#maybe they’ll pull something sad and have the mom leave after the kids (potential) death

[tunasama13]

Wait so if Spidey 2099 has a kid... WHO’S THE MOM???? 👁 👁

[recentanimenews]

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation – 02 – Facing the Outside

Most isekai anime never return to the protagonist’s original world after the first episode, but as Rudy grows older and more accustomed to his new life as a little kid, his trauma begins manifesting as flashes of that previous life. First, we’re presented with a Rudy who skips his parents’ funeral so he can jerk off in his bedroom.

When three goons break in, he runs away, sees a truck about to hit some high school students, and runs into its path, resulting in the death we saw last week. The only connection between this opening scene and the next one in the new world is that it involves someone masturbating, which Roxy is doing as she hears Rudy’s parents screw.

While he’s glad he saw her, as perv as Rudy is even he knows better than to disturb her, or even acknowledge he saw her. The empathy his displays underscores the promise of his new life: the chance to properly develop mentally, something that wasn’t possible in his old life. It’s also an early hint of the respect he gains for Roxy, who isn’t just his master, but his first friend…in either life.

Six months, then a year pass since Roxy arrived, and Rudy is making fast progress with his magic, and no longer passing out after expending it. Roxy looks upon this progress with pride, but also a sense of sad inevitability: soon he’ll easily surpass her as a mage and she’ll have nothing left to teach him. As for the green-haired demonic “Superd” she warns him about, Rudy already knows about monsters from his past life.

In his previous life, Rudy was brutally bullied at school, regularly stripped down, tied up, and photographed by leering, laughing gawkers. Though we’re seeing things purely from his POV there’s no reason to think he’s embellishing things, and we see that this treatment led him to cease moving forward. He retreated into the safety of his room, where he remained in stasis.

Even though his two worlds couldn’t look any more different (a contrast that’s well-executed by the visuals), he feels the same fear of the outside beyond his family’s land as he did leaving his room, or even looking out his window. When Roxy recommends he attend Ranoa Magic University in the Red Dragon Mountains to further his training, he brushes it off as unnecessary; he’ll be just fine where he is, with Roxy.

Of course, Rudy is deluding himself. Roxy is a great teacher, but as he reaches five years old (the first of three 5-year intervals birthdays are celebrated in this world) they’re quickly approaching the point when Roxy has nothing left to teach him. To remain home would stunt his development, both as a mage and as a person.

For his fifth birthday Rudy receives a tome from his mom, a sword from his dad, and a wand from Roxy, along with the announcement that he’ll use the wand for his imminent graduation exam. The magic they’ll be learning is dangerous, so they must travel away from home. The prospect of going outside causes Rudy to freeze up; as Roxy aptly puts it, he’s finally “acting his age.”

Roxy assures him there’s nothing to fear, and helps him exorcise his past life’s demons simply by being her wonderful self. As they ride past other villagers, Rudy wants them to stop staring at him, but then realizes they’re staring at Roxy, who in just a year was able to win the entire village over despite the prejudice surrounding people with hair her color.

With nothing left to fear of the new land in which he finds himself, Rudy watches Roxy pull of the biggest magical spell yet, summoning a huge storm that accidentally injures the family horse, Caravaggio. Thankfully he’s easily healed up and then placed in a protective shell when it’s Rudy’s turn to cast the spell.

As with the magical trials Fran puts Elaina through in Wondering Witch, the full terrible potential of elite-level magic is fully realized by the surpassing visuals, as the idyllic landscape is entirely greyed out by blinding sheets of rain, only to emerge more beautiful than before, with tinges of pink and violet in the blue skies.

Rudy passed his first two big tests of life in his new world: stepping outside, and passing his final exam with Roxy. With that passage, there truly is nothing else Roxy can teach him. While I half-expected him to press further for her to stay—either by becoming the village’s resident mage or, say, becoming his dad’s third wife—Rudy isn’t the only one who needs to move forward, and Roxy intends to travel the world, re-hone her skills, and see what else she can learn.

So while Rudy is understandably sad to see her go (as are his folks, who fail to hold back tears for her goodbye), he lets her go, thanking her for imbuing him with knowledge, experience, and technique in magic as well as life. He will also never forget that it was Roxy who brought him outside and showed him it was nothing to fear.

While Roxy was little more than a pretty game character made flesh to Rudy when they met, she’s become someone with whom he formed a genuine human connection, learned more than he’d ever imagined, and healed him in a way he’d long thought impossible. For all of that she’ll have his everlasting gratitude and respect.

Of course, Rudy is still Rudy, as we’re reminded when Lilia discovers a pair of Roxy’s underwear he’d stashed away a few months prior to her departure…the little shit! But maybe, just maybe, he’s taken the first steps to becoming a little less of a shit. Baby steps.

Stray Observations:

Looks like Rudy died shortly after his parents. I guess they were the last line of defense that kept the tormentors out of his house.

While the extent of the public torture Rudy endured stretches credulity, I’m not putting anything past human beings after 2020.

Rudy is right about Roxy being at the age where, well, “that kind of thing” is pretty normal, and this being a world that lacks the modern means of taking care of that, listening to two people having sex would have to suffice.

That said, the session we overheard did not result in a baby sibling for Rudy. I presume he’ll get one at some point.

Rudy is not yet much of a swordsman despite Paul’s efforts, but in Rudy’s defense, he’s five. you gotta give the kid a sword his size!

Roxy brings up the Superd, who have green hair and red stones in their foreheads. They started the horrific Laplace War between humans and demons. Rudy visualizes them as similar to Sadako from The Ring.

Seeing the village kids leering with flip phones was hella creepy.

Social status, pride, and even race apparently don’t matter at Ranoa University. I imagine Rudy will be heading there as soon as he’s old enough.

The little aside of Zenith feeding Roxy and Lilia grapes was extremely cute.

Really glad Caravaggio pulled through! Poor horse looked like he was toast—literally.

By: magicalchurlsukui

[mdarwin]

Of Your Life - Fall 2019

Of Your Life

Adapted from Pavement’s “Shady Lane/J Vs. S” from their 1997 album Brighten the Corners

Actually, eating anything at this point might do too much damage. There’s the ulcer and the bloating, two completely separate issues presenting a relentless challenge across their respective territories in my body. I’m walking the line between showing them my body and hiding my body from them and they already know that’s what I do, so my stomach is both there and not there depending on how endeared they are to my prerogatives. If I grab something -- anything -- the bloat will find its way to the shrouded beast, and if I don’t, I’ll be unable to speak or breathe or move comfortably because of the acid shooting up the tubes in the hearth of my body as the world sees my body. The breasts, the face, the front of me at eye level. Underneath those things, a raucous party. No one was invited but it’s not dying down.

I used to be pure.

But I have Tums and they’ll have coffee set up so I’ll sneak a splash of liquid dairy pretending not to be a freak and it’ll quiet down. Maybe the discomfort has come to be too close to a home, comfort itself, for me to eviscerate it so thoughtlessly; maybe this burn, these nerves, maybe this is where I live.

I’m here.

I sign in for the doorman and the time stamp is eleven minutes earlier than I had needed to be here. The elevator is both fast and nice and so I hope no one else gets on, because they would look me up and down and wonder if I’m homeless since I don’t know how to dress for SoHo and if I did know how to dress for SoHo I might still refuse to do it. But I remain alone because the elevator is fast and as I step out I wonder if I would even want the elevator at home to be so nice, or if I need things to be ugly and faulty to be at ease after all these years in earnest spaces.

I don’t struggle; I withdraw.

On the eighth floor, I get to a bathroom, Tums, a little setting powder (these lies I tell myself). I check my hair. It’s so sad but they already know that’s how it is and so my ugly hair, my ugly hair is fine and so, and so I follow the signs through the labyrinthine hallway all taped a bit cockeyed to the walls until I see the final “CASTING” on the door, and I open the door, and I walk through the door, and I’m in the door, and I’m here.

I don’t know when to photograph my life; too much seems momentous or too little.

There are three grey couches along the walls of the sunlit waiting room and two gunmetal sculptures of ovals approximating people, one in the middle of the room and one in the corner between two of the couches. I sign in without a word or even much of a glance at the thin brunette in her affected and prematurely exhausted importance sitting behind the desk set back from the wait and I take a seat closest to her. Do they know I love authority, any authority? I’m thinking about who might have been in this room earlier today, yesterday, tomorrow, and how close this production is getting to the truth and Ray flashes through my mind, Rafa, Holland and Anita, Tony. I picture their typecasts filling the room, a bunch of surly, balding brown bears filling the couches or maybe eight year olds with impossibly long twin braids; every one-legged mom-aged actor in the tri-state area. I’m thinking, I’m thinking about how close these casting directors are getting to the people who have populated my life and then I’m thinking, then I’m thinking about how close the people who have populated my life have been to me. There are distances, probably, that are getting close-ups in this thing. I picture a Sarah K. type filling this room, blonde crowns bent over magazines, and even though I am grown now, intimidation sets in as I envy the size they’d all be, their grooming, the way none of their nails are misshapen and all ten of them fit cohesively on the ends of unchewed fingers. I fail to sink into myself as I remember how Sarah seemed to hijack the backwards allure of my glasses, appropriating it onto the health and blasé wealth of Central Park West, and how her simple hair always did what she wanted it to do, which was nothing but shine. And I snap back into the room and into myself when it finally strikes me as absurd that I’m the one who would pretend to not be obsessed with these girls, these actors who want to be cast as Sarah as much as I want to be cast as anyone, anyone, in my life.

I am of these tiny little uses.

I am myself so I pull out something productive -- I highlight Michael Pollan. It’s about cattle. I remember the potential for dairy to quiet my insides and I take a look around. It’s skim milk next to the coffee machine, which doesn’t help me much. I think, you’d think they’d know, but at least the cups are biodegradable.

Sometimes I am on fire.

I’m reading, yeah, sure, I’m reading this section where he could get elitist but doesn’t, but I’m zoning out and I’m thinking about how the conversation with my agent later today is going to go. I know when I plan these future conversations it belittles the actual because it doesn’t matter where I go, I don’t know beforehand that for some reason I’m going to bring up Vermont, or O Brother Where Art Thou, or how rum cures colds. The actual is only vaguely predictable and I attach myself to its precursor, imagination. If it were up to me I’d stick to the fake talks and get fed through a tube, because the world I can touch is disappointing 73% of the time, I found recently, but what I stand before is a casting call I was born for and if I didn’t show up to this audition in front of these real people before retreating again to my apartment lit only by small lamps, never overhead lights, I’d kick myself for losing out on material to tell people when I imagine that I’m having conversations with them.

 Reflection, self-fetish, auto-fetish, meta-fetish, reflection.

A door past the desk to my left opens and I immediately make an effort to slow my heart rate. There’s a put-together woman with a ponytail and a premium tee shirt holding a clipboard standing in the doorway and she looks at her clipboard and then up and she says my name with a question mark at the end and I nod and she turns for me to follow her. I pick up my tote bag and reflexively continue the movement to awkwardly smooth my skirt over my thighs and just hope that if she is paying attention she’s already gotten the note about the strange way that I design my outfits and also that she excuses me for the sight of my legs, and finally that she won’t ask me to bend over for anything. I think they know, I think. They have to know.

In truth, I can handle anything.

So now I’m in a bright room, a bright room with mirrored walls and there are four people at the folding table facing a lone chair. None of them have ever met me, not even Mr. Moody, who should have met me. I access cheer and introduce myself and second from the left at the table, a Mr. Clean type, he ignores me to lean over and asks Ponytail, “Is this the…” and she tells him yes without looking at me, and once they’ve all heard that they look up from their papers and each other to face me and with a regulation boredom Mr. Clean says, “Hey, great to meet you. So did…” he scans my resume for Bernard’s name and continues, “Bernard tell you what you’re up for here?” I nod yes as I sit. Mr. Clean tells me with a reference in absentium to comedy, “No small roles, right? So in this scene we have the, uh, the…” he looks around and goes for it, “the you-character, you know, she’s doing pretty well right now, she’s this stellar student and she’s kind of leaving that, uh, that stuff from ��08 and ’09 behind, you know, she barely remembers that, and then Howard--” Ponytail cuts in, “Your dad,” she says and I nod that I have absorbed that it is accurate that my father’s name is Howard and Mr. Clean says, “Right, your dad, he’s like wracked with worry about you all the time still because he, well, you know what, actually, how would you say this, yourself?”

I have been more than lucky.

“Oh, thanks so much for asking,” I breathe out in what is almost a laugh, and maybe I flush a little, and I bring my hand to that hearth of my cleavage, which is a not entirely unsurreptitious display of modesty. “Um, I guess he was just really at a loss about what to do with such a sick kid, when he’d insisted for so long that nothing was wrong, and maybe avoiding the idea that I might, um, traipse into his territory with the… the death-drugs,” I cast my eyes around in apology for the uncouth mention of dirt in this room and they first land on Ponytail, whose eyes are on her phone screen, and then on Mr. Clean, who’s leaning back with his hand to his chin and he nods and motions for me to get to the point and so I continue, “Actually, I don’t know if this is useful for you but he -- he told me the other day that he hadn’t ever known that I had done that much cocaine in ’07, so he was always sort of --” I’m cut off by the tall, severe woman in what could easily be men’s clothes to the left of Mr. Clean, and her mid-Atlantic accent adds to the Tilda Swinton vibe when she says, “Actually, that doesn’t help us and it might be best if we just, erm… stay away from that sort of, er, retroactive speculation with new information. I mean, it’s not like this is a, a vanity project, dear.” All four of them laugh.

I am an island like you are an island and you are an island.

Mr. Moody, bald black pate hedged by grey fuzz, shuffles some papers and doesn’t look at me but gives me the relief of saying, “Okay, so he’s clearly got a different approach to all this than Rose, sort of out of touch with the reality of it. And what we have in this scene is that he’s walking on, what is it, 9th street, and he sees Margaret, the doppelganger.” Moody is focused, looking up at me now and he sees past my invalidity the most of the four, he sees me in front of him and I’m more or less like everyone else in my determination to keep moving and he knows that, and he knows. “So she’s just standing there on the corner, and he sees her and he thinks you’re ignoring him and he gets in her face and shouts at her but it takes him… what, about a full minute or so for him to really process that it’s not you. He thinks it’s you and that you’re out of it, but it’s him that’s unhinged here… and it’s sort of everybody’s own cross to bear, the negotiation of you coming back to reality and just really being here finally like everyone, and also their understanding of what it is to have been here in reality in the first place, while you were gone.”

It’s not my movement that’s looked to, but where I land.

The other three have been looking at Moody and nodding as he says this but then Ponytail faces me and she asks if I can answer some questions about 2011. She says it’s to test the waters of how accurate we can make the scene to Howard’s perception, and she makes a joke about being old, about how long ago 2011 was, but I’m breathing low in my body just like I have in all moments and 2011 is still happening, and it is happening, and it is, and in my insistent consistency, it’s reliable and can’t be stopped.

Time is everybody’s.

I say sure and first she asks me, “Did you look at your passing reflection in windows?” “No,” I say. “Did you smoke?” “Uh… yes, yes I did.” “Were you in love?” “No.” This gives her pause and she looks at Moody and then at Tilda and Tilda leans forward and asks, “What sacrifices did you make that year?”

I had given everything I had, already.

I wonder for a noticeable amount of time what it was that my dad saw that day, that I had, in their words,  sacrificed, that was somehow also palpable in Margaret. I stop myself, though. What did I sacrifice in 2011? I haven’t worked in so long and I need this part so fucking bad. But then I think of myself and my success at being in broad strokes and this is different from considering what answer they want because this is one of those times I honor the actual instead of the movement that I hope for and maybe that’s why they’re here, maybe this whole thing is an honorific, it’s the ways I am somehow so good at being. This is how I look when I’m honest. Slowly I say, “I started to lose pride. It took a few years to gain anything from that.” And all four of them immediately look down to the table to write a note on whatever paper is in front of them but while they’re still writing I realize how to get the part and instead of being good at being I say, “You could see it in my… in my spine.”

There has never been solitude; manifestation is endlessly dependent.

Now they’ve all looked back up at me again and no one says anything for a minute. Then I ask, “Would you like me to uh -- did you want me to read anything?” Tilda leans forward like a praying mantis to hold out a few pages off the table that had been in front of her just under her notes and my resume. I get up and reach forward to take it, return to my seat, I look at it. It’s an essay. Margaret wrote it. It’s on Jaruwan Sakulku. I take a quick few seconds to scan the first and last lines, then read it aloud with few intonation or emphatic hesitations. I slow down towards the conclusion. I give Margaret’s emerged thesis weight and sobriety. I read the last line to the four of them, and see that none of them are engaged. They’re leaning back in their seats, eyes drooping a bit and at one point while I had been reading they were passing a menu around. I breathe out all the air I’ve been budgeting.

I breathe.

Mr. Clean says, “Okay, thank you” and the four of them are rising again from their four slouches and they’re waking up from being in a room with me like I have been a blanket or a short night and fresh air has come in and I wonder what they think of the plot and I wonder what they think of me.

I am not my life.

Tilda leans forward and nods at Ponytail and Ponytail gets up to open the door back out to the waiting room and I say “I can do it again -- do you want me to do it again?” but she’s looking at the door and not at me and she says “We’ll be calling people Monday. Thanks for coming in” and I have my bag on my shoulder and I have my skirt smoothed on my thighs and as I pass through the doorway into the waiting room I see a room full of swarthy half-jewish girls who are 5’3” and 250 lbs with ugly hair, ugly hair, and thick, plastic-framed glasses in front of small, deep-set eyes. Ponytail calls out to the room as I head to the hallway, “Chloe? We’re ready for you” and one of these girls with whom I just finished competing stands up and picks up her bag and smooths her skirt over her thighs and she walks towards Ponytail and the door and the spaces I have left for her. She doesn’t notice me as she walks through her own nerves into the audition for the small part in the movie.

The outsides collide with the insides and I am some small thing in the waves.

I am some small thing in the waves.