#ten's arc is so damn good

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

Going to rewatch Waters of Mars next weekend and my brain is already breaking because of the parallels I see between that episode and The Impossible Planet two-parter 😭😭😭

[aq2003]

"it's a shame they shoved freema into so many of donna's episodes" Literally just say you're racist and leave oh my god those 3 eps in the middle of series 4 with martha in them were so fucking good showing ten having evened out and feeling more comfortable showing affection and martha recovering from all the horrible stuff she's seen and gone through (but also she can't leave that life behind completely bc how could she)

[greeniegaes]

Back at it agains with another svsss au im pulling out of my (slightly) sleep deprived brain

Basically yada yada everything happens as normal UP UNTIL the immortal alliance arc. SQQ gets this searing headache and the system just keeps popping up with errors, so while they are all fighting the spider hoard the system just kinda snaps and breaks. SQQ suddenly feels like he’s hit by a truck, his body starting to act like his sickly Shen Yuan body and his cultivation is tying itself into dead knots and every bone in his body feels like it’s locking up. There’s no system to blame for things as he and LBH confront MBJ and he just has to do his hardest to survive with just his spiritual sword.

And then the worse thing happens, Xiu Ya shatters.

SQQ panics at this, continuing to try his best fighting people off and eventually MBJ leaves *hooray* except not really because all the system errors are getting louder and louder in his head, and everything is blue and blaring and he might be bleeding and he can’t understand what LBH is saying even though he is right there, shaking his body and crying.

And then the abyss opens. He suddenly has the choice. He can send LBH, his white little sheep, down there to continue on with the PIDW plot, or he can… not do that.

So he pushes LBH.

Away from him. Away from the abyssal rift, only for him to be the one that falls though. He had prepared various lesson plans, life advice, what skills people to work on and so much more once he got without-a-cure, just incase he slipped up one day and couldn’t protect himself. So SQQ was satisfied as he knew his peak would be taken care of if LBH opened a specific drawer, everyone could still be taught by the hall masters and also have some future help prepared for each of them.

So SQQ let’s himself fall into the abyss, watching his student’s horrified expression as he plummets. He hears the system disconnect from LBH as he falls, all of the glowing blue error messages and pop ups instantly go away and he’s left in the dark as he sinks further and further into the abyss.

Surprisingly, he wakes up. He landed in the same field of flowers that are the reason LBH didn’t die in the original, they are filled with celestial qi in a place meant to be horrible and deadly. The one good thing about this place. He lays there for awhile and lets the plants essence fix up his meridians.

Then he has to experience the same horrifying things the protagonist did in person, fighting off each beast and trying his damn hardest to survive. It takes him a while, fighting and walking his way through what’s practically hell on earth, slaying beasts ten times his size, making sure not to fall into the trappings of demonic plants. He cuts his long hair, he thinks he will never see his peak again, so what do filial ties matter when you’re barely surviving. Sometimes the worse thing is his own mind, he feels a heavy layer of guilt to himself for so willing going along with the system. He sometimes forgets it’s not his fault too, that he was threatened to return to a dead body if he didn’t do as he was supposed to. But he’s happy sometimes too, he goes back to that field of flowers, laying in them and basking in his memories of a happier LBH, a LQG that isn’t dead, a Qing Jing peak full of song and happy healthy students.

He ascends from the abyss that day. He doesn’t know how or why but he wakes up in the same field of flowers, the sky above him no longer a damning black with red cracks seeping light in. it’s blue, soft, it hurts his eyes almost to look at it. It hurts so much but he can’t look away. He picks himself up, looking at all the grime and blood on himself and weeps in relief that he can go home. He hides his face and asks people where he is, somewhere in HHP territories, and begins to make his way back to his sect. Once he gets to his peak he sits down softly at the gate, it’s night time and there haven’t been many people about. He basks in the feeling of being home, leaning his head against the tall bamboo pole as he falls asleep.

He’s glad tomorrow is a new day, when he can see his family and just go back to his life.

(in the years he’s been gone all of CQS has been in some kind of mourning. LBH found all the letters from his shizun and they made all the disciples of QJP weep. Some of them took the advice given and left, some of them stayed and took care of a lordless peak. None of the hall masters or disciples were qualified to step up, and when the issue was raised even the peak lords agreed he shouldn’t be replaced. It was LQG who found him at the gate, going to visit the sword shrine in the bamboo house after an expedition, going to leave another fan to rot at the shrine’s foot. instead he heaved up his shixiong, hair not even reaching his shoulders, hands callused and dirty, and brought him back to the bamboo house, waking LBH in the process. Once morning light came everyone would know that their lost peak lord came home, but first they had to get the doctor to make sure he actually got through the night)

[a-killer-obsession]

Whoops, you got hit by a bus, and now you're in the world of One Piece. But not everything is quite as you remember it...

General Tags: afab reader, she/her reader pronouns, isekai, monsterfucker reader, vampire!kid, werewolf!killer, wyrm!heat, minotaur!wire, everyone has a human form, smut heavy, unhealthy relationships, dubious consent, serious violence, spoilers for Wano arc, starts pre-timeskip. There will be a lot of more intense kinks, please check AO3 for all current tags.

Chapter 1 - All in One Piece

A bad day gets infinitely worse.

WC: 2.5k

Masterlist | AO3

A/N: This fic will include a multitude of more intense kinks and fantasy themes such as watersports, heavy BDSM, forced painful eggpreg, bloodplay, knotting, non-human dicks, somnophillia, and of course considerable amounts of monster fucking. If you're not good with those, then this isn't the fic for you sorry! More tags will be added to A03 as the fic goes, so please see what's currently listed there before you start, but those are the tags I know for sure will be included that may deter some people. This one is for my freaks! (affectionate). It won't be as long as Wavelengths but this is definitely a longer series than Pitching Tents~

Cold dirty water leaked through the hole in your worn boot as you accidentally stepped in a puddle much deeper than you'd originally anticipated. You cursed to yourself and shook your foot uselessly, your socks were fucking drenched. An awful end to an awful day. Work had been fucking draining, and if one more customer asked if you could ‘check in the back’ you were going to start killing people. Ma'am, what fucking ‘back'? It's a damn boutique, we don't even have our own private toilet! The cherry on top was the classic Karen with that classic boomer lead poisoning stare who absolutely refused to leave when you were supposed to be finished ten minutes ago. You were about ready to hit her with the wooden sandwich chalkboard as you pulled it inside if she took one more fucking second. God, all this pent up anger was getting close to boiling over, you needed to get laid, bad. Ye olde silicone dick just wasn’t going to hit the spot tonight, even if you did have a fun new one shaped like an imagining of a dragon’s cock.

You opened your phone as you walked, music blasting in your ears, blocking out the sounds of the bustling rush hour city around you while you sighed to yourself and opened a dating app in utter despair. Swipe, swipe, swipe, oh a message, ew ugly dick pic no thanks, swipe, swipe. You were at least thankful that the rain had let up for your short walk home, but if one of these men didn't reply with enthusiasm to your need for a lay you were going to scream so loud they'd hear it at the city outskirts.

Swipe, swipe, sw-

Hang on.

What the fuck just happened.

Everything was so.

Dark.

Where did the lights of the city go? Was it a blackout, caused by the weather? The rain hadn’t been that bad today had it? A moment ago you'd seen the bright neon colours of illuminated billboards and shop displays reflecting in the scattered shallow puddles, the red of the no crossing pedestrian light, the bright headlights of an oncoming bu-

Oh.

Oops.

You got hit by a bus didn't you? God fucking dammit. Well that's fucking annoying. A real fucking inconvenience to be honest.

But hey, no time to think about that, because all of a sudden it's so bright your eyes have to squint to see, and with all the force of a body that was… just hit by a bus… you were soaring horizontally through the air. It was dark again but this time… just your body? Something encompassed you, shiny and metallic, a dark reflective surface covering what you could see of your skin. Something hit your back hard, or maybe you hit it? There was a crack of wood splintering from somewhere behind you and you slumped down, sitting against… a deck? Your head throbbed with ache but you seemed to be in one piece, blinking at your surroundings to try and figure out what had happened, where you had landed. Against some sort of food truck maybe? Directly under a bright streetlight? Surely that would explain it. Voices were calling out around you, the vibrations of heavy, frantic footsteps over wood able to be felt where your hands touched the ground, but you couldn't hear anything except the buzzing in your ears, like white noise turned up far too loud, your eyes having trouble focusing through the bright light.

Something warm closed around your neck and you were dragged to stand, then further, your feet hovering above the ground as you choked, pressed against something solid behind you. You blinked again. No, that can't be right? Must be a dream, hopefully a sexy one, you must have been knocked unconscious. Scarlet red hair sticking up like a wildfire, squared googles worn like a headband, thick eyeliner, lips painted in the same shade as his hair. Oh please, please, please let this be a sexy dream. No scars though, curious. Pre timeskip then? His mouth was moving but you still couldn't hear, ah, not quite a completely detailed dream you guessed. Lucid though? Your ability to scan your eyes down at will told you perhaps yes. Ah, there it is, two flesh arms, yup we're going pre timeskip. Just as well, you'd never been keen on the idea of the metal arm touching you; a strong, calloused, fleshy hand would feel far nicer on your body.

You vaguely registered the brief feeling of weightlessness as you were pulled away from the strong thing behind you and slammed back again. The mast perhaps? Ow, that one kinda hurt. I think? Surely not, it's a dream. His mouth was moving again, but this time words were starting to form, the fog of the white noise slowly fading to a more bearable hum.

“-re you doing on my fucking ship?” He barked, flicks of spittle splashing against your face.

You blinked again, hmm, could you talk in this dream? No time like the present to try I guess?

“Tryna get laid?” You coughed, your voice strained from the hand around your throat. Something unrecognisable flashed in his eyes. Anger? Confusion? He leaned back a little to pull something from his bandolier, his grip on your neck loosening for a moment before being replaced by something sharp and cold, metallic perhaps? It was hard to tell from the thin edge.

“Wanna try that one again little mouse?” He gave you a toothy grin, his canines sharp and dangerous, and something about the dark look in his amber eyes sent a shiver down your spine. Fear or lust, you weren't sure, both perhaps? “I'll put it in plain words: What. Are. You. Doing. On. My. Fucking. Ship?”

Hmmm, prisoner turned lover type scenario huh? You'd read more than your fair share of fanfiction, your best bet to getting this sexy dream to go somewhere was act confident, right? What was he gonna do, kill you? It's just a dream anyway. Probably a weird coma dream, given the bus. Oh, maybe you'd be one of those crack medical cases of people who live a whole life in their coma dream. Shout out to your brain for picking this world to live it out in, you wondered if the machines on the outside would beep with a heighted heart rate every time one of these pirates fucked you in the dream. You wiggled your toes to check you were in control, all systems go captain, initiate stage one of ‘badass bitch gets laid’. You swung your legs up and wrapped them around his waist, and his brows, or lack thereof, shot up in surprise.

“Did I stutter, captain?” You purred, “You are the big bad captain of the Kid Pirates, correct? I thought a guy like you would be overjoyed to be presented with a hot, willing lay, or do you prefer to pay for those services?”

Someone coughed out a wheezed laugh, it sounded strained and suppressed. Ah, Killer must be nearby. Well, at least if Kid hated your jokes maybe you could turn your attention to the masked man, he was your favourite afterall.

“So what, you just crashed onto my ship outta butt fuck nowhere, naked as the day you were born, for a quick fuck?” Kid scowled, “How did you get here? Devil fruit?”

“Uh, I think I got hit by a bus actually,” you pondered, able to speak a little easier now that his hand wasn't so tight on your throat, though the metal was still pressed to it, some sort of knife you assumed. “Hang on, did you just say I'm naked?”

“Are you stupid?” Kid squinted. He let you go all of a sudden and you fell to the deck with an unceremonious thump. Ow, that one definitely hurt. “Kil, throw her overboard, if she ain't gonna talk we'll prove for ourselves she has a fruit, fish her out before she drowns too much though, she's interesting. I wanna know how she got here”

You turned to the quiet footsteps of the approaching first mate, in his button up polka dot shirt. Cute. You gave him a sweet smile but he ignored it, scooping you up, throwing you over his shoulder, and absolutely yeeting the shit out of you straight into the drink.

Icy water closed in around you as your body dropped down several metres under the surface at the impact. You felt no exhaustion though, no pull of the deep. Well, at least now you knew there was no devil fruit for you in this dream, too bad, it'd be sick to turn into a big fuck off bear or something. Sighing internally, you swam your way back to the surface, doing your best Little Mermaid impression and flicking your hair back as you broke through to air. Several scowling faces looked down at you from the deck, and you bobbed awkwardly in the gentle waves, staring back up at them. Fuck it was cold, could someone put a blanket over your comatosed ass irl please? Jeez.

“Uh, can someone help me up?” You shouted up to the ship, “I'm not a good climber”. Honestly, you weren't a bad climber, you were just sure this was gonna turn into one of those running but getting nowhere situations if you tried.

Kid let out a tsk and suddenly heavy chains were wrapping around you, enclosing around your neck and nearly hanging you as they pulled you back to deck, dropping you back to the wood with a wheeze.

“That wasn't-” you let out a choked cough, “that wasn't very nice of you. This dream sucks, actually”

“Dream?” Killer asked. Oh god his voice was even better in person. But it sounded more to the pitch of the Japanese voice actor, hang on did that mean you were speaking Japanese? Dreams are weird man.

“Yeah I mean..” you looked up at him, crossing your legs, not bothering to cover your nude body. What did it matter, this was just like one of those giving a presentation in school kinda dreams, but nudity had never bothered you. “I got hit by a bus, so this is just some weird coma dream. Sucks though, usually they're sexy by now. What a disappointment”

“Yeah? You have sex dreams about us often?” Kid smirked.

“You, not so much,” Kid's smirk very quickly turned to a frown and he looked like he was gonna hang you again, “aye, easy big guy, they exist, I just prefer dreaming about Killer or Heat is all”

Someone nearby choked on air, and there was the audible sound of a palm slapping a back and the faint whisper of “get it to-fucking-gether Heat, fuck”

“Anyway, this dream sucks,” you hummed, stretching out your legs, bored, “so either make with the orgy or turn into a face eating demon or some shit so I spook awake, I'm bored.”

Kid rushed towards you, knife still in hand, and you wondered for a split second if he was actually going to do one of the two, before the piercing pain of a knife through your rib cage cut right through that line of thinking. It was searing, white hot like you were being branded from the inside out, you'd broken your arm once but this might have hurt more. Your world stopped for a moment before you let out a blood curdling scream that forced those closest pirates to you to cover their ears, and you gagged and as you looked down at the knife sticking out of you.

“Oh shit, oh fuck,” you finally stuttered as your scream settled, your throat sore and strained, pained tears rolling down your cheeks, “that hurts. Oh god, oh god, not a dream, not a fucking dream”

“No fucking shit, dumb cow,” Kid reached for the knife and you smacked his hand away, holding the hilt protectively.

“Don't fucking touch it, asshat” you bit, “oh fuck what if you got something important, just my fucking luck I get fucking isekai'd to the resident ship of the Grandline's biggest fucking asshole and now I'm gonna die again. Twice in one day, that's gotta be a record for sure.” Kid growled and tried to pull the knife with his powers, but once again your hands turned metallic and held the hilt steady. Realisation hit you like a… bus… hmmm, too soon?

“Oh, fuck yeah, HAKI!” you yelled triumphantly, “I always knew I was a strong willed bitch, ha, take that Captain Stupid Pants!”

You lifted a hand to flip him off. Ah, well, you'd never claimed to be smart. Moving your hand halved the strength against his pull, and the dagger shook and yanked itself out from your chest.

“Now who's stupid?” He smirked, dangling the dagger as he squatted in front of you, a shit eating grin on his face.

“Okay, admittedly, maybe me,” you would probably laugh if it didn't hurt so damn much. “Hey, what if I make you a deal, I'll uhh… I'll let you freeuse me if you let me live”

“Back at it again with the sex! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Kid yelled.

“A lot, probably,” you sighed, blood pouring freely from between your fingers. You squinted at Kid before reaching forward and yanking his sash off, “gimme that.” Much to his dismay, you pressed the fabric to your wound to slow the bleeding, though the effects of blood loss were quickly becoming apparent. “Cute that you wear each other's colours,” you mumbled drowsily, holding the royal blue sash to your wound, which was quickly turning a dark red as your blood soaked into it. “Whoops, looks like it's your colour now though, Kiddo. Hey, before I die, can someone tell me how Heat's fire breathing works?”

“Really? Minutes to live and that's what you wanna know?” Kid frowned.

“Call me curious,” you gave him a drunk looking smile, “they never explained it in the manga”

“Who the fuck is they?” Kid tilted his head curiously, “and what the fuck is manga?”

“It's like a comic book, boss,” Heat spoke up. Ha, you always had him pegged as a fucking weeb.

Life was quickly draining from you, red spilling out over the wooden deck, your eyelids drooping more with every minute. If this was real, a thought occurred to you. Maybe there was a real reason behind this. Maybe you really were dead, and this was some sort of test to be a guardian angel or some shit. Alternate universe type deal, perhaps all fiction was just flickers of a view into another universe. Deep. Ah, no time to really ponder that thought though. You let go of the sash to grab Kid's arm with a weak, blood drenched hand.

“Don't- don't fight Shanks,” you mumbled, “and don't make an alliance with Apoo or Hawkins. And don't-” your head spun as you tried to push out the most important stuff, “don't let Killer eat the SMILE fruit”

The last thing you saw was a look of confusion on Kid's pale face, before everything spun and once again you were tossed into darkness. But hey, at least you weren't wearing wet socks anymore.

[Next Chapter]

Taglist: @chershire23 @tremendoushorsepatrolgoth

[uneducated-author]

Because I will never be over this adaptation and how it perfectly used every frame and then elevated them until you actually have a wonderful way of displaying each characters thought process. You see Dazai's expression change, how he moves. Dazai has been silly and disarming all of the arc so far. He dances with Sigma and splits because he wants sugar. He jokes while opening a door, and hosts a happy hour quiz, comparing Sigma to his mentee.

But here. we see him, and see how far he is willing to go. We see him stop smiling. He finds out his partner is his enemy, controlled by vampirism and smirks, even if it's more of a 'damn, Dostoyevsky'. But it's important. Because he has ten minutes to make Sigma willing to die for him. Ten minutes to make Sigma willing to die for the agency. And he has to be powerful enough to make Sigma think. Strong enough to shock him, to make him listen. Now, Sigma watches him control time, and drown Dostoyevsky. He has to show Sigma that survival isn't an offer exclusively from the decay of angels.

But here, he sees his partner, it's broadcast on a screen. He sees Chuuya follow Dostoyevsky's orders, pound at the wall, scream and struggle, and then slowly drown. And he stops smiling. Because he can't lie, not in front of his partner.

Something about how the memories load. Something about how Dazai, whose mind works faster than light, takes a moment, because if he thinks about their past, he knows he'll crack and he won't have the resolve for this.Something about needing time to prepare for the heartbreak he's going to inflict on himself. Something about how he's speaking to someone empty, because Dostoyevsky has scooped out Chuuya's soul and turned him into a stranger, and Dazai could never forgive that rat, but this is beyond unforgivable.

Something about a shadow. Something about Dazai blocking himself from the memories where their heart connect. Something about blocking the light because if he's good, right now, he'll destroy what little soul he has.

Something about opening his eyes, and forcing himself to watch, because this is why he came for Odasaku, this is why he wants a double suicide, because he believes that nobody wants to die alone.

Something about listening to Chuuya and how he drowns. Something about a second of silence except for the other half of his soul fighting to live, as Chuuya always had.

Something about the turtle smile, so clearly fake because Dostoyevsky is there, and if he survives (Dazai has every contingency) there can not be a shred of evidence that Dazai cared for his former partner, and something about how if Chuuya was listening under the echoes of vampirism, he would know that Dazai is lying.

Something about there being no chance of ambiguity. Something about the darkness over his eyes, and the pain he's tried to wipe away. Something about shadows, and how you need light to cast them.

Something and something and something, and how soukoku have always been something more.

[monsterblogging]

So I finally narrowed down on the reason why Newt's possession arc in Uprising is so damn weird and out-of-touch with the first movie.

So for anybody who doesn't already know, Guillermo del Toro is a huge nerd about occult stuff. He even gives his characters ruling planets and he considers filmmaking a form of alchemy.

He's also ex-Catholic, and highly critical of Catholicism, just as he is is critical of any form of authoritarian institution. (The Precursors were visually modeled on Catholic clergy, btw.)

Once you understand where del Toro is coming from, it's pretty obvious that Newt is functionally doing necromancy and coming in contact with a much bigger, meaner spirit than he anticipated. Very importantly, choosing to drift with a kaiju itself is morally neutral, it just happened to reveal something worse than anyone expected.

Uprising, however, introduces an extremely Christian template, one that you may have seen before if you were ever unfortunate enough to come across a little thing called a Chick tract. For those who don't know, Chick tracts are basically little Evangelical Christian propaganda comics. They are extremely hateful toward anyone who isn't an Evangelical Christian, and present anything that of Evangelical Christianity as the product of man's arrogance and/or demons. Anybody who strays from the Good and Righteous will have bad things happen to them, and demons may well be involved.

Where the first Pacific Rim is using a sort of Lovecraftian "it's all fun and games until you meet the elder god" sort of template combined with del Toro and Beacham's humanist optimism (we can kick the elder god in the ass if we stick together!), Uprising is using a conservative Christian "make a deal with the Devil for fame and fortune, get possessed by demons" template. Newt's now this important bigwig at Shao Industries - because he's been drifting with the demon-coded kaiju for ten years. (Sidenote, it also isn't not the "play with a Ouija board, get obsessed with demons" template, too.)

And uh. This little switcheroo? It's bad. It's very bad. It's bad because it transforms Pacific Rim from a story about humanity banding together to defy uncaring and cruel institutions and solve our big problems together into a reactionary narrative that defends and upholds those very institutions.

[uncleasad]

top ten favorite hosie fics of all time, go

What a fun Ask! 🙏 Also, are you trying to kill me?! 😂

A few weeks ago, TheDarkestHour13 introduced the concept of Hope and Rafael keeping a list of “Landon’s Top 10 deaths” in Such Is Our Fate. I commented that that particular chapter (for reasons other than the deaths list) was a Top 10 chapter of the fic, though I also noted I didn’t have an actual list of my Top 10 chapters—there were approximately 120 chapters at that point. I also thought, in a related manner, that I didn’t have a “Top 10” list of Hosie fics…and perhaps that should have been my cue to start thinking about such a thing 😂

As of late June 2024 CE, there are nearly 2600 fics in the AO3 Hosie tag and I’ve been reading since the latter part of 2019…so I’ve probably read ½ to ⅔ of them…

I came up with 7 fics right away, but as I started to make links and such, I realized that 5 of those were incomplete (ongoing, but mostly either rarely updated or, practically speaking, abandoned); I don’t know what it says about me that my “top ten favorite hosie fics of all time” is full of fics that may never be finished.

But in terms of recommendations for reading, I know lots of folks will not want to start reading a work that hasn’t been updated in years and has a high likelihood of never being finished, no matter how amazing it is (or how much someone else liked it). And even for ones that are currently ongoing, it’s possible (though unlikely) that the author could do something crazy to make me hate the fic later on. So I thought I’d spin off all those works that were incomplete into a separate list and come up with 10 favorite finished fics…I could mamage that, right? As I started trying to do that…nope, that’s not done, either; that’s been abandoned 😳 oh, what about that fic? wow, how did I forget that one?! (Like I said, are you trying to kill me?! 😂)

So…to save my life (and to stop spending hours upon hours on this), the end result is about 30 fics all-told, completed and incomplete. (I further subdivided the incomplete fics into those that are updated at least once every few months and those that…aren’t 😢) They’re ordered roughly by time, with the earlier/older fics towards the tops of the lists and the more recent ones (mostly) towards the ends of the lists. Two of the fics on the “Completed” list had promised an epilogue that has never appeared, but you can read the entire story arc, so I think it’s fair to label them as complete.

So without further ado…

Completed:

it's a date (the only problem is it's fake) by avengerskye / @avengerskye

Coffee on Monday, Flowers on Friday by Redezzy

The Missing Piece by intribridsname 

slept next to her but I dreamt of you all summer long by hackingxbiochemist

what you got (cause I want it all) by ToriWritesStories / @toriwritesstories

summer lovin' had me a blast (wait, no, that's just the leaf-blower) by AdeleDazeem

Our Last Life by taengoo1 / @taengooxlove

I'll Never Give Up Hope by O_M_Jee

HM+JS by tellingtouch

Invisible String by luthorbae

Then why's it feel so good? by callipoicepole (Killing Eve AU)

This Is Your Home by Shadowmama55 / @shadowhuntermama

Shivers (A Lifetime of crimes, but the worst was loving you.) by ch8rlie

The Stages of Grief by endgamesonly

'tis the damn season. by wandererghost (complete, though promised epilogue still outstanding)

Lizzie Saltzman, Matchmaker by TheNutcase (complete, though promised epilogue still outstanding)

In-Progress – still updating regularly or at least every few months:

Such Is Our Fate by TheDarkestHour13 / @persevereforahappyending (updated every Friday)

The Power Field by Joho_meh

4 Years, 6 Months, 8 Days by Limon_Skittles

To Know My Heart The Best (You’d Have To Cut It Out My Chest) by mambaregz

Incomplete – rarely updated, on hiatus, or orphaned:

Dive bar on the east side by Bluejay720 (7 chapters to go)

summer rush by sabrinasfadingmoon / @sabrinasfadingmoon (incomplete)

im not gonna let you go so easily by allweseeislight (1 chapter to go 🤞)

'tis the damn season by blckmaqic, LizMikaelson (1 chapter to go 🤞)

Redemption by MysticSlurp (Red Dead Redemption AU, incomplete)

Sad Bedroom Eyes by EvilPenguinRika / @evilpenguinrika (on hiatus)

Hell Hath No Fury by ElegiesEulogizeMe (Ringer AU, 6 chapters to go)

the stages of waking by dandelionlighters / @dandelionlighters (incomplete)

let’s watch it all burn down together by iris_on_the_moon (zombie apocalypse; orphaned)

A number of the authors are no longer active in writing Hosie fics (not surprising in 2024, considering), but many of them (including the authors of the incomplete works I like) have substantial catalogs, so if you read and enjoy one of these, be sure check that author’s list of other works (and of course leave kudos and comments! 🙏)

—

If anyone would like to see other fics I’ve enjoyed, there’s the fic recommendation tag here on my tumblr that captures a few from the last couple of years, and I also have a few AO3 collections of specific themes/subjects:

Hosie Zombie Apocalypse (HosieZombieApocalypse)

Hosie Summertime Vibes (SummeryHosie)

Hosie Season 2 “What If?” (Hosie_Season_2_What_If)

(I really need to start one for post-S4 fics, because there are a lot of great ones and I’m starting to forget them already.)

Sorry I couldn’t get it down to 10, @tribridsireline 😂 But I hope everyone reading finds something new and exciting to read!

[dystopicjumpsuit]

hey hey hey, for the first kiss prompts-

the uncontrollable smile they break into either after or during the kiss itself with... Jesse!

happy writing <3

Thank you for the request @multi-fan-dom-madness! I got a flash of inspiration during the thotting hours, so I bring a Thanksgiving present for you. (That's totally how Thanksgiving works, right?)

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! May your turkey be as juicy as Jesse’s thighs.

Pairing: Jesse x Reader (GN)

Rating: T but MDNI as always

Wordcount: 720

Warnings and tags: Fluff, banter, kisses

Summary: Jesse performs "emergency field medicine."

Suggested Listening:

Masterlist | Sign up for my tag list

There’s an ARC trooper in your office. He has his back to you as he inspects your shelves full of plants, holoframes, curios, and even a few actual paper books. You don’t recognize the kama, so he’s not one of yours—though you have no doubt that the Jedi generals would lecture you for getting attached to the troopers that way. 

Good thing I’m not a Jedi.

Whoever he is, he’s a big kriffing dude. ARC troopers always look extra imposing thanks to the pauldrons, but damn, this one must have needed custom armor to accommodate those muscles. His helmet is off, and all you can see is the back of his shaved head.

“Hello,” you say. “Can I help you with something?”

Translation: Who are you, and what the kark are you doing in my office?

He turns, and you catch a glimpse of a large Republic cog tattoo.

“Jesse?!” you exclaim, rushing across the office to fling your arms around him. 

He doesn’t even stagger a little bit as you collide with him, just wraps his arms around you in a tight hug. Impulsively, you press your lips to his cheek.

“When did you get back?” you demand.

He beams at you with a smile that’s too brilliant to be contained. “About ten minutes ago. Came straight here.”

“And I was stuck in a meeting,” you say with disgust, drawing a laugh from him. 

“I haven’t been waitin’ long,” he replies.

“Well, I’ve been waiting for you forever!” you exclaim. “How long is ARC training, anyway?”

An odd expression flickers over his face, and he hesitates before he replies, “I’m not actually allowed to say. Sorry.”

“That’s all right; I’m just happy to have you back,” you grin as you lean back to admire his new armor. “Look at you, Mr. ARC Trooper! You look great.”

“That’s ‘Lieutenant ARC Trooper,’” he says with a tiny smirk.

“You got promoted? Jesse, that’s amazing!”

“Yeah, I didn’t think I’d ever make it past sergeant, either,” he jokes.

“That’s not what I meant,” you laugh, slapping his chest and immediately regretting it when your knuckles collide with the hard plastoid armor. "Ouch!"

“How was that?” he asks.

“2/10, do not recommend,” you reply, shaking your hand to ease the stinging.

“Let me see.” He takes your hand gently in his and holds it close to his face to inspect it. “I think it might be fatal.”

“Better get Kix in here before I keel over,” you say, trying to ignore the warmth of his fingers and the rough texture of his gloves on your skin.

“No time,” Jesse replies gravely. “I’ll have to perform emergency medical treatment.”

He kisses your knuckles softly, and your heart begins to hammer in your chest.

“Did they teach you that in ARC training, or did you pick it up from Kix?” you ask, trying to keep your tone light.

“It’s a top secret ARC procedure,” he replies. “Very advanced medicine. I doubt Kix has heard of it.”

“I’m so lucky you were here to kiss it better,” you say. “I’d hate to die of a scraped knuckle.”

“Funny story,” he says. “This procedure requires multiple rounds of treatment.”

Your breath stutters to a halt. “It does?”

“Mm-hmm,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to each of your knuckles individually. He grazes his thumb across them, and suddenly you forget all about the pain. 

“I think it’s working,” you say.

He raises his other hand to your face, stroking his thumb over your lips as his fingers caress your jaw.

“Better try one more thing, just to be safe,” he says as he leans close to you, his lips a breath away from your own.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “Just to be safe.”

His lips brush against yours softly, and it feels like the galaxy stops spinning around you, because you’re finally kissing Jesse, and it’s even better than you imagined, and his lips are kriffing perfect, and he tastes suspiciously like the candy that you keep in a bowl on your desk, and you never want it to end. Eventually, though, you have to come up for air, and he cups your cheek as you rest your forehead against his.

“You know,” he whispers, his breath warm against your skin, “I’ve been waiting for you forever, too.”

[brianmayfanatic39]

Maybe its cause I'm still sleepy and very hungry, but sometimes I feel like most fanfic authors dont get Nine. Yeah, he can be sarcastic and sassy and he sure has a temper, but above all things, his main motivation for most things isnt anger. Its guilt. I can think of a dozen examples off the top of my head.

("I couldn't save your world, I couldn't save any of them", the thing with the Gelth, sending Rose away during Parting of the Ways, saving Rose at the risk of letting the last Dalek in existense loose on the US, "You survived too" "Not by choice")

He starts off Series One as someone who wants to right his wrongs at all costs, even at the expense of his own life. We literally see that during Rose and Nine's first meeting. He starts off Series One as somebody who wants to remain distant. RTD once said that why he wears his leather jacket, as if to say to the world, "Don't touch me".

And by the end of his run, he has filled his hearts with love. He invites Mickey to come along, he flirts with Jack, he rediscovers his love for humans, he has hope again.

(Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives)

His final moments are acts of love. He takes the energy of the time vortex for Rose, even though that means he won't be with her ever again. He tries his best to reassure her as he begins regenerating. By the end of Series One, Nine dies, not with fear or regrets, but at peace, with a smile on his face. Kind of reminds me of Twelve's final words.

"Doctor, I let you go."

As tragic as it was for Chris Eccleston to leave the role so soon, he left behind a damn near perfect character arc with the Ninth Doctor, from "Run" to "And you know what? So was I"

And a good chunck of the fics I've seen reduce him to "The Angry Doctor". Which is funny because Ten, to me, is the textbook definition of Barely Restrained Anger. But that neither here nor there.

[ot3]

just remembered you like doctor who. two questions if you want em.

1) when do you think new who got bad? was it a sudden drop or a gradual decline?

2) did you like the new season, are we back in business lads?

new who pretty much immediately got bad when matt smith became the doctor. those seasons were barely watchable to me as a child with much lower standards and they're certainly not now. i will say it was gradual in the sense that its not like i watched episode 1 and was immediately turned off by the whole thing, but the entire experience of watching those arcs was waiting for satisfying character writing cand emotional payoff that never game

unfortunately, we are not So Fucking Back, which is a genuine tragedy. Ncuti Gatwa is a fantastic doctor. he's incredibly charming, charismatic, and just has an excellent presence on screen, but the writing hasn't been giving him enough to work with. episodes of this season have boiled down to being Mostly Functional But Not Very Interesting. Which is a god damned shame! Dot and bubble was like, a fucking black mirror episode. Good lord. The finales were fine but a little underbaked. The shortness of the season paired with the fact that there was no real tension in the relationship meant that pretty much everything about him and Ruby wasn't really impactful, even though I have no real beef with her as a character. I think 73 yards was definitely the best episode of the season.

I REALLY hope things improve here going forward! Disney has ten fucktillion dollars and I wish they'd use some of it to produce an actual full season of television and give the writing some room to breathe! 8 episode is simply just not enough to produce compelling episodic tv that has an overarching plot woven through it. And we really just need new people coming into the writer's room because a lot of this shit they're pulling feels very stale and lacking in pathos. You've got a talented star here! give him the best you've got!

[thetriggeredhappy]

where i’m like, at, creatively

like what's my dealllllll

so i’ve noticed a pretty big uptick in new people around here lately and i wanted to cover a few bases since i’m realizing it’s been a pretty long time since i had a fireside chat with the room. this is for a few reasons - first of all, i don’tttttt like talking about myself! i feel like sometimes notes on what’s up with me and how i’m doing can come across as invitations to talk a lot about my personal life, and i’m not really here to get into it. i really do prefer the anonymity of the stuff i do here. not a ton of people i know in real life have any idea at all what i do creatively, and inversely not many people who know me for my writing or whatever know anything about my real life. love that separation! big fan of it! that’s why i go by the alias Trigger, don’t have very many mentions of any facet of my identity, my location, don’t even really have my general age listed (i’m an adult, that’s all i’m comfortable sharing). i’m not, uh. a very confident person i guess? but with that said, i’m fine with talking about broad strokes stuff, and with talking about the stuff i make. so let’s go over it!

i’m not really known on here for anything beyond my writing, but i actually do various different creative stuff. i make music, i draw, i paint, i know a few instruments, i sew and make props, i’m a chef (like. professionally. that’s my job in real life. like, i’m my boss and i just answer to the owner of the restaurant. i made my menu. we’re actually expanding it at the moment). my fanwork is definitely a passion of mine, i love doing character analysis and riffing with other people and collaborative work, that kind of thing, but i also do like. a lot of original work.

“I KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING DONT CANCEL TAKING SHOTS—“ i’m not. i’m fully not. taking shots is just gonna be well over 150k words by the end of it and i’m running the marathon, not the sprint. that’s gonna continue to publish slowly over time. that’s not where i’m going with this. i have an outline, i know the plot, i just have to write the scenes and paint the spaces between the bigger arc of it and figure out the points between A and Z, and that’s going to take a while. if that means that fic is done in fuckin 2030, so be it.

my problem here is twofold. first of all, i have what the doctors call “a chronic depressive disorder” and “the good old neurodivergence that means you’re a perfectionist and also incapable of starting things”. there’s a part of me that really wants to ‘just’ hammer out Taking Shots and wrap it all up and do the damn thing and wipe off my hands and take a bow or ten before i move on, but i’m aware that my internal motivation issues are going to make that task take an incredibly long time. the second part of the problem is that i’m going to feel intense guilt pretty much all of the time if i split my attention between an original work and the fanwork i’ve already started, because in my mind, i’d be doing a half-measure of both of them rather than a sufficiently good job of either.

i know that doesn’t make sense, probably because it doesn’t. but honestly, for a longass time, me wanting so bad to start making my original work A Thing I Do, yet feeling bad for not instead doing more of my fanwork (which i know people really enjoy), has just been putting the pole through the spokes of the wheels on both of those projects.

so i’m biting the bullet. fuckin’ whatever.

Taking Shots is going to continue to keep its irregular infrequent schedule - i generally write more Taking Shots whenever i get really really annoyed with myself that i haven’t written more Taking Shots. in the meantime, i’m also going to start making and posting more about my original work.

i’m making a comic.

it has a title, i’ve scripted a ton of it, i have the plot and characters and worldbuilding and development, i know how it begins and what happens and how it ends. i started working on the story and the world around 2016, and i’m pretty happy with it. it’s going to take years to make the entire thing, as it’s going to be hundreds of pages per arc and a number of arcs in totality, and i plan to post pages as i go, maybe individually, maybe in small batches. it’s a fantasy setting, what with the elfs ‘n legally distinct hobbitses ‘n shit, adventure comedy, character driven narrative. i’ve made a separate blog to house it, and here soon the plan is to start showing off what i’ve already got, whatever isn’t spoilers, break out the title and some of the pages. my plan, eventually (and i mean EVENTUALLY) is to open a patreon or whatever the thing is by the time i get there. i’d fuckin’ love to just, like, make art and stuff full time, but realistically, i do need to hold down a real job for a while, even assuming i can make a living on art. i don’t have anyone to support me financially, so that does need to come first.

my artfight victims and opponents (my beloved) have already met a bunch of the characters, and some of you who have been around for a while probably also know about them. it’s not a secret or anything. i just don’t want to lean on the crutch of like, building a brand and hype for characters before i make the media. i don’t like stuff like that. you’ll see it as you see it. i love talking about my process and thoughts while making things and about character writing, and i’m open to questions or conversations about the comic and the characters, but like, i’m probably not gonna open with “and here’s the plot outline”. that’s a lot.

i want to be transparent now rather than later that no matter what i do, including making a patreon (or whatever), fanwork of any kind won’t be housed there. this doesn’t mean i’m giving up my fan stuff or that it’s dropping down the list as a priority. that hat is being hung up someday, maybe, but Taking Shots ends either when i’ve written all of it or when i’m dead in the fucking ground. this is partially because of, y’know, legality, because you really aren’t allowed to profit off of fan writing in the same way you might on fanart or whatever, but even if i was legally allowed to i wouldn’t necessarily want to. i don’t like the idea of making any significant amount of money on fan content, i don’t ever want enjoying media to have monetary incentive for me. that sucks. fan stuff is an outlet for me and i don’t like the thought of profiting off of enthusiasm. that seems like it would get a little parasocial.

this is my main blog, i’m probably going to keep using it for fan stuff a lot, and most of my comic stuff is gonna go on the same blog as the actual pages, and i’ll probably make some kind of dedicated webpage for the comic as well, and at some point i’m gonna make an executive decision on where i want to host any q&a for the comic - probably here. i’m hoping that getting vocal about my original work stuff will help me, like… commit a little harder? i work on it way more frequently than my fan stuff, like it’s not even close, but there’s kind of this sense of “and it’ll happen someday”. maybe that someday could be, like, before the heat death of the universe. because it doesn’t need to take that long. i have so much done.

that’s the synopsis. if you’re interested in my music, that’s over here. i’m probably going to reblog some of the comic-related art onto here every once in a while, but i don’t plan on reblogging individual pages onto here or anything like that. thanks for the read! let me know what you guys think!

[toon-topaz]

The vampire if how overprotective does the rest of the cast get when they find out Subaru's not a vampire like one to ten scale

Oh boyyy this is gonna be fun Scale is gonna be from 1 (Doesn't give a fuck) to 10 (keep him on a leash at all times good god)

Emilia - Emilia found out at the beginning of arc 2, once she brought Subaru in for Beatrice to heal him. She then spends the entire series horrified at the lengths he will go to to protect her, or prove himself or whatever the hell he's trying to do. Especially after he got mauled by the Ulgarm, her worry for him increased tenfold, and then another tenfold after he challenged Julius. Her reasoning for leaving him behind in arc 3 is in part because she sincerely believes herself to be a bad omen, because of Subaru's continued offers for her to bite him (he thinks it'll be romantic and doesn't understand how weird that is), she thinks he might have some kind of brain damage after what Julius did to him. She believes she may actually end up getting him killed (little does she know, it's already happened, a lot), but also that she might lose control one day because damn, his blood smells nice. By arc 4, she understands his reasoning a bit more, but still hates to see him constantly putting himself in harm's way, and considers it extremely important for him to continue hiding his true identity. Despite not being the best liar herself, she's dedicated to keeping him safe, but will usually just avoid talking about it. In a way she feels kinship with him, as they both need to be careful about going out in public, due to her identity as a Witch of Envy lookalike, and his identity as what's essentially a talking prey animal. 8/10

Beatrice - Beatrice also knew the moment she met him, her ability to read Mana coming in handy for this. At first, she finds him more annoying and stupid, and even when she starts to like him more, her reluctance to exit her shell and bare her vulnerabilities prevent her from being too involved in what he's doing. After their contract, she's about as protective of him as in canon. Beatrice isn't a vampire, she's a spirit, and so she doesn't have any reason to be scared of herself losing control and attacking him. He's her contractor, she cares for him and his safety and will protect him with her life, but she also trusts him to take care of himself. She knows he may be reckless, but he's not stupid. 5/10

Rem - Rem finds out in arc 2, once it has to be explained to the staff that they need to somehow find a food source just to feed this one guy. Needless to say, she finds it incredibly suspicious, especially when in earlier loops Subaru keeps tailing Emilia and casually suggesting they have a taste of his blood. He has to be up to something. Not to mention, there's not only a ridiculously sweet scent wafting off of him whenever he accidentally cuts himself, but there's also constantly the smell of the Witch on him. She's fully convinced he's a Witch Cult plant, some kind of fabricated existence meant to be as tempting as possible. She does actually end up biting him, in the loops where she kills him, to punish him for daring to step foot in her sister's home. After the Ulgarm fight, she becomes one of his most fervent protectors, while also passively encouraging his reckless behavior. His weakness is also a strength in her eyes, as it gives him a unique kind of bravery she's absolutely in love with. She won't stop him from getting into trouble, but she will without hesitation kill anybody who dares attempt to harm her Subaru-kun. He could walk into Hell and she would follow him unflinchingly. Rem is hard to categorize, because her protectiveness of him is filtered through her view of him as her hero. She doesn't want to stifle him, but in the process enables a lot of his bad habits, opting to take action to defend him in the moment, rather than preventing him from getting into danger in the first place. It helps that she knew the moment she met him. 7?/10

Ram - Ram also knows right off the bat, and she's initially a bit wary, like her sister. Depending on how suspicious Rem is of him, her own concerns vary. She's a lot quicker to understand that he's just kinda stupid however. Ram does care for him, but holds no small amount of exaggerated disdain, usually teasing him for his weakness and taunting him with his status as food, with such charming nicknames as "cattle", "pig", and "snack". It's all in good fun, but it's also a subtle warning to him to not get careless. Sometimes she brings him grass, for their "livestock", and he responds to the jab by shoving it in his mouth while maintaining full eye contact. 4/10

Otto - Otto genuinely has no idea until, like, Subaru's knighting ceremony at the end of arc 4. He's absolutely piss drunk when he finds out, and it sends him into a goddamn crisis. He feels like a fucking idiot for not realizing his incredibly fragile best friend is not in fact, a vampire with a chronic health problem, but apparently he's been a whole other species this entire time. He's starting to wonder if Subaru technically counts as an animal, and the only reason they're able to get along so well is because of Otto's Divine Protection. Knowing this now, he sees how Subaru never seems to eat the same meals as everybody else, he's never shared a glass of blood with anyone, and no, that sweet smell is not just Otto's imagination. Otto's dedication is second only to Emilia's with helping Subaru keep his secret from everybody else, and he's a much better liar than her. He essentially crafts Subaru a whole fake backstory, makes it absolutely fucking airtight, and all but forbids him from speaking to strangers without at least one bug tailing him to report back to Otto. If he could he'd ground him to his room forever. About half the paperwork he does now involves forging Subaru's legal documents (which he apparently didn't have for a whole two-ish months??? He's lucky nobody bothered to check), birth certificate, Lugunican citizenship, etc. Poor Otto is about to have an aneurysm every time Subaru goes anywhere. 9/10

Garfiel - Garfiel thinks this is the coolest ever actually. He finds out while fighting Elsa, and at first he's pissed cuz y'know, she hurt his Captain, but once the dust settles he's actually thrilled to find out that the dude he looks up to is part of a long extinct legendary species he's read about in all his favorite stories. A lot of the heroes of legend were human, and he really admires Subaru's tenacity despite his weakness. Everyone's a little fragile to Garf after all, so the most he'll do is offer to train Subaru to fight or dodge better, and act as his bodyguard when he goes out in public. Alas, he's bad at keeping a secret. He will punch anyone who fucks with the Captain though. 5/10

Frederica and Petra - Frederica learns when she comes back to maid duty, and Petra needs to be informed once she gets hired. I don't have much to say about them, but Frederica makes sure Subaru gets proper nourishment, and Petra is a little weirded out that she can lift Subaru up with ease, but she's mostly chill about it. Sometimes they team up with Otto to keep an eye on him. 6/10

Roswaal - This fucking guy knew before Subaru even got here. He's been growing orchards in his backyard in preparation for the day his favorite little pawn would show up. His sacrificial lamb. He's been doing everything he can to put Subaru in harm's way, knowing he can just try again if things go wrong. He fully believes in him to pull through somehow, even as he actively throws him to the wolves. Not only that, but Roswaal is one of the only vampires alive who was once human 400 years ago, so he knows how it feels to be preyed upon, and yet he could not give less of a shit as long as Subaru helps him achieve his goal. 0/10

Part 1/2

[painted-doe]

i have 2 thoughts for where they might go for bucky in thunderbolts. 1 - he's spying on / working for val, and somehow she blackmails him / brainwashes him to work for her (and she's associated with hydra so she gives him the old equipment. or just to torment him). 2 - bucky is now working for the sort of bad guys because he was never a good guy etc etc. which i worry is the route they may take due to tfatws seeming to act like he chose to work for hydra. but im hoping for 1 bc the angst potential is delicious.

anyway i was wondering if you had any thoughts / predictions?

If it’s brainwashing, I’ll bathe happily in the delicious angst (revictimization, my beloved) but beyond that I’ll be pretty disappointed by the backtracking of Bucky’s progress and the abandonment of his narrative arc. Then again, they could handle it exceptionally well if they make it an opportunity to show how far he’s come. Hmmm… I’m on the fence.

If it’s Bucky’s choice to work for Val because he’s a Bad Guy deep down, I’ll bet that it’ll be the last damn film we see him in, because Sebastian Stan is the president of the Bucky Barnes Defense Squad and ten bucks says he’d be so pissed about this shitty writing choice that he’d advocate for Bucky to be killed off.

I think the most narratively sound option, and my personal hope, is that he’s working for Val because she secretly has the Wilsons under threat. Could be that she’s threatening to derail Sam’s career as Cap, or it could just be the prospect of good old child murder. She’s flexible like that! This would build really nicely upon the relationships and characterization established in TFATWS as well as being perfectly in-character for Bucky, whose loyalty and protectiveness of his loved ones are his defining traits. He’ll go to any lengths to protect the Wilsons, so if Val wants the keys to a shiny new supersoldier? Voila, there they are.

What do you think?

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime roundup, Pt. 1: Ongoing/returning shows and the trash heap

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it!

I wasn't expecting to watch nearly this much anime in just the past three months, but life completely failed at getting in the way. So here's everything I either watched or tried​ to watch for the Winter 2024 season, and a short review for each.

I'm not going to bother with trying to rank them, so instead they're sorted by category, as follows:

Continuing series from Fall 2023

Returning series

What I dropped

Mixed reactions

On hold

New series that are actually good

With this first entry, I'll be covering the first three, with the back half arriving in another couple of days. As with the 2023 rankings, the OP for each show is linked in the corresponding title.

Here we go.

Ongoing shows:

The Apothecary Diaries

Looking back at my 2023 rankings, I think my placement of The Apothecary Diaries’ first cour at #11 may have belied how much I love this show and believe it to truly be one of last year’s greats. If anything, it was hampered by its status as an ongoing show making it incomplete by nature, and I worried myself over the possibility of recency bias taking over my top ten (Frieren is in the same boat, so its top overall ranking should really highlight how damn good it is). Make no mistake, though: The Apothecary Diaries fucking rocks, and it continues to fucking rock. 

It’s largely more of the same, and that’s what you would want from another cour of this show. At the same time, though, more and more is uncovered about Maomao’s background and Jinshi’s status as the proverbial camera continues to pull back and the mysteries adorning the edges of the frame become clearer. I got a sense at the end of the Fall 2023 cour that the show was moving on from its episodic nature into something more serial and plot-driven, and I was mostly right: While several episodes of the Winter cour still revolve around various mysteries of the week, they all start to converge before you even realize it. It’s the same flywheel-effect approach to plot development that Kaguya-sama did so well: While so many of the events seem like one-off curiosities in the moment, these almost-imperceptible movements eventually barrel forward into an unexpected but perfectly logical momentum. The show teases out several plot threads that may not seem relevant at first, and it trusts you to be patient enough to see them play out.

I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that, along with the next entry on this list, The Apothecary Diaries is one of the best anime of the past five years. I had a feeling that this could end up being the case as 2023 came to a close, but I’m sure of it now. Watch this show.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Last year’s best anime continues apace into 2024 as we get an honest-to-goodness story arc: Frieren, who has been around too long to bother taking any magical governing bodies seriously, needs a certified mage in her party order to continue on the journey north. She decides to take the necessary exam to be certified as a First-Class Mage, a rarefied status in this world, and has Fern tag along to do the same in order to double their chances. 

And it’s still incredible! Great action, brilliant animation, wonderful character moments, and a beautiful score. It is still the top-rated anime ever on MyAnimeList, and by a significant margin. I’m not sure I agree, necessarily, but I can say with all sincerity that this has been a perfect season of television and my Fridays now feel empty without it. 

That’s all I’ve got on this one. What else do you want from me? I’ve already written nearly 2000 words about this show alone since it premiered. You’re asking me for more? I’ll kill you.

Shangri-La Frontier

If the low placement on my 2023 list was any indication, I was pretty fed up with Shangri-La Frontier by the end of its first cour, and the first couple episodes of 2024 being little more than plot set-up had me teetering on the edge of dropping it entirely. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t reel me back in once shit actually started happening and the plot really began to move forward.

Well, for a bit, at least. The height of the series so far has been the Wethermon arc, in which Sunraku teams up with his fellow shit-gamers, Pencilgon and Katzo, as they vie to be the first to take down a notoriously difficult unique boss. As the fight plays out, we get to see the feeling-out process of a tough action-RPG boss, rife with attack pattern memorization, skill timing, and buff stacking as the margin for error grows ever thinner. As always, the animation is on point, the soundtrack rules, and the action sequences are exhilarating.

But my major gripe with the series remains: There’s hardly any actual story here, even after 25 episodes. There are broad gestures towards a larger plot (“the truth of this world,” as the NPCs call it), but they are too vague to even resemble anything enticing. Everything in between the major fights is just set dressing, and there’s a lot of in between. There’s decent stuff in there, to be fair; the adorable rabbit NPCs are always a delight, and I love the commitment to depicting our top-level gamers as smug, preening shitheels. These are long walks for short drinks of water, though, and much of the main cast isn’t likable enough to make the downtime tolerable, to the point where watching the many set-up episodes feels like more of a grind than the actual grinding in the show. Even in the best fight sequences I still had moments where I found myself yelling “STOP TALKING ALREADY” at the screen. Internal monologues are a constant in battle shonen, I know, but if there’s any demographic whose internal monologues I want to hear the least, it’s gamers.

I kept watching this show despite myself, and six months later I’m still not sure how much I actually enjoy it. I haven’t seen any of the lousy VRMMO anime that people favorably compare it to, so at least it isn’t Sword Art Online. Yay, I guess? Yet here I am, still plugging away at a show I can’t strongly recommend to a lot of people. Shangri-La Frontier has turned me into a Steam reviewer.

Undead Unluck

The stakes continue to rise exponentially in one of last year’s more underrated shonen hits (or it would’ve been a hit if Disney gave a fuck about marketing the anime on its own platforms). The Union neutralizes a threat, gains a new Roundtable member, and then shit hits the fan.

The scope of this series goes into absolutely buckwild directions, and all I will say is that “Kimi no Todoke predicting the future” was not a piece of worldbuilding I would have ever expected. But at the same time, it never loses focus on the human element, which only gets more poignant as it goes on. There’s a really beautiful message in the last arc about how people can live on through the memories of others, well past their bodies dying, which hits nice and hard considering this season aired at the same time as Frieren.

This is a show that I tended to watch sporadically (because I just plain forget to open Hulu just to watch one show every week), and I would say that it was the ideal way to watch it, except the pacing issues from the first cour only got worse during a monumentally consequential sequence in the middle of the second. There was an episode that had, I shit you not, 90 seconds of new content in the first seven minutes of runtime, and at the exact point in the series where you’re salivating for something, anything new. In a season where so much goes on in just 24 episodes, I’m baffled that they felt the need to pad the runtime so much.

That’s the worst of it, though, and the momentum fortunately builds up from there and barrels downhill until the end. The story becomes incredibly meta, which was a very ballsy move for a Shonen Jump series that was still relatively early into its run. The gamble pays off, though, and the debut season ends on several incredibly strong episodes, and now I want more. I’ll be hopping on the manga soon.

It also struck me towards the end of the season just how goddamn cute everyone looks. For all of the spraying blood and grim marching towards Armageddon, it says a lot that I still wanna pinch everyone’s fat little cheeks.

Returning shows:

The Dangers in My Heart, season 2

The first season was absent in my 2023 rankings but I decided to pick it up while the second was still airing, and I’m so glad I did: The Dangers in My Heart is an almost-too-precious middle school romance that is endlessly endearing and bluntly honest (if a little exploitative) about what middle schoolers are actually like, warts and all. Insecurities are amplified, they struggle to figure out their identities, and mental and physical development run on different schedules from one kid to the next. And amidst all this raging hormonal nonsense, we have ourselves a lovely little romance story.

Kyotaro has (mostly) kicked his chuuni tendencies and realized that he’s madly in love with the beautiful, cheery Anna. He’s as aware as anyone of what a mismatched couple they’d be, though, and continues to self-sabotage any progress in the name of maintaining her good social standing. To pile onto his loner’s perspective of middle school politics, Kyotaro also gets a front-row seat to Anna’s part-time work as a model-slash-actress and he wonders if an underdeveloped shrimp like him should be seen anywhere near someone so obviously more mature. At the same time, though, he’s a growing boy, and we see lovely moments of progress as Kyotaro takes initiative both for her sake and to achieve what he wants. To both ameliorate and complicate these situations, Anna reciprocates his feelings towards her, and we creep ever closer towards what we want to see, in increasingly awkward and precious fashion.

So much of this anime is just gorgeous. Even setting aside the visuals and music (which are on point at all times), there are really lovely themes in here about insecurity, teenage perceptions of maturity, and self acceptance. On top of all of that, though, this is just a delightful slice-of-life romance story. You can probably guess where we’ve ended up by the end of the second season, but it’s the getting there that makes it all worth it. The manga is still running (and I plan to pick it up), so there’s clearly plenty more of the story to tell, but if this is where the anime ends, it ended perfectly.

Holy shit, though, did the first season really air at the same time as Skip and Loafer and Insomniacs After School? Dentists must have made a mint that season because every single one of these shows is so unrelentingly sweet that my teeth start to itch. Not that I’m complaining.

Mashle: Magic and Muscles, season 2

I honestly think I might’ve been too hard on Mashle in my 2023 rankings. I gave up on it a few episodes in when it’d initially aired, but I eventually came back to finish out the season and ended up having a pretty good time. I’ll cop to having forgotten that latter part when I mapped out those rankings, but that enjoyment quickly came back to me when I picked up season 2... even if the season begins with a ton of table setting.

Plenty of battle shonen take time to find their voice, both in manga and anime, and Mashle really seemed to hit its stride fairly quickly into the second season. Mash Burnedead’s lack of magical quality is no longer a secret, and now magical society has to find a way to deal with it, so the series’ initial stakes are raised and Mash HAS to become a top-level sorcerer lest he lose his life. Also, the bad guys are back. Unfortunately, just as I started to genuinely appreciate the ensemble cast, most of Mash’s friends took a backseat to the larger plot (Lemon is nowhere to be seen almost all season) as the villains raise the stakes with increasingly JoJo-esque magic abilities. There’s still plenty to like, though, and some of the new characters help. Props for having an openly nonbinary character play a major role.

The music is a real highlight here; a surprising amount of hip-hop paints the backdrops during dialogue, and any show with an OP by Creepy Nuts will immediately grab my attention. "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born" actually turned into a bona fide hit single, much like Oshi no Ko's "Idol" and Jujutsu Kaisen's "SPECIALZ," and I'd say it's well earned (seriously, it fucks, please click the link above). The animation has also started to really pick up where it felt like it kept falling short in the first season as well, and I found myself looking forward to action sequences more as the season went on.

And hey, it might’ve taken 21 episodes to get there, but I finally laughed at a cream puff gag!

Urusei Yatsura (2022), season 2

I really don’t have much to say other than it’s more Urusei Yatsura, and that’s just swell. We continue the modern adaptation of the classic gag manga as the OG anime babe and her piece-of-shit “darling” get caught up in yet more bizarre hijinks. Despite the 48-episode run being touted as an “Urusei Yatsura all-stars” cherry-pick from Rumiko Takahashi’s 34-volume opus, not all of the segments hit on the same level, but the stories that last entire or even multiple episodes have been killer. Lum and Ataru, despite their myriad flaws, genuinely do care for one another, and this series is at its best when those feelings get to shine through. Takahashi remains a legend for her expert balancing of comedy and heart, and while this particular adaptation doesn’t have the built-in benefit of 300+ chapters of familiarity, those moments still feel earned.

It’s Urusei Yatsura. It’s a classic for a reason. Watch it.

Dropped:

Gushing Over Magical Girls (dropped after one episode)

For the TL;DR version, consult the image above.

All I’d heard about this show going in was that the manga it’s based on was good and that there would be boobs. I wish I’d known more than that before watching, though, because if I’d known that said boobs would belong to middle schoolers, I wouldn’t have bothered with even the one episode I did end up watching.

I was drawn in by the initial premise, too: The protagonist, the conspicuously-named Utena (who looks enough like Bernadetta from Fire Emblem that I was immediately endeared to her), is an enormous fan of the magical girls who keep her city safe, so when an adorable maho shoujo mascot approaches her with an offer, she immediately takes him up on it. As her sinister-looking (and unnecessarily revealing) costume suggests, though, Utena doesn’t get to live out her magical girl dreams; she actually got roped into—and blackmailed into keeping—a role as a villainess. The magical girl team she idolizes quickly finds her, and to stave off their assault, Utena is forced to summon a monster to bind them. As they continue to struggle and squeal, Utena goes further with it by ripping their clothes and spanking their bare bottoms red, because it turns out that she’s actually into this stuff, sexually. The title, it turns out, is a double entendre.

Credit where it’s due for a clever concept: On paper, this is really goddamn funny! My issue is with the execution: I don’t really care to see someone’s sexual awakening if it involves repeated violations of consent, and much less so if I have to see nudity of ostensible middle schoolers (Japanese middle schools are the equivalent of seventh through ninth grade, meaning these girls are 15 at most). After 100 Girlfriends, I thought I could handle whatever trashy bullshit any anime could throw my way, but the longer I chewed on Gushing’s premiere, the worse it sat with me. I have no intentions of playing morality police here, but I can’t bring myself to watch any more of this than I already have. 

Early teenage sexuality is a very difficult subject matter to handle delicately, especially in a comedy milieu, and I can levy plenty of criticisms on that matter towards series I otherwise enjoyed, like Call of the Night and the aforementioned Dangers in My Heart. And although there appear to be some coming-of-age elements here, Gushing doesn’t seem interested in handling it without being exploitative. Maybe it gets better, but I don’t plan to find out for myself. 

I just feel like it’s a shame that in a season with some actual halfway decent LGBT representation, the breakout yuri hit is about middle schoolers performing dubiously-consensual BDSM on each other. And maybe that speaks to something for some sapphic viewers, and I have no intention of speaking over them, but I do know that this isn’t for me. I would’ve gone fucking feral over this show when I was like 13, but I haven’t been a 13-year-old boy for a long, long time. 

I may not have a leg to stand on here as someone who watches Mushoku Tensei (and frankly, that one’s on strike two with me), but I have to put my foot down somewhere. For me, that “somewhere” is borderline pornography involving 13-15 year olds. I try to meet media where it is, even the squicky stuff, but I cannot put myself at the level Gushing Over Magical Girls sets for itself. 

Sasaki and Peeps (dropped after eight episodes)

This show is frustrating to even process postmortem. After a mildly intriguing hour-long premiere that introduced a whole lot of concurrent concepts, Sasaki and Peeps somehow managed to not only continue heaping new ideas onto the pile, but also fumble every single one of them in a way that wasn’t even entertaining to watch.

Sasaki, a lonely 40-something salaryman of modest means, decides that instead of living vicariously through adorable animal photos on social media, he should pull the trigger and get a pet of his own. He settles on a reasonably-priced and suitably adorable fat little Java sparrow, who as it turns out speaks human language and is actually named Piercarlo the Starsage (Sasaki settles on calling him Pii-chan, or Peeps in English). The bird was reincarnated from another world, where he is able to take Sasaki at will, and the man realizes he can use the other world’s relative dearth of technology to his advantage and sets up an interdimensional trade full time so he can make coin on his own watch and help Peeps try the delicious beef he heard is the best food in Sasaki’s world. To the latter end, he also invests in a restaurant. Peeps also helps teach him magic, which Sasaki is forced to use in a pinch in the real world. He is quickly found out and gets roped into a secret government bureau of psychics, because the agent who caught him using ice magic decides he’d be a perfect complement to her water powers (think Kanne and Lawine from Frieren, but stupider). Sasaki now has to balance these multiple lives, which hardly ever interact with one another, as the stakes rise in Peeps’ world in the form of palace intrigue and in Sasaki’s world in the form of a growing threat of evil psychics or something. Also, there’s magical girls, because why the fuck not at this point.

If you actually managed to process all that and went “wow, that’s a lot, I wonder how they can tie all that together,” it brings me no pleasure to report that Sasaki and Peeps completely fails at that task. This is a work of fiction with entirely too many ideas, to the point where it feels like it has no ideas. There’s a saying in football that a team with two quarterbacks is a team with no quarterback, and Sasaki and Peeps has, like, six on its depth chart. You ever hear a band that managed to cram multiple genres in the same song and you get whiplash every time it switches up? Those are bands with a lot of influences, but no identity or vision to call their own, and that is Sasaki and Peeps to me: It is the Twenty One Pilots of anime. A lot of shit got thrown at the wall, and none of it stuck: This show, conceptually, is shit-stained drywall with a pile of turds adorning the moulding. 

For a show about a 40-year-old man, it gave me serious pause that there was not a single named adult woman in any of the episodes I watched, and I grew even more frustrated waiting for one to show up. Sasaki’s partner, Hoshizaki, seems to be a driven, professional young woman, but it turns out she’s a 16 year old high school student, for some reason. The daughter of the viscount doing business with Sasaki is a young girl who likes to tag along with him, and Sasaki’s neighbor is a latchkey high school girl who may or may not have a yandere-ish fixation on him. The magical girl we meet is also definitely a kid. The female psychics they face off against don’t appear to be older than teenagers, though the one who appears to grow fond of him turns out to be several hundred years old, which especially gave me pause because we all know that unfortunate trope and the type of person who hides behind it. Before progressing any further, I found out that the light novel series upon which this show is based was written by someone with the pen name “Buncololi,” which told me the rest of what I needed to know.

That part made me increasingly uncomfortable, and I became less and less convinced that this show was capable of sticking the landing as it continued to pile on new, contrived ideas. This was a waste of an excellent voice cast, but more than that, a waste of time.

Tales of Wedding Rings (dropped after nine episodes)

I can’t believe how much goddamn isekai I ended up watching this season. That Tales of Wedding Rings wasn’t the worst one (see above) was a minor miracle, because boy howdy was this one a dud.

Satou is just a normal high school boy, blah blah blah, his childhood friend he’s in love with is actually a princess from another world and she has to go back to fulfill a political marriage, he follows her into the portal to pull a Benjamin Braddock. But then, gasp, the palace is under attack, so the princess (her native name is Krystal, but growing up in Japan she was known as Hime, which means… princess) instead decides to marry Satou, bestowing upon him her kingdom’s ring, which gives him powers that he uses to fight back the demons. It turns out that her ring enables him to use one elemental affinity out of five, so of course now Satou has to collect the rings held by the other four kingdoms in order to become the Ring King and save the world, and to do so he has to also marry each corresponding princess.

This is basically Tolkien’s Rings of Power but as a harem isekai with bonus nudity. What I saw of the season was basically a MacGuffin hunt that had waifus of various fantasy races attached. Fine character designs for each, to be fair, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested.  It’s funny on paper that (to paraphrase Geoff Thew) our protagonist’s power level scales with the size of his harem, but Tales didn’t do enough to make me actually care what was happening. And I wanted to! There were elf titties and I didn’t care. That’s criminal.

What makes Tales especially difficult to watch is that this show is fuck ugly. The color palette is muddy and unappealing, everyone looks uncannily shiny, and there’s a smudgy Vaseline filter over everything. The action sequences are uninspiring, the animation is lousy, and every character looks terribly off-model unless they’re naked. Watch the OP I linked if you don't believe me; that's the best of it. The aural element isn’t much better; ecchi scenes are punctuated by a Cinemax-caliber smooth jazz score that I pray was chosen ironically, and most of the show’s humor consists of “an old guy is screeching.” And if you’re wasting Shigeru Chiba’s talents on that one lousy joke, you’ve fucked up catastrophically.

What completely pushed me out of wanting to see any more of this show, though, was how hard it doubled down on the worst elements of harem anime by having Protag-kun be a wishy-washy little ninny even though he’s openly declared his love for and is literally married to Hime/Krystal. And I wanted to care about her; the narrative made me want to care about her, and her jealousy of the other princesses is warranted, but alas, the harem demands bodies. To his credit, Satou recognizes her mixed emotions and makes extra time for her to make it clear that she’s forever number one in his heart, but every single time their shared romance and emotions actually push them towards consummating their (all caps for emphasis) MARRIAGE, the show goes Rent-a-Girlfriend on us and finds a cheap excuse to ruin the moment. No thanks, I’m out. Nothing else about this show is good enough to make me wade through that shit.

Honestly, the only thing that had me coming back after my Persona 3-induced hiatus was that I wanted to see the dragon girl, and that alone was almost worth it, but there really isn’t much of a draw otherwise. There were better isekai, better romances, better fantasy settings, and even better uncensored harem shenanigans this season. I might pick this back up as the second season approaches, but I’m not in any hurry.

[doctorcurdlejr]

Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! Fuckin' real good life! Had us an Eddie arc of our own. But you didn't want it, 911! So what we got now is Eddie Begins! Everything's built on that! That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all! So I hope you know that, if you never know the rest! You count the damn few times we have seen Eddie centric plots in nearly ten years and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on - and then you ask me about Bobby's building fire and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get! You have no idea how bad it gets! I'm not you, I can't make it on a coupla dead wife doppelganger fucks once or twice a year! You are too much for me 911, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you.

[namig42]

I cannot understate how far I have fallen into One Piece again over the past two weeks.

I started at the filler arc before Thriller Bark and am already at the Marineford arc. I have watched over a hundred episodes, most of them in the past week, and my brain is so fixated on this dumb anime I stopped watching for ten years because I thought I was too tired for it. Turns out a ten year hiatus makes you miss something way more than you thought you ever would.

Now I can't stop yelling about how much I love Zoro and Nami and Sanji. I cannot express enough how fucking cool and stupid I think Zoro is, and how the Impel Down arc has me SO fucking hyped. I miss the crew, but DAMN are there some good fucking fights. Bon Clay also has me crying because of how great he is, and Ivankov has been WILD.

I'm so invested again, and GODS have I fallen deep into the Zoro x Sanji ship.

No exaggeration, I have had dreams every night for a week and these two idiots have made an appearance in every single one if they weren't the main focus of the dream. I love the ship so much. It gives Shadow'zel vibes, that constant fighting but actually pining for each other the whole time. GOD it's so GOOD.