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shirophantomvox · 3 years ago

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Analyzing Kars' Character

Hello everyone! FYI I am not ignoring your requests. I have tried for a week to get them finished and I keep losing motivation. Then I had the brilliant idea of writing something else about an interesting topic and then I’ll be able to finish a few requests! Today’s post is another character analysis. This is still a multi-fandom blog; you will see content related to other shows besides Voltron. Today’s character analysis is on Kars, the 10,000-year-old vampire. That’s funny. He, Allura, and Coran are the same age!

Overview

I watched JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures about a month ago when I became frustrated that there were only 4 seasons of Hunter x Hunter on Netflix. Remember the scene in the election arc when the citizens were casting their votes for chairperson and Hisoka walked up with his arms forming an “S”? Many people were posing the question of it being a “JoJo’s” reference and for the life of me, I never understood what they were talking about. Finally, I watched the show for the first time and by season 2 I could understand what they were saying.

I have to admit that by the second episode I was bored because the nature of season one took place in the 1800s England and nothing exciting happened. Though I worked my way through a few more episodes. I noticed a creepy stone mask on the way and how it never fell unless blood was splattered on it. I concluded the mask was going to play the role of an antagonist or help the antagonist succeed. Although this post is about Kars, I would like to take a moment and say that Jonathan’s death was very heart wrenching and it made me angry. Jonathan was unnecessarily nice to Dio and living in a privileged bubble lead to his demise. Jonathan was stronger than Dio and he should have kicked his ass once and for all. Have you noticed that after Joseph’s father, all JoJo’s (at least until season 5) could beat the antagonist in the show?

Anyway, the mask is a key tool in the bizarre adventures that each protagonist experiences.

Kars is a 10,000-year-old vampire that designed the Stone Mask and is essentially responsible for the horrific events that have happened throughout history. Dio being turned into a merciless vampire and his minions resulted from the Stone Mask. After discovering that he and his people could not be out in the sun, he concluded he needed the Red Stone of Aja to complete his transformation. Lisa-Lisa, a 50-year-old human woman, has possession of the stone given by her foster father Straizo. Kars, along with the 3 remaining Pilar Men (Wamuu, Esidsi, and Santana, can only survive in the sun if they two wear the mask with the Red Stone of Aja. After awakening, it is quite clear that Kars is on a mission to retrieve the stone and will destroy anything in his way. He was the only one wanting to live a life outside of the darkness. This was the driving force of creating so many Stone Masks and later discovering the need for the Red Stone of Aja. Kars understood the mask would only work on him partially because of his larger skull size, aka body manipulation. This created an increase in hunger. The Pillar Men did not like this at all and sought to eliminate him so he could not ruin the flow of nature. Kars retaliated; he murdered 99% of his people only leaving his friend Esidsi, and two children known as Santana and Wamuu.

Kars’ character is very interesting. A dog was about to have its life ended because of drunk drivers. I don’t know if this struck a nerve in his soul, but Kars nearly cut off the driver’s head, causing them to crash their car and the puppy was saved. After being defeated by Joseph the first time, he landed at the end of a snowy cliff, making sure he did not land on a few daisies. Given these unique interactions with nature and secondary species, Kars has some vendetta against humans. What did they do to him or his people for him to care only about flowers and animals but want to wipe out Harmon users? He insists that Lisa-Lisa drink poison instead of fighting her. Fighting women is something he and Wamuu don’t take pleasure in doing. When I heard this for the first time, I didn’t know if that was something to be proud of or if he was being misogynistic (you know the stereotypical view society has about women). Even if he genuinely did not want to lay a finger on Lisa-Lisa or any woman, his intentions are very questionable. He mimics politeness. If Kars offered to pay for dinner or a drink, run. Just run because if you don’t, you’ll probably be turned into a vampire or be eaten alive.

This is off topic but I wanted to pose this scenario. After watching Battle Tendency for the 10th time, I always like to bring out the “soft” side in villains. Being a sucker for Fluff isn’t helpful. I know that’s defeating the purpose of villains and antagonists, but I can’t help and wonder how it would show in Kars. As I’ve previously stated, Kars seems to care for animals and plants more than humans...so there’s a soft spot somewhere in there. I had a rather amusing and odd thought involving Kars and Lisa-Lisa. Since Lisa-Lisa is the leader over Caesar and Joseph and Kars is the leader over the remain few Pillar Men, I can’t help but wonder how they’d react to each other. When Lisa-Lisa is ordered by Kars to stay at their hideout while Joseph retrieved the Stone, I know she didn’t stand there like a statue for nearly 12 hours. I imagine Kars offering a drink, water, or juice just to get her talking. I mean, she has to warm up to him or it’s going to be a horrible 12 hours. Then he’ll try to engage in conversation and will only try to flirt with her to see how she responds. He may make a comment about how clear her skin is, how perfect her makeup stays intact, or how her legs look better than his (well, duh, you’re 9,950 years older than her!). This way, he can exploit anything he deems as a weakness, but she is a smart woman. She would reveal nothing about her that could be used against her. As OOC as this seems, it could be something he’d do. Remember, he mimics politeness; he has a trick up his sleeve. Although that may be true, at the back of his mind, he really admires how young and enchanting she looks.

Although Esidsi, Wamuu, and Santana are Pillar Men, they are ancient humanoid superhuman beings who lived on the American continent. They have supernatural abilities that leave them invincible while the sun is down. They look similar to humans, but they are much bigger and muscular. Among the 3 remaining Pillar Men, I seem to gravitate to Kars than the others. Before you judge me, I’ll explain. Kars, like many male characters in this anime and others, has a unique character design. Contrary to popular belief, I like Kars better in his head wrap or while he is wearing his hat and cape. That outfit reminds me of a ghost/monster from the remastered Scooby-Doo series in the 70s. The one thing in particular that stood out to me was his eye shadow and mascara. The earrings didn’t surprise me as every time I draw my male characters, they automatically get a pair of earrings. While being physically fit, he can make ANYTHING look excellent!

Just like any villain, Kars and Joseph are equally arrogant and can exploit their opponent’s weaknesses against them. Making jokes about Lisa-Lisa while she is unconscious nearly sets him over the edge and while Kars thinks he has defeated Joseph, he is launched into space.

Last but not least, I noticed how the first two protagonists form an unusual bond with their enemies. As many of you have seen, Dio calls Jonathan JoJo but does not acknowledge Joseph or Jotaro in the same way. He does twice towards Jotaro but not after that. Kars refers to Joseph as JoJo and I have to believe that even if he knew his real name, he’d still refer to him as JoJo. Wamuu stated that fighting Jospeh was worth his time as he did not waste it and fight fairly. Throughout their battles, they somehow remind me of childish games with the name-calling and all. I wish Kars was not a “onetime” villain. I wish he could roll over to the next season. This is a preference, as I hate seasonal villains, like Chrollo Lucilfer or anyone similar.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!

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the-sheep · 5 years ago

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ID GO ABSOLUTELY BONKERS IF U TYPED OUT HIS ENTIRE HISTORY FBFBFBFB i would like 2 see it..........

alright right right

This ended up being A HUGE POST so all info is under the cut.

Unless you’re on mobile, in which case, enjoy scrolling.

It all starts on flight rising. Well, Heart starts on FR. It REALLY starts with my webcomic/animated series.

It wasn’t well drawn or animated at first, but it steadily got better. One of the plot holes, back in 8th grade, was “who created priscilla and Jake?”

It was mostly summed up to “Penny made all the bots its all simple” but i was a middle schooler and i needed a complicated (and edgy) story.

Thing is I had already made Fandragons of a good chunk of my ocs on flight rising.

I bred two dragons to get my main characters, so why not just use them?

Christy Suggested the name Cavet, and I liked it.

Yeah this is my first digital image of him as a human and he DOES NOT LOOK RIGHT

no necklace, no beard, orange eyes…

horrific.

So I made human designs for them both, but Chrysanthemum remains forgotten, not even canon to Mechanical Fury anymore.

Here’s old art of her and Cavet back before she got wiped out from existence.

the art is bad btu the Heart gimmick is there

Here’s him in his second image ever. The one that pretty much defined his design.He also quickly gained a husband

Anyway he quickly morphed into a villain several time more dangerous than the main villain

He’s responsible for the deaths of not ONE, not TWO, but THREE children.

Two his kids, one the younger sister of a character that one of the dead kids liked.

One of his dead kids got his own story, the other was literally a main character.

Chloride, (Charlie) in all his glory, lucky enough to get resurrected as an android but after finding out he’s not who he thinks he is, has to attempt to live a normal Human life… when his two best friends are paranormal investigators, his love interest having lost their arm and their only remaining sister to the main villain.

He originally found out he was an android by finding his own blueprints, hearing his Mom cry about it, and then cutting open his face (for his signature scar) and running off.

Running into Cavet’s husband, Nathair Liu. He stitches him up, know all about robotic n all that but he is.

also a secondary villain….

youtube

I hate the art in this video but its not my worst.

(Video was Vendy’s debut, too. tho Vendy was more Nate(logan/mind/princi/whatever)’s kid than Cavet’s)

Okay i’ve gotten off track.

Yeah at this point I was really loving Cavet, on FR, and wrote an entire long story between him and Skittles based on the events of Mechanical Fury.

This was where I got the idea for reincarnation.

I needed an explanation for why the same character was in two different universes, and it was perfect. In fact, it lead to an amazing way to end it.

But what is in control of all this? What does he see in the in between?

Well, Death was packaged with two other red herrings to keep people from thinking she was more important than them from the start, when in fact, she was. One of the plot points is that Cavet dies. He continues causing havoc, but nobody can figure out why or how. he doesn’t have a body.

Except he does. Death.

She was scary, but that was just her, she was a literal robot grim reaper. Nobody suspected she was spreading a virus to make robots susceptible to Augap’s control everywhere she went. Not even her. Cav liked hanging out in the AI scape, AKA the robot afterlife or virtual heaven.

What a fun way to make a real grim reaper.

I never really kept track of the transition from “cute robot char” to “cute real god char”

and i guess it never happened. Heart still thinks of her as she was, as cute little Litty. Except when she’s not. He gave form to the literal concept of DEATH. And became her friend. She still calls him Papa, sometimes.

In any case, Cavet’s doodles started being more and more revolving around his angst with the reincarnation.

in fact, i had a few character in the same boat as him, as I had made a couple dragons into MF characters as well.

I called them The Artifacts. It didn’t seem rounded out with only four, so I added a 5th. To give me more leeway in case I make a character i like enough to bring with them.

and turns out. I did.

I was sad enough about Cavet losing the love of his life, betraying him, creating a rift between them with his descent into obsession.

So he came with them.

They’re inseparable.

after a few lives of getting revenge on him for killing his sons and some adult humans and a BUNCH of robots, (not even counting his crimes in the vampire life he committed because he thought he lost Liu forever) Soul revealed to him something about Heart’s 6th life, which Mind doesn’t remember.

But he was there.

Long story short, he was Captain Shuggazoom. Yeah 10 lives of stuff he forgot before he started remembering his past lives. Messed Heart up.

ANYWAY BACK TO DEVELOPMENT!

I went around, making original characters to fill in Heart’s lives. I put him in a LOT of stories, but a notable one is My Old Ask Blog, @ask-musical-monsters

In which Heart is our lovable Tweedle, Bean.

He’s the bird. (this is also the blog where Willow was made!) (also a character i referenced when putting antauri on the baldi blog)

I still hadn’t abandoned MF so Bean has a lot of influence from Cavet.

I REALLY liked bean. It occured to me here-ish that Heart isn’t constrained by being my oc. He can be whoever he wants and nobody will care.

So of course I immediately declare him purple guy. No drawings of him, but I know I said he was purple guy at some point. Also at this point in time I started organizing the lives by number order, and making a simple arc for Heart and the others to follow.

1000 lives.

I made a brief description of heart’s 1st life, but made it purposefully very superfluous so i can change it whenever i want. All i know is he had albinism, and a desire to live forever.

That summer I got an amazing idea. I would take advantage of the Baldi’s basics trend with a ASK BLOG.

It was a mathematically calculated success. I did as many things as possible to generate more audience. MAIN thing being posting as often as possible, and being REALLY funny.

But knew I wasn’t going to like adding to the ask blog if i didn’t like the main character

I already knew he was going to be Baldi, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to characterize him either.

Turns out making him heart solved both of those problems. He’s always been Heart.

And Princi has ALWAYS been mind.

Even if they don’t always show their artifacts, they always were the same people as all these other things ive made. They have a DEEP connection to both each other and me.

At some point, I re-re-discovered SRMTHFG. The first few seconds I saw SK I knew he was Heart. It was so perfect it scared me.

HE EVEN DOES THE POSE!!!!! RED EYES!!!! AAAH!!!

I got an idea for a storyline based on formless and regret and monkeys… so.. uh

Anyway that kinda brings us to today, where the events of the blog have happened based on Heart things, and i can play around with Heart as much as I want.

And Willie’s next life? Well, 23 is my favorite number. It’ll be cool, but I’m not sure how. All I know is 23 wears a striped shirt, and is a vamp again.

In summary, Heart is the most important character I’ve ever made, and I will never come close to anybody as wonderful and as complicated as him. He’s the greatest formless, the best villains, the heroes, and one character i want to hold out for finding irl.

I love them even in scribbles i find on bus seats, in fanart of him, love her in songs i hear, in flowers i see in the wild.

Whoever they end up being, it’s safe to say I’ve fallen in love with Heart.

If you want me to describe his in universe story, I’ll need a seperate post.

Other Heart Resources:

The Spreadsheet

The Playlist

#heart id tag #long post #baldis basics #my singing monsters #mechanical fury #fnaf #the mind electric #srmthfg #hfytus #IM SORRY IF THIS ENDS UP IN THE SRMTHFG TAG SHOWOFF

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evalinkatrineberg · 4 years ago

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Harald

A/N: A quick fic about Evalin’s father, aka a compilation of ideas that came to me during long workouts when I let my mind wander. Read if you want to find out what’s in the attic.

A boy of nine years leaned over the railing of the ship deck, the breeze blowing his short-cropped blonde hair every which way as he watched the horizon with wide eyes. He was raised around these boats. They were just as much a part of his family as his parents were, and as his cousins and their parents as well. The ships were his father’s pride and joy, secondary only to the boy himself.

It was his father that approached him now, placing a large, calloused hand on the boy’s shoulder as he, too, scanned the horizon. Turning to the boy, he asked, “Harald, ka du se?” Harald, what do you see? His father had always spoken a very strange dialect of Swendish, with an accent thicker than the butter cookies the boy’s grandmother always made around Jul. The boy kind of enjoyed listening to his father speak, though. It was a nice reminder that while the once separate countries his father and mother had been born in were now united as one nation, the unique quirks of each region remained in tact so long as the people held on to them.

“Eg se havet.” I see the ocean. It was true. The ocean expanded onwards, seemingly endless as the sun reached the lowest point on the horizon it would touch for the next twenty-four hours. It didn’t set in the summer up here, in the town of his father’s birth, where they always spent their summers in the little cabin that felt more like home than the well-kept house in Stockholm ever did. The boy’s mother loved their home in the southern part of their country - it was where she was born, after all - but the boy much preferred his father’s hometown, and he had a sneaking suspicion that his mother’s preference lied there too, though she was far too stubborn to ever admit it.

The boy’s father shook his head. “Du se ikkje hardt nokka, Harald. Ka vi se på e fremtida.”

You’re not looking hard enough, Harald. What we’re looking at is the future.

The words had stuck with the boy ever since they had first been said to him that windy summer night.

The boy was now fourteen years old, watching his parents pace circles around each other from their living room to their kitchen and back again. Their house in Stockholm with the garden his mother tended to in the front yard and miniature models of old ships in glass bottles inside every room had never felt so small to him. He knew he should be asleep, and yet, there was no way he could let sleep take him with his parents being so loud. So he sat in the stairwell, just above the curve in the staircase, behind the wall, so that his parents wouldn't see him. Not that they seemed to be paying that much attention to anything besides themselves anyway, but the boy figured he was better safe than sorry.

“I won’t stand for it!” His father’s voice boomed through the house, his words echoing off the portraits on the walls and rattling the fancy wine glasses that sat atop the cabinets in the kitchen. Why he was yelling in English, the boy didn’t know. He knew for a fact that his father detested the English language, in part due to the strong northern Swendish accent that lingered in his father’s voice whenever he spoke it, and in part because his father blamed a lot of his work troubles on the actions of English-speaking countries. Maybe he was speaking English so the boy wouldn’t understand what he was saying, in case he was in an ear shot. That was a foolish decision, though. The boy had started learning English in school at the age of six, and in all honesty, spoke it better than both of his parents.

“What’s your plan then, Edvard?” His mother spoke in English as well, her voice tinged with worry and frustration. Her English was less accented than the boy’s father’s, but it was still clear she was not a native speaker. That was fine, though. They rarely needed to use English outside of work, and as long as they could get their point across, that was good enough.

“You’re not going to like it.” His father shook his head, averting his gaze downwards, unable to meet the boy’s mother’s eyes.

“Edvard?” The boy’s father’s name sounded more like a warning on his mother’s lips than anything else.

“We have to leave, Amalia.”

Whatever his mother had been holding, she dropped. The boy only knew because he heard the object shatter as it made contact with the ground, which prompted the boy to jerk backwards, bracing his arms on the carpeted step behind him.

“Fetta!” The boy winced as his mother’s Swendish curse reached his ears. There was a noise that sounded kind of like a cabinet being opened, followed by something scraping against the floor. His mother must have been cleaning up whatever she had dropped. The boy hoped it wasn’t something important to her. “What happened today?”

“I spoke to him, finally, about the issues I have with the way he is using the ships and technologies I invented and helped build,” his father began to explain. The boy was pretty sure the “him” that his father referred to was either a royal advisor, or the King of Swendway himself. His father was the head engineer of the Swendish Royal Navy, after all - a fact that made the boy’s chest swell with pride as he walked down the streets besides his father.

“I said my piece,” his father continued, “and was told my opinion was irrelevant.”

The boy could hear his mother take one heavy breath. “So they won’t stop, then.”

He was pretty sure his father was shaking his head, probably still looking down, but the boy was too afraid to lean forwards and check. “No, they won’t. So I told them that if I’m so irrelevant, then they can do this without me.”

Another sharp inhale from his mother. “You quit?”

“I took all of my plans and drawings from my office. When they arrive tomorrow, the only thing they will find on my desk is my note of resignation.”

“Oh, Edvard.” The despair in his mother’s voice prompted the boy to lean forwards, watching as his mother hung her head, her eyes scrunched close as if she could force her tears to stay inside. “What are we going to do now?”

“We move. We sell this house - we can keep the cabin in Tromsø, to visit over the summers, maybe - and move to another country. Maybe Illéa, maybe France - wherever you want to go, kjæreste.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” his mother managed to get out, her voice strangled. The boy began to sneak down from his hiding spot, the need to comfort his mother overwhelming any common sense that had held him rooted in his spot before. “Our family and friends are here. Harald’s school is here, his friends and cousins -”

“Don’t worry about me,” the boy reassured her. Both of his parents’ heads whipped around towards him then, their eyes wide. “I can finish my schooling anywhere. I can go to university in whichever country we move to. I’ll be okay.”

His father nodded once at the boy before turning to face the boy’s mother again. “I have enough money saved to retire, and we’ll have more once we sell the house. We can settle down somewhere - you can still teach chemistry there. It will all be okay.”

The boy turned his attention to his mother, who was nodding, clasping his father’s hands so tightly her knuckles were white. She looked up and took a shaky breath as she blinked a few times, and then responded, “Yeah, okay.” She still didn’t sound very convinced. “Illéa. We shall go to Illéa. I know somebody there who can help me get a job.”

A small smile found its place on his father’s face as he looked at the boy’s mother, his eyes shining with an emotion the boy didn’t quite recognize. “See? It will all work out.”

The boy was now a man of twenty-eight years old, conducting research for his PhD dissertation in a town called Winston-Salem in the province of Carolina. He had decided to determine if different genres of music stimulated human brain activity in different manners. Why he had chosen this, he wasn’t sure, but something in his gut had tugged him in this direction, and he had learned over the years to listen to that instinct. It hadn’t failed him yet, so why should it fail him now?

The door to the small room Harald had found himself in creaked open, and in walked a petite blonde girl. She didn’t look to be more than fifteen, but Harald knew there was no way someone so young would have been let into this building to begin with. He also couldn’t deny that the girl was quite pretty, despite or perhaps because of her young appearance. The fact that he was even thinking about how pleasing her appearance was concerned him, and he decided it was something he would have to reflect upon as soon as he got the chance. These thoughts of his were simply unacceptable. The problem was clear-cut and dry, with an obvious solution, just as he liked it.

The girl’s cheeks were red as she set the case she carried down next to the doorway, looking up at Harald as soon as the black, rectangular case made contact with the floor. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she began. She had the typical Carolina accent that Harald had become so accustomed to the past thirteen years that he had lived there, her words leaving her mouth in the breathless rush of someone who had run a few blocks to make it to her destination as quickly as possible.

Harald frowned. This girl shouldn’t be here to begin with, if she was as young as she looked. “No, I’m sorry, miss,” he replied, shaking his head. “Participants in this experiment must be at least eighteen years of age.”

Now it was the girl’s turn to frown, her eyebrows furrowing as she narrowed her eyes at Harald. It wasn’t quite a look that could kill, but a look that could seriously injure, certainly. “I think one of us must be mistaken.” She shook her head, a small smile forming on her face then. Her tone was light, like a breeze on a warm summer evening. “For strarters, I’m twenty-two years old, and I’m not here to participate in your experiment. I’m Holly Piper, the violinist you hired.” She extended her hand towards him then, which Harald stiffly shook as he looked into the girl’s - no, the woman’s - wide, brown eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”

It would make sense that she was the violinist, now that he thought about it. Her violin was probably what was in the box on the floor, then. “Ah, sorry for the confusion, ma’am.”

“No worries,” she responded with a laugh, waving her right hand through the air dismissively. “I’m flattered you thought I was so young, honestly!”

Over the next few days Harald had come to the conclusion that it was a damn good thing that Holly was in fact twenty-two, because he found himself becoming quite fond of the young woman. He began taking his lunch breaks with her, listening intently to her stories about her family, her life, how she had come to hear about his experiment, reveling in how she threw her head back whenever she laughed - the picture of carefree, youthful beauty. What most amazed him, however, was her music. Holly had a magical way of making her violin emit beautiful notes and chords that Harald had not previously known existed. He was infatuated with her. There was no denying it.

The last day of his trials, the rain was coming down in buckets, drenching everything that was brave enough to be outside for more than one second. It was typical of it to rain almost daily during the spring and summer in Carolina, as Harald had learned over the course of the past thirteen years, but this storm was different. Usually, the storms started late in the afternoon, and lasted only about an hour or so, before pittering out and dissipating before sunset. This storm, however, had started early in the morning, the first crack of thunder cutting through the humid air just as Holly entered the testing room one last time. By the time the two of them were leaving in the evening, the rain had not stopped, or even slowed.

Holly let out a shuddering breath as she took in the sight of the outdoors, squaring her shoulders as she came to a stop in the lobby. Turning to Harald, she plastered the fakest smile he had ever seen on her face, and said, “Can’t wait to walk home in this!”

He frowned. “You can’t walk home in this. It’s not safe.” His eyes darted towards the door, then to the car keys in his hand, and then back to her. “Let me drive you home?”

She shook her head, her cheeks turning red in the dim lighting of the lobby. “I couldn’t possibly accept,” she stammered out, “I-I live on the outskirts of town, and my parents -”

“It’s no bother,” he reassured her, cutting her off. “I can’t in good conscience let you walk home in this, so I’ll either wait it out here with you, or drive you home. Whichever you’re more comfortable with.” Perhaps he was a little too straightforward, or a little too blunt. Perhaps he was both. He had heard as much before. It was a cultural difference between Illéa and Swendway, for sure, and one of the things he missed the most about the country he had grown up in.

“Are you sure?” Holly’s gaze softened, and she bit the corner of her lip as she looked up at Harald.

He offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yes.”

The drive to her house was quite short, actually. She really didn’t live that far from where Harald himself lived at that point in time. Once he had made the decision to go to grad school in Winston-Salem, he had signed a lease on a small house on the edges of the town, along with some of his friends in his PhD program. They had chosen it based on price, rather than for its location, though that fact had never bothered Harald in the slightest. It was a house, sure, but it wasn’t his home.

He hadn’t felt at home in many years.

“This is it,” Holly said quietly as Harald’s car approached a small, white, one-story house with a driveway that contained no cars. He pulled into the empty driveway, frowning over at Holly as she began to unbuckle her seatbelt and reach for the door handle.

“Wait,” he began, his hesitation and reservations evident in his voice.

“Hmm?” Holly leaned back in her seat a bit, dropping her hand from the door handle as she turned to look at Harald over her shoulder.

It was now or never, he decided, feeling the same instinct in his gut that hadn’t failed him yet. “Will you go on a date with me?”

At that, she let out a wry laugh, slumping back in her seat entirely, her head rolling up towards the ceiling. “You know, I was really hoping you were more than just another Three with a savior complex.”

“Pardon?” Harald furrowed his brows as he narrowed his eyes at Holly. The numbers, and the Caste System of Illéa as a whole still confused him, if he was being honest. It all seemed so arbitrary to him. He had only really began to ponder its existence when he had been applying to colleges, and his guidance counselor had told him a list of programs he could apply to as a Three. The concept of his career options being limited by a number seemed rather outlandish, in his opinion. His parents never referred to themselves as Threes, even though their entire family was, apparently, so Harald had never adopted the label, either. Holly was a Five, if he remembered correctly. That was the caste of artists and musicians, so that would make sense. “I’m not super familiar with how the Caste System works, I’m afraid,” he explained. “Am I not allowed to ask you on a date?”

Holly looked back at him then, inclining her head slightly to the right. “I thought you had a hint of an accent.” Of course her ears - tuned for music, for the slightest shift in tone or register - had picked that up. “German?”

“Swendish,” he corrected.

She hummed thoughtfully, a small, close-lipped smile forming on her face. Maybe that was a good sign. All he hoped was that he hadn’t offended her too much. “That makes sense,” she admitted, looking him up and down once before grabbing the car door handle once again. “I’m free this Tuesday, if you want to pick me up around six o’clock.”

Without even waiting to hear his response, she hopped out of the car, closing the door softly behind her.

He picked her up at six o’clock that Tuesday.

A year later, they were married.

Harald was forty-seven years old now, and the father of five beautiful children. “Happy accidents,” is what Holly had started calling them. They hadn’t been trying for children, but they hadn’t exactly been taking preventative measures either. So, some kids had happened. It wasn’t that unexpected, at least not to him, and certainly not unwelcome, but after their youngest, he and Holly had agreed that enough was enough. There were only so many beds they could fit into their two-story home in Knoxville, where they now lived and worked.

Their oldest was a girl named Lydia, now twelve years old. She was the spitting image of Holly, both in looks and in personality. She had taken after her mother’s love of music - the only one of their kids to do so, thus far - and was entirely sweet smiles with a hint of mischief. Staying out of trouble wasn’t necessarily one of her talents, but all she did, even if it could grow irritating, was mildly endearing, in the way that everything a child does is kind of cute. Her carefree nature never failed to surprise Harald, who had been led to believe that the oldest child was supposed to be the most mature, and the most responsible. Lydia must have missed that memo.

Second was Gabriel, a rebel in and of his own right. At eleven years old, it was becoming clear that he was interested in the sciences, and yet every time Harald attempted to sit down with him and talk to him about what he was studying in school, the boy made a point to mention how whatever topic he was studying was superior to Harald’s own field of study. It was kind of entertaining, if he was being honest. Gabriel would go places in life, there was no doubt about that. With his strong will and sharp mind, he could be successful in anything he decided to study, which was a relief to Harald. As long as Gabriel - as all of his children - were happy, he was content.

Third was Sam, now nine years old, eighteen days away from turning ten. He liked to work with his hands. Harald often caught the boy tying twigs together with twine, or setting up obstacle courses for ping pong balls inside the house on snowy days when school was cancelled. He always offered to help Sam out, giving him guidance whenever needed, though the boy’s need for assistance was declining with each passing day. Sam was clearly an engineer like his grandfather, a fact that never failed to make Harald proud. He knew it made his own father proud as well, though the man would never admit that he played favorites with his grandchildren.

Similarly, Harald would never admit that he played favorites with his own children, but his fourth child, Evalin, did hold a special place in his heart. The girl was nothing short of a miracle in his eyes. Born very prematurely, the midwife at the hospital had informed Harald and Holly that the girl only had about a fifty percent chance of surviving. The sound that had left Holly’s mouth when that was said nearly broke Harald. Evalin had pulled through, somehow, and suffered very few of the potential developmental complications the hospital staff had warned them about. The only big one Harald had noticed thus far was that the girl’s eyesight was terrible. The glasses she already wore at the age of eight were some of the thickest he’d ever seen. She’d also taken an interest in Harald’s own field of study - biology - which he supposed could be part of the reason he might favor her, as well. She was a very bright girl with a thirst for knowledge, and already a hard worker. Plus, she absorbed information like a sponge. He very rarely had to tell her anything twice.

The couple’s last child was a boy named Randall, who was now four years old. After Evalin having been born so early, Holly’s pregnancy with Randall had been the most nerve wracking nine months of Harald’s life, but luckily both mother and child had made it through without any complications. Randall was a sweet boy, and very curious about the world around him, but also certainly the quietest of all of the children. Harald had to admit he had a soft spot for Randall as well. He wasn’t sure what the boy was going to be like when he got older, but Harald sure hoped Randall managed to remain just as sweet and innocent as he was right at that moment.

Even though the world around them wasn’t innocent.

That fact was the reason that Harald was holed up in his study on New Years Eve with his father. Harald’s parents had recently retired to the province of Sota, notorious for its large Swendish population, insisting that they felt more at home there than they had ever felt in Carolina. They still went back to Tromsø every summer, now bringing their grandchildren along with them. Harald’s father insisted that any grandkid of his would know how to sail and how to swim, and his mother simply wanted her grandkids to be exposed to cultures outside of the one they were growing up in, in order to expand their worldview. Both were valid points, in Harald’s opinion. His parents still came to Carolina for the winter holidays, though. He suspected it was in part to avoid the heavy snows common in Sota this time of the year, but it had come to his attention now that they might have ulterior motives in visiting this year.

Harald’s father slammed a large box down on Harald’s desk, the thump rattling everything else that sat atop the hardwood surface.

Harald simply raised his eyes at his father, looking up from the papers that were now covered by the box. “Ka e ho?” What is that?

“Prosjektene mine.” He cleared his throat. “Heimefra.” My projects. From home.

Harald had a gut feeling that his father didn’t mean Sota. Pushing his chair back, he rose to his feet and began examining the box, feeling around the edges. If these were his father’s designs from all those years ago, then they were invaluable, especially if they fell into the hands of influential people. “Korfor?” Why?

“They are safer with you,” his father explained, switching to English, speaking in a low voice. “Less likely to be looked for here, less likely to be found here.”

Harald could only nod, eyeing the box warily as the wheels in his mind began turning in an attempt to figure out where to best keep the box. His study wasn’t ideal - the kids barged in too often, especially in the winter, when snowy weather sometimes kept them home from school. The bedroom he shared with Holly wouldn’t work either. Knowing Holly, she’d likely stay awake the whole night every night that that box was in their room, which wouldn’t end happily for any parties involved. That left him with only a few options.

“Loftet,” he decided finally, pointing one finger upwards towards the ceiling of his house. The attic. It was an almost perfect spot. Sure, the box wouldn’t exactly be hidden, but nobody could get into the attic unnoticed. It was only accessible by a door in the ceiling of the upstairs hallway that had to be pulled down. Attached to the other side of the door was a ladder, that also had to be pulled down, in order for someone to climb into the attic. The entire system was made of wood that creaked like mad, which would give away any intruders or snooping children before they even got close to the box itself.

Harald’s father nodded as another voice floated up the stairs. Lydia, calling for them to come down, lest they miss the countdown into the new year. With a quick gesture towards the door, and a mental note to put the box in the attic as soon as the countdown was over, Harald and his father exited the study, making their way towards the stairs. A momentary glance over the banister revealed all five of his children looking up at him expectantly, little Randall situated on his mother’s hip, Lydia and Evalin holding hands and practically bouncing with excitement, Gabriel flicking Sam’s head whenever he thought their mother wasn’t looking. For them, Harald would do anything, no matter whether or not keeping this box in his attic sat right with him.

Clutching the banister reminded him of a different railing he had once held, the wind ruffling his hair, the small of the sea filling the air around him.

What we’re looking at is the future.

What a bright future that was.

“Proctor knows what’s in the attic.”

Those were the last words Evalin had said to him before she had left, whisked off to live out her childhood dream of meeting and falling in love with the prince. Harald would never describe his daughter as silly, but the entire situation was kind of fantastical, he had to admit. Yet, he had spent the majority of his life succeeding in part due to an inexplicable gut instinct that never failed to tug him down the right path, and he was willing to bet that was the same feeling Evalin had felt when Lydia had read out the application to her when it had arrived in the mail.

Of all the events Harald had predicted in the weeks leading up to Evalin’s departure, one of his colleagues threatening him or his family had not been on the list. Then again, it was Janine Proctor. The woman was ruthless, even by Harald’s standards, which was noted by other students. Their reviews of her almost made him pity her, and he had read the RateMyProfessor reviews about himself. So maybe he should have seen this coming. That didn’t change the fact that Proctor shouldn’t have involved his children in any problem she herself had with him.

Thus he found himself walking into her laboratory the next morning, not having even put his bag down in his own office yet. “Janine,” he said by way of greeting, staring at his colleague’s back as she herself stared at the screen of her computer.

She spun around, a smile dripping in a sickly sweet combination of poison and honey filling her face as she realized who was in her lab. “Harald!” The woman leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs and clasping her hands on her lap. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Evalin told me what you said to her.” There was no point in wasting time with niceties. He had come here to do one thing, and one thing only, and that was to say his piece.

“Ah, I see.” Her smile deepened as she pushed her chair over towards her desk, leaning her elbows on it once she reached it. Placing her head in her hands, she continued, “I don’t suppose you’ve come to me to confess the truth of your father’s complicated past, then.”

Who did this woman think she was? It had mystified him how Evalin had always spoken so highly of her, but then again, the younger of his two daughters could befriend a brick wall if she tried hard enough. He clenched his jaw, staring down at the woman in front of him. Janine Proctor. Renowned researcher, tenured professor, and well respected by any biologist worth their weight in pennies. He had other words he could use to describe her, but he decided it was best to refrain from doing so.

“I came to tell you that if you ever attempt to bring my family into the middle of any of your schemes again, I will not rest until you are brought to justice.” Having made his point, he turned on his heel, walking towards the door.

His hand had barely gripped the door handle when he heard a laugh float through the air behind him. “I look forward to seeing your restless spirit wander these halls in the future then, Harald.”

“She looks absolutely radiant,” Holly sighed as a picture of Evalin crossed the screen.

She did, Harald had to admit. Her hair was shining, the gold tones catching in the light, reminding him of how the waves of the ocean used to shimmer in the sunset. There was a broad smile on her face, as if she was laughing at something. She had to be happy then. That was good. That was all Harald could ask for - had hoped for - for any of his children.

“She’d make a beautiful queen,” Holly continued, a dreamy expression on her face as she stared at the television.

“She would,” Lydia agreed, pointing a finger at the prince as his picture floated across the screen. “It’s too bad he’s a dick.”

“Lydia!” Holly admonished, turning to glare at her.

Harald had heard the story of his daughter’s first date with the prince from Lydia, secondhand. He really hoped his older daughter had embellished some of the details she had shared, as she was prone to do, but he had to admit, he didn’t have high hopes for the quality of this prince’s personality. Something about him had always looked empty, or off, to Harald. Then again, he had never actually met the man, so who was he to make a snap judgement like that? It was nothing more than a gut reaction.

“It’s true, mother,” Lydia retorted, rolling her eyes and grabbing a few pieces of popcorn before fixing Holly with another glare.

Holly just shook her head. “Your sister still shouldn’t have been so short with him. The man likely leads a high-stress life. She has to understand that.”

“Oh, come on!” At Lydia’s outburst, Harald’s three sons squirmed on the couch, looking between the two women in the house. Harald was inclined to follow suit in their reaction. He loved his wife and oldest daughter dearly, but it was kind of ironic that they were arguing about Evalin’s supposedly short temper, to say the least. “You cannot tell me that if Father had said the same things to you that Arin said to Evalin, that you wouldn’t have gotten snippy with him!”

“She has a point there,” Harald had to admit, trying to break the staring contest now occurring between his daughter and his wife. “You got snippy with me when all I did was ask you out.”

Lydia’s eyebrows shot up so quickly that Harald almost thought they would fly right off her face. Both she and Holly turned to look at him now, Lydia triumphant, head held high, and Holly angry, eyes narrowed. “I would hardly say I was snippy,” the latter argued.

“You told me I had a savior complex,” Harald recalled, chuckling at the memory. That spunk was one of his favorite things about his wife. He was of the opinion that she should be proud that their daughters had inherited it.

Holly only sighed while Lydia laughed, both turning back to the television. Even with them done bickering, it still felt like there was something fundamental missing from their home. The now empty spot where Evalin usually sat on the couch was impossible not to notice, eating up the light that usually surrounded it like a black hole. Harald constantly had to remind himself that his younger daughter was doing great things, doing what she felt she had to, and that she was tough. She’d be okay. She was looking at the future.

Or perhaps she was the future.

What a beautiful future that would be.

#selectionoc

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rose-demica · 5 years ago

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Somethings Changing:

Heya Everyone, this is another one-shot that happens before the actual story begins, but I wanted to share this one next, give you an insight into Iris and Clints relationship. I think I'll share the first chapter of The Rise of Thanos next, but don't hold me to that.

The main idea for the story has 4 separate versions! From different periods of writing. I will tag them all so you know which is which, and follow whichever ones you want.

2013-2013 Sister Agents. 2014- 2015 The Fall of Loki 2016- NOW The Rise of Thanos (Most stuff fits in here!) Alternate Universe stuff/ aka stuff that clashes with The Rise of Thanos, but I worked hard on, and want to keep anyway.

I’ll loop all the same timeline ones together in a series, although they don’t have to be read that way.

This one-shot can belong to any of the timelines, although it was originally written to tie in with The Fall of Loki.

It’s also on A03 if that’s your prefered reading site.

Anyway! On with the story:

Iris hears something weird happening in her body, and it's going to change her and Clint's lives forever.

The call came, at the most inappropriate time as always - Iris answering her phone while shrugging her shirt back on, pinning the phone between her shoulder and head as she fumbled slightly with the buttons, leaving one hand on her stomach once it was done.

"Agent Iris," she answered. She held up a finger to the man in his late 50’s who approached, telling him to remain silent while she was on the phone. The doctor nodded once, more than happy to keep what he had to say between just them.

"Got an 0-8-4 in New Mexico. Coulson's on the ground, wants you in on it. Says it's your kind of thing." Agent Maria Hill always cut straight to the chase, knowing exactly how to entice the other agent into taking a mission on her supposed ‘time off’. She only had a few days left of leave anyway.

"New Mexico? I'm in the area. I'm sure I can stop by," Iris replied. She ended the call without waiting for any more information, and turned to face her doctor, silently praying to gods she didn’t believe in that he would be able to tell her she was wrong.

"They all came back negative, every single test. If you are pregnant, as you assume, it is simply far too early for us to tell." He flipped through the pages on his clipboard as he spoke, avoiding her gaze with years of practised ease. There was more to say, clearly more than he was willing to.

"I can hear something growing inside me Doc, if we've eliminated everything else..." Iris' hand rested on her still flat stomach, listening to the strange sounds coming from within her own body. So quiet that the doctor’s high tech equipment couldn’t pick it up. That no tests they did could confirm or deny.

"Then, we shall assume you are correct, as always. You'll need to pay close attention as it grows, considering exactly who you are, and what you and your partner have both been through in your line of work. Come back the instant anything sounds abnormal, you know where I am." The doctor subtly indicated that she was free to go, turning towards the side door that led to his own personal office.

"Doc?" Iris interjected, her voice small. The doctor hesitated, looking back at his patient.

"If I keep it, what are my chances of carrying it to full term?" Iris avoided his gaze, it was the topic neither of them wanted to bring up. Neither wanted to discuss nor consider. The fact that they didn’t know if she was human, if her years of Shield service had done something to her.

"You did some research." He stated calmly, drawing her gaze back to him.

"I've been your doctor since you arrived on Shield's doorstep. We both know you have no real intention of aborting that child. As for carrying it to full term, only time will tell, we have no idea where you are from, what your body can and can't handle, but you know I will do whatever I can to keep you both safe. Now go on back to your man. I'm sure he's worried sick about you." A look of guilt flashed across Iris' face.

"I didn't tell him, I was certain I was right, and I couldn't have him worrying." Iris started to fidget, wringing her hands together nervously. She had no idea how her partner was going to take the news of what she had to say.

"You have nothing to worry about Iris, he loves you far too much. I'm sure he will welcome the news." The doctor left the room, leaving his patient to fret over her lover's reaction.

Iris was moving on autopilot, barely realising she was putting one foot in front of the other. Slow movements, as she pulled out her keys, and opened the door to one of the several ‘safe houses’ she shared with Clint. This one was a beautiful farmhouse, out deep in the countryside, hidden where no car could ever travel. A place they both felt safe and comfortable. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the second Quinjet, taking the spot next to her own.

"Hey Ri!" A familiar male voice called out. Iris froze, he wasn't supposed to be back from his mission yet, let alone be standing in front of her, wearing only his low-slung, black-denim jeans. Water droplets ran down his chest, dripping from his hair and the towel in his hand.

"Finished up early, Hill said Coulson wanted us on the 0-8-4 case. Figured we may as well head down together?" He kept speaking, pretending to be oblivious to her closed body language, incorrectly assuming her reactions were caused by his half-naked state.

"Sounds good!" Iris managed to choke out, turning her back on him and taking a few calming breaths. She instinctively found herself listening for any sign that Clint was injured. She wasn’t prepared for this yet, she had no idea how to tell him, she still had to figure out how to tell herself.

"Ri? What's wrong?" Clint's arms folded around her waist, his lips pressing into the top of her head as he drew her back into his chest. Iris allowed herself the comfort, turning into his safe grasp as sobs started to rack her frame. Clint held her closer, soothing her as she broke down.

"Ri?" He whispered, backing up until he hit the wall, sliding them both down to the ground. He continued to cradle her close, confused as to why she was so upset, concerned that something had happened to her while he was away. His hand ran soothingly through her hair, as she tucked her head into his shoulder, unable to stop the sobs that were tearing her apart, tears falling from her eyes.

“Ri, sweetheart, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?” Clint whispered as the sobs subsided somewhat, giving her the chance to be heard.

“You’ll hate me.” She replied, her voice barely a raspy murmur against his skin, sore from the heartbreaking sobs. Barely recognizing the term of endearment that her lover used, he was not normally one to use them.

“I could never hate you. Ri, I love you.” Clint tightened his hold ever so slightly, kissing every part of her he could reach. “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he whispered, cradling her head as he tugged it gently from his neck, before he rested his forehead against hers, waiting patiently until she looked up at him. “Now, what’s wrong?” he asked, using his thumb to wipe the tears from her eyes.

Iris drew in a deep breath. ��I just got back from the Doctors, they can’t confirm anything, but they can deny a whole lot more.”

Clint pulled back slightly, with a confused frown upon his face. “Ri?” She looked away from him.

“I’m pregnant Barton. You’re gonna be a dad.” Iris whispered, looking back to him in time to see his eyes widen in shock.

“Pregnant?” He stammered, his eyes flicking down to her stomach.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s too soon for my doctor to confirm it, but I can hear it growing, and the Doctor says I’m probably right, because I normally am, and I, I can hear it Clint. I can hear my body changing to accommodate this thing, and I'm freaking out. I'm terrified you won't want to stay with me. We've never even talked about kids, because we never thought it was a possibility, and now it's all too real. But I don't think I could give it up, or abort it, and we don't even know if I can carry it to full term. It's only been a week, and oh dear god. There's so much that could go wrong, and now I'm just rambling again!"

Clint's lips folded over Iris' own, ending her terrified ranting. Iris responded in turn kissing him back as she fought back tears. "We're gonna have a kid?" He asked again, pulling back slightly. Iris nodded, not trusting herself to speak. A smile illuminated his face

"Ri, that's amazing! I've never really thought about having kids. The fact that it was never an option didn't bother me at all. I was scared that I would just turn out like my father - but with you, I'm also sure you would never let that happen! Wow, I can't believe it…" his arms tightened around her, hugging her close.

"Wait, if you can hear a small child forming inside you a week after..." Clint's eyes widened, the secondary facts of the revelation starting to register.

"Then yes, I can hear the muscle regrowing under the stitches and bandages on your thigh," Iris cut him off with a small smile, tucking her face into his neck again. “You should know that.” Clint let loose a low chuckle in response.

"Your phone, Barton." Iris whispered, seconds before his SHIELD issued phone started to ring.

"Barton," Clint answered, rolling his eyes. He tucked Iris in closer to his chest, adjusting himself so they both sat more comfortably.

"Agent Barton, where are you? Hill said you'd be here by now," Coulson's voice came through the line.

"Running a bit late sir. Family emergency" Clint replied, glancing down at Iris fondly.

"Barton, we both know you don't have a family." Coulson spoke softly, concerned.

"No offence sir, but it would seem I do now." He paused for a moment. "I'll pick up Iris on my way down, we will be there ASAP," Clint chuckled, ending the call before Coulson had a chance to reply.

"Baby?" Iris whispered. Clint hummed softly in response."I wanna keep this between us, as our little miracle for a little while," Iris continued.

"Three months right? That's the period of most risk. Then you'll start showing. That's when we either have to come clean to everyone or vanish off the face of the earth." Clint knew the risk that came with being involved with her. They’d kept their relationship under wraps for so long now, scared of what her fathers would do if they found out.

"We come clean," Iris stated. "Father won't tear us apart if a child involved." Iris couldn’t leave her family behind, couldn’t leave her life behind. She could only hope that Fury and Coulson wouldn’t tear her new family apart.

"Get some rest Ri. I'll get us to New Mexico." Clint assured her. Iris felt herself nodding off, safe in his arms. She barely noticed it when he stood up, balancing her carefully in his arms. She was stirred slightly by a soft male whisper, followed by lips pressing against her stomach.

"Hmm?" She opened one eye to look at Clint, who appeared slightly nervous.

"Just, trying to wrap my head around it. Go back to sleep sweetheart," Clint murmured. Iris nodded, closing her eyes as he adjusted his grip and made his way towards the Quinjet with her.

"I love you Ri." He whispered. Those last, affectionate words reverberated as she welcomed sleep's numbing embrace.

#Clint Barton #clint barton x ofc #Iris Coulson Fury #The Rise of Thanos #The Fall of Loki #Sister Agents #Clint x Iris #Avengers #avengers fanfiction #my writing #baby Barton Time

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trishmishtree · 6 years ago

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live tumbling my reaction to ml season 2 episode ???

aka The Return of Fuckboy Adrien Frozer

This is a week late because I’ve been busy. idk what the actual episode number is, but this release order is not cutting it. I’ll have to make another recommended list some time.

Spoilers and salt below. Warning: there’s a lot of salt.

Did he really need to use Cataclysm when they were just chasing a runaway hang glider? They weren’t even fighting an akuma!

Nope, this can’t be real. Adrien must be daydreaming. The love rectangle was the reason this show got attention in the first place. There’s no way they’d give up the game this soon.

Well, this came out of nowhere. Now I get the feeling Galciator is supposed to be later in the season...

What’s Kagami doing in the boys’ locker room? (They do separate locker rooms, right? Or do they change elsewhere and those are their normal school lockers? Does Kagami even go to College Francoise Dupont?)

It’s been a really long time since I watched Riposte, but...is Kagami’s voice different? I thought I was supposed to be deeper. Or maybe I’m just getting the French and English dubs mixed up.

“I’m Plagg, so very nice to EAT you” /groan

Oh look, Gorilla isn’t fired after all

Ok, so obviously he’s talking about Kagami, but since when do you study together? And why the fuck is it not even mentioned, let alone shown on screen? No, wait, don’t tell me. It’s because the writers are lazy as fuck and think that keeping the details vague somehow makes the show clever

^Tikki is all of us

I don’t know, I actually thought Marinette handled it pretty well, considering there was no way she could have seen that coming. What was she supposed to do? If she told Adrien how she felt, then he’d reject her. If she manipulated him into thinking Kagami’s not that great, or gave him a shitty date idea that backfired, that would way too inconsistent with the kind of person Mari is. Offering to third-wheel on his date as moral support was kind of dumb, but she literally had milliseconds to think about what to say after he dropped that bombshell on her.

Wtf was Juleka’s voice just there?

Is Juleka going to offer to set Marinette up on a fake date with Luka, to give her an excuse not to show up at the rink?

(Where are they anyway? This setting doesn’t look familiar at all.)

Never mind, it looks like they’re on Anarka’s ship.

Oh great, it’s Corny McCheeseface

His lines are so cringey, omg

.......Marinette, what are you planning here?

Weird how no one has been akumatized yet. You’d think Adrien would have gotten it this time, since Ladybug rejected him. Or Marinette, since she seemed so down just now. It’s not like people haven’t been akumatized for much less.

Philippe’s English voice is awful

Does either of them even know how to skate? I get the feeling Kagami’s going to have to be the one helping Adrien around.

Yep. Of course, she’s perfect at this too.

So Luka is too busy with music (does this guy even go to school, or did he drop out of Lycee?), Marinette is too busy being Ladybug, Kagami doesn’t take skating seriously even though she’s ~practically perfect~, and...let me guess, Adrien says no because he can’t let his dad know he’s here?

idk Philippe, maybe you should introduce yourself before you shove your lessons in people’s faces? Pretty sure letting people know you’re a famous skater would be a better selling point than “I’LL MAKE YOU A STAR”

Never mind, Kagami answered for him. (To be fair, he was being pushy and obnoxious, so I don’t blame her for brushing him off)

I know Gabriel can sense “negative emotions,” but can he specifically sense “my ice rink is getting shut down because Adrien Agreste won’t sign up for my class” vibes? And if so, wouldn’t Gabriel be able to know where Adrien whenever he’s out, as long as someone sees and recognizes him?

Is Plagg serious here? He KNOWS who Marinette is! Or did this happen before Dark Owl and Sandboy?

“All of Paris will be your ice kingdom”....so he’s Elsa now?

Side note: I already know they get outfit changes for this episode, so...does Marinette keep her magic macarons with her at all times, or is she going to have to run home to get them?

Never mind, they were in her backpack. (Isn’t that dangerous though? What if they fell out of her bag and someone ate them thinking they were regular macarons? Do they affect humans differently?)

Convenient how she saw the ice and immediately thought to transform, even though she probably only has a limited supply of “magicarons” and will have to make a run to Master Fu’s to restock if she uses any up. If she had those magicarons in season 1, would she have been this quick to use them on Stormy Weather/Climatika too?

It’s almost like the writers don’t give a shit

Stalactikki? Do they have to announce her new name every time, like she’s a fucking pokemon?

What’s the thing on the front of her supersuit that looks like her yoyo but isn’t? Why give her a tiara? Other than the fur, is there any part of this outfit change that has any practical purpose?

Convenient how Adrien just happens to have the magic cheese on him. Convenient how Plagg hasn’t eaten them all, too.

Why is he acting like such an asshole now? He seemed happy to ask Kagami out, and he seemed fine at the rink. Why is the writing for this show so inconsistent?

Thomas, you can’t insist on Twitter that Felix got scrapped because his trope has been done to death and Adrien is much better because he’s a perfect gentleman, while at the same time making him act like this out of nowhere in the name of giving him flaws to make him more ~realistic~

Maybe he’s mad at her for constantly replacing him with other Miraculous wielders? That would make more sense, since she’s done it like 4 times now. Plus, it would be more justified than passive-aggressively (passive-Agreste-ively?) whining about how nice guys finish last when he seemed fine just 20 minutes ago.

So...Frozer just shoots icicles out of his hands and feet?

Well, that got resolved fast. Not that Frozer was all that dangerous a villain.

I’m noticing a theme here: Any time the episode tries to fit in more “plot,” the akuma battle loses out because of timing issues. This one is most obvious because the akumatization happened SO LATE in the episode since they were too busy drawing out Love Square drama.

It’s nice of Adrien to advertise Philippe’s class online, but what is his father going to say when he gets home?

New headacanon: Kagami figured out in Riposte that Marinette is Ladybug, but she’s been keeping it from Adrien because she can see those two are hopeless.

Of course nothing changes in the end. Wouldn’t want the writers to hurt themselves trying to keep things consistent when they’re more interested in ripping off fanon after all.

4/10 The villain was lame and the writing sucked

While I despise love triangles, most of my problems with this episode actually stem from the inconsistent characterization. This episode brought us the return of Fuckboy Adrien, as well as the long-promised return of Kagami and Luka. But if Thomas was trying to convince us that Kagami and Luka were going to be deeper characters than just secondary love interests, I don’t think he could have failed more epically. Making Kagami way too cool for Adrien in addition to a secret Adrienette shipper does not make her the more compelling love interest Thomas tried to sell her as. Having Luka be nice to Marinette--who is his friend AND his little sister’s friend--just makes him a decent human being, it doesn’t give him any personality to contrast with Adrien. It just shows that the creators/writers can’t commit to an idea. It’s like “we want to shake things up a little, so let’s bring in homewreckers...but we don’t want people to hate us, so let’s make the twist that they’re secret Adrienette shippers instead!” They chose the safest route that they could chicken out of at the end.

#miraculous ladybug #ml salt #frozer #ml spoilers #miraculous spoilers #at this point the show isn't even *bad*#it's just...mediocre

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raendown · 6 years ago

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All very good and very valid questions. What a delightful story to write.

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 4817 Summary:We all want someone who will stop and listen to us, however we decide to make ourselves heard. (aka that story where Tobirama is mute and it changes some things but not others)

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Speaking From The Heart

Mito’s first impression of Tobirama was that of a polite man with proper manners. He was the only other person besides herself present at the meeting who did not speak over the crowd of voices at any time. In fact, he remained perfectly silent for the entire duration, serenely perched next to his brother and sipping his tea with nothing but a few twitches of his brows to hint at his thoughts. At the time and with no information on either of their personalities Mito wondered why she was being given as a bride to the other, louder sibling instead of such an exemplary gentleman.

Closer to the end of the meeting she saw Tobirama emerge from his shell at last, placing one hand on his brother’s shoulder to gain his attention and then using both to make shapes in the air. Mito was delighted. She waited only long enough for Hashirama to make his reply before leaning across the table to capture Tobirama’s attention for herself.

“You speak sign language! My mother lost her hearing shortly after I was born; I learned both silent and spoken language as I grew.” She offered him a polite smile, thrilled when he lifted his hands to reply.

It only made sense, she thought. The room around them was quite loud and clearly he wished to practice – although he didn’t seem to need it. His sign language was as flawless as her own. Still, she appreciated having someone to speak to like this other than her mother or his own siblings. It was pleasant to share that part of herself with someone outside the family and she very seriously began to wonder if her father might consider changing a few things in the alliance contract they were drawing up to merge her people with the Senju.

Tobirama was able to keep her entertained with some very intelligent silent conversation until the Senju delegation and her father’s counsel finally talked themselves out. She might have paid attention if they were discussing something more interesting than the precise amounts of sea food and wood to be traded between their clans each year but as that was the only thing left on today’s agenda she felt no guilt in losing herself among the challenge of stretching her secondary vocabulary to its limits, having discovered that her conversation partner also enjoyed fūinjutsu.

More and more she was beginning to think she should be marrying this man rather than the one to whom her hand had been initially offered.

Over the next couple of days she sought Tobirama’s company as often as she could. It didn’t occur to her as strange that he continued to communicate only in sign language but she also didn’t see him speaking with anyone other than his own sibling. From what she gathered in their conversations he wasn’t a fan of most people and preferred to keep to himself. If things had gone on in this manner for much longer it was very likely she might have embarrassed herself terribly by asking for things he was not willing to give and in the process insulting her future husband-to-be.

The first thing which tipped her off that her growing fantasies of a perfectly polite marriage were unattainable was the moment she saw Tobirama giving a very discreet once-over to her very male cousin. Rather than seem at all ashamed of his actions, when he noticed her watching he lifted one eyebrow and both hands.

Is he single? He asked her in sign language. Mito blinked.

Yes.

Does he speak like we do?

No, very few in Uzushio do.

The disappointment on his face was palpable but cleared quickly, pragmatic even in being denied.

You are the second heir of your clan, are you not? Such tastes are…frowned upon for heirs among my people. She allowed her face to show her hesitance for the question but he waved such an impolite question aside in favor of pinching his expression at the members of his own clan.

My inability to speak makes my position as the second-born rather shaky anyway. Sexual preferences won’t matter until they decide whether I can lead in this condition or not.

Although she managed to stop herself from showing it, Mito very nearly fell out of her seat with embarrassed shock. It hadn’t even occurred to her that he was unable to speak. Or that he might not be sexually attracted to members of her gender.

It seemed she had many things to learn about Tobirama and the Senju clan as a whole before she continued to make assumptions about any of them.

It didn’t occur to Izuna until long after the fact that Tobirama had never once spoken during their clashes, no war cries or trash talk, not even an involuntary exclamation of pain on the rare occasion he was bloodied more than a simple scratch. Izuna could probably be forgiven for not adding these things together in his mind since most of his attention was usually focused on protecting his clan’s future and staying alive himself.

On the other hand, he thought it might be less forgivable that it took him a couple of weeks after peace had been made to figure things out.

Natural suspicion and a lifetime of seeing the Senju as his enemies led Izuna to assuming the worst possible thing when he was finally present for Tobirama’s attempts at communicating with others. During the first few peace talks his counterpart had remained perfectly silent, his face barely moving from an impassive expression, and Izuna had assumed the other man was simply making a silent assessment of his new tentative allies – either that or holding his temper by refusing to speak. Their clans had already met several times and Tobirama was always there sitting next to his brother yet he always remained silent. Even stranger was how no one from his own clan seemed interested in asking the opinion of a rumored genius, their supposed second heir.

It wasn’t until the signing of the final peace treaty between them that Izuna finally saw him frown and turn to his brother, both hands lifting to make shapes in the air before him. Clearly the first thought on every Uchiha’s mind was that he was forming hand signs.

The commotion of every Uchiha present leaping to the defensive at once caused all of the Senju to react in turn, the entire clearing bristling with weapons in the span on a few seconds.

“What is the meaning of this?” Hashirama’s wife demanded; Mito, he thought was her name.

“Ask him,” Izuna spat, nodding his head towards Tobirama and irritated when all he received was a tilted head and a frown. “Not even going to defend yourself? They’re handing you the pen to sign for peace and you’re weaving signs for an attack!”

“Oooooh. I think I see what happened.” Without warning Hashirama burst in to booming laughter, holding his belly as one might upon hearing a particularly good joke.

Tobirama glared his sibling down, reaching over to shove him sideways, but said nothing still.

“Do tell,” Madara snarled, already inching sideways to put himself between Izuna and the Senju. No one had lowered their weapons yet and he clearly did not intend to be the first. “We all saw his hands, Hashirama. Don’t try and deny that he was doing something. Explain or it all ends here and you lose this one chance for our families to live in peace.”

“He wasn’t weaving signs, he was just talking!”

“I just said that we saw his hands!”

“That’s how he talks, dumb ass,” one of the Senju women spoke up, the really attractive one with the big muscles. Izuna regretted that he’d never had a chance to face her on the field.

Any fantasies about muscly arms he might have slipped in to, however, were immediately dispelled as her words sunk in. “He what now? Talks with his hands?”

“Well duh, he’s mute.” The woman shrugged, Tobirama standing at her side with no visible reaction on his face beyond a mild wariness. “He was born that way so he’s learned to talk with his hands. It’s called sign language. Which I’m sure you would know if you weren’t an uneducated dog.”

“Fuck you, Senju!”

“I’d really rather you didn’t. I don’t go in for whiny bitches.”

“Oi!”

Amidst the flailing and the yelling which followed after, Tobirama’s lack of speech sort of fell to the wayside. Only once he had been forcibly removed from the meeting and marched back home by his exasperated older brother did the situation finally sink in. Izuna stood in the middle of his bedroom and stared blankly at one of the walls, muttering to himself as he went through all the battles his Sharingan had memorized and confirmed that Tobirama hadn’t made so much as a sound in any of them.

Then he spent the next hour desperately trying to deny that having an explanation for the creepy silence made Tobirama just a little more human in his eyes.

Shishou made weird faces at sensei sometimes. Kagami had noticed it almost as soon as he started training with Tobirama, though he’d never been stupid enough to mention anything about it.

Usually it didn’t interfere with their training so it wasn’t like he cared much either but sometimes sensei would stop sparring to look over at shishou with a deep frown and a questioning expression, fingers twitching at his sides with the desire to say something even though he knew that he couldn’t. Sensei spoke with his hands instead of his voice and there weren’t a lot of people outside of his own family who understood what he was trying to say.

Kagami thought if there were more people in his own clan who were willing to just spend a little time around his teacher then they would want to get to know him too and, really, it would be all too easy for anyone of the Uchiha blood line. He himself had to learn sensei’s hand language the hard way but for someone who had already activated their Sharingan it would be the work of a couple hours to memorize all the hand signs. Kagami couldn’t decide if his clan head was too proud or just too much of a complicated grown up to think of such a simple solution. And he wasn’t about to suggest it just in case he got yelled at.

Shishou was kind of famous for his yelling.

The weird look was back today but at least shishou was sitting out of the way at the edge of the clearing, his arms crossed as he sat on the ground with his back against a tree, eyes trained on their ragtag group. Sensei had a lot of people from several clans who wanted to train with him but he only accepted the students who were willing to learn his language. They had to be patient enough to stop and listen when he needed them to as well; that quality had weeded out several other students who no longer came for sparring practice.

It was kind of odd to be so quiet while they fought but sensei liked to point out that it was good for them to work on making their movements as silent as possible. He said it would help them become better shinobi.

“Pssst. Kagami.” He looked up to find Hiruzen waving at him. Before answering he took a moment to peek over and make sure that sensei wasn’t watching before shrugging his shoulders questioningly. “Why does Madara-sama keep coming back to stare at sensei?”

“I dunno,” he whispered back.

“Do you think it bothers him?”

“I dunno,” he repeated. “But sensei hasn’t told him to go away yet.”

Hiruzen rolled his eyes. “Duh, because he can’t.”

Rather than allow his friend to see how stupid that had made him feel, Kagami straightened his back at the last second as their teacher turned to eye the both of them suspiciously. Upon seeing Hiruzen bent over to whisper at someone else while they were meant to be concentrating on their kata he leveled the boy with a narrow eyed look of disappointment.

If you have questions I am the one who is supposed to instruct you, not your fellow students, he signed. Hiruzen gulped and nodded frantically.

“Sorry. I was just wondering why Madara-sama keeps staring at you.” Hiruzen ducked his head in shame but Kagami, who had miraculously escaped a watery death this time, caught the faint look of frustration on sensei’s face.

He has yet to tell me why and I refuse to play broken telephone with a man who cannot take the initiative to try and open communication himself. Now get back to your kata.

Kagami let his weight rest on one foot and very carefully raised the other until it hovered well above his head, his eyes never leaving their teacher. It was interesting, he thought, that sensei hadn’t asked anyone to tell shishou to go away yet. Even with his silent mode of communication he had never hesitated to send someone packing before, although he frequently had to do so using someone else’s voice. It was almost as if he didn’t want shishou to go away.

Which was ridiculous. All he did was stand there and make that same weird expression all the time.

Watching Madara struggle through the task he had assigned himself was both an exercise in boredom and probably the sweetest thing Hashirama had ever seen. He himself had mastered sign language as a child, as soon as their small family understood that Tobirama would never speak, and he simply wasn’t suited for helping someone else learn something that he already knew so well. Yet he forced himself to be patient and converse with Madara as slowly as the other man needed because he’d never seen a more romantic gesture than the one his friend was quietly working at.

It honestly surprised him that Madara was capable of such romance but he hadn’t seen fit to say so. He wasn’t that stupid.

“Slow down! I only caught half of what you just said!” His guest slumped over the kotatsu and glared at him, his massive hair in wild disarray from all the times he had pulled his fingers through it in frustration.

“But you know all of these signs,” Hashirama pointed out. Madara glared harder.

“My brain knows them separately, yes, but it’s not an instinctive for me as it is for you. I have to stop and think about which means what.”

“You know that you could practice with Tobirama just as easily, right? He wouldn’t mind.”

“Absolutely not!” His friend jerked upright with a scandalized expression. “How am I supposed to carry on a conversation with him if it takes me five minutes to figure out whatever he’s trying to say? He’ll think I’m a simpleton! Just shut up and do it again, alright? I need to get better.”

Hashirama smiled and shook his head but raised his hands obligingly, forming the signs a little slower this time as he silently asked, Are you staying for dinner tonight? A wave of glee rushed through him when he saw the light of understand dawning in the other man’s eyes and hesitant hands forming their own signs to respond to him. Madara’s Sharingan had made quick work of ensuring he could create them but possessing that knowledge did not automatically mean he knew how to apply it.

I don’t think that is a good idea.

Why not?

Your brother will think I am ignoring him again.

Then maybe you should talk to him.

“I can’t, you nincompoop, that’s why we’re doing this!” Madara burst out, slamming his fist down on the table. “Didn’t I ask you to cut the commentary? I’ll never get better if you won’t shup up and just help me learn this!”

“Awww, Madara! You never ask anyone for help. This is really big of you.”

“Fuck off. No wait, here.” He raised the middle finger on one hand. “Does that still mean the same thing?”

“Well…he’d understand you at least.”

Go die in a hole. You are a waste of space. I hate you.

“Those aren’t phrases you should be saying to my brother; should you really be practicing with them?”

Madara screamed in frustration and did his best to rant with his fingers in place of his mouth, using as much vocabulary as he could pull out of his quickly-formed memories.

Distracted by their own drama as they were, neither of them took notice of the figure peering around the doorway with a soft smile who disappeared a moment later. Hashirama was too busy laughing at Madara’s mishmash of loud and silent screaming and trying to encourage his best friend without sounding condescending. He really hoped that this plan of theirs worked out.

And he really hoped Tobirama was ready to be patient because Madara was terrible at this.

This was it. He was going to do it. It had taken too many long months of stupidly difficult struggles but finally he felt ready to do this. Today was the day he was going to speak to Tobirama.

Madara mentally rolled his eyes at how childish he was being but at the same time he couldn’t deny his excitement. His interest in Tobirama had been sparked as soon as he learned the man was incapable of speech, an innocent interest at first as he quietly sought more information on the situation through subtle questions that his reunited best friend always answered without seeming to think much of it. The more he learned and the closer he watched, the more he became invested until one day he realized that he had developed a crush on someone he had no idea how to speak to.

Well, he could speak to Tobirama. Problems arose in that Tobirama could not speak back to him if Madara didn’t take the time to learn sign language first.

Now he finally felt confident enough in his skills to do something with them. Madara took a deep breath in and let it back out slowly to calm his racing heart before knocking twice on the door he’d been milling around in front of for the past ten minutes. He waited until the two knocks were echoed from inside before entering and almost losing his nerve at the sight of Tobirama’s curious expression. The man looked much too attractive in his casual blue shirt and reading glasses, seated behind the desk from which he silently ran half of the village.

Swallowing thickly, Madara closed the door behind himself and steeled his nerves, raising his hands and trying to ignore the open surprise he could see on Tobirama’s face.

Will you join me for lunch? You have not taken a break yet today. Forming the words didn’t take him nearly as long as they used to. After so much practice with Hashirama it was very close to being as natural as any second language should be and he was inordinately proud of how far he had come. The joy on Tobirama’s face was certainly more than worth the effort.

Yes, thank you. Where will we eat?

Madara very carefully spelled out the name of the small café just down the street from the administration tower which he happened to know sold tea and the kind of sweet cakes Tobirama would kill a man for. The smile he received in return was all the reward he needed.

After all the many hours and weeks of effort, it was hard to describe the feeling of walking side by side with the one he had admired from afar for so long – but even better than that was finally being able to sit across from him in a private café booth and have their very first conversation. Tobirama complimented him on his proficiency with sign language and asked, with a strange little smile on his face, why they had never spoken like this before. Madara changed the subject as quickly as he could.

He learned more about Tobirama in the single hour they spent on break together than he had ever dared to ask Hashirama about before. At some points he questioned whether his incessant questions were too invasive or if he was being subtle enough for his companion to take little notice but since Tobirama never said anything he saw no reason to stop. He was certain that Tobirama would have no trouble telling him to back off if that was what he wanted. Just witnessing a few silent arguments had been enough for Madara to learn that this was a man who was not afraid to state his opinions.

Incredibly, he managed to make it all the way through their meal and the entire walk back to the tower without embarrassing himself in any way. His good fortune came to an end, however, when they stopped outside of Tobirama’s office and the man turned to him with his lips turned up in a half-smirk.

This was pleasant, he signed. You should ask me on another date soon.

“Date!?” Madara blurted, blood rising to his cheeks. Dating and romance had been an end goal in the back of his mind, certainly, but he hadn’t truly intended for this to be an intimate outing today. His intention had been to build at least some sort of companionship between them before even attempting to ask for more.

Tobirama’s smirk widened and he winked before closing the door of his office, leaving Madara alone in the hallway to wonder how in the hell he’d gotten so lucky.

Some might call it stalking but Touka preferred to think of her newly acquired habit as ensuring the safety of her loved ones. It was no secret that she was rather protective of her youngest cousin – although she would be the first to admit that he hardly needed protecting – so it probably wouldn’t be much of a surprise if that idiot Uchiha ever realized that she was following behind them on all of their dates. He probably wouldn’t notice though. From what she observed, he tended to get so wrapped up in his companion that he stopped paying attention to anything else. Charming, if a little stupid.

It was unlikely that Tobirama hadn’t noticed her but she figured he was simply taking the path of least resistance. They both knew she wouldn’t stop even if he asked her to so merely pretending she wasn’t there was the most peaceful option for all.

Like most people, Touka had quite a few doubts when she first heard of the budding relationship between Uchiha Madara and her precious baby cousin. That certainly wasn’t who she would ever have chosen for Tobirama and she’d wondered if they would even make it past the first date. After silently accompanying them over the past few weeks and observing from afar she could admit that she was reluctantly on board with the idea. Madara treated Tobirama much better than she would have expected him to.

Unfortunately, her habit of following them around was beginning to encounter some negative consequences as their relationship progressed and they started to behave more intimately. Touka wasn’t sure if she wanted to smirk or gag as she turned her head away, avoiding the sight of her cousin making out with his boyfriend for the third time in the same evening. She definitely could have lived without having to watch that.

At this point she was sure that the two of them would be fine and there wasn’t much need for her hovering anymore, not when she was grudgingly beginning to trust that Madara was serious about this. It was harder than it should have been to let go, though. No matter how many times she told herself that being mute didn’t make Tobirama helpless it was still her first instinct to watch over him and leap to his defense at the slightest hint that he might need her. Touka was more than aware that he found this habit as offensive as he did touching.

It seemed that today he saw is as slightly more on the offensive side, however. Peeking over to make sure they were still in her line of sight, her spine went rigid when Tobirama looked over and caught her eye for the first time. One eyebrow lifted and he raised his hands to chastise her from across the dark clearing.

She really hoped Madara didn’t know some of those signs yet. Tobirama’s language was positively filth when he was angry.

Touka flashed her cousin a grin and retreated before any mysterious bodies of water could find her hiding place. If they were going to get nasty in a public place she had no desire to stick around and watch it happen. As much as she loved her baby cousin there were some things she didn’t want to know about him and the question of whether he topped or bottomed was not one she needed an answer to.

Checking behind herself once last time as she left, Touka realized that she was now alone in the park and laughed. Wherever they went she hoped they enjoyed the rest of their night because she was definitely going to tease them about this later.

Warm sheets against his back and cool fingers mapping out his chest, Tobirama sighed in contentment and thought distractedly that he could never have imagined he would end up in this situation – though he was happy that he did.

A smile touched his face when Madara froze above him, fingers falling still and eyes darting up to his face to see if everything was alright.

You didn’t have to stop.

The older man hesitated and Tobirama used the pause to let his eyes wander down his partner’s body. Legs spread to straddle Tobirama’s hips, shirt gaping open and drooping from one shoulder, he looked like any number of unspoken fantasies come to life. His expression was the one thing more endearing than sexy, cautious in a way not many got to see him because he’d heard one of the few noises his partner could make and wanted to make sure it was a good sigh, not a bad one.

“If you’re sure.” Madara dropped his eyes to one side, embarrassed. “I’m…used to just…listening to make sure the other person is, ah, enjoying themselves.”

A slightly awkward silence fell over them as both men shifted in slight discomfort. Tobirama frowned at the idea that he had ruined the mood. Biting softly at his lower lip, he recaptured Madara’s attention so that he could speak.

I’m sorry. He was touched that his partner responded with his own hands.

For what? I overreacted.

No, I’m sorry that I make this difficult for you.

“Excuse me?”

Tobirama’s mouth gave a wry twist and he sighed again, this time not so happily.

Not being able to speak or even show you that I’m enjoying myself like this. It makes things difficult for you.

“I repeat, excuse me? Don’t you fucking dare apologize! It’s not making anything difficult, just different. Just because I need to adjust the way I do some things doesn’t mean you should ever apologize for the way you were born.” Madara glared as he leaned down to poke Tobirama in the chest, just over his rapidly beating heart. “Would I have put so much effort in to being able to ask you on a date if I didn’t think it was worth it?”

All Tobirama could do was shake his head, a reluctant smile returning to his face.

“Hmph. So I have to pay more attention, so what? I’m a shinobi. We’re used to operating in silence.”

It was such a terrible joke that Tobirama couldn’t stop his smile from growing, soundless puffs of laughter causing his chest to jerk up and down. He noted the pride in Madara’s eyes as the man watched him laughing and felt compelled to pull him down for a heated kiss. The groan that echoed in his ears only encouraged him, sending his hands wandering across the body astride his own until they had reached around to cup Madara’s bottom and tuck him even closer.

With others his own silence had always felt like a wall between them, a scream that only he could hear, but with Madara things were different in the best possible way. He may not have been able to make sounds of his own but he would always enjoy the ones he could earn from his partner; being silent himself only ensured that he would never miss any of them.

For all the words he couldn’t say, only Madara had made an effort to find another way to listen.

#rae writes #madatobi #tobirama #madara #mito #izuna #kagami #hashirama #touka #fanfiction #naruto shippuden

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kiederen · 6 years ago

Text

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE review

I said I would give my impressions on #FE and I neglected to do so till now, but better late than never.

I’ll be talking about:

Story

Setting/Theme

Characters

Gameplay

1. Story

The story is nothing special - I enjoyed it, but it's a fairly typical jrpg "power of friendship and bonds" deal that is only made unique in any capacity by the idol culture that frames it. It's not bad, but it's not groundbreaking either. I wish the story were a bit longer to give more of a build up into the final confrontation. The earlier stages slowly start to set things up but even just one more dedicated chapter to ease into the final arc would have probably made the ending feel less rushed. That and I just enjoyed playing it overall and would liked more content.

The distinct chapters format to the flow may have been meant to simulate FE chapters while still also representing how persona stories often have noticeable breaks between dungeon arcs. In TMS though, it felt a bit more artificial, not damningly so, but I think the plot momentum was a bit worse for it.

The set up for each chapter break also revolves around Itsuki himself improving as an entertainer, even though he doesn’t know what direction he wants to focus on, and while it’s most emphasized early on, this aspect of Itsuki’s development himself feels almost abandoned or ignored through the mid and late game until the very end. The solution does make some sense, but some of the details that enable it to happen are a bit questionably contrived, and like the overall story, it felt a bit rushed in the final hour, based on what I remember.

Otherwise, the story did a good job of setting itself up, providing the characters with adequate motivation and means to seek the goals they set and each dungeon gave reasonable purpose for the main characters to tackle it.

The final chapter seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of build up by twisting and turning a bit more than usual, but most of its attempted twists were fairly standard fair for trying to draw out suspense and unfortunately were somewhat predictable for it. I was a little surprised at the host for the big bad, but mostly because I hadn’t been paying close enough attention so that was on me.

2. Setting/Theme

The Tokyo idol scene setting is the most interesting aspect of the story and while I can see it being polarizing, I found it novel myself. Mechanically, it does a good job of unifying the dungeons under a common theme of "things idols do" - such as posing for photo shoots or acting on TV.

Beyond dungeon design, the idol theme also naturally informed character designs and the multitude of costumes that appear throughout.

You can even see this thematic flair in the way that spell casting involves a character signing their autograph as a glyph!

If there’s one oddity that stands out to me about the aesthetics of the game, it’s that the monster designs seem to be unable to decide whether they should be FE inspired or SMT inspired or neither, but even in the latter case most don’t seem to fit in with the idol theme in any capacity.

Even when enemies are FE inspired, they seem to have gone through a similar (if not more extreme) filter that the Mirage characters went through - becoming dramatically stylized and the only real purpose I can conceive for it is to make enemy classes that were definitely human in FE appear non-human here. For instance, the middle and right monsters above are myrmidon class enemies - unpromoted swordmasters from the FE universe.

Not to mention: Why do their out-of-combat sprites look like Organization XIII members!?

3. Characters

Like the story, the characters are good if nothing particularly revolutionary. Most seem built around one or two tropes but then are fleshed out beyond that which is fine. You learn more about them as you do their individual side quests (social links) and these do a good job of giving the feeling of evolving your bond with that character. The pacing of the side stories is mostly okay, though the gameplay reward for those that are plot locked to be very late doesn't always feel equal to how long you had to wait to do them. There's a bit of persona syndrome wherein all the chars get plenty of opportunities to interact with the MC, but would benefit from more time interacting with each other as well.

I liked all the characters in the end. There's a good variety between both the girls and boys, though because of join times some chars got more focused screen time than others. Again, I think a longer late game with more story side quests (instead of fetch quests) would have helped balance things out.

If I had to be as base as to rank the girls in terms of waifu ratings: 1. Eleonora 2. Tsubasa 3. Kiria 4. Maiko 5. Mamori = Tiki Though it's worth noting that top four are all really close, and each slot only wins out over their competition by a small margin. I don’t dislike Mamori or Tiki, I just am not into the little sister appeal.

I suppose Barry Goodman is worth mentioning as well. Barry is a foreigner who settled in Japan and behaviorally embodies the most cringe-worthy aspects of otaku culture. He’s heavy-set, roughly groomed, and somewhat aggressive/abrasive about his passions. I’m not one to judge him for the subject of his passions, but the way he interacts with them would make me uncomfortable around him had he been a real person. Ultimately he is a good person at heart, but his poor people skills are unlikely to endear him to anyone on first impressions, and the fact that he doesn’t care only exacerbates his problems.

Finally, and predictably most disappointingly, the FE chars (heroes and villains) are barely developed and could be replaced with persona or persona like motifs without changing the overall plot. The FE aspect is little more than a coat of paint that gives secondary theme to the invading 'otherworld,' and it's a real shame and waste of potential.

Aside from the Mirage characters and Tiki themselves, there are however a few unmarked references that are at least self aware enough to be welcome Easter eggs for fire emblem fans:

Anna is your convenience store shopkeeper, and there’s even a ‘shadow anna’ who will sell you more dubious dungeon consumables that a normal convenience store wouldn’t stock.

Ilyana works at the cafe, keeping close to her beloved food.

Aimee runs the jewelry store as she was the item store merchant in FE9 and 10

And Cath runs the costume shop. She’s a thief in FE6 with a distinct affinity for money, not unlike Anna, though not as extreme either. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve read over her supports though.

I saw an npc employee at one of the random background shops in Shibuya central street that could also be Brady from FE Awakening, but the camera never got close enough to see him clearly enough to make a positive ID.

Finally, I found it amusing that all the playable chars' names are class puns/references

蒼井樹 = Aoi Itsuki > Aoi means blue in reference to FE lords typically having blue hair

織部つばさ = Oribe Tsubasa > Tsubasa in reference to her peg knight class

赤城斗馬 = Akagi Touma > 赤 (Aka) gives us “red” while 馬(uma) is “horse.” Red cavalier (partnered with a green cavalier) is a reoccurring archetype in FE. The Red cav tends to be the hot-headed one.

I can break down the others if desired, but these will do for examples.

4. Gameplay

Going to break this into a few parts:

General

Combat

Dungeons

1. General

The real reason this game is compared to Persona; gameplay mirrors a lot of persona's elements and it's almost easier to describe how it deviates from the Persona format than spend time detailing how they're the same. That said, if you like the persona formula (as I do), you'd probably enjoy TMS's gameplay flow as well.

While the lack of daily life and day limits for dungeons removes a lot of the tension of time management for them, I think it's fine since a lot of persona players rush dungeons in 1-2 days anyway and in TMS, once the dungeon is done, you don't have to worry about doing busy work to tick off the days until the plot is allowed to move forward again. The lack of social stats is an element of depth removed, but without a time cost element to activities, it makes sense and is probably a good thing for it to be absent from TMS (even if story wise it could have actually be viable as Aoi and the others grow their skills as performers).

Using the WiiU game pad as a smartphone screen to facilitate off-screen character interactions as well as display more detailed enemy information was clever if perhaps unnecessary (as persona 5 showed). Having the only map on the game pad actually made it a little disorienting to reference for me since my eyes had to leave my tv entirely, leading to me either holding my game pad up or bobbing my head up and down to compare my map with my surroundings. On the DS, the two screens are at least close by. I’d like to say there may have been a better use for the game pad, I’m not thinking of anything off the top of my head, so it may have been wise to minimize its use as a gimmick anyway.

This is already in your phone history when you start the game, but it’s still probably my favorite moment from the text message logs:

#relatable.

Replacing persona fusion is a more straightforward crafting system that is the source for your weapons and passive skills, and in turn, much like Tales of Vesperia, your weapons are the source of your skills, both active and passive. The system sounds more grindy than it is in practice though. Simply advancing through the dungeons and fighting 70-80% of the monsters you encounter naturally will provide you with enough materials to forge most weapons as they become available. In fact there were a number of times when I ran out of new weapons to forge and had to push on with already mastered weapons equipped. I liked that bosses and some savage encounters would drop mats of a higher tier than what was readily available from current monsters, and you had to spend them wisely before advancing the plot to the point where those mats became common. It let you preview the next tier of weapons and abilities for select characters but who you gave those weapons to was never overly stressful since you could get the other weapons you passed on later anyway.

Rare monsters drop unique mats that can make weapons that give unusual or otherwise off-type skills to characters and it makes catching rare monsters that flee rather than engage the player rewarding. IIRC, I encountered fewer than ten rare monsters in my entire play through though, so I did not feel it worth the time to actively hunt them unless there was some trick to make them appear more reliably (and catching them was also a bit dependent on the surroundings). Like treasure monsters in P5, they usually had some kind of gimmick where they were only weak to one thing if they had any weakness and the latter ones also came with dodge [weakness] passive and had a chance of just up and running from battle.

2. Combat

The one-more mechanic is replaced by "Sessions" which are not unlike self contained one-more combos anyway. The tag in attacking animations were pretty fun and though late game sessions can get quite long, there’s no way to speed up or skip session animations, possibly in part because of the existence of duo arts which use the session animations as a timer. They could have prohibited skipping prior to deciding on a duo art and then allow skipping or speed up after, though. Long session animations didn’t bother me, personally though, as session attack animations were varied and interesting enough that I never got tired of even the early basic ones (most of which were replaced by late game).

Openly displayed turn order, plus some late game skills that can actually influence turn order were both welcome features as well.

Beyond sessions, specials, duo arts, and ad-lib performances were great at providing extra variety and changing the pace of what might otherwise be rote combat. While duo arts and ad-lib performances were rng bonuses that you mostly just take whatever you can get and be grateful, specials were more deliberate, needing a resource that builds slowly at first. Later on, with longer sessions and meter boosting passives, the sp gauge builds up much faster, but even then specials usually should be selected carefully, especially within boss battles where recovering lost sp is a bit trickier.

That said, special skills were not created equal. Even though buffs and debuffs are powerful, some of the later buffing and debuffing specials came late, at a point where I already had normal skills that could buff or debuff at almost if not the same potency without spending SP. Similarly, as my repertoire of skills grew, my ability to hit weaknesses improved and using specials to break through resistances became less necessary, even as monsters began appearing with more resistances.

Finally, Itsuki’s second special - “Strike A Pose,” was absurdly good and only got better as my session combos grew longer late game. The ability to give everyone twice the actions in a turn opens up so many other combos that often times, there was little reason to use offensive specials in favor of either two individual sessions or a concentrate/charge boosted session.

Inversely, I found myself using healing specials a lot less, and perhaps it was because I used Tsubasa a lot less late game - I made Chrom a great lord which gave Itsuki healing and support which was kinda Tsubasa’s niche previously, so with Touma able to out damage Tsubasa and Elly covering flying enemies, Tsubasa just wasn’t out in combat all that often, which meant Mamori was the only one with healing specials (which were helpful on occasion) but in the end using Strike A Pose allowed me to get normal heals out in extra abundance while still enabling attackers to make a play to help clear troublesome enemies.

The FE weapon triangle’s representation in strengths and weaknesses among weapon types (not extending to magic though) gave a welcome way to predict weaknesses for enemies I had not encountered yet. One of the frustrating things about persona had always been that weakness/strength attributes for new monsters were difficult to predict and late game could cause you to walk into a bad situation that was never really your fault. Not only did the weapon triangle help mitigate some of the arbitrary mystery, but weaknesses were frequently consistent across similar enemy types at different levels even outside of the sword/lance/axe trinity. For example mage type enemies were, with few exceptions, all weak to swords and fire. Skills that deal effective damage (i.e. horseslayer/armorslayer) were also a great addition that gave characters tools to start session combos on enemies that they might otherwise be powerless against. The player also gets other ways to work around pesky resistances, features that are both welcome and necessary because...

If I have one glaring critic of the battle system it’s that Itsuki, like persona protags is mandatory. However, unlike persona protags, Itsuki has static combat tools and extremely limited ability to influence his own strength and weakness attributes. He’s always weak to fire and lances and since you can’t remove him from the front line, you always have someone in combat weak to those elements. Fortunately this is less deal breaking for the fact that Itsuki dying in combat doesn’t immediately game over (hallelujah!). In addition, later in the game most chars get passive skills that greatly increase their avoid against elements they’re weak to, Itsuki included. Still, being able to remove Itsuki from the front line would greatly increase your party diversity and flexibility. For a while after recruiting a second sword character, I had difficulty justifying putting him in the active party because Itsuki already filled the sword role. Eventually, I promoted Itsuki to a more support role and let the other char handle offensive sword plays.

One more minor complaint I have is the inability to swap out fallen allies. Having only three party members means that even one of them dying can be crippling, especially later on and on harder difficulties. I’ve wasted turns reviving downed allies and trying to heal back only for enemies to just repeat what killed someone in the first place and put me exactly where I was last turn with less healing items or sometimes in an even worse situation. While the boss dichotomy of easy/impossible with little in between that some persona bosses suffer from is present here, the existence of specials, ad-lib performances and duo performances that heal or revive greatly alleviate some of the comeback struggle that has a tendency to snowball in this combat system. As the only active non-rng option, specials in particular are important to the system. The severity of boss gimmicks isn’t quite as punishing in TMS compared to persona, but TMS’s smaller party size, can still cause a bad situation to cascade into unsalvageable territory.

3. Dungeons

The dungeon design of TMS is interesting in that it departs from persona 3/4′s formula of randomly generated floors in favor of deliberately organized floor plans with usually only one correct path to the end. The linearity is sometimes broken up by treasures that you’ll have to backtrack for, but aside from that, there’s little mandatory backtracking within a dungeon. Dungeons stick around even after you clear them, allowing side stories to ask you to venture back over familiar ground for one task or another.

That said, the linear nature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In TMS’s case, it allows the developers to give the player a learning curve for the dungeon’s mechanics and then challenge how well the player understood the earlier lessons, because the devs can guarantee that the player experienced the earlier sections before the later ones. It may sound obvious on paper, but it means that the developers can have a better awareness of the player’s competency at any given point in any dungeon, which is something that can’t be tracked when the player can go multiple routes at any given time. But I digress.

Another mechanical difference of note is how the player, Itsuki interacts with enemies pre-battle. In persona 3 and later, you could swing your weapon to hit an enemy in the field and that would start combat (at an advantage if they didn’t notice you), but in TMS, striking an opponent on the field knocks them back and stuns them, giving you the choice to then get closer and touch them to begin combat at an advantage or to avoid combat entirely. I like this greater degree of choice and it fits within the philosophy that TMS dungeons are made to be less stressful - less about meticulous resource management - than persona games. There’s still an incentive to engage in combat: you need to keep up a certain amount of level growth just to have the raw stats to beat bosses, but if you’re low on health and/or healing items or just plain short on available play time and you think or know there’s a checkpoint up ahead so you just want to make a push to reach it, you aren’t forced into battles you don’t want to engage in... with the exception of “Savage Encounters,” which are challenge monsters that seem to just exist to screw with you anyway. I think there was only one area prior to the last or second to last dungeons that had savage enemies I could actually beat albeit with great effort.

Playing TMS after Persona 5, it was also apparent that TMS’s idolaspheres were prototype palaces, from the set floor layouts and linear progression to the overarching themes of the dungeon informing its aesthetic and unique mechanics. In fact there are a number of things that TMS pinoeered for Atlus that then went on to feature in P5. You can read about some others here.

Puzzles were almost entirely navigation in nature - that is, how to use the dungeon mechanics and infrastructure to get from your start to your goal. It may be because it’s been a little over a month now, but none particularly stand out in my memory as being exceptionally good, while one or two I remember for being somewhat arduous or tiring. I’m still of the opinion that areas that the player is trying to solve puzzles in should have lower if not 0 encounter rate with random enemies, as battles, especially turn based ones that don’t tend to resolve in a single turn, can disrupt problem solving trains of thought.

Overall the dungeons are good though, and that’s important as they’re the meat of the gameplay. They are generally well paced with plenty to do and some minor stuff to find on your way to your target goal. Each dungeon’s unique mechanics fit with the dungeon theme and aside from a few exceptions the enemies are fairly distributed.

5. Conclusion

It has its flaws but I think, in the end, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE gets more right than it gets wrong. Even though the story was standard fair for this genre, I thoroughly enjoyed it and wished it had more content to its core for me to experience. I know there’s dlc, but the nature of dlc means that it’s nothing integral to the story and I’m not sure it would scratch the itch the way I want.

The setting is unique and the game fully embraces the themes it sets up and the themes in turn inform and affect almost every aspect of the game, giving it a unified appeal.

The combat is arguably more interesting than persona. It takes the same core formula of targeting weak points for massive damage but allows players more tools and freedom to circumvent bad matchups, make carefully planned strategic plays, or simply style on enemies with flashy satisfying attacks.

#TMS #Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE #Sharpfe

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fyrapartnersearch · 6 years ago

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m// fantasy ideas

Name: Anna

Age: 29

Timezone: gmt+1 but I'm on at the strangest of hours

About Me: As I said I'm a 29 year old girl that has been writing RPs for about half of my life by now. 99% of those are Yaoi aka MxM and that's what I feel most comfortable with. I'm very fine with adult content and usually write around 200-300 words aka about 2 or 3 paragraphs? I guess that's my ideal post length for both giving and receiving.

What I’m Looking For: I'm looking for some nice Rp with a good mixture of dirty smutty fun and a nice story to balance the smut parts. Generally I prefer to play the submissive part in bed but that doesn't mean my character is a girly, shy, blushing uke all the time. (unless that's exactly what you want) Generally my characters have a spine and can dish out just as much as they can take.

MC = My Character YC = Your Character

Idea No.1 Knight(YC) x Prince(MC)

YC is a royal knight, serving King and country for years now and like everybody else YC knows the story of the crown prince disappearing only weeks after he was born without any clue where he was taken or who was responsible for it. And after the whole country searching for the prince for several years now YC didn't ever expect to find him. And especially not in a house specialized in pleasure. But that was exactly what happened when YC was talked into having some fun at a brothel.

YC could have been a young knight and in charge of looking after the infant prince (And failing) which leads to him having a lot of pent up guilt.

Idea No.2 Knight(YC) x Prince(MC) Version 2

Instead of the Prince getting kidnapped the royal spies actually got information about a planned assassination towards the prince and he could be brought to safety, hidden away in a remote estate with only a few people knowing about his whereabouts. To keep the young prince save he was never told his true lineage, that is until YC arrives to accompany him back to the castle on his 18th birthday. Everybody expected the dangers to be over.. but they were wrong.

Idea No.3 Fae King (YC) x Human Prince (MC)

The war between the Fae and humans had been devastating for both sides but it had been the elven mages that had crushed the human armies in the end and so the human kingdom had fallen under Fae rule. But surprisingly for everybody on the Human side, the King of the Fae ordered only two things. That all decisions made in the Human kingdom would have to be approved by him and that MC, the crown prince of the human Kingdom would come and live with the elves under the king's (YC) supervision. The humans thought he was meant to be a hostage but YC's thoughts went rather towards teaching and training the young man to be a better and more knowledgeable ruler than his father was. Little did YC and MC expect that they would end up intrigued and fascinated by each other.

Idea No.4 Vampire Servant(YC) x Human Master (MC)

MC expected a few things when his grandfather left him his fortune and estate, skipping his father in the process but what he certainly didn't expect was to find a vampire lurking in the estate, claiming to be his new bodyguard and servant. Because YC has sworn a blood oath to MC's family to protect the head of the family until he is released from this oath. In return MC is meant to be the one providing YC with his blood to keep him strong.

Idea No.5 Fantasy rogues

YC doesn't know much more of the World than the rough, unforgiving woods and cold winters of the north where he grew up, traveling and hunting with his father. He has heard stories and legends about fantastical creatures that lived in the south, of magic that could do things he couldn't even imagine.

Until one day he runs into MC. More exotic than anything he had ever seen MC draws YC in and before he knows what's happening, they are on their way to the south together, to a different country where all the things from the legends seemed to come alive.

I imagine MC as a kind of spy/thief, not quite human, more leaning towards a type of elven creature.

Smut: Yes I'd like to include smut in my RP and I'm looking for somebody who can and want to write at least physically dominant/Top characters.

Also I'm more than happy to expand side characters to secondary pairings where I'm willing to take on a more top role as well to balance things out.

Contact: you can reach me under minazu.ruka<a>gmail.com if you are interested.

#oc rp #long term #email #smut rp #submission

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danschkade · 8 years ago

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PAGE x PAGE ANALYSIS — ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69 (2005) with special guest AUD KOCH

Dan Schkade and Aud Koch (right)

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69

PUBLISHED: Marvel Comics, January 2005

SCRIPT: Brian Michael Bendis

PENCILS: Mark Bagley

INKS: Scott Hanna

COLORS: J.D. Smith with Chris Sotomayor

LETTERS: Chris Eliopoulos

EDITORIAL: Ralph Macho with Nick Lowe

Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley wrote and drew ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN for one hundred and eleven consecutive monthly issues. Can you even imagine.

(I, by contrast, drew WILL EISNER’S THE SPIRIT for twelve consecutive monthly issues and barely made it out with all my fingers still intact.)

Neither or them went into this cold — Bendis cut his teeth on a long series of hard-edged indie crime thrillers like AKA GOLDFISH and TORSO, while Bagley had been a regular Marvel Comics fixture since the eighties, with a strong history drawing Spider-Man in particular. But they both hit their stride on ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, kicking out a new version of the character that felt fresh and familiar and, in the process, creating one of the most consistently entertaining superhero comics this side of EMPOWERED. My personal MVPs: their new versions of Aunt May, Daredevil, and the surprisingly affecting mega-narrative of the Ultimate Green Goblin. And that ending — ho man, that ending.

The issue we’ll be looking at this week, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69: “MEET ME,” takes place more or less in the middle of their mammoth hundred and eleven issue run. And that’s part of why I chose it — the goal of this feature is to take solid, workmanlike comics from professionals who know what they’re about and see what makes them tick, but also to see what we can learn from their mistakes. Mister Bagley’s credentials are unimpeachable; I’d place him up with John Romita JR and Andy Kubert as one of my top living artists of straight-up old-school Marvel-style Super Hero Comics. But mid-run slippage is inevitable, and sometimes the shortcuts of a good artist can be just as useful to pick apart as the abject failures of a bad one.

I also picked this issue because I thought it’d be a good fit for my guest: comic artist Aud Koch, one my favorite people to talk theory with and someone whose output I’m both impressed by on a peer level and super into on a fan level. Even though this is the first time I’ve had a guest on this feature and I only half know what I’m doing, Aud was still willing to sit down and help me beta test the tandem Page X Page Analysis experience like a mensch. Now, Aud’s the nicest person you’ll meet in a year, but she’ll also tell you exactly what she thinks and damn the torpedoes. She’ll make some poor young artist cry one of these days. She’ll feel just awful about it, too. My point is: I didn’t exactly pick her name out of a hat for this, y’know?

With that, let’s go to the transcript!

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69 and all characters contained therein are property of Marvel Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.

PAGE ONE

DAN: So, Aud: are you of the opinion that a single issue should be a complete story in and of itself?

AUD: That depends on what the intention of the writer is. I think this one is fine without being that way — I mean, this whole series is set up like a teen drama show. They always have cliffhangers.

DAN: And “previously ons…”

DAN: There’s certainly a lot more boring ways you could start an issue off.

AUD: It’s definitely eye-catching, but an immediate problem is: who’s the main character? You’d think from the first panel that it’s Liz. Or Johnny, who’s the one with the big action shot. But no, it’s actually those tiny little figures in the corner.

DAN: We’re not really getting much from her expression in panel one.

AUD: Which is a problem that I had throughout a lot of the comic. The expressions felt slightly off to me.

DAN: I would have to agree. The point of this exercise is not to nitpick, but sometime small details really do go a long way towards keeping a page from working.

AUD: Later on, there’s that scene that’s entirely just Peter and MJ standing around talking to Johnny for like four, five pages, so it entirely rests on the acting that Bagely does through characters, but there’s no movement happening at all. Bagley doesn’t do the thing where he makes everything a soap opera, which is good, but he also can leave his figures rather flat.

PAGE TWO

DAN: The game’s upped quite a bit here. I feel like we get a lot more from the expressions. Bagley has a great model for the Human Torch — he’s able to suggest emotions and facial details even though he’s all flamed up.

AUD: The artistry of the flames on Johnny is really beautiful. Looking at it now, these last three panels should have been the first ones of the issue.

DAN: Mm, yeah! We’d start off with Johnny looking down at our main characters. Because it really is Peter and Johnny’s interaction that the issue hinges on — Liz’s story is a secondary thing, even though she’s the first character we see in this issue. Bagley and inker Scott Hanna do a good job of suggesting the city in the panel one background, giving the scene a good sense of pace; They’re not in the Mojave desert, they’re on a beach near New York.

AUD: Something I found a bit distracting though is — what the hell is going on with that moon? Like, that’s not a moon! It’s a warty… mass!

DAN: Fair enough. And it’s funny because the city’s so nicely abstracted, while the moon is — I feel you there.

AUD: It’s like a giant tumor in the sky!

DAN: I also have a little problem with Liz’s motion in panel two.

AUD: Yes! She should be be running away from Jonny and off the page. That way she’d be looking back at him as she make her exit off the page.

DAN: Yeah, I think that would be better.

PAGE THREE

DAN: Here we have another juicy Human Torch splash image…

AUD: See, that’s another money shot — storytelling-wise, it would have made more sense if it was us looking up at Johnny from where Peter and MJ were standing, seeing him him shooting off into the distance from their point of view. This one looks like we’re about to follow Johnny off on some… flame adventure.

DAN: You’re right, it really does feel like we’re transitioning to his POV, when that’s clearly not what’s going on.

AUD: Bagley also didn’t take into account where speech bubbles would go. you can see that the letterer was like “what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

DAN: Yeah, they’re spillin’. He could’ve dropped the figures a little bit.

AUD: The only reason it doesn’t fit is because Bagley wanted to leave room for this image of Johnny shooting off, which again, storytelling-wise, doesn’t really work.

DAN: One thing I do really like about those bottom three panels — they’re this nice narrative unit, small and cramped and comic booky in the corner to offset the splashy sci-fi spectacle of Johnny shooting off into the night above. It makes MJ’s dialogue, which is think is pretty funny here, even funnier by comparison — it’s like a small comedy aside.

AUD: But then, they are the main characters…

DAN: They are the main characters! Good point.

PAGE FOUR

DAN: Alright, here we are back in the Baxter Building.

AUD: This is one where it was really, like, these expressions are so flat… it doesn’t carry the scene.

DAN: One art thing I have trouble with here… I don’t know if Sue is his mom or the same age as him. I have trouble placing her.

AUD: Well, the only reason you’d know that is because she says “little brother,” which I feel like Bendis might have added because it wasn’t clear.

DAN: It’s a problem when you have a character who’s supposed to be a teenager, which Sue clearly is —

AUD: Wait, she’s a teenager?

DAN: I mean, is she not?

AUD: [Laughs] She probably is…!

DAN: I mean, that’s a problem, we should know! And she’s wearing lipstick and whatnot…

AUD: It’s that hollywood syndrome! Women don’t wear makeup when they’re in let-down at home clothes. Ack.

DAN: That said, I think Bagley does a good job of moving the camera around. Even though there’s not a lot happening on this page, it’s not static. After Johnny says “leave me alone” in panel five, we cut to this nice, lonely panel with heavy shadows.

AUD: I don’t like the way they’re facing inward in that panel necessarily, though.

DAN: You’re rather maintain Johnny’s rightward positioning from the earlier panels, to maintain a sense of space?

AUD: I want his face to keep facing the bottom right corner, so if Sue’s off to the side, she’d be closer to the outside of the page, since she’s on the outside of him in the conversation.

DAN: Yeah! Johnny’s sitting still and staring in one direction, so we really should we moving around with Sue, not moving around with Johnny, who’s stationary. That’s a really good point. Also — I like the hot pretzel line in panel four. That was something specific to them that nicely places them as siblings. Sometimes that little element of specificity can really help sell a scene.

AUD: The devil is in the details!

DAN: The devil’s in the details.

PAGE FIVE

AUD: Bagley does do really good backgrounds. That feels like a school.

DAN: Mm! What are the elements that cement that for you?

AUD: Well, it’s not generic. The front of that building is really nice. That’s a building that I’ve never seen before, and that I haven’t seen in movies, which is good because that means he isn’t doing the pruned-down, basic idea of what a school should look like.

DAN: Yeah! And it’s still got the cement walls, it’s got the low ceilings and whatnot.

AUD: All of the people in the backgrounds are doing things, which is awesome. They’re not just standing around like props.

DAN: It’s true. And then also, they’re not overacting. You’re right, he’s really good at that. A couple nice little touches — the back of this guy’s t-shirt, the Home Ec textbook. We didn’t need those details to place it as a school, but they do add some variety. I feel like the pacing in these last three panels are not as good as the writing is. The panels three and four are setting up her reaction in panel five, so it’s weird to me that panels four and five in this sequence are sub-panels of panel three. I would rather have the first two take place in the same plane. Setup, setup, then payoff.

AUD: My major beef with the sequence is: the reason that she feels so bad is everyone’s laughing at her, right, but we can’t see the people laughing at her.

DAN: We should see them laughing! It might even be better if we switched it so we don’t see many people in the panel three, and then see them all in panel five.

AUD: Yeah, do it so it’s just MJ and Liz at first, and you get the growing sense of her being surrounded by these glaring entities.

[Aud’s edit, version 1:]

DAN: Or! Have panels three and four right next to each other in their own row, then have panel five be a wide panel along the bottom of the page. I think that would be a superior version of an already fairly solid page.

[Aud’s edit, version 2:]

DAN: The scene is also very mid-2000s, which I appreciate.

AUD: That’s another thing with his setting! It does really look like the time period it was drawn in, which is fun.

DAN: Yeah, it’s not just the stock comic book teenagers. I think that’s why this series was so popular when it came out. It really did feel like high school, despite the fact nobody working on it was… matriculating.

PAGE SIX

DAN: I like that Johnny’s car is red. I think that’s a slick color cue.

AUD: The only thing I have to say is… Bagley consistently does these weird perspectives that throw you out of following who the main characters are supposed to be. Like, I don’t like that opening panel. There’s something off about looking down on them.

DAN: Ohh, yeah. That’s a good point. The camera isn’t down with them, it’s distant, it’s above. There’s a nice line of motion where Peter and MJ in panel one lead into Peter’s position in panel two, but then Bagely breaks it immediately by switching the camera around in panel three. That said, I do really like Johnny’s incognito-wear.

AUD: [Laughs] Talking about early 2000s…

DAN: Right? I love it.

PAGE SEVEN

DAN: So, like you said earlier, these Peter and MJ talking to Johnny pages are a little bit — well, there’s not a lot happening.

AUD: I feel like the scenes where there’s just people standing around give you the most room to, like, wander and throw in creative things. Do fun acting, have them fidget. This does not do that.

DAN: I do like that close-up of MJ in panel two. It helps us identify with her; it sells her curiosity and her sympathy. A different version of this panel might have had her farther away, in which case that line could have sounded a lot more accusatory. I feel like this averts that.

AUD: All of these pages are superficially fine. There’s a good variation of sizes of faces… I don’t look at this like, “I don’t know how to read this,” which is nice.

DAN: Being able to read the comic is very important. Yeah, the drawings are all really attractive, the coloring is good as well — it works together well as a package. I think what we’re harping on here is unfulfilled potential.

AUD: Yes!

DAN: Speaking of color, I like what colorist JD Smith did with the sky. It sells the end of the school day really nicely and avoids being just “sky colored!”

PAGE EIGHT

DAN: I like the negative space on this page.

AUD: Yeah, that is interesting…

DAN: Really nice flow of action from panels one to three. Johnny’s head turns slightly between the first and third panel, which sells this beat of silence in panel two. And I like dropping out the panel border in three; it makes him feel alone and insecure. I wish there was more stuff like this in the issue.

AUD: And I wish there was more stuff like Peter’s stance in panel five.

DAN: Yeah! One foot up on the curb, one in the gutter. That’s really nice.

AUD: Whereas in all these other panels, they’re just standing straight.

DAN: This is a very attractive final panel.

PAGE NINE

DAN: More great negative space on this page. You almost feel like Bagley started to get bored in this scene and started to change things up.

AUD: Which yeah, if only he had… done that earlier?

DAN: Same thing with Peter’s silhouette in panel three. It’s a really intelligent use of Peter’s design, indicating him by just his the line of his floppy hair.

AUD: Which, if I remember correctly, there was quite a bit of mocking of throughout every comic he appeared in.

DAN: And I like that! I like that Peter has goofy nerd hair. Because he’s a goofy nerd — that’s a big part of his appeal. When Peter Parker is too cool, he starts to fall apart, I think.

AUD: Panel six is bad.

DAN: [Laughs] Why is panel six bad, Aud?

AUD: Okay, so, once again, we’re coming from Peter and MJ’s perspective, but we’re in front of Johnny’s car. He’s driving into where we’re standing! Why would you not have him be driving away from the viewer? Bagley consistently puts the motion of action towards the viewer, and that doesn’t make sense to me.

DAN: It makes for a more dynamic image, but… it can make for muddy storytelling.

AUD: Yeah, it makes the motion come to a halt, because there’s nowhere for your eye to go.

DAN: I feel like this comic really thinks Johnny’s the main character. And I just… don’t… think he is. Maybe that’s on me.

PAGE TEN

DAN: More of that curious downward angle. Yeah, I’m with you — I’d rather have more environment shots from the ground. Because this doesn’t really tell me anything about the environment — all I get from this is that they’re still approximate to the parking lot. And as an artist, if you’re in a rush, you’re just begging to make technical mistakes if you keep shooting things from this angle.

AUD: Yep.

DAN: But, again, credit where it’s due, good job moving the camera around the characters. Nice full body acting in panel three — which is shot from the ground, and is super attractive. Maybe he should do more of that! I dunno! And Peter and MJ’s dialogue continues to be funny.

AUD: It’s delightful!

DAN: Bendis is aware this is magic, and he gives us a good amount of it.

AUD: Yes! Going back to the teen drama — what makes this so good is the personality of the characters and how much they come through. The dialogue carries it a whole lot.

DAN: This comic has a nice small cast — you understand all their motivations, they all have distinct voices and personalities. The human element is really well put together.

PAGE ELEVEN

AUD: This page — I hate this page.

DAN: [Laughs]

AUD: Okay, I don’t hate it, but I have major issues reading it.

DAN: Tell me!

AUD: The first two panels are fine, but then — where the hell are you supposed to go??

DAN: That’s a good point! That’s a very good point. Now, If I block out panel three—

AUD: It works! You don’t need that panel!

DAN: Really, all we’d need is to change Johnny in panel four, from looking around to looking up at Peter. The reason why he’s looking around isn’t super clear — since Johnny is supposed to be under wraps, I’m assuming that when he sees Spider-Man, he’s looking around to see if there’s other costumed people who’re gonna jump him. We can do without that.

AUD: Okay, other funny thing — as you said, Bagley thinks that Johnny is the main character. This is supposed to be from Spider-Man’s point of view, right? So the first shot should be from where Spider-Man is seeing him. Even if you don’t see Spidey in the shot.

DAN: Well, yeah, that would be a nice shot/reverse shot from panel two to panel three. It’s funny; in panel two, we actually WANT Bagley to do the down angle.

AUD: Yeah!

DAN: There’s an easy fix for this wonky reading order that keeps all the panels:

You drop panel three half an inch and make panel two a page-wide environment shot. It’s a subtle difference, but I think it strengthens the flow of the scene.

AUD: And also, why do we even need the time? Just to show it’s been a while since school got out?

DAN: It’s shows — He’s supposed to meet Liz at 5:00, and this shows it’s been… longer. It also shows that Spidey was allowing for the possibility that Liz would show up. He doesn’t just pop up at 5:00.

AUD: Ahhh, right. Okay. Yeah. But why is Johnny wearing the costume? Like, if he’s incognito, why is he wearing the Fantastic Four costume?

DAN; Well… I guess, in this universe, nobody knows it’s a Fantastic Four costume yet.

AUD: But he’s still obviously wearing some kind of uniform.

DAN: I dunno, maybe he just came from, y’know, street luging.

AUD: [Laughs]

DAN: Still rocking his street luge gear.

AUD: “…Street luge…”

PAGE TWELVE

DAN: Okay, so I really like the arc of Spider-Man’s movement on this page. It starts mid panel one, comes up and down in a nice arc across the top three panels. That’s really cool.

AUD: However; it would’ve made more sense to me if it started with his face pointing in some way towards the right.

DAN: I agree that would be a little bit better; even if his head was just cheated that way a little bit. I still think this works fine, but that would’ve been a slight improvement.

AUD: Even if the body was just flipped.

DAN: Ah, yeah, yeah! That’s good. Even just inverting Spidey’s position in panel one makes it that much smoother:

AUD: It still trips my letting thing. You want to read straight down from panel one into panel four.

DAN: Yeahhhh, that is unfortunate.

PAGE THIRTEEN-FOURTEEN

DAN: So, this is great.

AUD: Yes, except… okay, I do like it. But for me, it was another lettering issue. I feel like they were hesitant to put any dialogue in in panels two, four, and seven because there was so little room to the left of the fold. Maybe if those panels had been extended half an inch, they could’ve… I don’t know…

DAN: I think I disagree with you on this one. I think that they chose to make it a quasi double-page splash because Bendis wanted this moment to exist all at once, without risking it being split up by ads. I think that’s why it’s cheated over the fold this way. That said… the balloon placement in panel four is distracting.

AUD: Yeah, you can tell there’s all this space above Spider-Man’s head where the dialogue was supposed to go.

DAN: It really shoulda been there. If this were a digital comic, that would’ve been perfect. I does weirdly work quite well in panel seven…

AUD: Because they put dialogue there!

DAN: There you are, then. Even if Spidey had said “um” in panel four, just to full in that space, that would’ve been an easy fix.

AUD: So, okay, this is a big moment; but why is it a big moment? Peter’s already seen his powers. We already know that’s what Johnny does. Is it that he’s revealing his “Human Torch” name?

DAN: Well, It’s a big moment for Johnny. Again, this issue thinks Johnny is the main character. So it’s a big moment for him… Peter’s reaction is still genuine, it’s still surprising to see a person, y’know, light their hand on fire. And also, it’s the first time in this universe where The Human Torch and Spider-Man are on the same page, so there’s a little bit of a fan nod there, plus a little bit of this being Johnny’s moment to reveal himself to, he thinks, a new person. Some of it is just a nice juicy visual on which to hang the rest of the scene. The dialogue in this scene is great. I like the idea of this scene. Johnny’s life is actively inconvenienced by Spider-Man — the way his life is set up is a direct reaction to Spider-Man’s existence. But he likes Spider-Man a lot, so they’re being friendly.

AUD: I like… I think I have a thing against power imbalances. Like, Peter and Johnny are on the same level, but with this scene, it’s like hero worship. Johnny’s like a fanboy, and Peter just allows that imbalance to continue. That’s a personal thing, I just don’t like it — except that at the end of the scene, it switches, where Peter becomes the fanboy for Sue Storm. So I did like that.

DAN: Yeah! You see it in panel five, which is where Peter and Johnny actually become friends, but it’s also where you see Peter changing the subject of him being rich, trying to protect the idea of him being rich — read, “cool.” But here in panel seven, he can’t help but reveal he’s not cool, because he’s such a big fan of Sue Storm.

AUD: I will say, throughout a lot of these scenes of pure dialogue — again, this is just a personal preference — you get these panels where there’s so much back and forth in the same panel, and I don’t like it. I like it when you get more of a focus on what the characters look like when they’re saying each individual line, so there’s more emotional hit to it. Here it’s all consolidated, so you don’t get as much personality from the characters.

DAN: Would you’ve liked if this comic had, let’s say, five more pages to it that just allowed a little more space for the back and forth between the characters?

AUD: Well, either prune down the dialogue, or… yeah, extend it, give the artist more room. But then again, I don’t know if Bagley would’ve really wanted more room — he doesn’t really seem to enjoy drawing these still dialogue moments.

DAN: Or maybe at this point he’s so used to them that he just kinda bangs ‘em out without thinking too hard. Which we could hardly fault him for.

AUD: Yeah! Issue… sixty-nine of a series?

DAN: Jeezy Petes. I don’t know if I already said something nice about JD Smith, but the colors are real swell here. The glow on Spidey’s chest in panel one.

AUD: One detail I really like is that his coat is actually on fire in panel two.

DAN: Oh yeah! That is a nice little touch. And now, this is an excellent final panel; an onomatopoeia leading off the page, they’re both looking in the same direction, off the page, towards the page turn, you gotta turn the page, you gotta know what’s gonna happen next…

PAGE FIFTEEN

DAN: I love this page.

AUD: Rrrrrreally.

DAN: I do! I do, and I’ll tell you why: It does the handoff of POV from character to character really effectively. So, this page is split into two equal circuits of storytelling. They have roughly the same layout; the first one is Spidey vaulting off — the webline’s going off the page in the right direction, he’s going off the panel into the negative space, it’s really dynamic. This is where Bagley’s ‘everything comes towards you’ thing really works. And then we end on Johnny’s reaction to this, which then transitions into the second circuit; this nice juicy Human Torch moment that mirrors Spider-Man’s. There’s a little joke, and then we stay on Johnny’s reaction in the last panel, a reaction that follows through from his other reactions on the page. So it’s a really effective handoff. And then, from the perspective of somebody who’s maybe meeting these characters for the first time, it’s cool to see how Spider-Man has to jump off the jungle gym and shoot a web and, y’know, he moves in THIS way, and meanwhile Human Torch can just straight up fly, he’s made of fire, he moves in THIS way… I mean, I could see experiencing this for the first time and really getting excited for these characters, the way they’re depicted on this page. What do you think?

AUD: That’s interesting, because I really disliked this page.

DAN: Ooh, tell me! Tell me why.

AUD: Well… I guess one of the things I’m personally most concerned about is the way the lines of action move within the structure of a single page. Not just the way that the characters are moving, but all of the composition. This page feels really cluttered to me; there’s all these different directions, and there’s so many different moments happening too, and none of them are given enough space.

DAN: In a way, I think you’re sort of right… what makes this page work for me is that there’s the two complete circuits, but a page is typically only supposed to be one.

AUD: What you said about Spider-Man having to climb off the jungle gym — I didn’t even realize that that’s what had happened there because there’s such a gap. I want to see him moving onto the jungle gym. In the first panel, I want more of a pause as they look at the smoke. I would’ve preferred smaller bits of them both going off.

DAN: Maybe we coulda cut down on some money shot panels and reallocated that space to give these two moments bigger moments on their own pages. I still really like this page, but I totally agree with your criticisms.

AUD: I also feel like that last panel should have maybe been the back of Johnny’s head, so we’re following him as he’s going somewhere? As it is, it’s just a static image of his face.

DAN: Mmm, yeah, I could see that.

PAGE SIXTEEN

AUD: It’s beautifully drawn. I really like the swoop of the smoke.

DAN: Yeah, Bagley’s smoke is really cool; all whispy and tendrily. It is a little bit weird to me that Spidey’s swinging left, into the page fold. I would rather have flipped Spidey’s figure so he’s facing right, maybe just jumping down with her in his arms, or with his web attached to the roof ledge. There’s some nice contrasting movement between Spidey and the smoke, but it’s still a little muddy to me.

AUD: Once more, who’s the main character on this page? You actually think it should be Johnny this time, carrying over from the last page.

DAN: Also: modern comics artists have finally stopped drawing that high-riding underwear on women, which I personally appreciate. Nobody liked that.

AUD: That was also never, like, a real thing that happened, even in the early 2000s.

DAN: This is a type of page layout I like a lot; you’ve got a tall, scene-setting panel, and then everything that follows is sort of a detail of that main setting. Panel two is nice; we’re clearly from Johnny’s perspective, looking down…

AUD: Except that time, it shouldn’t be! It should be focusing on Spider-Man!

DAN: Crap, you’re right! You’re totally right. The perspectives in panels one and two should be switched. We should be on the ground with Spider-Man and her looking up in panel two, and we should be with Johnny looking down on the scene in panel one.

PAGE SEVENTEEN

[Long, thoughtful shared pause]

DAN: Nice line of motion along those bottom panels… I hate this baby. I’m sorry.

AUD: That’s not a terrified baby! That’s a hungry baby opening its mouth for food.

DAN: I dunno, maybe she’s got a Spider-Man-colored bottle or something, so when he comes in the room she’s like, “oh thank god, I’m parched.”

AUD: I also don’t think panel four is entirely clear enough about what Johnny’s doing.

DAN: What if this panel were framed by the window? So we could see the fire going away from us, from inside the building, and towards Johnny.

AUD: Oh, that would be clever…

DAN: And then we can skew panel five just a little bit so it’s not just the same shot twice. Panel six is a really good panel.

AUD: It is a really good panel, yeah. Unfortunately, it is followed by a weird baby.

DAN: Oy. Such a weird baby.

PAGE EIGHTEEN

AUD: Panel one immediately gave me the feeling that it should be flipped. The direction of motion — it doesn’t look like he’s jumping out of the building.

DAN: He’s just coming down from heaven with a baby.

AUD: That’s what this looks like. Also, it would have helped a whole lot of his suit was singed.

DAN: Or if smoke was trailing off him, yeah.

AUD: In panel two, why are we looking at this from the very above again? Do it from Peter’s point of view! Actually, wait — if you move panel four up next to panel one…

DAN: Oh, yeah, that’d work. Because the Torch panels don’t tell us… much. And Bagley and company have my sympathies here, because showing a contiguous stream of flame coming out of the building and towards Johnny? I don’t know how I would show that.

AUD: I think the flames themselves are fine, but the swoop of the smoke around the border of panel two gets me.

DAN: This is an instance where the old Marvel style of captions talking about what’s happening would really help you out.

AUD: I mean, you need to be really careful with captions… actually if he were muttering something…

DAN: Oh yeah! Like, “Oh my god, he’s drawing the flame out of the building” or something.

AUD: Yeah! Yeah, that would work.

DAN: Or a panel where the babysitter like “What’s going on” and Peter’s like “I-I-I-I think he’s drawing the flame out of the building” and she’s like “How is he doing that” and he’s like “[weird noise plus awkward shrug]”

AUD: See, and that would have been awesome, just to add more personality and some nice moments between Peter and the crowd.

DAN: I mean, sure, he’s amazed at the Torch in panel four, but this would really sell the — well, anyway.

PAGE NINETEEN

AUD: We've talked about unfortunate ad placements before; I’d just like to point out that those are DC characters in a Marvel comic.

DAN: Right as things seem at their most dire — Batman and Superman pop up!

AUD: Come to save the day!

DAN: We got this, guys, don’t even worry about it. So, this page: I understand what’s happening here, but I wouldn’t if I hadn’t read a bunch of other comic books.

AUD: …Yes, because there’s not a sense of him getting rid of anything, it’s more like he’s channeling the energy to blow something up.

DAN: Yeah. That said, I like the sweeping top left/bottom right motion of the clouds, which adds a nice parallax to the bottom left/top right motion of the flames. And at least there, it’s popping off the the page, away from us.

AUD: And up where people are looking.

DAN: Yes! They’re following the line of action. That’s quite good.

AUD: And the colors on this panel are beautiful.

DAN: They really are. JD Smith clearly knows how to bring out the warmth and energy of the flame with these nice cool background colors. I have no idea why the cough was lettered like that —

AUD: I thought it was hilarious. It was for comedy, right, ‘cause he’s actually saying “cough?”

DAN: Oh! [Laughs]

AUD: At least that’s how I interpreted it, as a humor beat.

DAN: But then as we go on, we see that he’s actually coughing ‘cause of smoke inhalation.

AUD: Is he?

DAN: Here, put a pin in that, we’ll come back to that. That’s mostly a nitpick on what is overall a very strong page.

PAGE TWENTY

AUD: What the…?

DAN: What is happening in this first panel?

AUD: I think that’s Johnny flying off.

DAN: Oh!

AUD: To the park, to meet him again?

DAN: Yes.

AUD: But.

DAN: Maybe Johnny could have been smoldering there a little, in panel two?

AUD: You could have just not had panel one and have them just meet up again in the park.

DAN: Again, my sympathies to Bagley, because this flame stuff is… it doesn’t exist in the real world, so he’s gotta hack it out.

AUD: I do love the trails of the smoke in panel one. And that looks like a fucked up building.

DAN: Although! I think the colorist let us down a little there. This flamey bit coming out of the building should be smoke. It shouldn’t still be on fire.

AUD: That’s… definitely true! So: who’s the main character in this scene?

DAN: On this page, it seems like they’re both the main character. And after the scene we just had, I’m cool with them being equally important on this page.

AUD: Yeah. The jump between here and the next page wasn’t clear to me, though.

DAN: No. I mean, it’s a funny bit! I get it. But.

AUD: The ending on his face at the end of the page just didn’t hit right. I do like that body movement in panel three.

DAN: Again, when Bagley chooses to do acting, he does a really good job.

PAGE TWENTY ONE

DAN: Okay, so here’s where the downward angle really works. Again, I would have liked to have a little flame coming off him in panel two to show the transition from Torch to normal. Overall, I like this scene a lot. Like, Johnny having to lose his jacket is a nice narrative device to show the sacrifice of heroism.

AUD: Plus a metaphor of the police getting him. I will say that in all the comments about the acting, all of it was passable — except for panel four.

DAN: Really! Why?

AUD: Just bad acting!

DAN: You just think it’s, what, cheesy?

AUD: It’s cheesy and it does the soap opera thing.

DAN: Ah, fair enough. The script description, I assume was “Johnny lets the moment land, feels proud of himself.” Tough to pull off. But I hear ya.

AUD: And also he’s facing…

DAN: Yeah, have him face the other direction. Although, I do kind of like him looking off, taking this moment to himself —

AUD: But that’s part of what bugs me the most! Like, look at panel three — they’re not looking at each other. They don’t seem to be in the same interaction.

DAN: I think this page is a good example of problems with placing figures in space that Bagley has throughout.

AUD: Especially scenes that are just dialogue.

DAN: The scene were MJ and Peter are talking to Johnny in the parking lot earlier is helped because Johnny’s leaning against a landmark; his car. But when they’re a little more free form like this, the figures start to drift around.

AUD: I love that last panel.

DAN: It’s a great panel. I love the lighting on Spidey.

AUD: Johnny’s… beautiful?

DAN: [Laughs] He’s very pretty.

PAGE TWENTY TWO

DAN: Final page.

AUD: Another money shot of him! How many are in this fucking issue!

DAN: [Sighs.] I guess if I were choosing to defend this, I would say the initial money shot on page one —

AUD: Was fine.

DAN: Yes, it sells the chaos and the fear of what’s happening. This next one on page three —

AUD: Nope.

DAN: — if I wanted to defend it, I would say that was, like, Johnny flying off into the sky like Frankenstein’s Monster, and then this last one is him flying into the sky like a hero. It’s a progression.

AUD: [Snort.]

DAN: Your milage may vary. More great sweeping motion of the clouds that create a contrast to him flying away at us —

AUD: Another example of things flying out of the page.

DAN: This is just a personal thing, but I would have broken the panel boarders here at the top and had his hands reach out into the bleed.

AUD: Yeah, if he’s gonna do the big moment where he comes out towards you, have him come out towards you!

DAN: And panel two is a funny final beat that undercuts this big heroic moment with Peter coughing — that’s solid. The birds are bit much.

AUD: The buildings are nice, though. He draws nice buildings!

DAN: He does! He’s really good at drawing this comic. Mark Bagley, shocker, is a really good guy to be drawing a Spider-Man comic. He’s good at buildings, he’s good at dynamic action — he is good at acting. I think in this issue, we just see him being a little bit on auto pilot. There’s not a lot we can say is really wrong with this issue.

AUD: Yeah, if I picked it up I would happily read it. The structural elements of it were perfectly passable.

DAN: Yeah! It’s well-written. It keeps moving. And the final action set piece is a nice way to get them to team up and learn about each other, but only be interacting with each other; they don’t have to fight anybody. Y’know, Paste Pot Pete doesn’t show up and they have to team up against him.

AUD: This is the exact kind of comic I would love to have drawn! Yeah. It’s good. Well written. Very well written.

DAN: You could be a hell of a lot worse.

***

You can buy a copy of this issue on Comixology, along with every other issue of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN.

You can also pick up Aud Koch’s Marvel Comics debut, last week’s ULTIMATES 2 #7, written by Al Ewing with colors by Dan Brown -- which I highly recommend.

Check out Aud’s website, and hit her up on twitter! She’s always posting new art -- including some Spidey and Torch stuff that gives you an idea what this comic might’ve looked like if Aud had ghosted Bagley.

As always, feel free to check me on any mistakes I/we might have made, add your own commentary, or share similar examples of good comics done well. I’ll be back next week with a different comic to peruse.

Be well!

PREVIOUS PAGE x PAGE ANALYSES

THE SHADOW STRIKES! #13

PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN #13

BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #17

#Ultimate Spider-Man #Aud Koch #Comics #Educational Purposes #Brian Michael Bendis #mark bagley #Marvel Comics #The Human Torch #Spider-Man

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mi4011annabodgal · 6 years ago

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ANIMATION DAY - 31.10. 2018

Task: Let’s create a spooky Halloween themed alphabet together, all the students, from all levels, like a big happy family what

Animation day is an optional program organized for all animation student from foundational year to masters to gather together and in small groups let’s do together a piece of animation by the end of the day. How you solve the lunch is your problem.

Egh… I’m not gonna lie, that was my first thought about it on that morning. Don’t get me wrong, just one day before I was head over hills by that idea, because I was pretty aware of how much I could benefit from it. Building connections, meeting with new people, gaining experiences, chances of free pizza and candy, yep, sure I wanted to dive into it, who doesn’t?!

Then on that specific day, somehow the exact same reasons become the cause of your anxiety because your lazy introvert mind recognizes what is it up to for real:

Meeting with new people - greeeeat, I need to socialize, go through countless small talks to warm up to strangers, like I’m not doing that since the past 2 months heh?

Building connections - oh sugar honey ice tea, so I even have to do a good first impression

Gaining experiences - aka showing how poor skills I have compared to demigod 2nd and 3rd-year peers

Free pizza - Free pizza DECLINED… Oh…

So after waking up to thoughts like that, I don’t think that it’s surprising that I had even considered the idea of ditching that day because first, it’s optional, second I had so so so many other things to do such as finishing storyboards or updating blogs… but worry not, I go through thoughts like that in relation to almost everything, some call it worrying, I call it listing my options and the possible outcomes before I start anything. I usually have my priorities sorted out right, so a little social anxiety won’t stop me of living up all my possibilities, and also funnily, the exact same reason to cons can become a quite supporting statement to pros… I could put it on the blog…

Talking from experience, an attitude has a lot to do with how we handle stuff and what we end up with. So I walked in taking big steps, deep breaths, putting on a smile and deciding that I will do everything in my power to collaborate and make it as good of an experience as I can. I have to make the best of it. I have to make it worth it.

And I immediately got much much more relaxed when I realized that there were others in nice numbers from my classmates who turned up too. Probably with the same bothering thoughts. And we stayed like that. Together. For some time.

After the 3rd and 2nd-year students were sorted out equally for different letters we came to the part that where we had to sign up for letters. Now by that time excitement took over most of the place of my anxiousness so while some of my classmates decided to stay together and sign up for the same letter, I boldly chose a random letter with an unfamiliar name. Long story short, I ended up being in a group with a girl from 3rd year, two guys from 2nd year, and 3 other boys from my class to make animations for 4 letters. Now comes the interesting part, teamwork.

I have always found teamwork the most interesting but also the most challenging task of all. The basic concept is quite admirable, people with different views and ideas create something phenomenal by making compromises and working toward the same goal together. Now here comes the problem, the phrase “working together” has as many definitions as many people exist, that’s why sometimes it can result in a rather unpleasant experience. Who doesn’t remember from group projects from preschool and secondary school when usually one person did 80% of the work, one person ditched completely their part, and the others did only the minimum?! We are all one of them. It also hides lots of conflicts, tension, and disagreements of who wants to do what part, who’s idea are we keeping, who is the leader etc. I personally think part of the conflicts wouldn’t even exist if we didn’t take so many things personally. Look at the questions above, who’s who’s who’s. It emphasizes the importance of the person behind the idea. Change some of them to which. Which idea do we keep, which parts should be done, it’s not perfect but you get the idea of this phrase sounding more objective. It emphasizes the idea itself. Just because your idea didn’t make it, that doesn’t make you stupid. The decision is not against you, and not even against your idea, it is for a concept that will have the most efficient result.

Every group needs a leader otherwise, it’s chaotic. We are humans, we don’t know it but we like to be told what to do. Let me give you an example. At the beginning of a project, the same question crosses through our minds, what are we doing? At a group project, the leader is the one who knows. They keep it all together, usually because they are the ones who know which step comes after what mostly because they have the most experience in it. They see the whole picture. They don’t oppress or boss around but supervise and make sure the group stays on track. At least that was how we sorted it out and made the girl from 3rd year - let’s call her A - the leader. We hadn’t had to discuss it really, from the first minute it was visible that she has the most experience and she had known where to starts and how to go. And we just naturally felt it right. Of course, it had to have to do a lot with the fact that we discussed everything together and everyone’s thoughts were listened.

First thing first was to decide if we wanted to do 2D or 3D. Who was not a newbie preferred the idea of 3D but we greenies were absolutely terrified of it. Given that we did not have any mentionable experience in using Maya and that we were a majority of the group, they ended up making compromises and agreed to do 2D or anything that does not include advanced software knowledge. Even tho they were incredibly nice and offered to help us learn to use the software or they just wanted to see us suffer as and I quote them: ”Maya is a special kind of hell”, we only had one day to make 4 pieces of 2-3 seconds of animation, it was pretty clear that there was just not enough time for that.

We chose to work with charcoal mostly in one paper for every animation because it has a special unique effect. Our teachers even suggested that we should shoot it on putting it on easels, vertically. Do you remember the part when I said an idea should be accepted when there are more useful things resulting from it than problems? Well… Now tell me how do you say no to a teacher, if you wanna build connections and you are also just a dummy newbie and it’s only been your first month here? Exactly, you don’t. Well, it was definitely interesting and challenging to work on. I am not entirely sure if it was worth it, because we sometimes accidentally bumped into the easel so it moved a bit off place and we couldn’t put it back to the exact same spot it was so it resulted in small jumps in the animation, and also the camera was extremely close to the paper for small details and high resolution so we had to work in a rather interesting poses, very very carefully. But one more experience to gain. Yay!

We decided to dissolve into smaller groups within our group so we can work on the animations more effectively. When we had some solid designs we discussed them together and gave critique to each other. Getting feedback from your peers is incredibly useful as they are also part of an audience you will want to make stuff for. I ended up being with A and we were given the letter “M”. Which was awesome because we know many words starting with M which had a spooky vibe. Monster, mystery, murderer, moon… And by saying moon I did get some extra knowledge about the course. There are 3 banned cliche things, that under any circumstances should not appear in animations, these are dragon, robot, and vampire. Vampire or werewolf, she was not sure which. That was one of my favourite aspect of it all, that we ended up talking about all sorts of kind of things, and not just with my group mates but with others too through them. I was disappointed in a pleasant way, I don’t know what did I expected but it was half as not friendly and open-minded as it turned out to be.

We agreed on making a monster who has mad cow disease and committed mass murderer and adding mystery by it’s appearing from the fog.“A” did the design as I was pretty clueless of how this should look like or where was I supposed to start. Seeing my distress she asked me what were my specialties. I immediately said character design. She asked me if I do stuff like taking random words and design a character from them. And I said no, I meant humans, I draw human characters. Until that moment I did not realize how boring that sounds, but yes it is boring. Only humans are boring. Sure anatomy is important and gestures and poses too, and yes you can have a bunch of own humanoid characters with a whole storyline that you promised yourself to bring alive once you have all the skills you think are required to have before starting and concept arts and designs and mood boards, hell yes, of course, I do have, but you need to realize that they are incredibly interesting for you because you have a strong emotional attachment to them, because you created them, you know everything about them, you love them, and it could easily happen that strangers without that amazing backstory knowledge won’t find them as captivating as they are in your eyes. Additionally, it’s always better to be good in more stuff than just in one. You stand in more legs you have more opportunities, so just have the courage to move out of your comfort zone, it can only benefit you in the long run.

At the end of the day, which we previously decided to be 5pm, all the animations were done and we even had a look at them as a whole sequence. It turned out pretty amazing, seeing so many different styles and solutions was really fun.

To sum up, all, if one thing to learn from this day was to dare to move out of our comfort zone, whether socially or artistically, chances are we are gonna end up with more benefits than regret. I know now that I have a lot to improve in terms of creative character design, need to leave humans alone for a while for sure. Also, let’s be brave enough to collaborate and get your ideas out, being wrong is not a failure. Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will and a wrong idea written down whorts a thousand times more than keeping it in and contemplating whether it’s good or not. We can soon realize that something is off and it can give space for new ideas if it’s out early. If we keep something in for a long time we become over biased for certain concepts and don’t notice the black holes in it. We need feedback from the outside world because their opinion is objective, and that is something that every artist who wants to move an audience is in desperate need.

#uni #animation day #thoughts #art #animation #team work #art project

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