of herself as dirty and impure, irresponsible and incapable of love.

So is it really any surprise that her darkest secret, the thing she can only confess with her eyes shining with black stars is simply that she's a fallible human? That she was a lonely young girl, confused and hurt in her own ways and that she hurt someone she dearly cared for and wanted to take it back?

Is it a little convenient that she put all this in the DVD? Yes, absolutely, and I'll be the first to say that the DVDs existing at all are a pretty clear retcon in service of getting info onto Aqua's hands. But it's also perfectly in line with Ai's timid, avoidant methods of reaching out. It parallels both Viewpoint B and 45510 (moreso the latter) where she pours her heart out in words, waiting for others to read and understand her. In 45510 in particular, her leaving the blog post is an extremely clear and strong parallel to the DVD - love letters put into bottles and thrown to the ocean in desperate hope the person they're addressed to might find and understand them.

As Akane says, Ai is torn between secrecy and a desire to have her true self exposed, so she attempts to craft scenarios in which this must happen, even if her avoidance can only allow her to do so with indirect methods. With the blog and moreso the DVDs & their method of delivery, Ai attempts to create situations where the initiation confrontation and disclosure is out of her hands and she has no choice but to tell the truth.

Ai's entire speech here is just heartbreaking. If the start of the chapter didn't make it explicit enough, we see her here put her good intentions into words to better understand how they were misinterpreted.

This adds SUCH a fascinating additional layer to her death that has me gnashing my fucking teeth. One of the things I've talked about a lot in my Ai meta is that Ryosuke is essentially an agent or even an embodiment of the entertainment industry and the way it has exploited her - the misogyny, entitlement, purity culture and abuse that ruled her life went on to end it. With this additional detail, though, Ryosuke becomes an agent not just of the things that plagued Ai of B-Komachi, but Ai as a human, too. All her life, Ai is willfully misunderstood and mischaracterized by the people around her, assigned narratives and roles without her consent and punished for both living up to and failing to live up to them. Ai's death is the end result of a lifelong cascade of failure on the part of every system and individual that has had the opportunity and responsibility to care for her - and, as Aqua throws in his father's face, that includes Hikaru.

Hikaru's supposed understanding of Ai is not one based in empathy or love but projection and possessiveness - understanding in this context is ownership, exclusivity and frankly, arrogance. A claim to a piece of Ai that no one else knows. But as Aqua forces him to realize… Hikaru never understood Ai, even as she did her best to make herself understood. For all his arrogance of understanding Ai and the nature of their relationship, Kamiki is ultimately just the same as every other person who idolized and objectified her then discarded her when the image they'd created in their mind didn't match reality. Ai wasn't his pure and perfect soulbonded saviour - she was a lonely, broken kid like him, still struggling to understand love after a lifetime spent starved of it.

Once, Kamiki begged Ai to save him. And here, the bitter truth is laid out for all of us: the salvation Kamiki had wished for was waiting for him, reaching out with open arms and he not only desecrated it but irrevocably destroyed any path back towards it. In killing Ai, Hikaru Kamiki killed himself.

The imagery of this moment is so fucking gorgeous. The visual of Kamiki and Ai reaching out to each other, in mutual understanding at last but separated by time and death… the "what if" happy Hoshino family… Ai's words being framed as a 'love letter' that transcended time to reach Kamiki and Aqua's eyes blazing with white as tears pour down his face… Jesus fucking Christ Mengo I'm already dead!!!!!

Like I said up top, I make zero secret of the fact that I am primarily invested in Ai above everything else in the manga and the way her importance has been seemingly downplayed since the late 130s mark chapter wise has really bugged me. As such, this chapter was INSANELY cathartic for me. Not only do we get a really beautiful cap to Ai's post death arc (hopefully finally killing those dumbfuck Secretly Evil Ai theories for good) but it's done in a way that once again recenters her love and her wishes as the heart of everything. Even Aqua's revenge play is completely redefined in this context - no longer the childish, selfish and self destructive lashing out we've seen before but as a quest to both honor Ai and to punish the person arrogantly assuming ownership of her heart even as he so catastrophically misunderstands her.

This is a really fantastic end to Aqua's arc too… on paper, that is. I know for a fact that a certain genre of OnK readers are going to bitch and moan that Aqua didn't run his dad over with a 2003 Honda Civic but I really can't imagine Aqua's revenge quest going any other way unless OnK was intended to be a pure tragedy. Over and over, we have seen that Aqua's revenge is at odds with not just his happiness but with Ai's wish for him to live a full life with a bright future. It is self destructive, hurtful to the people around him and antithetical to any of them moving on and reclaiming what their futures. With the emphasis the story places on moving towards a happy future, in selfishly reclaiming your happiness even in the face of systems that seek to crush you and on honouring Ai's wishes and legacy, it would be flatly thematically incoherent for Aqua to choose killing.

The issue is not with this as Aqua's end point but with the path we've taken to get here. As was the issue with Ruby during the Movie Arc, we don't actually see any of the internal work that happened in service of this arc, just the big emotional end points of offscreen development. But it stings especially bad with Aqua when such a huge chunk of the last few arcs locked us out of his head, sharply contrasting the start of the story that lived and breathed his interiority - AND when this is more or less the capstone to his series long struggle to choose love or revenge. It's not that I dislike this as an emotional payoff for Aqua's revenge - this is more or less beat for beat what I'd expected - but that it lacks proper support from the rest of the story. In general, this chapter falls flatter than it should because all this heightened, dramatic emotion rests on arcs and setup that simply have not been shown to the reader, save for Ai.

Speaking of Ai, the info in the DVD here potentially represents a pretty major break in the continuity of Aqua's behaviour based on when we're told he had access to it but I'm willing to bite my tongue and see if that gets filled in, if only because this chapter review is already so fucking long. Let's just say that I Noticed and I sure hope Aka or his editors did too.

And finally… Oh, hey there, Ruby! Aren't you an interesting little snarl to this chapter. Or maybe "snarl" isn't quite right, but her presence here is potentially interesting either way. I'm not quite sure how to read both her expression and her presence - the expression on her face looks VERY displeased and it looks to me like she's outside the room, so is she maybe eavesdropping and not happy with what she hears? Or is she in on Aqua's talk with Kamiki here and just struggling with her emotions with regards to it all? I'm quiety hoping it's the latter, because it would confirm that Ruby DID recognize her dad in 147 and Akasaka wasn't expecting me to believe he was hitting her with the stupid stick quite that hard lol.

In either case, I'm actually excited to see what Ruby takes away from this. In the ways that AQRB has echoed the HKAI dynamic, Ruby has always been in Kamiki's shoes - the one desperate to be saved, clinging to her oshi and relying on him as her sole bastion of light in the world. So what will she think now after being faced with the logical endpoint of this wished-for codependence? When she sees how destructive and self destructive it can potentially be? Just as she saw Ai reflected in herself, will Ruby see her father in her own reflection - and if so, what will she do about it?

Break next week! So we'll be sitting pretty for two weeks to find out. Not that I actually mind this time because with a chapter like this on top of season 2 of the anime coming back today, a week without a break might have actually killed me… please, akamengo, i'm just a little guy!!!!

[lynn-tged-posting]

tged webtoon ep 161 spoilers with thoughts below the cut u know the drill

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THIS IS MY FAVORITE PANEL OF JAVIER EVER. IN THE ENTIRE MANHWA IM LOSING MY MIND HAHAHAHAHAHA

HE JUST LOOKS SO FUCKING UNHINGED I DIDNT EXPECT IT AT ALL HHAHAHAHAHAAAA

anywayy back to the top

honestly maybe i shouldve seen the fact that his own singing would fuck him up coming LMAO

their matching dazed expressions when they both realize PLEASSEE LOL

raphael also calls the start of his singing demonic sounding lmao

and then they start fighting again and JESUS holy shit they're so overpowered this is so cool to watch and also as i was reading i was VERY scared for javier

genuinely i really really love whenever they draw action scenes they look very cool while also not being terribly hard to follow i like that

like oh my god?? he's swinging that hammer around like its nothing its very very terrifying, esp cause its been a while since javier has fought something thats his match yknow, or at least it feels that way

AND THEN. THE LEADUP INTO THE NEXT SCENE IM LOSING MY MIND JAVIER YOU SCHEMER

the feigning being down and then the peek and the slow getting up im giggling so so bad AND THEN

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA JAVIER YOU CLEVER ASSHOLE I LOVE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH

like i knew that line raphael said about how the halo would continue protecting him so long as he's pure and just or whatever would come into play BUT I DIDNT THINK JAVIER WOULD BE THE ONE TO DO IT SO DIRECTLY TOO HAHAHAHAAA he's learned so much from lloyd <3 LOL

i also think its interesting that the halo keeps track of this with like points or smth, not much to say about it i just think its an interesting gear; the ultimate defensive tech but it's based on how "good" you are thats just really interesting to me hehe

ALSO ALSO i think it's really really silly funny that raphael was this very intimidating and menacing figure that was super scary right up until the moment javier played dirty and then the moment that happened that image/vibe immediately crumbled WAHHAHA he's just a silly guy and the halo does the work i like him a lot

i really like these panels of them being evenly matched, raphael is still holding his own even with a penalty like that, their expressions here are really good too its so tense,,,

AND THEN LLOYD BEGGING THEM TO STOPP AAHHH

AGHHGHGHHGHGH AAAHH JAVIER STARING WIDE-EYED AT LLOYD IM CURLING AND SHRIVELED ON THE FLOOR

like okay i know lloyd is scheming or whatever. but my heart wants to believe that some part of this was very real okay . let me cope let me believe this . one cannot act/lie effectively without some of it being real. RIGHT???

AND THEN WHEN THE POPUPS APPEARED I STARTED SHOUTING OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABT THE RP SYSTEM IM SO. LLOYD YOU BRILLIANT MOTHERFUCKER YOUUU

HE CAN JUST SKIP THE PROCESS AND THEN BECOME A SWORDMASTER HE HASNT DONE THAT IN A LONG TIME OHHHH MY GOD

also. everyone else's bonus RP was +10. but only javier's bonus RP was +45. which could mean nothing.

WHAT DO I EVEN SAY ABOUT THAT LIKE. JAVIER WHAT YOU. WHAT. YOUUU im gonna lose it im gonna LOSE IT

top ten photos taken moments before disaster HE LOOKS SO EVIL THE ART HERE IS SO GOOD HAHAHAHA OHH MY GOD

and how he says "YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS" ohhh lloyd you asshole you i love you so much

THIS PANEL TOO LIKE WOW THE FUCKING EFFECTS THIS IS INSANE HE LOOKS SO FUCKING MENACING THE VIOLENT LINEART HES POWERING UP HIS SINGING OH MY GODDD HAHAHA

when i saw these panels i immediately thought of that one song from princess and the frog god i wish i could like tween or something itd be so cool to see This drawn to That

thats all i LOVED this ep i had so much fun RAPHAEL JAVIER LLOYD FIGHT PART THREE NEXT WEEK HERE WE GO

[quinngefail]

what do you think Adam and Lawrence’s first time was like?

Lmao y'all don't waste any time asking for what you want to hear HRKAKGKSK

Short answer: undeniably a little awkward. But still nothing short of fulfilling and mind-blowing @_@

...Long answer (spice below, obviously):

(Okay so keep in mind that I'm not gonna get super detailed coz as I've said. I AM A SEX REPULSED ACE so I'm gonna stay within my comfort zone lol)

Grhhh so like I love thinking about all the buildup to it... Like just to zip through the timeline I've been going with (say it with me, more details will be in my headcanon doc), they fall out of contact following their hospital releases. It's about six months until they finally start to reconnect, but over those six months they just cannot stop thinking about one another. Their desire, yearn, and want for each other just never goes away. So when they do finally reconnect and begin spending more and more time together, the tension is fuckin palpable lmao. It's the elephant in the room, and a thing where like they know they're both thinking it but just not saying it, y’know,

Been going back and forth on it as well, and I think I've decided that I want this relationship to be the first time either of them have ever engaged romantically with the same sex. Like Adam's for sure been asking himself the whole ‘am I bi-’ for about ten some years now, and Lawrence is. Lawrence (turbo repressed gay lmao)

But I do think I want to really go in with this theme of them navigating this whole slew of new, complicated things together. And that includes their relationship being the first time they've ever done this or that with another man :]

And the night when it finally happens, I imagine it's this whole flurry of like... Excitement and thrill, but then they also voice their doubts to one another; like being worried about 'disappointing' the other person, and just being like I. DO NOT KNOW WHAT I'M DOING.

But it's okay because there's the shared reassurance that they're in this together, and they're going to figure this out together :) AWKWARD MOMENTS BE DAMNED...

There's caution and a lot of in-the-moment talking, like hurriedly asking "are you okay, are you okay with this, is it okay if I do this," etc etc.,, they're generally just very considerate and careful about all and any types of boundaries, recognizing that they're both in rather fragile states, and not wanting to ruin any of the trust and care they've been slowly building up... I do also imagine Lar taking the leading role during this first time, and like the line between sex and Worship Session is EXTREMELY blurry HRGSKKGK (which 100% applies to much more than just this first time, FOR THE RECORD)

It is just... LOVE, AND THEM WANTING NOTHING MORE THAN TO FULLY EXPRESS THAT LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER 🤌

But yes uh after all the pained months and months of this building desire, and recognizing just how intense their shared bond is, I mean,, it is indeed just nothing short of absolutely fulfilling. Sorta this definition of 'finally'.

Which like that can be applied to so much between them... That feeling of 'finally'.

And I go just a little insane thinking about the aftermath of it, where they're both just laid back, looking up at the ceiling, chests heaving. And the looks they'd share when they inevitably turn to face one another,

JUST. MAN

Also just love thinking about the general leadup of hands unintentionally brushing together -> shared glances -> wordlessly leaning in to kiss each other -> growing passion -> that tender kiss turns into a steamy makeout -> oh lord clothes are coming off-

But YEA there's certainly that first time awkwardness, and moments they go on to laugh at later (WITH MANY MORE TO COME, OF COURSE), but it's also just,, them knowing that this is undoubtedly the start of something huge, and something that they've both perhaps been wanting before they even met one another.

Finally :]

[moistvonlipwig]

IRIS WEST

CAN SOMEONE FREE HER FROM CW'S THE FLASH.......they paid her DUST that entire show i s2g. i know a lot of people love joe but i do not forget and do not forgive his patronizing attitude towards her in the early seasons. barry is on thin ice too but i forgive him because he is so gone for her and, like, mood. i loved in s5 when we got to see her interacting with nora and i feel like that was maybe the highlight of her arc for me even if i wish it had been expanded on more. s6 made me nuts because she deserved to play a way bigger role in the leadup to crisis and crisis itself which was literally set up in s1 of the flash as a westallen story but noooo it's gotta be about fucking OLIVER. ok. whatever. crisis bad. we knew this. the mirror monarch arc was ok, i liked mirror iris, but again we just needed more exploration of iris.....and i stopped partway through s7 because i just got fed up lol but from what i heard eric wallace kept promising as he had in s6 that every subsequent season would have lots of iris and lots of westallen and then every subsequent season kept pulling the s6 trick of isolating iris from barry and the rest of the cast and not really giving her her due. ok sir. and if i talk about how the fandom reacted to her i fear i may burst a blood vessel because what do you mean her calling out barry GENTLY on his bullshit got her called a bitch for nine straight seasons. fuck off fandom i hate you.

also when i picked up the flash again during covid i had forgotten that iris for most of the show's run was like. a blogger? i had it in my mind that she was a journalist at a newspaper a la lois lane. but no she's just like a random blogger and she's still the most respected journalist in the city. that's so funny to me. truly no one is doing it like her. also i love that she can't cook and for breakfast she Makes Barry A Banana. what does that mean. does she peel the banana or does she just like. hand it to him. and say hey babe i made you a banana! :) these are the questions that i think about at night.....

[curiouselleth]

Oooh, tell me what are your plans for the Gil-Galad is Eluréd please!!!!

Hi @camille-lachenille!!

Thanks for the ask, this fic is spiraling into something possibly longgg, so I'll talk about the events I want to hit with this fic, and certain things I want to write with it. Also sorry this got long lol

I am avoiding big spoilers in this, I am going to be adding a lot of things but I'm staying relatively close to canon so going over what this is going to cover in this way is not very spoiler-y I think.

Well my pl*n (ahem, lol) is for this fragment I posted a while ago to be at the end of the next chapter. From there, Elured will be trying to figure out what to do from there, because he's been crowned king of the Noldor and his pl*n to see if Elwing was alive and live as a happy family flew out the window.

From there, he will try to get in contact with Elurin again. I won't say how that goes, for good or bad because I don't want to give major spoilers, but, well... you know how much angst I write 😂 (take from that what you will lol)

From there - however that goes - we will see more of Elured as High King. I will spend some time on him getting into the job, finding his feet and learning, and in a way finding his identity outside of being Elurin's twin, as someone independent and with such a different kind of power, and his struggle with all this.

And I want to spend some time on the 3rd kinslaying, and the War or Wrath.

The 3rd Kinslaying -

I want to show his point of view from Balar of the leadup, his interactions with Elwing in this time as he tries to protect her and advise her, but she likely pushes away because of how she has been infantized and treated as lesser by some of her advisors and lords and such. I think there would be a few more visits between Elured and Elwing, him meeting Earendil, possibly him at their wedding, meeting Elrond and Elros... some good things for a time.

Then I want his POV as he gets the news. As he rushes to try to help... I'm not departing from canon too much, I am placing Elured into canon as a different character. There will be differences. New things. But I want to explore it like that, without departing too much. We know so few details from that time so it's also exploring that time and what it was like.

Then I want to show him after, what he tries to do, his public acceptance of his sinda heritage, something he likely didn't advertise much beforehand.

From there I would start heading towards the war of wrath, and with Elrond and Elros leaving Maedhros and Maglor and coming to him. I want him to meet and know his nephews, some of his last family, I want him to teach them about their maiar powers... I want them to be a happy not quite family for a little bit. He won't tell them who he truly is of course.

Then the War of Wrath.

I want to cover things getting worse and worse, possibly in small bits with a lot of jumps. What I am particularly excited to write is the unlooked-for arrival of the hosts of the Valar and Finarfin.

I want to write the tension of it, yes, they are here to help but they expect the people of middle earth to stand down and let them handle it, and that will not go over well. I want the tension of them trying to reconcile two kings of the Noldor, them trying to treat Gil-galad as someone young, inexperienced and naive. They think he is going to step down, give his power away, give way to Finarfin's authority. Hell no. Then I want to see him show them who's boss and how they have no idea what they're doing and for them to teach the hosts how this place works, how to truly fight... then of course for the hosts of Valinor to gain some respect for the peoples of middle earth, maybe a Galadriel and Finarfin reunion, and a proper, respectful alliance lol.

(I have Thoughts about the hosts of Valinor finishing the war without the peoples of Beleriand lol)

From there it would be summary or jumping to the end of the war. I'm not sure if I will continue this to the second age, I prefer the first and third ages and know much more about them. But we'll see!

...okay this got a little long and rambly 😂 well I suppose that's always what happens when I talk about my fics lol

This fic, or theory I should say, actually started as part of another fic, but that fic has become a white whale and this one has branched off. This theory will be used in that fic, and this will be part of the universe that fic is in, if I ever get any in post-able form lol

Thanks again for the ask!!!

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

I'm not too long out from my screening of Sonic 3 (for reference it's 3pm rn and my screening is at 7pm) so decided I'd just sort of hash out some final pre-release thoughts. I'm looking forward to this one! Quite a lot!

It's been long enough since the first and second movies released to where I don't remember my pre-release thoughts on those quite as well anymore but I mean I was definitely dreading the first one and then the second one was a full on cautious optimism type approach. Of course the first movie I was right to not be anticipating but the second movie surprised me and I came away really glad. I've since rewatched it and found I didn't like it as much the second time around, and of course since then we also had the Knuckles series which, for as hilarious as I found it, didn't exactly inspire confidence. But everything in the leadup to movie 3 has been a lot more exciting I feel and as we approach the proper release date and tons of like popular Sonictubers and streamers and whatnot have gone to the premiere and come out the other end loving the movie, promising that it's easily the best one, Fadel saying those final 30 minutes were like the best of his life or whatever, review scores clear the first 2 movies, I'm hype, I'm going in with high expectations.

I'll also say I'm fortunate in that the literal day before movie 2 came out I was spoiled on Super Sonic as well as Shadow's post-credits tease but so far I should be going into Sonic 3 unspoiled apart from what's in the two main trailers as well as, uh, well. Some toys have already released featuring a certain something lol. But hey I mean we sort of expected that, so that's cool. Don't know post-credits teaser(s?) at all and I'm gonna probably be off of tumblr and twitter and careful on youtube for the rest of the day so I'm feeling good about my odds.

We have already learned that Sonic movie 4 is gonna be entering production with an expected release date of 2027, and yeah I mean no surprise there. First 2 did great and this 3rd one is projected to do great, they weren't gonna stop making more of a successful thing. Absolutely have my problems with the "Sonic Cinematic Universe" including just that term itself, but I really am glad they're a thing because they've rejuvenated public interest in Sonic in such a huge way and I don't think any of the amazing titles we've had since then would've come out as good as they had been without them. Shadow Generations alone justifies the existence of all 3 of these movies. I can only hope they'll continue to see success and thusly we'll get better games with better storytelling and more of an inclusion of the supporting cast to go alongside this.

I'm not really worried about how movie 3 is gonna be as a whole but on a more individual level I do hope some of the comedic dialogue is toned down in frequence, I can only take so many pop culture references a minute before I explode. "Konnichi-whaaaaaaaaaaat?" better have been just a trailer line because I don't want to hear that in the cinema. Obviously I'm expecting the movie to mostly be about Sonic and Shadow with a sort of Gerald and Eggman second place, but I hope Knuckles and especially Tails aren't too sidelined to achieve that, cause Tails has had a rather poor showing in the SCU as it were and I think he deserves more.

I guess my one other thing is that my main hope for the movie (other than "it's good" and "they do Shadow right" and "they don't do the things I'm worried about") is that we do actually spend a fair amount of time in the London and Tokyo parts of the movie. I'm not actually desperate for this to be the case like I wouldn't be disappointed necessarily but everyone loves place Japan and London is close enough to me to feel familiar and so spending a fair amount of time in both would be like a point at the screen and go woo moment for me. Or something.

No matter what I feel coming out the other end of this movie I am still gonna wish we got like really stylised animated movies instead of this live action CGI blend that Hollywood loves, truly being more faithful to the games and their worlds and the series' musical history especially would be very much preferable to me, but also it is what it is. We're 3 movies and a TV series and a confirmed 4th movie deep, I can move on, this is just what the Sonic movies are gonna be. I'll talk hopes for the 4th one sometime down the line, presumably after I've seen 3 lol.

Think that's everything I really wanted to say. I'm not anywhere near needing to leave yet so I'm gonna do some other stuff today first and whatnot, but hey, see you guys on the other side.

[klug]

Okay okay I know I said my last post was the last-ditch one for Satoru and Daifuku copium, but I'll do one more.

A lot of people have been saying the staff for the episode today is pretty stacked, so I did some research (since I'm honestly a casual fan and pretty new to Precure in general) and it is immensely stacked for an episode that's just supposed to be a resolution to Satoru's feelings for Iroha. The staff has mostly worked on very plot relevant episodes like new attacks, new cure additions, and just general plot developments. (I personally count the Tanabata episode as a plot-episode since it lays a lot of groundwork for Gaou-sama)

This list isn't comprehensive so it's possible I've missed something.

Screenplay: Yoshimi Narita

Series composition (Essentially the writer)

Episode 1 (Cure Wonderful)

Episode 2 (Cure Friendy)

Episode 6 (Friend Liberale leadup)

Episode 16 (Mirror stone lore (And the Shin-chan crossover episode? lol))

Episode 18 (Lillian leadup)

Episode 19 (Cure Lillian)

Episode 23 (Tanabata)

Eoiode 29 (Nico-sama reveal)

Episode 30 (Diamond Ribbon Castle)

Storyboard: Hanako Ueda

Was harder to dig up information about this animator for some reason, seems that they only joined this season.

Episode 17 (Cure Nyammy)

Episode 21 (Mayu/Yuki's school life)

Episode Director: Tsuyoshi Tobita

Episode 2 (Cure Friendy)

Episode 18 (Lillian Leadup)

Animation Director(s):

Akira Inagami

Also the character designer for Futari Wa/Max Heart

Episode 7 (Friend Liberale)

Episode 19 (Cure Lillian)

Yoko Furuya

This seasons character designer

Episode 19 (Cure Lillian, storyboarder, transformation animator for Lillian)

Yukiko Nakatani

No prior Wanpre work, but was the character designer for Go Princess Precure and Tropical Rouge Precure. Extremely interesting to see her here, honestly.

Art Director: Yuki Nakabayashi

Episode 7 (Friend Liberale)

Episode 19 (Cure Lillian)

[hildred-rex]

Hello, I love Hildred Castaigne! He’s such a fucked up unreliable narrator and he also reminds me so much of myself in middle school and I love him for it. What do you like about him?

First off, apologies for taking absolutely ages to answer this! Life happened and I promptly forgot tumblr existed for almost a month. Yay.

Anyhow, I think my love of Hildred is a combination of the factors you mentioned and the absolute state I got into shortly after I found The King in Yellow -- aaand here comes an essay. The last version of this got deleted, and apparently I've taken it upon myself to make its replacement even lengthier.

Hildred is a fascinating character to read and to write, and his opinions on things are (or would be) so different from mine that it's fun to try to puzzle them out. I keep a bevy of fictional characters that I can simulate reasonably well as a way to make myself consider how people get to opinions that differ from mine, and naturally he's among them.

Beyond that, I'm an absolute sucker for hints at a greater world, but only narrow viewpoints from which to try to figure out what's going on in that world.

The weird bits of The King in Yellow as a whole are superb at tantalizing you with smug allusions and tiny scraps of information about what, exactly, it is that the book is named for.

Is it a play? Is it an entity? What happened to the author? ...was the author Boris? (I don't think the author was Boris, but I won't lie that I've considered writing a fic where he was.)

I got hooked on Lovecraft for the same reason, and it's actually what put me on to Arthur Machen (favorite author) and The King in Yellow (favorite book).

Even with all that, I think my King in Yellow interest would have been a passing thing that returned occasionally, if it hadn't been the last thing I got into before my first set of high school final exams kicked my ass.

The tl;dr of freshman year is that I picked the wrong math class and it spent the semester wrecking my self-confidence (and my sleep schedule) before I finally managed to transfer to a better one. (Then I spent second semester picking myself back up.)

Hildred, notably, is self-confident to the point of it backfiring catastrophically on him. He absolutely should not have gloated to Louis, tactically speaking; in this essay I will-

Anyway. Stress is weird, so during finals season and its leadup I had quite a lot of unmarshalled energy that refused to work on what I actually needed it to do and that instead directed itself at my idle pokings at Hildred and his world.

Probably better than worrying about how my abysmal math grade was going to ruin my life.

It didn't, and I came out of the crucible with rather extensive additional worldbuilding. Since I essentially speedran getting invested in the project, I came away wanting to do more of it and... it just kind of stuck?

I mean, here we are several years later and my first impulse is still to name my tumblr blog for him. I've got a rough idea of his extended family back three generations. I have a design for that spring suit Hawberk had that was mentioned exactly once. I am the embodiment of

when it comes to this lol

_____

I couldn't find a good place to fit this in above, but Hildred was also the first time I encountered a story with an obviously intentional unreliable narrator after I'd encountered the term. Not sure how I missed it that long, lol. I spent probably half a decade looking askance at various authors and going "...do you know what you're writing there???"

I also couldn't integrate it anywhere, but I absolutely adore "The Mask." I have Thoughts on Chambers's ability to write romance more generally, the short version being that he writes Lovers™ and not characters and they're thus so wooden they're hard to read, but that he must have been in a position like the beginning of "The Mask" because holy god that is exactly how it feels.

[dufrau]

What do you personally seek out/enjoy most in smut?

Ooh fun question, thank you!

Honestly the main thing I want in smut 99% of the time is the same I want in any genre of fanfiction: strong characterization. I'm reading fanfiction about these characters for a reason, I want it to be about *them*. So I don't really like super out of character smut (although EXAGGERATED characterizations are a different story, lord knows some of my sillier stuff pumps certain aspects of characterization pretty far out of proportion).

Specific to smut, though? I like uh, like, tension? I like the focus to be more on the leadup and the wanting and the wondering and the denial and the almost and the negative space before they actually start touching each other. I like a lot of sense information, the temperature and the lighting and the texture of the surfaces they're on etc, i like writing that engages all the different parts of my brain to build a full picture of what it's like where they are.

I like dialogue that stays in character even when they're fucking! Which is hard to write and hard to put a finger on exactly what "right" is, its only really obvious when it's *wrong*.

I like smut as a device to create a bubble of intimacy in which characters can be a little more vulnerable and honest with each other than they might normally let themselves be. It's okay if smut is only about sex! If it turns out the thing they want is just sex, with each other, right now, and there's no deeper meaning at play. But what *kind* of sex are they having and where are they having it and have they had it before etc etc etc you are sort of establishing a worldstate even if you didn't really mean to and I think that's really fun lol.

Anyway basically the things I am looking for in the smut i read are the same things I am trying to do in the smut I write.

<3

[voteformightyclocks]

Rebels Season 1 Rewatch

Let's start off with Rebels being an awesome show. It was a major part of my life ever since I was 14 (which was when Season 3 came out), and I remember actively checking the library website daily when Season 4 came out, desperate to reserve it or get on the waitlist for it as early as possible. It was the first show I was immensely invested in, and as such it holds a special place in my heart. So, I decided to (FINALLY) rewatch it after all these years, and wow am I not disappointed

I've always defended Season 1, saying it's not as bad as people say. Sure, it's got a lot of issues, and it's definitely not the best Rebels has to offer, but it's at least good. I think I underappreciated it last time I watched it though. The show is clumsy, but only because it fails to balance being a kids show with being a deep show with complex themes like the Clone Wars did. Each individual episode was good, everything built up to a satisfying finale, and characters were fleshed out really well. I can't really complain too much about it because quite frankly, it's only fault is experimenting and trying to be something amazing

But, there are two changes I would make to Season 1 if I got to redo it. And it's worth noting that neither would change the overarching plotline, and most episodes would remain as-is, they're more minor changes that would've had a much stronger impact

Ezra Isn't Kanan's First Padawan

This is the biggest change I would make. Kanan has renewed hope by the start of Season 1, and he's fighting hard, so it would've been cool if we had the show hinting at a former padawan prior to Ezra. In Episode 10 "Path of the Jedi" when Yoda and Kanan talk, have Kanan admit he's scared of failing Ezra like he failed his other padawan. Leave the other padawan's fate ambiguous of course, so you could potentially bring them back. Likely as an Inquisitor for the Ahsoka show so that you don't have to use an animated suit of Inquisitor armor. This would add so much depth to Kanan's pain and trauma, and it would add a lot of gravity to Ezra's training for older audiences, but for kids it would just be a cool fun fact about Kanan's past

2. Kanan Taps Into The Dark Side

In Episode 15, we get the finale, "Fire Across the Galaxy". Ezra saves Kanan, and the two end up facing off against the Grand Inquisitor. This is an epic Star Wars battle, and it shows off the Grand Inquisitor's power, as he defends against opponents on either side of him. He gives Ezra his iconic cheek scars and knocks him off the platform. Ezra's fine, of course, but Kanan (and maybe a couple of audience members? But that's a stretch lol) believes Ezra was killed.

K: "That was a mistake." GI: "Why? Because you have no one else to die for you?" K: "No, because I have nothing left to fear."

EPIC leadup to Kanan tapping into the Dark Side, but instead the show squanders their opportunity. Kanan is stronger than ever in the Light Side, and instead of the Grand Inquisitor being killed in a fair fight at his full power, he's killed by his own failure to recognize the flaw in his lightsaber design. It feels unsatisfying when rewatching it. I wish Kanan tapped into the Dark Side, calling upon it for power, and using it to destroy the Grand Inquisitor. I wish Ezra witnessed that, and saw the darkness within Kanan, yet still chose to learn from him. It could be a cautionary tale for Ezra, who now understands what the Dark Side is, and in early Season 3 when Ezra taps into the Dark Side himself, and when he talks to Kanan about it, have him say something like "I understand why you used it. It makes sense now" or something

Conclusion

Rebels Season 1 is amazing and heavily underrated, but it fails to balance it's themes efficiently, which pushes more mature audiences away and damages the show way more than it should

If you have yet to watch Rebels Season 1, please give it a chance, and continue on to the end of Season 4

[rosadiazofficial]

GCSE Mock Exams Round Two, Electric Boogaloo

Exam number one of sixteen was English Literature, again. I was a mess in the leadup to this exam so I popped into the English office to check in with my teacher beforehand - honestly dude she's so reassuring idk HOW I'm gonna cope at A-Level lol. Luckily when I stepped into the exam and saw the questions, I realised they were ones I could talk about! [yippee!! sound effect] I went OFF on all the questions, filling about 5 pages in total. I was worried I'd written too much, but my teacher said it's easier to cement marks by writing a lot, as it shows you consistently achieve the mark and it's easier for examiners to give you the mark that way. So overall, I think it went quite well lol

[spookfished]

media roundup june 2023

hey guys guess who just went "oh its the 4th of july. that means that its july" here im going to talk about things i read/watched/played last month! i didnt read as much but did finish a couple books that ive had checked out Forever. ok actually i read a lot woops

books/comics/written media:

fake dates and mooncakes by sher lee: fake dating (obv) premise between a cooking boy and a rich heir! book that made me realized im honestly just not that interested in ya romance anymore LMFAO. pretty sweet and a decent read, but landed more heavily on the expository end of uhh i guess diaspora fiction? than i really prefer. i think i picked this up bc the author got mega cancelled on tyk twitter lol??

bird by bird by anne lammott: book about how to write. i love to read about how people do stuff :3 some of the advice applies pretty universally to creative efforts i think.. made me want to write more too

john dies at the end by jason pargin: DNF. comic/horror about this loser guy who discovers stuff. sigh i tried so hard to like this book its supposed to be pretty 'mecore'...talked about this with alena a bunch but its like hm... i know the sort of casual offensiveness sort of goes in hand with being poor and white and in the midwest and i appreciate how its like that creates its own doomed narrative or whatever. but also i feel like the protagonist would call me slurs or something. also the lowgrade but pervasive orientalism is kinda offputting. probably fun for some other guy! i did enjoy the horror elements though

the goldfinch by donna tartt: literary coming of age about a boys relationship with a painting (the goldfinch). also he flops a lot and its sort of homoerotic i guess? a movie was made of it. so something to note is that ive had this book out on loan since literally december. neil kept on being like hey man just stop reading it LMFAO. thoughts cp'ed from discord:

why does the goldfinch feel like a 600 page leadup to the actual book which is 800 pages

idk at this point im kinda sick of pathetic lovelorn self obsessed semi literary men. like toku men are also sopping and pathetic but i think its more appealing when they are also kind and can be vulnerable. this guy is just annoying and kind of incel coded. like does a grand gesture to make up for the fact that he killed your dog while dogsitting

i actually did enjoy the parts post timeskip but i still think the first two thirds could have been cut or Greatly compressed or interspersed w the present or Something, yk? prose was nice though

the bodyguard by katherine center: romance novel about a woman bodyguard who lives for her job. fresh from a breakup, shes given a new undercover assignment with a handsome actor, recently withdrawn from society. will they be able to break each others' shells....? my mom recommended this to me LMFAO we kind of have different tastes in romance.. ive read a book by this author before i think her platonic scenes are very strong? i wish there had been a couple more of those. also i like how she always includes a life affirming section at the end about how important it is for us to open ourselves up to love etc etc cute but not especially memorable

kiss quotient by helen hoang: (reread) a shy, autistic econometrician decides that she needs to get better at sex, and so hires an escort. helen hoang is one of my faavorite romance authors i really enjoyed this reread although i kinda forgot that both leads say, think and do some pretty embarrassing things. but you know a little embarrassment is endearing and all that.. i still prefer her other book (the bride test) but this one is pretty good too. vivid characters 👍

sisters of dorley hall by alyson greaves: web fiction - a trans woman infiltrates a secret force-feminization program. ok im just cp'ing my thoughts from discord again but i enjoyed it a lot:

my thoughts are that the first like, third? is really really good. it like idk takes the very real trans fears of like discovery and passing and all that and fictionalizes them a bit. but like its still grounded and swag. sooo tense once The Reveal happens n things w steph are pretty normal it gets kinda meandering? which i dont really mind bc i love interpersonal drama even if i miss how tense and scary it was. but also theres only like two major plot threads going on rn and theyre both pretty slowburn. a timeskip would probably benefit tbh like the point rn is kinda like. the 7 year meteor? yeah sorry

like it used to be sort of psychological thriller? and now its sort of more character focus and also surprisingly fluffy.. im surprised that the author has said they have a complete outline bc it doesnt feel very focused atm? but also like i suppose things are snowballing a bit re: revealing the sisters to the outside world

an unauthorized fan treatise by lauren james: a fangirl trying to prove her rpf ship is real uncovers a greater conspiracy. to me if something is able to capture a specific age/vibe from the internet its automatically pretty good. however more and more people are learning how to do that so maybe i should change my standards... i was never involved in All That re: rpf or even fandoms of live action shows until kamen rider? but like i definitely knew people in hs that were sort of like this LMFAO so it felt very familiar. i appreciate the author trying to make that $$ but i dont know if it really needs an expansion/sequel.. the ending is better off with some ambiguity imo

impossible us by sarah lotz: literary romance? a man and a woman fall in love online, but encounter difficulties when they try to meet. ok im just pasting my thoughts here again (spoilers btw):

ok that was a lot of stuff. onto movies/tv:

xo kitty: kitty goes to a school to connect with her online boyfriend, but all is not well. yall this was not good. i guess my standards shouldnt have been that high but to all the boys ive loved before was so cute!! (havent watched/read the others). but like.. the writing was bad and the main actress just wasnt very sympathetic or charming? characters waste time saying "i can explain" until time runs out for them to actually explain, additional (and nonsensical) romance plots are added for no reason, and the male lead isnt even that hot. sorry. also kitty deciding to move to korea to connect with her mom but not bothering to learn a speck of korean and insisting that everyone else speak to her in english really sucks honestly. not even my mom liked it so thats how you know its bad 👎

succession season 1: yesss succession. greg is my favorite cant wait to see him become evil. makes me stressed

shin kamen rider (hideaki anno): reboot of the first kamen rider by the guy who made evangelion. this guy kinda makes the same thing over and over but it looked sick as hell so i wasnt complaining. like stella obstinaterixatrix said, kinda more introspective or even insular to the point of kinda ignoring the usual kr theme of justice but it was still very fun :3 kinda want to watch the original now

ready player one (movie): my parents made me watch this movie. aggressively mediocre.

kamen rider revice and live and evil and demons: pretty fun if you have the disease that makes you think revice is good, but mostly made me miss revice. i think they should have gone more into the clone thing but i always think that so

kamen rider juuga vs kamen rider olteca: two-parter special for kr revice. i forgot what happened in this pretty much immediately after but karizaki was hot

roman holiday: a princess touring in rome escapes her duties for a day, and meets a dashing young reporter. classic romance!! i actually liked this so so much like it actually is very romantic and funny and like deserves the hype. didnt expect it to be in black and white even so audrey hepburn is really hot. (spoilers) more romances should have bittersweet endings though like it hit

kamen rider ryuki: a young man is inducted into a battle royale between those fighting for their deepest wishes, and decides to try and stop the rider battle once and for all. hey guys ryuki is so fucking good for those who have watched madoka magica a lot of it is very heavily based off of/inspired by ryuki! but ryuki does it better. pretty much The kamen rider has so much to say about justice and love and what it means to be a hero and sacrifice and *runs out of air and falls over* also it made me cry. if you ever try kamen rider try this one <3

EDIT OH i forgot about across the spiderverse 100/10 obviously groundbreaking in animation nice take on generational trauma and also like the nature of adaptation and being in a multimedia comics franchise and all that. really hope the sequel doesnt get crunched too bad. oh but copaganda not great 99/10

video games:

twisted wonderland: gacha game where random disney villains are bishie high schoolers instead. ill play chapter 3 sometime soon i swear. gameplay is terrible as with most gacha games but the characters are cute? i feel terrible guilt for being involved with a disney franchise. honestly pretty compelling character writing sometimes though sorry

apico: stardew-like about raising bees (in beta). sooooo cute and the devs obv care about bees a lot in real life. the gameplay loop + breeding systems are a little bit punishing right now though i really hope it gets adjusted. took over my life during finals (woops) and i got like half the bees and then burnt out. multiplayer is fun though!

legend of zelda tears of the kingdom: the next zelda game, now featuring building + vertical elements. yeah this took over my life for two months like it did for a bunch of other people i finished the main story a couple days ago! i might go back to do a couple more of the shrine puzzles, but other than that i think im done. LOVE the vertical elements and also all the little sidequests there are to do and how the world has changed since botw. dragons tears was really good and OMG PROVING GROUNDS. would be a 10/10 if zelda was the protag stop damseling her you guys cmon

paper mario origami king: newest paper mario game, which is a spinoff of the main series where theyre all paper (duh). im about halfway through this, i think? tried it out because of the dunkey video lol and also bc it was free at my library. very charming and inventive, has a really good soundtrack and really funny writing! i know the gameplay was controversial, but im enjoying it a lot (and theres a lot of room for error). might 100% it

it feels like this month i tried a lot of things that i didnt really like LMAO. also a lot of romance. im very happy about finally finishing the goldfinch! the only holdout on my libby is slaughterhouse 5 :P i did find some things that i really liked though! anyways this one feels a bit more scattered but if you got to the ending, congratulations! thanks for reading :3