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veeranger · 5 years ago

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So you want to watch Precure!

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(Google Docs Vers & Changelog)

Maybe you follow people who like it, maybe you just love magical girls and never got into Precure, but there are over a dozen seasons and you don’t know how to jump in. Never fear, this masterpost is here to give you a rundown of Precure, and hopefully by the end you’ll have an idea of where you want to start.

What Is Precure?

Precure (short for Pretty Cure) is a Toei Animation franchise started in 2004 and has been on the air nonstop since then. It’s a magical girl franchise, y’know like sailor moon or ojamajo doremi or other such shows. The main demographic is children so you don’t have to worry about any weird “fanservice” or panty shots or anything nasty like that, it’s very G rated.

What Are The Shows About?

In a general sense, Precure is about a team of 2-6 middle school age magical girls fighting bad guys and giant monsters and saving the world on a weekly basis with pretty outfits and big flashy finishers and the power of love and friendship. Each season follows a pretty standard formula (toku fans should be pretty familiar with it for the most part), and each season is around 48-50 episodes long.

In keeping with this toku-esque formula, most seasons will feature mid season additions to the cast, in the form of new precure heroes. For the sake of not spoiling these shows, these mid season cures will not be mentioned in our plot overviews unless they appear extremely early or something like that. Just know that almost every season will feature an additional cure joining the team later in the show.

Additionally, every season has at least one movie, these days there’s usually two per season. Usually you’ll find the movies are a standalone self-contained romp, and a crossover movie with the preceding seasons, with a focus on the most recent 2-3 teams. These movies might as well exist in a continuity of their own, and have absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever, save for one except which I’ll mention when we get to that season.

Why Should I Watch Precure?

Because it’s good. It’s a really stellar franchise with a ton of content and genuinely engaging characters and stories. Also this isn’t your mom’s magical girl show, these girls throw punches, and kicks, and big lasers. Precure is pretty well known for being extremely hands on with its combat compared to other magical girl shows, though don’t expect the same kind of fights you’d find in kamen rider or anything. Also a main draw for a lot of people is the amount of gay subtext in, frankly, every season. While there’s only one season with an explicitly confirmed gay relationship between two cures, every season has varying levels of subtext between cures, it’s pretty cool. We won’t discuss the subtext in every season overview but trust us, it’s in there.

What Show Should I Start With?

It doesn’t actually matter which season you watch, every season is a new setting and with new characters and set in a new world (except for two sequel seasons i’ll explain later), so you’re free to watch whatever you want in any order! We’re going to spend the rest of this post talking about each season to give you, the beloved reader, a glimpse at what each season has to uniquely offer. Don’t worry, there’s no spoilers down there.

Futari Wa Precure (We Are Pretty Cure) & Futari Wa Precure Max Heart

The original precure show that aired in 2004, and even received an english dub. Misumi Nagisa is a star lacrosse player living a normal life until one day a shooting star she wishes on turns out to be a fairy that careens right into her room, or rather, smacks her right in the face. The fairy, named Mepple, explains he comes from the Garden of Light, another world that’s been taken over by the evil Dark King and his Dark Zone in order to capture the Prism Stones, a number of heart shaped crystals that, if collected, could give Dark King the power to destroy not only the Garden of Light but also the Garden of Rainbows, Earth itself. Meanwhile, Yukishiro Honoka finds a box in her grandmother’s shed containing an item just like the one that smacked Nagisa in the face, and inside is the fairy Mipple, who explains the situation to Honoka. The two fairies, seeking to be reunited, drag Nagisa and Honoka along and the four of them end up meeting up, but are attacked by an emissary of the Dark Zone. Mepple and Mipple grant the confused duo the power to transform into the warriors of legend, Precure. As Cure Black and Cure White, Nagisa and Honoka manage to fight off their attacker and protect their new fairy partners. The girls are then more or less dragged into the battle against the Dark Zone, as the only hope for both Gardens, they fulfill their duty as legendary warriors despite their hesitations and desires to go back to being normal teenagers.

Futari Wa doesn’t exactly have any major themes to speak of, it’s just your standard magical girl vs evil bad guys kind of thing, forgive it for being the first season. What it does have to offer is the relationship between Nagisa and Honoka, as well as the action in fight scenes. The girls don’t start the season as best friends, in fact they barely even know each other’s names when they’re first flung together. It takes a few episodes and a major fight between the girls for them to really start opening up to each other, but soon enough they become inseparable and support each other in everything they do. It’s clear, especially near the end, that the girls cling to each other for support and strength in the face of the increasingly overwhelming odds they face as the Dark Zone gains strength. It’s very compelling to see their relationship deepen in the early season and see how deep their bonds truly go near the end.

Futari Wa received a sequel show, Futari Wa Precure Max Heart, picking up the story where it left off in the first season’s finale. Honoka and Nagisa are still the main characters, and they’re still fighting the Dark Zone, but this time they’re joined by a mysterious girl named Hikari, who can transform into Shiny Luminous, not a precure but precure-ish. This time the girls are trying to recover the heart and soul of the Queen of the Garden of Light, before the Dark Zone can recover and destroy the queen in her weakened state. Also their precure costumes have changed slightly.

The first season (that is to say, not max heart) is currently one of the few seasons available with official english subtitles on the streaming platform Crunchyroll

Futari Wa Precure Splash Star

Hyuuga Saki (Cure Bloom), a tomboy who loves playing softball, and Mishou Mai (Cure Egret), a quiet transfer student and aspiring artist, meet each other by chance one day under the Sky Tree, where they discover two creatures from the Land of Fountains named Flappy and Choppy. The two girls transform into the legendary Precure and are tasked with restoring Princess Filia and the Seven Holy Fountains, which were sapped of their power by the evil forces of Dark Fall.

Splash Star's main theme is the appreciation of nature. The main focus is on the girls rediscovering their relationships with their town and the nature and people in it. You get to meet a whole cast of characters in their community, who have a lot of heart and charm behind their writing and the show does a good job of getting you genuinely invested in their stories.

Unfortunately the romance in Splash Star isn’t much better than Futari Wa's (sorry to any Fujimura/Kazuya fans), but the main girls themselves are so engaging that it's easy to ignore. The villains are pretty goofy, but entertaining if you can accept that the show doesn’t take itself very seriously. There are two villains in the latter half of the season that really stand out, though. Without spoiling too much, I can promise you their character arcs will tear at your heartstrings in the best way.

If you've watched Futari wa Precure, Splash Star will probably feel familiar. Although it's the first "reboot" series in the franchise with completely new characters, Toei overall played it safe and Saki and Mai in many ways still feel like "Nagisa and Honoka 2.0". Splash Star is different in enough other ways to make the show stand on its own merits, but if you watch it immediately after Futari wa you might find yourself feeling some deja vu. Personally, I think it's interesting to see what Splash Star builds on and explores when compared to Futari wa, since it has many of the same themes and character archetypes but they play out quite differently.

Yes! Precure 5 & Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!

Nozomi is a cheerful, carefree girl, but she doesn’t have a dream. One day she meets a hot guy and finds a mysterious item called the Dream Collet, capable of granting any wish once all the fairies known as Pinkies are gathered inside it, in the school library. She discovers that the hot guy is actually a tanuki from Palmier Kingdom named Coco, and that the Kingdom has been destroyed by the Nightmare. Coco’s dream is to restore his kingdom using the Dream Collet, and Nozomi decides to make it hers as well.

She’s joined by her jock friend Rin, Urara, an aspiring actress, Komachi, a writer, and the rich student council president Karen. Together they form Yes Sentai Fiveranger Yes Precure 5 and work together to prevent Nightmare from obtaining the Dream Collet before they can gather all the Pinkies. They also save Coco’s “”””””friend””””””” and fellow hot guy squirrel, Nuts, and he joins them as the second mascot/handsome love interest.

The theme of Yes is dreams and heterosexual furry romance. It pulls off the dreams part very nicely. The het furry romance is bad, mostly because Coco is Nozomi’s teacher at school and also her love interest. However, Coco and Nuts are fairly gay and if you look past the romance part they have very good dadly relationships with the rest of the team.

Yespre, like Futari Wa, received a sequel show, Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!. After the defeat of Nightmare some time ago, a new faction called Eternal rises up and starts stealing treasures from various dimensions. When Eternal targets the Rose Pact belonging to the Cure Rose Garden, the precure are called back into action to fight against Eternal, with new cure outfits, a new fairy named Syrup, and a new cure-like teammate named Milky Rose.

Fresh Precure!

Fresh is sort of the defining series for modern Precure, introducing a lot of plot and thematic elements to the franchise that would be used repeatedly later on.

A concert Momozono Love attends is attacked by a monster called a Nakewameke. When Love stands up to it, she is nearly killed, but is saved when she is chosen by a mysterious power to become Cure Peach. She is joined by Inori and Miki as Cure Pine and Cure Berry, and, together with the talking ferret from the Kingdom of Sweets, Tarte, they have to prevent Labyrinth, a grey world led by Mobius, from taking over the Parallel Worlds and transforming them into identical, machine-like dictatorships, and also figure out the secret behind the Magic Baby, Chiffon, that Tarte is entrusted with.

Fresh’s themes are happiness and nature/technology and donuts. The donuts are important. Labyrinth operates by gathering misery; the Nakewameke are created from it and their function is to create more of it and fill the Sorrow Gauge. All the girls (and the mascot) have love interests and their familial relationships are explored a lot to bring out the general stakes and emphasise what they’re fighting for.

While Fresh is very strong in characters, plot, and thematics, its lack of budget is very apparent. It looks terrible. Fortunately, it isn’t that difficult to get used to the bad animation once you get into the show, although the lack of means tends to show up at inopportune moments, like new powerups.

Heartcatch Precure!

Featuring character designs and art direction from Ojamajo Doremi’s character designer Umakoshi Yoshihiko, and written by Ojamajo Doremi and Onegai My Melody writer Yamada Takashi, Heartcatch should look and feel familiar to fans of either franchise, especially Doremi.

After having a reoccurring dream about someone called Cure Moonlight being defeated trying to defend the “Great Heart Tree”, the shy and reserved Hanasaki Tsubomi moves in with her grandmother and ends up inheriting the will of Cure Moonlight and becomes the newest precure, Cure Blossom. Finding out her grandmother used to be the legendary Cure Flower, Tsubomi vows to protect the world as a precure and learn to change herself for the better. She’s joined by her new friend and the first person she saved as a precure, Kurumi Erika, a loud girl with a big heart who means well, but doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind. Erika becomes Cure Marine and the two become Heartcatch Precure, the newest precure in the long legacy of those who have stood up to the evil Dune, a mysterious invader who destroys planets and turns them into lifeless deserts. Heartcatch Precure fights against Dune’s minions: the mask wearing Professor Sabaku, his Desert Apostles, and the mysterious Dark Precure. Along the way they meet the former Cure Moonlight, now stripped of her power, and try to help her cope with her defeat.

Heartcatch Precure’s main theme is flowers and flower language. Everyone has a “heart flower” that the Desert Apostles take and use to create their monsters every week. As an interesting result of this, the monster of the week will be the main character in the plot of the week and often their big monster form will vent about their issues which will usually lead to a resolution when the precure return them to their regular bodies. Heartcatch also has a very nice backstory and lore to it. Unlike most iterations of precure, the Heartcatch girls are not the first precure to exist in their world, there are dozens maybe hundreds of precure that came before them, fighting against Dune and his forces for hundreds of years. It adds a lot to the narrative in small ways, especially later on in the season. Also the fight scenes are extremely excellent, especially when Moonlight is involved.

Suite Precure♪

The musical paradise of Major Land falls under siege by the forces of Minor Land, led by King Mephisto. His goal is to steal the living notes of the “Melody of Happiness” and remake them into the “Melody of Sorrow”, throwing the world into a permanent depressive state. As a last resort, Queen Aphrodite scatters the notes into the human world and tasks Hummy, the cat-like fairy, and the Fairy Tones, to find the notes before the forces of Minor Lands can capture them. In the human world, Hummy meets Hojo Hibiki and Minamino Kanade, two girls who were best friends as children, but drifted apart as teenagers because of their tendency to bicker with each other. The two find themselves thrown together again by fate and transform into Cure Melody and Cure Rhythm to protect the things they hold dear. Not long after, the two rekindle their relationship and become closer than before, despite their bickering. Soon the girls run into the mysterious Cure Muse, a girl who appears to be a precure like them, but hides her face with a mask and refuses to join in their fight, claiming to be neither friend nor enemy. Melody and Rhythm battle against Minor Land and the giant Negatones they create from the notes they gather, as well as Siren, another cat-like fairy who used to be Hummy’s best friend before turning to evil and joining Minor Land.

Suite Precure’s main theme is music, and it is a very encompassing theme. Hibiki and Kanade bond over their piano practice, the town they live in celebrates music frequently and is aesthetically music themed, and their powers take the form of musical instruments. Harmony is also a large theme for the two girls. Their precure power increases as they harmonize with each other, and the early season is very much about them learning to harmonize with each other. Suite also features several extremely well done mystery arcs, about the identity of Cure Muse, and various other things that I can’t very well talk about without risking spoiling things myself. If you manage to go into Suite not knowing anything consider yourself extremely lucky and be super sure not to get spoiled. The show staff went to great lengths to hide certain things, including leaking fake cure designs, and creating a second version of the second dance ending to further mask the identity of Cure Muse until her true reveal.

Also something to note, usually precure movies have nothing to do with the plot of the show itself and can be watched whenever but the Suite movie is best enjoyed right after the arc revealing Cure Muse’s identity is concluded, it has a nice resolution to plot elements in that arc and sets the stage for the last few arcs of the show, so be sure to watch it then.

Smile Precure!

Written by Kamen Rider Kabuto head writer Yonemura Shoji, Smile Precure is the second season to feature a 5 girl team after Yes! Precure 5 Gogo!. Running late to her first day of school, resident happy-go-lucky klutz Hoshizora Miyuki runs face first into a small creature called Candy, a fairy from a place called Märchenland. The two are attacked by an anthropomorphic wolf named Wolfrun, and Miyuki transforms into Cure Happy to fight against Wolfrun and the big clown faced monster he summons called an Akanbe. After Candy explains that the legends say there are five precure, Miyuki recruits four new friends: the hot blooded Akane (Cure Sunny), shy artist Yayoi (Cure Peace), responsible older sister Nao (Cure March), and refined student council vice-president Reika (Cure Beauty). The five of them become Smile Precure and fight against Wolfrun and his allies in the Bad End Kingdom, who attempt to revive the slumbering Pierrot by trying to put the world in a “Bad End”.

Smile Precure’s main theme is fairy tales, in a general sense. The Bad End trio are based off of the big bad wolf (Wolfrun), the oni from Momotaro (Akaoni), and the witch from Snow White (Majorina), and Miyuki herself is utterly captivated by fairy tales. The secondary theme is happiness, and the happy go lucky tone of the series often turns on its head during serious arcs to deliver extremely powerful emotional moments. Smile Precure is light on plot, and most episodes are an ultra happy experience, but the show knows how to get serious when it needs to and Smile is exceedingly competent at pulling off drama when the time comes. Smile knows how to get you invested in its characters and use that to pull on your heartstrings during the big moments. The last 10 episodes of the show are the absolute pinnacle of the show’s emotional drama, and each cure gets her own episode for closure before the finale sets in and emotionally destroys you. Also you get to play rock paper scissors with Cure Peace during her roll call so that’s always fun.

Doki Doki! Precure

Doki opens with Trump Kingdom’s destruction by the Selfishness as Cure Sword looks on, helpless. Switching to our world and brighter topics, we meet Aida Mana, Student Council President of Oogai Middle School, whose dream is to become the Prime Minister of Japan. Whenever Mana sees someone in trouble, she’ll help them out, so when a monster attacks the city, Mana does the obvious and tries to stop it. And when, chosen by the fairy Charuru (Charles? Cheryle? Cherry?) to become a Precure and defend the world, she meets Cure Sword, she has to befriend her and help her restore Trump Kingdom and find her happiness.

Mana (Cure Heart) is joined by Rikka (Cure Diamond), her studious companion and supporter, and also the immeasurably powerful and rich (in that order) Alice (Cure Rosetta). Together they have to unravel the mystery of the man who gave them their transformation items, the missing princess of Trump Kingdom, the strange, evil girl called Regina, and Ai, the chaotic neutral baby who hatches out of an egg.

Dokipre’s theme is love and selflessness. It also has Deep Lore, a lot of which is established in extra-series material. The show does try to explore concepts like past cures and manages a very nice repeating pattern effect with the plot, in terms of past and future happenings. There’s a lot of foreshadowing. Compared to most Precure seasons it’s very plot-heavy and even the filler usually ends up being plot-relevant.

Happiness Charge Precure!

The 10th anniversary of Precure! The Phantom Empire is spreading across the world, and Precure are rising up all over the globe to fight them off. In Japan there are two active cures, Cure Fortune, strong and capable, and Cure Princess, scared and unsure of herself. As Cure Princess, Shirayuki Hime, struggles desperately to do her duty as precure, Cure Fortune refuses to work with her for reasons Hime doesn’t fully understand. Realizing her only hope is to find a partner to work with, Hime bumps into Aino Megumi, a super friendly girl who has a tendency to drop everything and help others any time she sees someone in need. Megumi becomes Cure Lovely, and bolstering Hime’s confidence, the two of them become Happiness Charge Precure, tasked with protecting Japan from Queen Mirage and her Phantom Empire. The two are joined by Cure Honey, and eventually Cure Fortune, and the four of them receive support from Blue, the God of Planet Earth. As the girls continue to fight and defend Japan, they are assaulted by Phantom, the ruthless Precure Hunter who has defeated and trapped countless Precure in his Precure Graveyard, and the Oresky Trio, the Phantom Empire generals who oversee the invasion of Japan.

Happiness Charge Precure’s themes are romance and happiness. There are several arcs dedicated to the budding romances of the cures, and the backstory of the show is heavily tied to romance. Happiness might as well be Megumi’s middle name, she makes it her business to spread happiness to as many people as she can, and takes every chance she can to help others. Happiness Charge is also the first season to have form changes for the precure, each cure has a small selection of forms they can change to for different big attacks, and this concept would later be expanded and used as a core concept in Maho Girls Precure. Like Heartcatch before it, Happiness Charge exists in a world where multiple precure exist, but unlike Heartcatch all those precure exist at the same time in the present day. Other precure teams make cameos every so often and the concept creates a great world in which the whole planet is being protected by teenage girls with superpowers, creating a wonderful sense of scale that really makes the big victories of Happiness Charge Precure feel even bigger.

Go! Princess Precure

The first precure series to take place at a boarding school! Years ago, a young girl named Haruno Haruka meets a very royal looking person named Kanata who gives her a Dress-Up Key, a big key shaped like a dress. A teenager now, Haruka starts attending Noble Academy, a prestigious boarding school, all the while holding tight to her dream of becoming a true princess, in a quasi-literal sense. Not long after starting the school year, Haruka meets Pafu and Aroma, two fairies from the Hope Kingdom desperate to revive the legendary precure to fight back against Dyspear and her minions who steal dreams to create their giant Zetsuborgs. Realizing what her Dress-Up Key is meant for, Haruka uses it and the Princess Perfume to become Cure Flora. Together with student council president Kaido Minami (Cure Mermaid), and Amanogawa Kirara (Cure Twinkle) a fashion model with huge aspirations, they become the new Princess Precure, tasked with learning to become true princesses along with protecting the Dress-Up Keys from Dyspear’s forces.

Go! Princess Precure’s main themes are princesses (duh) and dreams. Dreams are a driving force behind all of the cures, and most of the plot of the week characters. Dyspear steals dreams to make monsters, and the precure fight to return those dreams. Characters follow their dreams with conviction, pride, and full commitment. This is also where the princess theme intersects, since it’s Haruka’s dream to become a true princess. One should note that princess is used sort of liberally in this series, it’s not that Haruka wants to somehow become someone of noble birth or have political power, she just wants to be strong, kind, and beautiful, the traits of a true princess in Princess Precure’s own terms. Also she wants to wear pretty dresses and such but who can blame her really.

Mahou Tsukai Precure! (Maho Girls Precure!)

Quite literally putting the magic in magical girls for the first time in the franchise, Mahou Tsukai Precure was the first season to have its cures be actual magicians. Izumi Riko lives in the magical world, a world where magic is real and she attends a magical academy to hone her craft. She leaves the magical world to travel to the “non-magic” world, to search for a legendary item called the Linkle Stone Emerald. In the non-magic world she ends up catching the attention of another girl, Asahina Mirai, who sees her using magic. After trying to show off some magic and messing it up, Riko is attacked by Batty, a servant of the dark wizard Dokurokushe, who is seeking the Linkle Stone Emerald as well. As fate would have it, both Mirai and Riko carry stones that turn out to be the Linkle Stones Diamond, and the two of them use them to become Cure Miracle and Cure Magical, the legendary Mahou Tsukai Precure. Additionally, the power of the Linkle Stones grants life to Mirai’s lifelong companion, a teddy bear named Mofurun. Having discovered the world of magic and become a precure, Mirai is invited to spend time in the magical world learning magic alongside Riko, before the two, joined by Mofurun and a baby fairy named Ha, return to the non-magical world to search for the Emerald and protect it from Dokurokushe and his minions.

Mahou Tsukai Precure’s main themes are bonds and separation. It’s strengths lie in how it shows the relationship between Mirai and Riko. The show takes its time building their relationship in the first dozen or so episodes of their adventures in the magic world, highlighting their similarities and differences as they grow closer and learn to live with each other and fight as precure together. Well before the halfway mark it’s clear how strong their bond is and how deeply they care for each other, and the lengths they would go to for one another. Mahou Tsukai is an emotional ride in so many ways, every emotional moment hits its mark and the more you get attached to the characters the more the show will hit harder and harder with its moments, both sad and happy. Even side characters get satisfying and emotional conclusions to their storylines outside of the episodes they’re introduced in, it’s all wonderfully crafted.

KiraKira☆Precure A La Mode

Another return to the five cure format, Kirapre is also the second season to feature a sixth team member after Yes! Precure 5 Gogo!, as well as the second season to feature high school age precure after Heartcatch Precure. Usami Ichika is in her second year of middle school and loves sweets, especially making sweets. One day a hungry fairy named Pekorin finds her way into Ichika’s kitchen, and after being fed teaches Ichika about Kirakiraru, an energy source that exists in all sweets, and something that can be stolen and used for evil, leaving the sweets gray and tasteless. Utilizing the power of kirakraru in the shortcake she baked for her mother, Ichika becomes Cure Whip, one of the legendary patissiers, Precure. One by one other precure appear, the smart but shy Arisugawa Himari (Cure Custard), the rock band headliner Tategami Aoi (Cure Gelato), the fickle catlike Kotozume Yukari (Cure Macaron), and the responsible and helpful Kenjou Akira (Cure Chocolat). The five of them fight against the evils of Noir and those he has influenced: Julio, the mysterious masked boy who runs “experiments'' using kirakiraru, and Bibury, a mean spirited girl who uses her talking doll to steal kirakiraru and create monsters.

Kirapre’s main motifs are sweets and animals, and it has a pretty general togetherness and happiness theme going on, the standard precure stuff, mostly viewed through the lense of sweets and sweets-making. All the precure work as patissiers for one reason or another and it’s the main way the team bonds early on. The team, as well as the people of their small town, love sweets as a part of their culture and sweets maintain an important role as the emotional tie that binds most things together in the story. Overall Kirapre is a wonderful show with a great cast on both sides of the conflict, and a lot of care has been put into the show to make sure characters have their moments to interact with each other as well as have their own stories , even on a team of six every precure gets more than enough time to shine on her own. Kirapre is at it’s best when it takes two girls and puts them together for an episode, letting each unique dynamic play out in a fun and satisfying way. Kirapre is also noteworthy for the almost inarguably canonical relationship between two of the cures. It's not exactly explicit and it does leave something to be desired, since this is a Toei children's show, but there’s not really any other way to read the evolution of their relationship or their duet song, so I’m more than satisfied calling it canon.

This season is currently one of the few seasons available with official english subtitles on the streaming platform Crunchyroll

HUGtto! Precure

Precure’s 15th anniversary! This season is in many ways a celebration of all things Precure, bringing together a lot of familiar elements from past shows into one. Hugtto! is another five cure season whose main themes are destiny and future. Nono Hana (Cure Yell) is a thirteen-year-old girl whose dream is to be a "cool and stylish woman," although she worries that others see her as childish. One day, a hamster named Harryham Harry and a magical baby named Hugtan fall out of the sky into Hana's house. They're being chased from the future by an evil organization called Criasu Corporation, who are trying to use Hugtan's power to freeze time forever. Hana makes friends with two of her classmates: the responsible class representative Yakushiji Saaya (Cure Ange) and the reclusive ex-figure skater Kagayaki Homare (Cure Etoile), and together they fight Criasu while taking care of Hugtan and figuring out the many mysteries surrounding her. Expect some light sc-fi elements and an emphasis on modern technology/social media.

Hugtto! explores its themes primarily through the lenses of childcare and the workplace, giving us a look at how each girl comes to terms with the transition from childhood to adulthood. This season does a good job of letting each member of the team shine; you spend several episodes with each girl (or duo of girls) and there's a real sense of a complete character arc for all of them. The romance aspect is, unfortunately, pretty bad: there’s a return of hetero furry romance between Harry and Homare, and Hana’s love interest exhibits some really creepy behavior towards her. There’s uncomfortable age gaps in both of these relationships too so it’s a just a bit…. Yikes. Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to ignore like past seasons, but a warning for it nonetheless.

Something that makes this season stand out is its LGBT subtext; there's a TON of it even compared to the normal amount that Precure is known for. Without giving away too much, two of the cures this season are heavily coded as lesbians (though not with each other per se), and there's a subplot concerning a side character who is pretty explicitly (well, as explicit as Toei dares to be) a gender non-conforming man/nonbinary person in love with another man, and it's all very wholesome and presented in a positive light. Again, this is Toei, so don't expect anything too radical, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised with how Hugpre handles it.

Finally I'll just say that while Hugpre is a fantastic season on its own, I would personally recommend waiting to watch it after you've seen some other seasons (notably Futari wa). It's not required, but since Hugpre is an anniversary season, there are a few episodes (especially near the end) that will really hit different if you have an emotional connection to the franchise already. Ultimately though this is a fairly minor part of the show, so watching this season first won’t ruin it or anything like that, it’s just something to keep in mind.

Star☆Twinkle Precure

Precure… in space! Our protagonist, Hoshina Hikaru (Cure Star) loves space and cryptids, to the point of drawing her own constellations. One of her constellations is an adorable alien puffball, who warps into Hikaru’s room almost immediately after she draws it. The puffball quickly befriends Hikaru, who names her Fuwa. They are later joined by Prunce, the team dad friend/alien mascot, and Lala (Cure Milky), a humanoid alien who is an adult in her own culture. After our initial duo gets off to a bit of a rocky start, they are joined by the student council president, Kaguya Madoka (Cure Selene) and a biracial upperclassman who is considered to be the “sun” of the school, Amamiya Elena (Cure Soleil). Together, they explore the universe and befriend all sorts of aliens, while also defending them from the Notraiders, who want to rid the universe of all imagination. On top of that, the universe is dying and the cures need to find the 12 astrologically themed Star Pens to save it and the 12 Star Princesses. This series is notable for attempting to break the “monster of the week” format, instead making it a “fight of the week”.

The major themes of Star Twinkle are space, imagination, and maturity. The cures have to explore the universe to find the Star Pens, and in doing so, visit a bunch of different planets. About half the series is spent on Earth, but the world still feels developed! Honestly speaking, the theme of imagination is forgotten pretty quickly and I’d refer to it more as free will. The theme of maturity is where Star Twinkle really shines. All of the cures have had to grow up too fast in some way, and the series is partially about just allowing them to goof off. Lala is considered an adult on her planet, and this plot point is treated realistically. Well, as realistically as it can be. This is one series I’d recommend avoiding spoilers like the plague for, because part of the fun is in how the plot twists are pulled off. Also Star Twinkle is notable for featuring the first ever dark skinned precure, as Elena is half-hispanic.

Healin’ Good Precure

The currently airing Precure season, as of this writing. The Byogens seek to revive their king by inflicting viruses on Earth, the Healing Garden sends three medical interns to combat them. These interns, fairies named Rabirin, Pegitan, and Nyatoran, along with a baby fairy princess named Latte, journey to Earth to find partners to become Precure. They end up meeting Hanadera Nodoka, a kindhearted girl who was hospitalized for most of her young childhood. After Nodoka risks her life to protect Latte, Rabirin chooses her to become Cure Grace. Joined by older sister type Sawaizumi Chiyu (Cure Fontaine) and the outgoing Hiramitsu Hinata (Cure Sparkle), they form Healin’ Good Precure, and defend their friends and the Earth from the Byogen’s newest wave of attacks.

This season is currently one of the few seasons available with official english subtitles on the streaming platform Crunchyroll.

Where To Watch Precure Online

Unfortunately for us, Precure isn’t really a thing in the west. There was a dub of Futari Wa back in the early 2000’s and Smile and Doki both got “adapted” into Glitter Force over on netflix (I don’t really recommend checking those out), but really Precure just doesn’t exist over here.

However, as mentioned above, there are currently three seasons avalible for streaming on crunchyroll. The original Futari Wa Precure, Kira Kira Precure A La Mode, and the current season, Healin’ Good Precure.

Beyond these isolated examples of official releases, you can really only watch precure online on streaming sites or through torrents. You can find precure pretty much on any major anime streaming site, kissanime, gogoanime, the works. You can also try your luck torrenting the seasons, i’ve found that pretty much every season has a working torrent you can find on sites like nyaa.si or the like. For more recent seasons you should have little difficulty getting torrents, and last time i checked every season was on one of the aforementioned streaming sites. What I’m saying really is there’s no single place to find precure, but it’s not impossible to find for sure.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you decide to check out precure and I really hope you end up loving it.Thanks to my wonderful friend @meltorights for writing the sections on Yespre, Fresh, and Dokipre, to @wonderlilane for writing the sections on Splash Star and Huggto, and @cure-cosmo for writing the segment on Starpre.

If you have questions feel free to drop me an ask I’d be happy to help. I will literally go out of my way to help you if it means getting someone new into precure so please do not hesitate by any means.

#Apple Post #precure #pretty cure #magical girl #anime #toei animation

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davidmann95 · 5 years ago

Note

For definitely no reason whatsoever, in response to nothing specific, can you rank the DC Multiverse Earths and tell us a bit about why each is in its place on the list?

Were this in response to an article, I could assure that I generally enjoy the writer’s output perfectly well from what I’ve seen and was absolutely baffled by the bizarrely selective research that went into it. Anyway, I hope you feel guilty enabling the amount of work I put into this truly ridiculous task by the end.

Cliff notes for the relatively uninitiated: that gorgeous monstrosity up above is The Map Of The Multiverse from the miniseries Multiversity, presented as a series of concentric circles bordered by the ‘Overvoid’ that all of reality is suspended in (and framed in such a way as to make clear it is the white of the pages comics are printed on). You go inwards from the borders of creation - moving moreso with each sphere from abstraction to the realm of the physical - to the Monitor Sphere in which once lived the near-omnipotent, now nearly extinct Monitor race that observed and maintained the multiverse, into the Sphere of Gods where the various beings of myth and divinity dwell, and into the innermost sphere where ‘we’ live. The 52 Earths you see within aren’t the whole of the multiverse but the ‘local’ 52 worlds, with infinite other Earths dwelling in their own dimensional pockets; all these universes actually exist in the same three-dimensional space at the same time but suspended in a higher-dimensional substance called ‘the Bleed’, and vibrating at distinct frequencies. Also there’s a ‘Dark Multiverse’ that’s cosmologically speaking ‘beneath’ the map, disintegrating half-formed potential realities that new proper universes are culled from. There’s a lot more to it than even all of that, but that’s enough to explain what’s up with these.

My ranking here is obviously subjective, but mostly comes down to a mix of ‘how cool is this Earth’, ‘how much would this Earth be worth using again’, ‘how well does it work in the context of being part of a shared multiverse’, and ‘do I seriously see creators unearthing any of this Earth’s potential down the road’. Also, Earths 24, 27, 28, 46, and 49 aren’t here, as they’re among the 7 Unknown Earths on the map that were left behind for future creators to define; 14 and apparently 25 have since been revealed.

64. Earth 14

A worthy bottom-place entry, Earth 14 is at the top of the Multiverse Map, and is shown as physically different from the other Earths, seemingly vibrating as if in two places at once; map co-designer and illustrator Rian Hughes suggested in an interview the intent was that this was where new universes entered the multiverse. Instead, ending up the first Unknown Earth to be revealed after the doors were opened to other creative teams, it was shown as a generic dystopian world home to a ‘Justice League of Assassins’ that were quickly dispatched by a generic cosmic threat. A monumental tribute to contextual ignorance and creative laziness.

63. Flashpoint

This is one of several Earths I’ll touch on that exist in neither the ‘local’ nor Dark Multiverse, but has directly crossed over or been framed in reference to the currently operating version of the DC Universe and so is probably worth a mention even if I’m not going over every Elseworlds and Imaginary Story DC has ever published. Another dystopian world, in this one an attempt by The Flash at fixing a change to history resulted in an Earth torn apart by war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman, where Cyborg was America’s greatest hero and Kal-El was held captive his entire life in a military bunker rather than becoming Superman. Aside from the prospect of a Thomas Wayne who became Batman when Bruce was gunned down as a child rather than vice-versa - resulting in him being pulled into a recent Batman run after this worlds’ destruction, the reason for this Earth’s inclusion - absolutely nothing of value came of this or the stories tied into it, such that astonishingly in spite of being the impetus for one of the biggest DC reboots of all time with theoretically an entire revised history to play with, essentially no one cares about this anymore.

62. Earth 1

The site of DC’s standalone, bookstore-market oriented ‘Earth One’ graphic novels. The incredible tunnel vision of marketing these for that purpose with titles that exist in reference to their multiversal structure aside, the Green Lantern book is the only one of those I’ve heard about being even kind of good; the rest top out at an interesting failure in Wonder Woman, with a standard forgettable failure in Teen Titans and truly flabbergasting misfires in Superman and Batman. Even Multiverse Map co-designer and writer Grant Morrison described this Earth in a blurb as having a history ‘in flux’, implicitly permitting the reader to believe it’s something else if they really want to, but as it stands in spite of the theoretical wide-open possibilities the foundations have already been built on salted Earth.

61. Watchmen

Home to the cast of characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal miniseries. Crossed over with the DC Universe 30+ year later in Doomsday Clock, which clearly intended to set up this world as one ripe for future stories and development rather than a singular text, but instead misinterpreted, stripmined, and otherwise nuked essentially everything that might have had one interested in exploring it further in the first place (in spite of the source text’s very definitive conclusions to all major narrative threads and characters). The only reason this is not ranked even lower is the possibility that the upcoming, as-yet untitled Watchmen project by Tom King and Jorge Fornes might manage to dredge something out of this.

60. Earth Negative 11

The first of the Dark Multiverse Earths here, a gender-flipped Earth where Bryce Wayne generically altered herself into an Atlantean in order to do battle with Aquawoman and the forces of Atlantis. As the Dark Multiverse worlds we have seen thus far are described as being borne of Bruce Wayne’s fears, it’s odd that as opposed to the ‘want of a nail’ scenarios shown on all others, this includes the additional twist of making Bruce a woman, yet does nothing with that. Anyway, this is a very clear product of the Dark Multiverse’s debut in Dark Nights: Metal wanting an evil Batman to correspond to each member of the Justice League, and it’s the oddest, most perfunctory of the lot.

59. Earth 34

Home to the heroes of the Light Brigade, defenders of Cosmoville, this is an Earth meant to evoke the classic creator-owned superhero comic Astro City. However, as Astro City is itself made up of archetypal signifiers yet isn’t meta about its usage of them, being defined by its storytelling principles rather than the shared universe it builds up in the background, there are essentially no stories to be told here that couldn’t be told with the regular heroes of the DC universe. Which is a shame, those are some neat character designs.

58. Earth Negative 12

A Dark Multiverse Earth where believing Wonder Woman killed in a battle with the war god Ares, Batman took up the deity’s helm in hopes of redefining war, instead being corrupted by it and becoming an unstoppable monster. There’s basically nothing here.

57. Earth Negative 44

A Dark Multiverse Earth where a computer program meant to replicate Alfred after the butler’s untimely death, attempting to protect its charge, takes control of Batman by way of mechanizing him and turns Gotham into a digital nightmare. A little more on-point than the previous entry, but still not much here.

56. Earth Negative 22

A Dark Multiverse Earth where Batman is finally pushed into killing the Joker, but the Clown Prince of Crime secretes a particularly potent Joker Toxin upon his death that corrupts the Caped Crusader into a second Joker known as The Batman Who Laughs, who slaughters his way across his universe before ultimately making his way to the ‘main’ DCU. The prospect of a Batman/Joker combination is interesting, but an origin for the ultimate corrupted Batman ‘he got drugged into going bad’ falls short.

55. Earth Negative 32

A Dark Multiverse Earth where Bruce Wayne moments after his parents’ deaths was judged worthy of a Green Lantern ring, but having only his hatred of crime rather than the discipline and morality he would come to develop becomes the murderous terror of the underworld, with even the Corps unable to stop him when he manages to force the darkness of his heart through the ring into ‘dark constructs’. Another ultimately throwaway Earth, this at least illustrates the properties of the Dark Multiverse in an interesting way: the constructs he creates aren’t something that’s ever been indicated as being possible or even sensible with the ‘real’ Green Lantern, but as this is a world literally made of nightmares that’s irrelevant.

54. Earth 39

Home to the United Nations superspies the Agents of W.O.N.D.E.R., who operating using super-technology with eventually deleterious side-effects. A pastiche of the obscure T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, it’s hard to imagine anyone with much to say about them wouldn’t simply wish to write an actual comic about them under the current rights-holders, though the concepts described in Morrison’s provided information are enticing.

53. Earth 41

A riff on several of the superheroes published by Image Comics over the years, they’re worth having around for the occasional heroes of the multiverse groupshots for your big crossover comics and Dino-Cop turned out to be charming, but it’s doubtful someone with a big Spawn story in them for instance would use Spore as their outlet.

52. Earth 9

All I know about this is that this is a ‘what if superheroes really changed the world’ Earth, and when those are a dime a dozen, the additional conceits of the names of the various characters not at all corresponding to their traditional backstories and attributes, and being the brainchild of creator Dan Jurgens, are far from enough to sway me. I understand there are some fans out there who may heartily disagree, to be fair.

51. Earth Negative 52

Another Dark Multiverse throwaway Earth, this time one where a Batman shattered by losing his various partners taps into the Speed Force so that he can finally be everywhere at once to stop all crime. This is distinct however in that he achieves this by defeating The Flash, chaining him to the hood of the Batmobile, and driving it so fast their atoms explode and merge, which is thoroughly rad and gets it big-time bonus points next to its contemporaries.

50. Earth 37

An Earth based on the DC works of creator Howard Chaykin, its conceit of being a world that progressed technologically far faster than our world but culturally remains decades behind us is interesting, but I’m not much of a fan of his work that I’ve read and most of what’s been drawn upon here doesn’t seem to have much of a following.

49. Earth 30

The world of Superman: Red Son, where Kal-L landed in the Ukraine and grew up to become leader of a global Soviet Union, before realizing he had deformed humanity’s development and faking his death. Leaving Earth in the hands of a Lex Luthor who while still very much a bastard found public approval in America for fighting Superman, Lex ultimately led Earth into a utopia that over time fell into complacency and became its universe’s version of Krypton, Jor-L (Luthor’s distant descendant) and Lara sending their baby back in time to survive and establishing a predestination loop. While several elements of the DC Universe are present in a limited capacity that could in theory be expanded on, Superman and Wonder Woman are the only superheroes of long-term note and both their stories are very much concluded, seemingly leaving little to do here except have the Superman with the hammer and sickle logo show up in event comics.

48. Earth 6

The world of the Just Imagine Stan Lee Created The DC Universe series, where the father of the Marvel Universe rebuilt several DC figureheads from the name and a few pieces of imagery up. The results were mixed at best, but a series of gorgeous artists involved in the projects mean the characters certainly look interesting even if it’s hard to imagine creators going back here in any meaningful capacity.

47. Earth Negative 1

A Dark Multiverse world where Superman turned on humanity for reasons unknown, and Batman deliberately infected himself with the ‘Doomsday Virus’ to gain the properties of the hulking monster and defeat his former friend. Now numbed to human emotion and vulnerability, this Batman hopes to spread the virus as to make humanity similarly indestructible, as well as shield them emotionally from what he has come to see as the false hope Superman represents. This Batman didn’t end up a major figure in the same way as The Batman Who Laughs, but the conceit is killer and I hope someone picks up on it one day.

46. Earth-52

A universe somewhere outside the local 52, a ‘remnant’ of sorts of the main DC universe circa 2011-2016 prior to cosmic revisions resulting in the current setup. A world where superheroes had emerged approximately 5 years earlier and home to lots of dudes in very dumb battle-armor, most fan-favorite stories from this era have been carried forward into the current history, and its unique version of Superman under Grant Morrison - a socialist crusader in a t-shirt and jeans who battled corrupt institutions and cosmic supervillainy in equal measure - was depicted as set loose from his world after 2016′s continuity changes as a defender of the multiverse. While a significant part of DC history both in-universe and publishing-wise, there wouldn’t seem to be all that much left here worth exploring.

45. Earth 2

A world where Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman alone represented the first wave of superheroes, they nobly fell in battle repelling an invasion of Earth by Darkseid. In time a new generation would emerge that were modernized, youthful iterations of the Justice Society of America, the superhero team predating the Justice League in DC’s publishing history. While the logline’s an interesting one and the successor to Superman Val-Zod debuted to some acclaim, for the most part this reinvention didn’t end up received well by either new or longtime fans, and a last-minute overhaul where this bunch was transplanted into a rebooted world without superheroes probably didn’t help. You still see them in crossovers and there are promising concepts, but this world seems basically dead.

44. Earth 50

When Lex Luthor ascended to the presidency and soon thereafter executed The Flash, Superman snapped, executed him, and took over the world alongside his allies as the Justice Lords, until they were ultimately overthrown by way of a parallel universe Justice League and a repentant Lord Batman. A Better World unequivocally rules, but given this is supposed to be those specific versions of the Lords rather than a new iteration, it’d be weird to see them up against any universe other than the DCAU. And, well...

43. Earth 12

The DCAU, currently world of Batman Beyond and a future Justice League. The DCAU, you may be aware, extremely rules, but is also somewhat redundant in this context - the ‘regular’ DCU already has all its core components without too much aesthetic differentiation, and there’s already frequently a Batman Beyond in the future of said universe. It has its unique attributes that make people love it, it’s cool that it’s here, but on the macro scale it’s too clean an adaptation to bring much to the table to crossovers and whatnot, and you’d never see any further stories told there otherwise as really being part of the DCU cosmic landscape so much as a comic tie-in to the TV show.

(Also it’s odd this is placed here with the Justice Lords Earth as if to go ‘it’s secretly been part of the 52 all along, you just never noticed when it only crossed over with the one other!’ when there were two other parallel universes in the DCAU.)

42. Earth 43

A nightmare world haunted by the once-heroic, now vampiric Blood League, the obvious potential would be for this world to function as DC’s equivalent to Marvel Zombies. Recently however DCeased has come to fill that position, and while this world in practice if not concept skews more closely towards that source material as the former heroes still have vestiges of their old personalities - in theory distinguishing it as its own spin worth keeping around - it’s hard to imagine most takes on ‘Justice League but monsters’ won’t come out under the DCeased banner for the foreseeable future.

41. Earth 40

A world of pulp villains made to oppose Earth 20, these guys are simple but a hoot.

40. Earth 35 aka the Pseudoverse

More analogues to analogues, this time of the Awesome Comics characters largely defined by Alan Moore in Supreme. This opens up the promising vista of ‘DC if it were designed by Alan Moore’, but in practice as demonstrated by his work with both DC and the analogues these mimic, that would just be...well, good DC comics, which you don’t need a whole extra universe for. The notion of this as a universe artificially created by Monitor ‘ideominers’ however both gives it a unique place in the multiverse, tackles its status as a pastiche in a unique way, and gets back to ideas of the power of imagination in both Supreme and Moore’s other works, so it’s likely there could be something to be done here.

39. Earth 11

A bit of a study in contradictions. This is seemingly a rather straightforward ‘gender swap’ Earth with Superwoman, Wonderous Man, and so forth. Also, its version of Star Sapphire implied it’s not subjected to constant crises in the same way as the main universe it mirrors, maintaining a greater degree of consistency in the process. At the same time however it’s mentioned that the Amazons rather than leaving Man’s World for Themyscira shared its technology and philosophy with the world, changing it forever, suggesting a far different world from what we’ve seen in glimpses here. Until it decides one way or another whether it’s a simple mirror to the regular DCU or a radically different take, it hovers in a state of uncertainty.

38. Earth-2 aka Earth Two

The original version of Earth-2, home to the DC Universe of the 1940s with aged versions of Superman and company and the original Justice Society of America. The first take on a DC universe that would progress in something resembling ‘real time’ rather than keeping the headliners as perpetual twenty-to-thirty-somethings, this was also the birthplace of heroes such as Power Girl and Huntress. I’m of the perhaps controversial opinion that this is a concept that was explored better in later takes: there’s a sense here that the largely forgotten follow-up generation eventually introduced, with the exception of the two heroes mentioned above, will never really matter in the same way as their still fully-active predecessors in spite of ostensibly taking over the family business, meaning you never quite actually get what you want here, which is to see a DC where things meaningfully change and move on - well into his middle age and his mentor’s death long behind him, Dick Grayson is still Robin. Add in the odd, ignominious demise of the original Batman and its Superman’s odd eventual fate - which slide from bizarre to intolerable if you accept the frequent implication that these are meant to be the original versions of them from the 1930s - and I can’t help but think the enjoyable high concept was never realized as well as it could be here.

37. Earth 4

The Earth of the characters of Charlton Comics who would go on to inspire Watchmen, this initially seemed like one of the most promising worlds after its debut in Pax Americana drew perhaps the most pronounced critical acclaim of any single issue in the past decade as the site for creators with something to say to work with Watchmen without actually touching that property. Now, however, Watchmen itself is in the mix: most wouldn’t reasonably go here while the material they’re truly referencing is now freely available (especially those simply wanting to draw fan attention by visibly playing with those toys, the way Earth 4 sidestepped) even though that world itself is now massively compromised past the original text, and with the ‘Watchmen Earth’ no longer an option and the characters themselves - if cleaned-up, more mainstream versions of them - existing in the DCU proper, this world’s role seems to have been largely stripped from it. I have to imagine there’s still potential here for those with the talent and commitment though.

36. Earth 44

A world where in the absence of natural superhuman beings, Doc Tornado created a Metal League of robot superheroes to protect the Earth. A promising concept definitely worth a few stories.

35. Earth 15

Once a perfect universe destroyed in a rampage by another Earth’s Superman, it was artificially reborn through the will of Countess Belzebeth - a cosmic vampire - as a copy of the Prime universe with the Green Lantern Corps replaced by Belzebeth’s despotic Blackstars, the uncertain and bitter heroes of this universe warped through the lens of Belzebeth’s perceptions of them had no chance against her forces. While its inhabitants are a bit samey what with all life having been subsumed into the diamond will of Blackstar Controller Mu, the idea of a conceptually weakened DCU being turned into an army against the rest of the multiverse makes for a terrific threat, and the prophecy of the ‘Cosmic Grail’ (a Green Lantern power battery lost somewhere in the multiverse) and that the First Lantern of the multiverse Volthoom hail from its original incarnation lend it some extra mythological weight.

34. Earth 32

A mashup world hosting the likes of the Justice Titans, Young Justice International, and the Doom Society. A world that’s home to Aquaflash will probably never have an ongoing all its own, but plenty of stories, miniseries, and even a brief line of comics have been based on mashup characters before, so there’s plenty of proof of concept for this being able to endure.

33. Earth 23

An Earth where Batman (naturally) is the only white guy on the Justice League, and Superman is not only President of the United States in his secret identity as Calvin Ellis, but the leader of the multiverse-spanning superteam Justice Incarnate. It reads like Morrison trying to do his idealized take on an ‘Ultimate DC’, a more diverse and politically engaged superhero landscape that doesn’t scale down its big ideas in turn, and if I were ranking it at the time it was introduced it would go much higher. The problem is that its version of Superman is modeled after Barack Obama, and that guy isn’t President anymore (and for that matter his legacy seems to grow more complicated by the year). As a result the vibe goes from triumphant to wistful mourning if not outright bitterly ironic, and that’s a needle that would have to be threaded before doing any substantial work here.

(Also, since several Justice Leaguers here rather than being made black are replaced with various black counterparts they’ve had over the years, that means Wonder Woman here is the 70s Amazon Nubia. And, uh, that name is something that would have to be...something.)

32. Earth 19

Steampunk superheroics; superhero period pieces are usually fun, and this is built on a foundation of pretty Mike Mignola art (though confession that I’ve never read Gotham By Gaslight), so sure, this one has potential.

31. Earth 18

Same as above but cowboys instead. This gets extra credit because cowboys mesh better with superhero conventions, and the additional twist of this world being frozen in history by the Time Trapper, forcing them to approximate modern technology with 19th century resources.

30. Earth 31

A post-apocalyptic waterworld where humanity is protected by Captain Leatherwing and assorted other pirate superheroes. Another ‘superheroes but in another genre’ setup, the post-apocalyptic, environmental twist makes it unfortunately more relevant than its peers, though I don’t think it’s quite the best end of the world as we know it on the list.

29. Earth 42

Home to the adorable, innocent world of the chibified Little League...secretly robots unwittingly enacting an endless stage play for the malevolent being known as the Empty Hand, running scenarios of his devising in preparation for a coming war with the rest of the multiverse. It’s a neat little multipurpose world, able to be played both as amusing contrast, or as parody whether light-hearted or cynical, in their endless ‘playtime’.

28. Earth 7

Formerly home to counterparts of the heroes of Earth 8, it was shattered by the Empty Hand’s forces and its desiccated cities made his throne, the zombie hordes that were once its champions his armies. The ‘Ultimate Marvel’ to Earth 8′s Marvel proper (and now Marvel Zombies), the idea of the broken remains of the cool version of the cool superhero universe as the lair of the ultimate evil has a certain appeal.

27. Earth 52

The last of the Earth 52s on this list, this newly added 53rd core Earth is home to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight books. Much as the reception to it over the years has become...mixed, at best (for my money Dark Knight III is the only one that’s not at least bad in a very interesting way, and even it still has its moments), the surprised generally positive reception to the most recent entry in Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child suggests there’s still life in this oddball corner of the cosmos yet.

(Fun fact: this was Earth 31 in a previous version of the multiverse, and Morrison intended it to be included as such in Multiversity - hence why Earth 31 is made up of inky scratches on the Map - but Miller requested he not since he wanted to keep his domain separate from DC’s ongoing storylines. Instead he agreed later to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s use of it in Dark Nights: Metal as DKR is famously Snyder’s favorite comic, bringing it in as Earth 52.)

26. Earth 47 aka Dreamworld

Where the Love Syndicate of Dreamworld dwells, baby: all is groovy. It’s incredibly specific in both era and theme, but a psychedelic universe with heroes to match invites tons of possibilities.

25. Earth 10 aka Earth X

It’s the Nazi Earth that sucks. It has superheroes who unnervingly are about as well-intentioned and effective as the standard set in the New Reischman, opposed by the few remaining dregs of the Freedom Fighters led by Uncle Sam; only their Kal-L, Overman, once Hitler’s weapon, truly understands the scope of the atrocities that led to their ‘utopia’, having grown a conscience too late and ever-aware that no feat in the present can ever redeem the oceans of blood on his hands. You can do horrifying introspective stuff with them as in their Multiversity chapter, you can tell Freedom Fighters stories like the recent miniseries, or you can just have the Justice League show up to fight the Nazi Justice League. A Nazi world is a standard one in multiverse stories for a reason, you don’t get easier targets.

24. Earth 5G

The DC universe that’s...sort of here and sort of not. Doomsday Clock and other upcoming stories appear to be shifting us over to this, but in most of DC’s line of titles the leap hasn’t taken place yet. As we haven’t seen the bench of successor heroes apparently primed to take over only so much can be judged, but the vast changes suggested by the new ‘official timeline’ that’s been leaked suggest a bizarre attempt at incorporating as many of their editorially-favored biggest hits as possible into a bizarre selective mishmash, without particularly serving the status quos any of the constituent characters said history is meant to bolster (with the exception of Wonder Woman, now framed as the first superhero, which would at least be interesting and a deserved bolster to her profile if there were any particular impression her new standing would be meaningfully followed-through on), while also not only reinstating the mutually destructive retcon of the JSA as preceding Superman, but taking the absurd extra step of actively presenting them as his inspiration. Of course we haven’t seen it in practice yet, and at the end of the day good stories will surely still be told here, but the foundations here are about as shaky as they’ve ever been for the ‘core’ DCU as a wholehearted capitulation to placing dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s over the actual narrative logistics of making a shared universe function smoothly.

23. Earth Negative Zero aka Betwixt

A world where those whose senses of self entire disintegrate fade away to seeking to feed on those still well-defined, this bears similarities to the realm of Limbo where ignored superheroes reside, but with just enough conceptual differences and a hellish, malleable twist that makes it the best thing anyone’s come up with to date to do with the Dark Multiverse.

22. Earth 48 aka Warworld

While its iconography is rooted of all things in castoff characters from Crisis On Infinite Earths and no-hopers from Countdown To Final Crisis, the actual conceit here of a world where literally everyone and everything is a superhero that operates by superhero rules, a world built by the New Gods as defenders of reality, is wide-open and tantalizing.

21. Earth 38

Another major shot at a DCU that aged in real time, this version has its own idiosyncrasies but far more of a sense of forward momentum and meaningful change, with the original Superman and Batman still leading the pack one way or another but successors to both them and the rest of the heroes truly stepping up. Also the predominant hero of the 21st century is Knightwing, the grandson of both Superman and Batman who has only partial Superman powers but also Batman training, which is just really cool.

20. Earth 3

The good ‘ol classic evil mirror universe, where strength is the only law, the forces of evil always win in the end no matter how bright the day may become, and thus the Crime Syndicate operates as it pleases. It’s never quite as interesting as you want it to be - its villains are largely one-note - but its warped societal and cosmic rules, and that each character has a handful of twists on the mythology of their counterparts rather than being an exact (if morally inverted) duplicate, means it could easily one day come to live up to its obvious potential in the right hands.

19. Earth 21

Here, most superheroes were forced into retirement after World War II by McCarthyist paranoia, but at the dawn of the 1960s the few remaining and a new generation are emboldened to step back into the light, spearheaded by the Justice League of America. DC: The New Frontier is a modern classic, with a direct standalone follow-up virtually out of the question; as it doesn’t quite lead into the world of the actual 1960s DC Comics either, its sole function in its capacity as a world in the multiverse is as a 60s ‘period piece’ Earth. Given that’s where most of the architecture of DC as we now know it was built however, that’s hardly a problem.

18. Earth 26 aka Earth C

Funny animals are fun, and in a superhero universe that means you get superhero funny animals, courtesy of Captain Carrot and his amazing Zoo Crew. What’s not to love?

17. Earth 22

While time has somewhat dimmed the acclaim that originally surrounded it, Kingdom Come and its tale of a Superman coming out of retirement alongside his allies to try and reign in an out-of-control new generation remains a landmark moment in the genre, and in many aspects still holds up. Unlike many stories of its stature this world has always played nice with the mainline universe in terms of guest appearances and crossovers, including works by the original creators Mark Waid and Alex Ross, and as the most iconic and conceptually expansive work to date set in a DC universe that has joined in the march of time, that makes it a prominent and useful one to have around.

16. The Antimatter Universe of Qward aka The Reversoverse aka the Anti-Verse

The original dark flipside of DC reality, this has occasionally also played home to the Crime Syndicate - and their best stories by far, to boot - but mainly serves as a home base to the Weaponeers of Qward and occasionally Sinestro. While largely unexplored it has a massively central place in DC’s cosmology and the birth of the multiverse, the glimpses of a society of pure evil in early Silver Age Green Lantern and JLA: Earth 2 are far more fun and interesting than anything seen in Earth 3′s history, it’s about to get even more room under Morrison to find definition, and as the ultimate mysterious Forbidden Realm of the DCU the possibilities could be essentially endless in the right hands.

15. Earth-1985 aka Earth One

The DC universe of 1956-1986, and the dragon an entire generation of creators have spent their livelihoods chasing as the ‘classic’ iteration, as evidenced by one of them flat-out confirming it still exists somewhere out there. While that makes it frequently redundant when the main DCU is trying hard to mimic its feel - a few divergent notes such as Maggin’s idiosyncratic take on latter-day Superman and its version of Jason Todd aside - the prospect of a DCU that remained in that mold forever to a greater or lesser extent even if time may have moved forward could, in principle, free the main universe to go off in wildly different directions, knowing this image of DC always exists in its own space to return to when so desired rather than actively turning the current status quo to face backwards.

14. Earth 17

The Atomic Knights of Justice quest across the radioactive landscape of Novamerika in a world decimated by nuclear was in 1963 in search of Earth 15′s Cosmic Grail, their only hope against the coming of Darkseid. A mashup of the Justice League with the protagonists of one of the most fascinatingly bizarre comics of DC’s Silver Age in the Atomic Knights, a mythic quest, and most relevantly “What if Fallout had superheroes?” leaves this feeling like it’s just waiting for its moment to shine.

13. Earth 8 aka Angor

Known across the rest of the multiverse as the protagonists of the Major movies and comics (as opposed to the sub-imprint Essential Major reflecting Earth 7), in actuality the non-actionable champions of Angor - the Retaltiators, the G-Men, the Future Family, and The Bug, among others - are as real as any other superheroes, and while they struggle under the weight of both mistrust by the general public and frequent in-fighting, they’ve thus far protected their world from threats global, universal, and multiversal alike. The Big Two having stand-ins for each other is a longstanding tradition for good reasons: it not only allows for crossovers where the legal stars don’t align (and adds an extra fun shock of recognition whenever the reader realizes what’s happening), but provides each of them an ongoing version of those archetypes to play with within the confines of their own narrative, whether as contrasts or bending them to fit the tone of a very different shared universe than they were originally created for.

12. Earth 16 aka #earthme

The world where every sidekick, super-son, successor, and short-lived ‘new generation - of HERO!’ at last seize their moment in the sun...in a world already saved by their predecessors, with little left to do but lap up lives of super-celebrity and wish for one, just one little alien invasion or immortal tyrant to justify their existences for them. The best of DC’s futuristic/what-if-time-mattered alternate Earths in my opinion, taking to its logical conclusion the notion as stated by Morrison in interviews that as the Justice League will stick around as long as there are evils that need fighting, the ever-present promise of the torch being passed could only ever truly, permanently take place in a world where the job was already redundant. Playing as it does with in-universe history, real-life publishing realities, celebrity culture, generational divides, and the question of what being a superhero even means sans the usual confrontational justifications, it’s by its nature only going to become more expansive and interesting a commentary as time goes by and the regular DCU goes through its cycles of reboots, rebirths, and returns to form.

11. Pocket Universe 54471

Exactly what you see: Superman made a little pocket universe a half mile wide to go fishing in and he was gonna take Bruce and Dick there for the former’s bachelor party, and he knows about and/or created at least 54470 others. It’s absolutely delightful not only in its own right, but as an opening of the door to what the multiverse can mean in DC comics as a sci-fi idea generator beyond riffs on existing properties, while still being presented with a distinctly DC sense of playfulness.

10. Earth 45 aka Earth 45™

The origin of one of the best Superman villains of all time in Superdoomsday - the Superman idea in a world without him brought to life but twisted by committee into a murderous living brand - a horrifying corporatocracy standing for all Superman and company are meant to stand against, and an enduring threat with the world still in shackles and those in power still able to dream to life whatever vision they please of absolute power to be wielded in their name.

9. Earth 36 aka Terra

Justice 9, the defenders of Terra - or I suppose Justice 7 now after the losses of Optiman and Red Racer, though how long does that matter in a superhero universe? - is the most interesting of the direct analogue groups for my money. Technically speaking they’re another twice-removed set like 34 and 35, standing in for the heroes of Big Bang Comics, but given my understanding is that there’s no major “Like the DC heroes, BUT” twist in that book the way Astro City and Supreme have other than a retro ‘good old days’ bent (which definitely isn’t the case here with at least two queer members), Justice 9 basically function as direct analogues for the Justice League...in the same comics as the Justice League. To me, that’s actually fascinating: one of the most useful elements of stand-in characters like this is the ability to tap into the iconic power of archetypes without the familiarity surrounding the actual figures, in the way Planetary for instance uses just enough distance from the source material to make a couple dozen decades-old pop culture touchstones feel completely new, and this implements that approach to the material to the DC characters with heroes who can actually themselves team up with DC proper. As many approaches as could be taken with that though, that potential alone probably wouldn’t be enough to shoot it this high up the list if not for a major additional factor: in the same way that in the old-school DC universe the heroes of Earth-1 had comics reflecting the adventures of the heroes of Earth-2 long before learning they were real in another universe, DC Comics are published on Earth 36. Aside from the neat trick of putting our leads in the same position as the Golden Age heroes, it means Justice 9 grew up with the Justice League as their heroes in the same way as us the audience before becoming heroes themselves, and then they grew up to learn they were real. These folks absolutely deserve to become multiverse standbys.

8. Earth 51

The Earth where all Jack Kirby’s ideas live as a single cohesive world and adventure. No further justification is needed.

7. Earth 13

A world of occult danger where DC’s traditionally superheroic magical figures such as Zatanna and Deadman are given the full Vertigo horror treatment, while the more intimidating and morally dubious figures such as Etrigan and John Constantine get logos and codenames. Not only an expansion but an offputting inversion of one of DC’s most acclaimed corners, this oddball bunch could bounce off of the capes and tights crowd as easily as your Shadowpacts and Justice League Darks, in ways no other team from any corner of the multiverse could.

6. Earth 20

Pulp champions of a 21st century that remains aesthetically moored in the early 20th, of the handful of Earths converting DC standbys into different genre territory in the local 52 the homeworld of the Society of Superheroes hits hardest, given the role the likes of Doc Savage and The Shadow played in that time shaping the conventions of superheroes as we know them. Add the wealth of concepts presented in their oneshot and the decision to hew away from the traditional Justice League riffs of parallel Earths, and of all the truly new worlds introduced in Multiversity, Earth 20 is the one that most feels like it could support an ongoing all its own.

5. Earth 29 aka Htrae

You gotta have Bizarro World. You just gotta.

4. Earth 33 aka Earth Prime

The in-universe representation of our very own pale blue dot. Whether it’s the birthplace of Superboy Prime where assorted DC creators had to deal with a visiting Flash and Superman throughout the 60s and 70s, meta games with the various incarnations of Ultra/Ultraa, a looming threat yet also victim in need of rescue through the eyes of Justice Incarnate, or the unwitting home of the ‘Superman’ or ‘Batman’ of Kurt Busiek’s off-center takes on the characters in Secret Identity and Creature of the Night, over the years DC has shown a decent amount of restraint in not going back to this particular well too often unless someone has a really clever tale to tell, and as a result it has maybe the single best batting average of all the ‘parallel Earths’ that have been regularly returned to by DC over the years. Give yourselves a hand, folks!

3. Earth 5 aka Thunderworld

Home not to ‘Shazam’, but Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family in all their glory, a technicolor world playing by the rules set down by Otto Binder and company where a superhero can literally battle planets and the most dangerous villain of all may be a very, very mean worm with glasses, a place of dream logic and childish innocence even by the standards of superhero comics. Captain Marvel at his best is one of DC’s most iconically potent players yet many seem to agree that much of his woes in recent years have come down to trying to find a unique space for him in the DCU proper. While I don’t know that it’s at all impossible to make that work, it’s certainly true that Marvel as he was originally presented doesn’t quite make sense in that world, whereas back in his own he keeps a flavor entirely unique to himself and his partners, whether for solo adventures or teamups with the heroes of the other worlds, playing it straight or examining some of the unsettling implications established by Thunderworld or finding a new way to make it work. Much like Bizarro World, it’s simply a locale the place doesn’t quite feel whole without.

2. Earth 25 (?)

While I’m a bit dubious on it definitely being Earth 25 in the core 52 based on interpretation of an offhanded line from Mr. Terrific (it has a multiverse all its own!), the fact of the matter is that America’s Best Comics came roaring out of the gate as proof of its own title, and basically didn’t stop until it ended. A couple after-the-fact Tom Strong miniseries (containing perhaps the most singularly cowardly hack move in the history of shared universe comics in undoing the end of Promethea) can’t detract from the core ABC lineup being made up of some of the most singularly clever, gorgeous, and heartfelt superhero titles to hit the stands, pretty much the platonic ideal of what you want books like these to look like. If this universe can hang around in any capacity at all until someone god willing picks them up again in a big way, it’s a win in my book.

1. Earth 0 aka Prime Earth

The extant version of the main DCU for at least a little longer, it really does feel like more than just about any version before it - at least for my money - they finally got all their ducks in a row, albeit right before blowing everything to hell. Most of the stories you really want to still have some sort of weight for the major characters are still in play to be built on, and most of the stories that clearly needed to be dropped are dropped. The cosmology’s fleshed out and expanding, the big names mostly work as they should ideally work while still heading into new territory, the JSA is mysteriously somehow around in the past without interfering with the primacy of Superman and the Justice League as the first known superheroes (a mystery that will never be resolved now due to the current reboot; damn shame) and the Legion of Superheroes have a new coat of paint, and there’s room for stories cosmically massive and intimately personal and utterly bizarre throughout the line rather than there being a single overriding idea of what these books should be. It may not be the perfect DC Universe by any means, but it’s a real, real damn good one, and of course without that thing, none of the rest of these universes would have been there in the first place.

#DC Comics #Multiversity #Opinion

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ridiculoustrainsofthought · 4 years ago

Link

I've been on a Wind in the Willows binge which has lead to looking at several versions. But when I went looking for movies, all I could remember of the one from my childhood was like a voice clip from the Wild Wood scene and this song. But WitW is in the public domain so there's dozens of versions and readings to sift through so it ended up being like "Uh... I guess the song is the same as the title so that doesn't help." And it's funny because much like the actual song in the book, this song has teased at the back of my mind over the years where I might recall parts of the melody but only bits of the words and could never piece it together.

For anyone wondering about the visuals in the vid, the "Wind in the Willow" is actually never name dropped in the book turns out. But there's a chapter called "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" which is one of two chapters that have almost no connection to the rest of the story. It's like a standalone piece with the characters helping a friend of theirs find his lost son, living along the river they were all starting to fear the worst, but while helping in the search Ratty suddenly hears a sort of "calling". And taking a side stream they make their way to a massive willow tree where they find the babe being protected by none other than Pan. Which if iirc Pan is a God of Nature or demigod or something along the lines? But the pair, Ratty and Mole are struck in such awe and light they give worship to him and "The Piper" slips away and plays a song to make everyone forget the encounter because little animals have enough troubles in the world to be in fear and wonder of beings like him around the forest. But even as they row away confused to what just happened, Ratty (who was strangely sensitive to things already. The others joke it's just the poet in him) still hears the words to the song, then the melody, then he just passes out.

I bring this up because it leads to another chapter, called Wayfarers All, that also seems to be a standalone piece separate from the rest of the book. Ratty also has an episode where he seems to be struggling with depression. Starting off the chapter by saying he'd been losing interest in a lot of the things he usually loves, and goes looking for anyone to hang out with him. But it's the end of summer and like any tourist town, everyone (The birds, the mice, and so forth) are all packing up to move southward for the fall. So they don't have time to deal with him. Eventually he gets into a bout of jealousy and goes up to the road to wonder about all the travelers and happens upon a Sea Rat (Ratty being a water rat himself) and gets to talking with the old sailor about "the calling" since the sea rat had been staying at a farm but it's time to get back to port. Just his way.

And then it gets into this sorta dream sequence thing with Ratty seeing his life aboard ships and in far away cities and the book doesn't specify the sea rat asking him to come with but in his state he's sure he did and when he comes out of the dream, the old sea rat is gone so I've half a mind to wonder if he was ever really there. But Ratty is somewhat possessed and runs home muttering about going south, grabs like a few treasures and some food and was about to run out the door when Mole tackles him to the ground to stop him and get him to explain what the hell has come over him. And honestly??? Ratty doesn't know. He just finds himself trying to explain his day to Mole before he starts just sobbing. So Mole tries to comfort him by reminding him of everything he'd miss if he left. And this time of year, would be dangerous. And then tries to cheer him up with making plans for the winter and when Ratty seems to have stopped crying but gone listless over the matter, Mole brings up he hadn't worked on his poetry for a while. Maybe that would make him feel better? And he brings over a pen and paper, which Ratty shoves off at first, but when Mole comes by to check on him later, he seemed to be working after all. (And honestly, I think Mole would know. He left home on a whim one morning, met up with his new friends, and spent nearly a year away before realizing how homesick he was.)

The combination of the two chapters fascinates me. Mostly in that every version I’ve watched seems to handle these two chapters differently (IF they get used at all because, again, they seem disconnected to the rest of the plot and could easily be removed with none the wiser.) The Rankin-Bass version the video is from ties the two chapters together where one leads into the other. My favorite version of the movies has a nod to Wafarers All at the end of their first summer and then having the Piper at the Gates of Dawn much later. And then another version had Piper first then gets into Wayfarers some time later. And I honestly can’t decide which combination I like better.

Having Piper first and then Wayfarers later is how it is in the actual book. And versions that have it this way make me feel like it implies something actually happened to Ratty in that incident. He’s shown to be very well tied to the river, almost to a point he doesn’t know what to do with himself if he’s not near it. It’s his everything. But then after this run in with the Piper, he has this call to the sea almost like his ties to the river have been heightened to a point where he wants to follow the waters wherever they lead. But having Wayfarers happen before Piper could just as well imply he’s always had a heightened sense of things and the “episode” of him feeling possessed by something greater to him and then after being jolted back to reality this feeling of being lost to some siren song could help explain his actions in Piper and how he just knows where to go even if he’d never been to that area before.

And I’m just seriously rambling at this point, but I wanted to get this out somewhere. I love these guys so much <3

#Wind in the Willows #Piper at the Gates of Dawn #Wayfarers All #Ratty #moley #Rankin-Bass

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mittensmorgul · 5 years ago

Text

This Must Be The Place

timestamp for Lifetime Piling Up, 7 years later, but works as a standalone.

(2440 words, T, all the fluffs)

Read it on AO3

It’s the sort of day that leaves Cas desperate for some reminder that life isn’t all trauma and tragedy. He’s finished his shift at the hospital, where one of his patients lived and the other didn’t. It’s the reality of his life as a trauma surgeon, and he’s long ago accepted the fact he’s not God, that he can’t save everyone. It doesn’t stop him from trying.

He’s too worn out from five hours of surgery and a heart-wrenching talk with a man’s grieving family members to bother changing his clothes. Cas ditches his pristine white lab coat and slams the door of his locker. There was something he could do to turn the day around. Something impulsive, but something he’d also been planning for a long time; saving it up for the perfect moment.

Something life-affirming.

Cas pulls on his coat, the lapel catching on the hospital identification clipped to the pocket of his scrub shirt, and walks purposefully out the emergency room door. He waves to Alex the charge nurse at the desk and to a few other people who notice him leaving, but after the day he’s had nobody tries to hold him up when he looks so determined to leave. He’s grateful for that small mercy.

It’s raining as he pulls his car out of the parking garage and drives on autopilot. He sees the shop every day on his way to work and every night as he drives back home. Tonight he lucks out. There’s an empty parking spot right in front of the door, like it was meant to be. He pulls in without a second thought and shuts the engine off. He sits there for a minute, his head resting back against the seat as he basks in the welcoming glow of the blue and yellow neon sign in the window, the light streaked and shattered through the raindrops rolling down his windshield. It’s raining even harder now, and Cas just smiles to himself. It feels right. Everything feels right for once that day.

He pats down his pockets to be sure he has everything-- phone, keys, wallet-- and then readies himself for a mad sprint across the sidewalk through sheets of rain to the shelter of the shop’s awning. The familiar neon-lit window looks so different up close than it does when he’s driving past. The glowing Winchester Tattoo logo is clearly visible from the road, but the dozens of drawings that frame the sign and almost completely obscure the view into the shop from the sidewalk are another story entirely. On closer examination, each of them is easily worth a thousand words.

Cas thinks to himself that if the weather were being more cooperative he could spend hours giving every last drawing the attention it deserves. Then again, he also knows he’d only be delaying the inevitable. He’d talked himself into this months ago, and then waited so long for this moment. He wasn’t about to talk himself out of it now. This was definitely what he wanted, so why would the thought of actually going through with it fill him with dread?

He’s a surgeon, dammit. He has no trouble helping others deal with physical pain, but this is something potentially far more terrifying than that. This would be forever.

Cas closes his eyes, heaves in a fortifying lungful of cold, humid air and then opens the door. He’s greeted with a warm, inviting roil of heat and light and sound. The tinkling of a dozen tiny bells hanging above the door provides an uncanny counterpoint to Led Zeppelin playing on the stereo, several quiet conversations and the intermittent buzzing of a tattoo gun. It’s the strangest combination of things to inspire a feeling of ease and contentment, but as he looks around the warmly lit shop and acknowledges its occupants Cas can’t help feeling an inviting sense of home .

The man behind the front counter hunches over a sketch as a customer describes the artwork he’s commissioning, pointing out a detail that the artist erases and then redraws to the customer’s satisfaction. The artist sets his pencil down and continues to study his work, standing up straight and clasping his hands behind his back as he arches into a stretch. The sleeves of his incongruous white lab coat ride up revealing strong arms covered in vibrant tattoos, heaven and hell, light and darkness, somehow both perfectly at home together as if he carried a piece of each extreme in either hand. Cas can’t help the quiet laugh at the sight, how similar the coat is to the one he’d left at the hospital, and yet how startlingly different this one appears in context draped over the shoulders of this beautiful man who looks more like a punk rocker with his faded Metallica t-shirt and ink-stained fingers than a medical professional.

Where his coat is embroidered Dr. Castiel Novak above the pocket, the artist has chosen to create his own name tag in a swirling riot of color. The name Dean is written in a bold script across a hand-drawn banner surrounded by bird wings and wildflowers. Cas wonders what his colleagues would think if he showed up at the hospital with a similar badge, and laughs a bit louder.

He finally garners a glance from Dean, who gives him a little nod and a wink to let him know he’ll be with him shortly. Cas nods back and then distracts himself by observing the shop’s other occupants. One artist, a young blonde woman, is entirely focused on her work while the man in her chair whimpers through the pain of a shoulder tattoo. Another older artist meticulously sets up her station for one of the customers waiting on the sofa off to Cas’s left. The three girls look barely old enough to be getting tattooed at all, yet they eagerly flip through the photo albums labeled with each of the artist’s names-- Claire, Jody, Donna, and of course Dean-- commenting on the pictures as they wonder in equal measure at how good they look and how much each one must’ve hurt. He’s entirely bemused by the girls when he hears Dean finishing up with his client.

“So if you’re good with that, I can fit you in next Tuesday at four,” Dean says to the man, who nods and hands over fifty bucks as a deposit.

“Sounds good to me,” the man says. “Been wanting to get that done for years.”

Dean puts the money in the cash drawer and prints out a receipt that doubles as an appointment reminder while Cas sidles up to get a closer look at the artwork. It’s two birds in flight, circling around each other, that he recognizes as arctic terns. Cas glances up at the man, who catches him looking but only smiles back at him.

“For me and my wife,” he says. “Arctic terns mate for life, but they’ve got the longest migration of any birds in the world. Their entire lives are one endless road trip together. Well, in a manner of speaking.” The man laughs.

Cas glances at Dean to see him smiling curiously at him, as if he’s waiting to see what Cas has to say on the subject-- of tattoos or arctic terns or gruff old men deciding that’s how they want to commemorate the love of their life.

“Congratulations on finally going through with the tattoo, and for having someone you cherish to share your life with. It’s a beautiful piece.”

Dean’s smile brightens for a moment at Cas’s reply, his green eyes filling with a captivating mirth.

“So,” Dean says, leaning in and making a show of reading the identification badge still clipped to Cas’s shirt, “Dr. Novak, what brings a classy, upstanding doctor like you into my humble little den of iniquity tonight? Just getting out of the rain for a minute, or are you thinking about getting a tattoo?”

The customer belts out a startling laugh, but Cas pays him no mind.

“I noticed you’re still open, and I’ve had an idea for a tattoo for a while now. Would you prefer I schedule an appointment, or are you free right now?”

Dean looks him up and down and grins. “For you? I think I can spare a couplea minutes. What are you thinking?”

The girls on the sofa giggle at the unfolding drama, whispering to each other behind their hands. Mr. Arctic Terns says what the girls are either too polite or too shy to say aloud.

“Ooh, are you sure about that? You’re a doctor, you must know it hurts, and how painful the laser is for folks who regret their ink later.”

Cas smiles mildly at the man and slides off his coat, laying it on the counter beside Dean’s sketchpad. “Yes, I’m fully aware.” He continues stripping off his scrub top, the ID badge clinking against the glass countertop as he sets it down as well, leaving him in a heather grey long-sleeved henley that clings to the defined muscles of his shoulders, back and arms. Dean raises an eyebrow but doesn’t otherwise object to the strip tease.

The other customer nods seriously as Dean folds his arms across his chest and bites his lip to keep from laughing aloud. Cas appreciates it, as well as the mischievous glint in Dean’s eyes.

“I’m just saying, medicine doesn’t seem like a profession that looks kindly on tattoos.” He turns to Dean. “No offense to your profession, but I ain’t never seen a doctor with ink.”

Cas just sighs and casts a wistful look at Dean, who shrugs and waits to see what he’ll do next. Jody’s finished setting up her station but she stands back beside Claire, whose tattoo gun has gone quiet as they both watch and wait to see what will happen next. Even the three giggling girls are practically holding their breath at this unusual series of events. Cas barely even registers their presence as he reaches down and tugs up the hem of his henley, then whips it over his head.

“I dare say you’ve seen at least one tattooed surgeon,” Cas says, never taking his eyes from Dean and only peripherally registering the little gasps from the three girls at the unveiling. Not only is Cas a physical work of art himself, his skin is all but covered in glorious illustration.

“Well then,” Arctic Tern Guy says, scratching his head and then moving toward the door with a little chuckle. “Guess you learn something new every day. I’ll see you Tuesday, Dean,” he says, and then the bells tinkle and a gust of cold wind sends a shiver across Cas’s exposed back before the door shuts again behind him.

Cas’s shoulders settle again like a bird folding his wings, which is the visual illusion he gives with the broad set of wings tattooed across his shoulder blades and down his arms past his elbows. Above the wings and up to the base of his neck is an expanse of outer space, the black punctuated by bright stars and a glowing pink and purple depiction of the Heart Nebula, the greenish streak of a comet piercing it like an arrow. Below his wings blooms a garden of vines and wildflowers populated by a dozen or more frolicking bees. Heavens and Earth.

Through the entire show, Dean and Cas just smile at each other until Dean finally cracks. “Guess you told him, sunshine.”

Cas just shrugs and-- to the three girls’ dismay-- begins dressing again. “It always disappoints me when people assume that the appearance of someone’s skin has any bearing on their competence or their professionalism.”

“You’re a regular crusader,” Dean adds, also looking a little disappointed that Cas put his shirt back on. “So did you just stop in to fight social injustice?”

Cas steps up close to the counter, reaching into the back pocket of his dark blue scrub pants and shaking his head. “No, I really am interested in another tattoo, and I believe you’re the only person I’d trust with it.”

Dean’s smile returns. “Well I hope I’m worthy of that kinda faith.”

Cas nods, slowly edging his way around the end of the counter until he’s practically toe to toe with Dean. “You’ve proven that to me over and over again, every day for the last seven years. I hope I’m worthy in return.” He drops down onto one knee and holds out his hand, a simple gold ring in his outstretched palm. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I don’t ever want to imagine a day without you in it. I love you, Dean. Will you marry me?”

Dean stares down at him for a second, and that terror that had held Cas back from asking sooner begins to creep up inside him. The pain of a tattoo needle’s got absolutely nothing on this. But Dean blinks and then pulls Cas to his feet, grabbing him up in a tight hug and planting an awkwardly sloppy and slightly frantic kiss on him as Dean tells him yes over and over again.

“Hot damn,” Claire’s client says and the rest of the shop erupts in a chorus of delighted awws.

Relief and joy flood through Cas, washing away his entirely baseless fear and making room for the certainty that Dean will always be his. Jody and Claire offer them fond congratulations, as do the three girls, before Jody brings one of them back to her station and she and Claire both get back to work.

“That was unexpected,” Dean says the minute everyone’s attention moves on from them, and admiring the way the ring looks on his hand before pulling Cas in for another kiss. “How long you been planning that one?”

Cas shrugs. “A long time. Years, maybe. On some level, probably since the first time I walked into your shop.”

Dean nods, too overcome to even tease him. He clears his throat and leans against the counter, pulling Cas close. “So did you really have another tattoo in mind? Or was that just an excuse to come see me at work?”

“I gave you a ring, and I was hoping you’d be willing to give me one too.”

It’s a ring he’ll never be able to remove, and one he’d never want to. When Dean’s finished inking it into his skin, he removes his gold band and teaches Cas how to give his very first tattoo. It’s the sort of day that’s marked indelibly in their skin, and all the way down to their souls.

(thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it and haven’t read Lifetime Piling Up, here’s a link to the whole series: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559668)

#spn fanfic #destiel #things i have written

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srprincess · 5 years ago

Text

Fictober prompt 2 - “Just follow me, I know the area.”

Fandom: Check Please

Context - since I seem to be using these prompts for wip type things and not standalone fics - this is the start of what, in absence of an actual title, I am calling the SpookydooAU (it’s fun to say, try it) What you need to know - Dex is a lone lighthousekeeper. The rest of the Samwell crew are friends that go on “ghost hunting” trips every year to keep in touch. Friends who end up at His Lighthouse and are Very Bothersome. And there’s a ghost. Maybe.

Way light on the spooking and heavy on the shenaniganing (totally a word I just made up)

(fic here on ao3)

Will was leaning against the ‘walk deck’s rail when he saw them. Enjoying his coffee and minding his own business, gearing up to start the day with his monthly inspection of the works and lens polishing for the lighthouse he called home. With all those blasted new houses popping up on the coast, it might not be the tallest view in the village anymore, but it was a clear view and it was his. Had been since the day he was born, and would be until the day he died if he had any say in the matter.

Right now his inland view was of small suv that had pulled to the roadside just after the last house at the end of his drive. Out piled over a half dozen people. A couple of them small, but, even from up top the tower, most looked far too large to have all fit in that rig comfortably...like it was some sort of clown car magic or something.

He continued to watch as one guy started pulling things out of a duffel and shaking them one by one before dropping them on the ground at his feet. Four people, two women - one of them massively taller than the other - and two more guys, crowded around a map they’d spread on the vehicle hood. Another guy, with a cap pulled down over his face, alternated between looking over them and burying his head in a notebook. To his side, a shorter man had climbed atop a boulder and was holding something in his hand - a phone maybe? - as he jumped up and down.

Then two more people climbed out the back of the vehicle - Seriously?! How did they all fit?? Third row seating can only do so much! - and ran off towards his neighbor’s dock.

All in all, a very odd group.

An odd group too close to the house for his liking.

And one that didn’t appear to be leaving any time too soon.

Resigning himself to putting off his to-do list a little longer, he climbed down the spiral staircase and headed out to where they were parked. He could hear their muttering amongst themselves get louder and louder as he got closer.

“-like she said,”

“but the viewpoint?”

“I don’t get it, we followed the map!”

“Dead, dead, dead. All dead.”

“Hill to head to lane,”

“Why can’t I get signal???”

“Maybe if - where did those two fuck off to now?”

“Higher ground? Who knows, what if-“

“GPS won’t load.”

“Phone neither.”

The group was so wrapped up in trying to figure out where they were that they didn’t even notice Will’s approach, so when he spoke up there was a chorus of yelps and a maybe a scream or two. Dignified manly screams, of course. The man on the boulder slipped off with a shriek, but was caught by notebook guy.

“Lost as all get out, and now I’m fixin’ to have a heart attack! Where did you come from??” Said the small blond man, after he got back on his feet. Now clutching his - useless - phone to his chest.

“Come from up the way apiece, and saw you looked lost. I can tell you, that phone is never going to get a signal here, and,” turning towards the car hood Will pointed out, “your map appears to be upside down? Where you headed?”

The shorter of the two women answered, “Union Cemetery off of dog...ummm...dog...something...what was it called Jack? I lost the spot again.”

Notebook guy, apparently Jack, looked up from said notebook. “Dogfish Head“

“Yeah you missed that. Should have turned the other way at the new roundabout. Bit hard to keep directions straight if you can’t keep your map that way though. Since you overshot the viewpoint to end up here you might as well loop round the point instead of doubling back. You want to be cove side and this is the harbor.”

“We’re at the harbor now?”

“Near ‘nough”

“Then that would make this lighthouse the one owned by William Poindexter-“

Will confirmed “Ayuh, that’s me.”

“-who we were not to disturb under any circumstances?” He cringed, “sorry, eh? The visitor’s center tried to guide us, but-“

“S’alright. Happens. If you want to grab your friends back from the shore though, you can just follow me over there. Born and raised on the rock, I know the area. I’ll get you where you’re going.”

The guy with the, ugh, manbun took off towards the water to get them, shouting the whole way. The others in the group started to gather their things and re-cram themselves into the vehicle.

“Since we’re already here, can we see-“

Will’s expression instantly shuttered when he saw the man in the shark hoodie excitedly pull out a ‘Coastal Hauntings’ pamphlet. Oh they were that kind of tourist. He quickly interrupted with his now standard brush off “Closed to public. I’ll mark your map with the other Bay Lights for you, but no tours at mine.”

Supernatural Tourists. That’s what he got for being friendly for a change. He’d learn to accept all pictures of his house snapped from the viewpoint, give directions to the lost, even greet a leaf peeper or two, but the tourists that just wanted to dig up ghoulish stories about a poor dead girl from years ago couldn’t be less welcome. He should have guessed that’s what this group was up to when they were looking for the cemetery. And now that he took a closer look, all the electronic shit duffel guy was tossing around were clearly meters, recorders and such.

He turned to that duffel guy, who he might have found attractive if he weren’t both disturbing his peace and still making a mess with all the shit he’d dumped everywhere. “You’re going to pick that up right?”

“Chyeah obvi,” he replied with a bored tone and a roll of his eyes, as he kept digging even more electronics out of the side pockets.

Stupidly hot faces with scruff to die for did not belong attached to such an annoying person. It was offensive, Will thought to himself before throwing up his arms - “NOW?!”

“Fine. Whatever. Chill.” Will watched him roll his - damned, perfect, green - eyes again before unzipping the duffel the rest of the way and shoving everything back in.

“Happy?”

Will looked around, and yeah it was all picked up. “Happy enough.” He turned to the rest of the group, still loading themselves up, and said “Let me go back and grab the truck, and then you can follow me out.”

The sooner he could get back to his day, the better.

#fictober19 #omgcp #fic #spookydoo au #nurseydex #eventually

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gffa · 6 years ago

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So, I read Wendig’s proposal about separating out the movies from the comics/novels/etc. and I get where he’s coming from and why he feels that way, especially as a creator!, but what is this blue hellsite for if not to dump my feelings about why new canon is working really well for me and why I personally disagree with that idea, even when I see where it’s coming from. For starters, while I agree that the books and comics and games are tied to the films/are trailing after the films, that they’re not allowed to explore certain areas before those films are made, I think it’s too soon to judge how this will work because IX isn’t finished yet, we don’t know how things will move on once the Skywalker Saga is finished. While the Skywalker Saga is ongoing, we’re sort of limited in what we can do with books and comics and such, because the films have to come first. But films beyond this point? Yes, Rogue One and Solo both stayed in that same time frame, but we have no idea what Johnson’s films or D&D’s films are going to be about or when they’re going to be set. We don’t yet know if books and comics can be more than gap-fillers, because we’re not at that point yet. I think this is a conversation for a couple of years after IX ends and we see the state of things at that point, imo. But second I think this is a lot of personal preference, one person is going to lean that way on this idea and another is going to lean this way on this proposal. I have no problem with the idea of future Legends stories still being told, picking up from one of those continuities and writing in that world with new material. I think that sounds like a potentially really cool idea! But, as someone who cut their teeth on comics for a lot of years, who has lived in the pick-and-choose-your-canon world for a long time, I actually vastly prefer a far more coherent canon timeline. I love Star Wars canon being all part of one bigger storyline! I love that I don’t actually expect it to conform to 100% accuracy (seriously, guys, it’s okay if some smaller details get messed up, we can unclench about that! also, a LOT of this can fall under unreliable narrators and I LOVE THAT SO MUCH, too!) but that this is a story where all these things happened in this galaxy. And I disagree that it’s limiting at this point, because it’s not all about the same small handful of characters. One of the examples used showed me that I don’t see this as that limited a space for storytelling--because Cassian Andor didn’t exist before Star Wars Canon came onto the scene and now we’re getting a TV series about him and maybe you can’t change the bigger galaxy’s storyline, but you can absolutely drop massive bombs and plot twists for Cassian Andor the character. Rebels also came along and they were able to tell massively personal world-changing stories there, connecting it to the bigger galaxy, but getting it to line up with the films. There is a ton of room for more Ghost Crews and more Cassian Andors and more Jyn Ersos and more Doctor Aphras and so on, characters whose personal stories can have world-shattering events for them personally. This isn’t even touching on how we’ll have the post-IX landscape to explore, this isn’t touching on how, once the films are done, they’ll be able to explore more, how we’re only just now starting to get pre-films exploration stuff. And it’s not even touching on how, as much as a lot of people loved the Legends books storyline, a lot of people were not exactly pleased with the Yuuzhan Vong, and, honestly, I’ll take the way the First Order has been fleshed out through books and comics and games, the feeling of everyone adding in gap-filler details to make this one story really good for me, than the Wild West feeling of Legends. Again, personal preference, totally understandable if someone else feels differently! For me, though, the ST films would have had nowhere NEAR the joy and interest I get out of them without the books and comics and games serving to help fill in the gaps. I enjoy the movies very much, but they are pretty thin in and of themselves, if you separated out the Cinematic Universe from the books/games/comics/etc., I think they would be so much duller as a giant whole. Which is coming from me as a consumer of this canon, rather than someone who would like to create things for this world. I get that the gap-filler nature of a lot of the stories probably feels lackluster to a lot of SW authors who want to take bigger risks and want to be able to change things in a lasting way, but as a reader, I’m not looking at just one standalone book or comic needing to fill that urge for me. I’m here for that bigger picture, that’s what’s so intensely satisfying for me. I’m here for those connections that mean something when a character appears in someone else’s series, I’m here for feeling like this is actually a living, breathing galaxy, rather than a splintered dozen different continuities because they can’t mesh together. (But, also, frankly, a lot of the chances and changes that a lot of authors want to take are, well, not very good or in line with the themes of Star Wars, I’ve found that the restrictions on what they can do makes things a lot more coherent for me.) This is just how I feel and why I think current Canon works really, really well and why I don’t feel it lacks for satisfying stories.

#meta #scattered star wars thoughts #to be extra clear: this is not an attempt to tell others they're wrong for seeing things differently than i do #or to say that i don't get where wendig is coming from (the article was a really thoughtful piece that i enjoyed reading!)#this is just me saying that i very much do get satisfaction out of the current set-up and that i think the benefits far outweigh #the costs at this point in time #(and also i REALLY don't trust some writers to stay coherent to star wars' themes XD)#(which is very much not a dig at wendig because i very much enjoy his writing and would like to see more of it!)

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neshabeingchildish · 6 years ago

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07. Feeding the Monster

Well, I’ma be real with y’all. I haven’t made any new white friends in ages, lost many of the associates that I once had in recent years and honestly have like 2-4 in my life that I’m comfortable with on a genuine friendship level. But. a lot of young people tell me about how disappointed they wind up when they first recognize that their friends don’t get their identities. Growing up in SETX, in a city surrounded by hick towns with active Klan my entire lifetime, none of the “racial climate” of America is new to me or mine. But, I do realize that in some places, people somehow never witness or experience a racially motivated situation early in life. I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse. To be honest, it’s so normal where I’m from, I don’t know what the attitude might be for people who have only managed to get dosages of it in “Trump’s America.” Regardless... I wanted to do this sort of Charlotte-centric racial piece and ultimately decided that A Chasper Fic was where I would put it. Though, it could easily be a standalone with Chasper shipping. Anywho, TW for racial discrimination, harassment and racial isolation. I know that affects a lot of folk and don’t want too much heartache.

Feeding the Monster

Most people don't know Charlotte. That's one of the world's greatest gags, in her opinion. She was always straightforward. She's never been dishonest or fake. She may not always speak her mind, as she didn't always find that necessary and some people simply weren't worth her energy. But, even being as genuine and authentic as she had always been… people didn't really know her. People thought that they knew her. She was often a subject of conversation. Whether she was thought of as a booksmart nerd with no friends, or a pretty girl who probably was stuck up and that's why she had no friends.. Charlotte was aware of the mystery surrounding her.

Even her two best friends didn't get all of what there was there. They knew her habits and hobbies, but neither of them ever really knew her hardships. They never noticed and they never asked. It didn't surprise her. Neither was observant and that wound up being her role in their lives a lot of the time. But, she strongly believed that if she sometimes shared her issues, they would most likely have her back. Why trouble anybody with anything they'd never really have to deal with, though?

That gave her hardships too much power. She didn't ignore her problems. But, she liked to handle them in her own way and time, if it was worth either. Sometimes… things didn't go as planned, though.

Her parents didn't discuss it, unless of course it couldn't be avoided, but Charlotte knew early on that there was a difference between herself and most of the Swellview kids.

They didn't seem to have the haircare concerns that she did. Their skincare routines seemed vastly different. Whenever they watched TV and movies - they saw themselves in the characters and in public personas. Whenever she watched the same programs, she saw her surroundings, not her reflection.

It wasn't an issue that she was necessarily conscious of. She simply knew. She knew that different spaces held different volumes of viewable types. For instance, at a family gathering she knew she'd see perhaps sixty similar viewable types. But, at a school gathering she knew that she would probably only see six. That was simply a thing that she knew, like the sky is blue and 2+2.

As she got older, more tech savvy and reliant on the Internet; the differences became clearer. Not in the way that she felt some type of way about being different and her reflection being a minority… but she noticed that many of those souls in her surroundings felt a way about it.

Now, her two friends - they didn't really see it. She had been friends with both of them long enough to gather that much. They couldn't hear the dog whistle terminology or feel the aura when some bias was directed towards her. She would be annoyed by it at times, but mostly, she tried not to let the ignorance of others interfere with her day.

Whenever the ignorance triggered hatred, she'd sometimes gain an enemy. They might start a battle and she would feel like the one with the power to pick and choose those. She wasn't used to anyone else joining her, especially when she wasn't choosing to battle…

"It was dangerous. For all you know, the man is a psychopath and capable of killing you!" She fussed at Jasper, pulling him into the Man Cave by the elbow and carrying both of their bags. Henry looked up at the sound of her fussing, expecting to see Jasper with egg on his face or something. Instead, he saw blood.

"Whoa! What is happening? Who did that to Jasper? Tell me it was a wild animal!" He said, with his hand at the ready to grab his tube of gumballs.

"He fought like a wild animal, but trust me - the other guys were in way worse shape." She sat Jasper down, dropped their things and went to the auto snacker, "Three bags of ice." Henry fished for more details as she retrieved the first aid kit.

"Okay. I know I made you mad once and you socked me with a slab of meat, but THIS is way different. What the butt happened?"

"Some dude attacked Charlotte!" Jasper said while she was putting ice on his busted fists.

"WHAT?" Henry did have his tube of gum now and was pouring one into his hand.

Charlotte offered, "Trust me, for now the crisis has come to a halt."

Jasper went on, "He was following her and screaming obscenities when I walked up, and I heard him call her the worst thing that I've ever actually heard in my entire life."

"What did he say?" Henry asked, with the gumball at his lips.

Charlotte snatched it away from him and resumed tending to a cut above Jasper's left eye, "I don't need two of you busted up. That fight could have easily been avoided. The guy was probably not gonna touch me and I was recording him with my phone, in case it escalated beyond the yelling and I would have just pressed charges. But Jasper comes along and immediately takes a swing at the guy, and nearly got murked by he and his friend!” She addressed his jaw next, with trembling hands. "Somebody like that is just looking for a fight. You don't GIVE it to them. You let them do their thing, then you either make them famous on the Internet, or if you’re me, you show them they're irrelevant by not feeding the monster." She was shaken up as she placed a bag of ice on his jaw. "What if they had weapons? You could have been seriously hurt. I could've seen my friend killed over a few slurs."

"I'm sorry, but I didn't think about that when I heard him. That's revolting. Who says things like that to someone?"

She stroked his hair and shrugged her shoulders. "It happens."

He leaned into her touch, "I know, but it shouldn't and you shouldn't have had to have it happen to you. Weren't you upset or angry or something?" Henry felt like he was witnessing some intimate moment, but was too concerned to dismiss himself.

Charlotte admitted, "I was furious and terrified. I usually am. But, I pick my battles and some bulky guy with a friend is not someone I felt like I should engage. You should’ve followed my lead."

Jasper pulled the ice from his face and said, "You usually are? How often has this happened to you?" He was horrified by the thought of it happening even once!

She shrugged her shoulders, but tears were trying to come out of her face. "You know, the first time I heard that word , I was 7, and by the time I stopped counting the times, I was 14 and had been referred to as something like that about a dozen times. The past few years, it's increased and people are more vicious about it. Like that guy… That's the 3rd time something like that happened this year."

"WHAT???" Jasper cried out.

She shook her head and said, "Google it or something. I don't want to talk about it." She left to go pull herself together and Jasper put the ice back on his face.

"She's not upset that you fought him. She's embarrassed that you saw her go through something that sounds terrible. She doesn't like to look weak and stuff." Henry said and sat down. "So.. that dude. He said.. you know THE word. N word?"

"An N one followed by a B one," Jasper said, clenching his fist.

"Anybody would have punched him in the face."

"No. Not if it happens a lot and we didn't even know. We would have heard that someone punched somebody in the face for that, right?"

"Maybe. We're just now hearing how often it happens to her."

"I feel sick. How does this happen and she just… I don't know… Deals with it?"

"Same way you deal with your personal things," she said, coming back and forcing him to put the ice back on his jaw. "Speaking of.. your mom is gonna lose it when she sees this." She sighed, dreading the thought of what she might say to him about it. "Tell her you were defending Henry. She likes him."

Jasper put the ice aside and pulled her to himself to give her a hug. "I'm sorry that this is… frequent for you. And I'm sorry in advance… because if I'm ever there and that happens, I'm always gonna fight for you."

"I also will be fighting over this," Henry said, lifting a finger in the air.

She pulled away from Jasper's hug with an escaped tear and a chuckle. "Well, you're both idiots," she said and walked off. But, there was something soothing about their declaration. It was almost like they finally got everything that there was there with her.

"Dude. I don't want to be the guy who flip flops on issues, but I'm relatively sure that you just bagged your girl," Henry said.

"You're joking. She's furious with me."

"She's furious that you got hurt over something that she's (sadly) gotten used to living with. I don't know anybody alive that's not turned on by someone else jumping in front of danger for them. I say this from experience of being a hero. You are in there, Jasp."

Jasper fought off a smile. It hurt his jaw. "I didn't do it for that. It was just a reflex. I'm not gonna use this as my plot to get her. That seems gauche. I just… really want her to feel like we're here for her when she gets treated like that." Jasper was thinking about what she'd said earlier. Him dealing with his mom was vastly different from having strangers accost you on the sidewalk just for existing.

Ray came in and shook his head, "Who'd you tick off this time, Jasper?"

"Char says he won the fight," Henry told him.

Ray smiled, "Oh yeah? Against who? Some kid?"

"Dude was trying to hurt Charlotte…"

Ray reached for his gumball tube, "Oh, really? She get a piece of him too?"

Henry shook his head. "She seemed really scared, Dude. Apparently people say racist stuff to her a lot?"

"WHAT?" Ray said, throwing gum into his mouth.

"She doesn't want us to go after him… But, Jasper, if we happen to see him or his friend somewhere, just signal and it's on."

"If I see him, I'm actually going to dropkick him in the chest, both feet, on sight." Jasper said.

"That'll be the signal then," Henry said and fist bumped him.

Jasper winced, shook his fist and put it back into the ice. "You… really think this will make Charlotte see me differently?"

Henry quickly said, "Dude, you got your jaw rocked. We all see you differently right now."

Ray followed up with, "I see you differently, Jasper. Respect." He raised his fist and Jasper bumped it and powered through the pain. It was worth it.

Charlotte returned and changed Jasper ice out, then looked at all of them suspiciously. "What are you three up to?"

"Male bonding."

She rolled her eyes and said, "Well, take it easy on this one. He's had enough adventure for a while." Then, she strummed Jasper's hair again and gave him a smile before heading back to the store. All three of them waited until she was on the elevator to respond happily to that little gesture.

#A Chasper Fic #chasper #henry danger #Nesha HD Fics #hd fanfic #I know I said that Family Danger was next but this one wrote itself and I just had to find it a home #I'm really working on FD and some AU Glee tho #This Means War is on hold #August is hectic

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noonmutter · 6 years ago

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Allow me to squee and shill just a little bit for a comic I love

Do you like The Secret of NIMH? Do you like post-apocalyptic stories that aren’t about zombies? Do you like really fuckin’ gorgeous artwork on every page?

Say hello to Scurry.

Look I’ll level with you I love the hell out of this comic and the story feels like a loving tribute to a dozen different stories, old and new. Don Bluth only wishes his stories were coherent enough to play out like this one has. The mice and rats are nearing starvation, the town they’re in is overrun by feral cats, humans are nowhere to be found, and shit ain’t good, yo.

Eventually there’s a moose and he’s as badass as a moose ought to be. It’s great and I love everything about it.

The author does Kickstarters for each new book release of the comic, and while those Kickstarters have both been plagued by wierdness from printers or shipping companies at various stages, the final products have arrived beautiful and pristine in a fairly reasonable time when all things are taken into account.

The slipcase for this book is solid and the text/logo have a lovely metallic sheen that my phone camera can only do so much to capture. It’s also a really sturdy hardcover and I feel like I could concuss somebody with it.

And, arguably, the most important image in the book:

MOOOOOOOSE

Seriously though guys every page of the comic has this level of detail and color in it. This is how it always looks. These aren’t standalones. The comic pages aren’t always quite as polished as cover art and special stills, but they are never sloppy or lazy.

For example, this is page two. That’s what it looked like a few years ago. That’s what you get constantly.

Scurry is well worth your time and, in my opinion, money.

GO READ IT

#scurry #I love this story #I love this artwork #the author/artist deserves all the attention #all of it

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maverick-werewolf · 7 years ago

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Just some werewolf (and writing) thoughts

I had another moment tonight. I get these moments sometimes. This one actually stems from my writing.

Why can’t people take werewolves seriously anymore?

I’m going to just clip this here because this is going to get very long and inane and now you’ll find out why I’m going to have to just tag some posts as “rambling.” Keep reading if you’re curious as to what’s bothering me. But if you don’t want to drown (seriously you will drown, I didn’t hold back) in unorganized walls of text, wait for this Wednesday’s werewolf fact instead.

Whether werewolves are from the beginning or turn into one, they’re jokes. Whether the person telling the story intended it or not - jokes. Ha ha, dog jokes. Sometimes that’s fine. I enjoy it, I even dabble in it myself. I’m not completely innocent of that, and I’m not completely bashing everything that does it. I think it’s fun and it can be really super cute and entertaining. Especially if it’s reached at a point later in a story or a relationship (I know some of you you know what I’m talking about).

But the problem is that werewolves have been degraded into just something funny, or something average. They’re just one of those monsters you randomly throw at your players in a tabletop session, or they’re a boss fight in a video game. There’s an evil pack of them your heroes have to slay. By default, no one takes them seriously.

Where’s the depth? Where’s the meaning? Where’s the horror, the torment? The challenge?

That’s another thing. They’re almost “normal” by the standards of a lot of settings they’re in. It’s “normal” for a guy to turn into a horrible man-beast that eats people. Yeah, that’s not really that scary, I’ve seen those before and killed like half a dozen. It’s not too uncommon out here in [insert setting/region], the only hard part is figuring out what werecreature the person is turning into while they’re seizing around in throes of desperate agony.

Let’s fight something bigger, badder, scarier. Werewolves are so blasé. And it’s not a setting they’re in, it’s werewolves as a whole - in popular culture. It’s part of the reason why we see all these people trying to “change” them in some way or another, to try to make them “different” or “unique” - and we’re back to bigger, badder, scarier.

Say for example you run a zoo. Someone sells you a tiger. A TIGER? But tigers are NORMAL! We’ve all seen tigers before. These enormous, endlessly majestic animals that can easily kill a man with a single effortless swipe of its massive paw, with teeth longer than your forefinger, whose tawny hide has since time immemorial stricken a primal fear into anyone who sees it - as it should. Yeah, those are boring. They’re not good enough anymore.

Let’s genetically engineer dinosaurs and bring them back instead. Tigers are so blasé.

Only then dinosaurs aren’t good enough anymore. A fucking tyrannosaurus rex? That’s not very scary. We’ve seen those now. Let’s amp it up a little more. Let’s genetically engineer a big freaky albino auto-cloaking horror monster dinosaur straight out of your nightmares because we’ve reached a point now where, to modern audiences, a T-rex is normal, and we need something - what? Bigger, badder, scarier.

And as for werewolves, where’re they? Down there on the bottom of the totem pole somewhere with the “lowly” tiger.

(note: this isn’t a dig at Jurassic World or its plot, I’m just using that general idea as an example :P)

Anyway, I love Jurassic Park with all my heart and soul and that isn’t even a very good comparison as to what exactly is bothering me.

So what do you mean, Mav? What’s got you so upset tonight?

I’m upset because I feel like no one will ever take werewolves seriously again. Not really. Yeah, some things might try, but they won’t get very far. Because in the end, werewolves will always be relegated to what they are now.

Werewolves are essentially one of the most primal and terrifying concepts that have captivated the imaginations and nightmares of mankind in some way or another for the entire existence of humanity, even since the days of cavemen. Throughout our collective history and across every single region of the world, we have werewolves.

But now the average person struggles to care about a story if it focuses on werewolves. What a silly, cheesy fantasy thing. Tell someone your story has werewolves in it and you’ve probably already lost them, because to them, the word “werewolf” carries a lot of connotations and assumptions that are premeditated and inescapable thanks to this greater hive-mind conception of them shaped over the years by overwhelmingly bad media, with far too few diamonds in the rough to change most anyone’s opinion about anything.

Because, to the average person, what are werewolves? They’re B-movie monsters. They’re old news (despite never really being much news at all). They’re some shirtless romance model. They’re a random encounter, or just that one boss fight earlier in the game.

They’re paranormal romance novel material or something similar that serious authors won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, because the second you have a werewolf in your story that isn’t just a one-off, lame, monster-of-the-week creature (hi, “Silver Bullet”), your story acquires a very, very specific audience and becomes one of four things: a young adult paranormal novel ala Harry Potter, a romance novel ala Twilight, a standalone horror quick-read, or a book no one wants to read because you can’t quite fit it into any of those specific boxes, and those are the only boxes in which werewolves are now meant to exist.

Oh yeah, or straight-up comedy.

Bring up werewolves in a conversation - what do you get? Any number of, or all of, these responses: Oh yeah, I saw [insert horrible movie here], it was really funny. Haha, [dog joke]. Hey what about were[whatever]s. Let’s talk about all these other wacky werecreatures and make endless jokes about those instead. How about wereannelids and werehumans? Oh I’m sorry, were you trying to have a serious conversation? Well then how about you answer this completely off the nut question instead? What would happen if a werewolf swallowed silver? Wouldn’t that be funny!?

What about discussing them in relation to some particular setting? Oh yeah, it’s just that ONE setting that treats them that way, right? No. No, it’s not.

My whole life, I’ve just wanted to find some way to encourage people to take werewolves seriously again. I don’t know why or how this became my passion, but that’s what it’s always been.

This blog has actually helped a lot. So thank you all.

But here’s my problem. And now things are about to get personal and move away from broader territory. I’m about to talk about writing fiction.

My primary means of showing the world that werewolves can be awesome, I had always planned before, was to write some novels about them and attempt to tell a story as deep, as moving, as powerful, and as emotional as I think one could tell with a werewolf protagonist. Those novels were going to be called The Prophecy of the Six, set in my world, Wulfgard. And my protagonist? My once favorite character I’ve ever made, Tom Drake. But now I’m struggling to love these things again, to the point of being deeply and emotionally upset with myself.

Because in my mind, he isn’t even “the werewolf” anymore. He’s barely even a scary monster anymore. Which, in my world, he is supposed to be all of those things. He is my ultimate werewolf, and beyond that he is the ultimate monster. Or at least he was/is in theory. For quite a while now, he hasn’t been. There are other werewolves, and for some reason or another or in some way or another, they’re better at being werewolves. They’re, put simply... better werewolves.

And I have to be reminded time and time again that werewolves “aren’t even that scary.” Which I know is a statement bred in the pop culture we have to work with today, and it’s statements like that that should - and sometimes do - spur me on to work even harder. But when I’m down, it’s hard to deal with. And there’s not really much to stop all of these things from coming close to breaking me. Breaking my spirit, in terms of the werewolf thing, and breaking my heart, in terms of my personal issues with Tom right now.

So next time you leave a comment on some story you read online that you really enjoy? Thank the writer simply for writing it. It’ll mean a lot to them. It’ll mean the world to them.

Being a writer can tear you apart. Being a writer is very, very hard.

And on top of that, next time someone talks to you about something that they’re truly and deeply passionate about, no matter what that thing is, do me a big favor...

Don’t shoot them down.

Even if, yes, their passion is trying to prove to the world that something as “silly” as werewolves holds a much deeper and more profound meaning than your average direct-to-DVD horror flick is going to convey.

#rambling #brain weasels #I hate being passionate about a thing other people dismiss #or don't take seriously #not that this is the only one of those things #you know what I'm talking about #personal stuff #please be excellent to each other

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