#there has to be more to the story then just disrupting orochi's death

[a-weird-writer]

BITCH I WATCHED SUSANOO'S CG TRAILER AGAIN AND DYAMNNN I'M THIRSTING ABOUT HIM I WANT TO BE HUG BY SUSANOOO-SAMA'S YUMMY ARMS AS IF HE'S PROTECTING ME 😭😭😭😭 ANY HEADCANON OR SMTH ABOUT HIM IF YOU PLEASE!!!

Susanoo loves hugs, physical contact is greatly important to men like Susanoo and equally cherished. Like the gold coins in a treasure chest.

Many many years fighting evil gods rendered Susanoo a cold but very lonely individual, shattered his initial innocence and tethered his divine standing. War opens one's eyes to how the world really is in the face of a god. For practically heavy-hearted Susanoo, weighted by a dark curse, to seek humanity and crave sentiment is logical; a fond trance of friendship, of a time long drifted far from home.

Scars litter Susanoo's body. Wounds no mere mortal can suppress; brother to a divine lie, the cursed executioner of Takamagahara, a deep engravement with in his very spirit.

The radiation of battle stubbornly follows Susanoo, in the form of fierce winds and terrible waves. Bellowing in the wet vapor of clouds, shouting voices of booming thunder heard from the other side of the Earth; Seas, fields of devoted spoil's part ways under the weather's calming gaze. The war-torn catalyst overcomes all in his way, as expected from a harbinger of storms grand enough to cause earthquakes. Slayer of gods. Tight, closes in on himself, too bashful for his own good in the modern world; complicated amounts of trauma burden him, plagued by shadows and ghosts. War with no direction is an ugly sight, as is Susanoo most days, the skies will say as much.

No one likes getting hurt, and Susanoo wholly hates the fight; a judge loathing his purpose, but when the role beseeches, the weather's will strike it down. A pawn to fate, solider to destiny. Godly weapon of Amaterasu.

Regardless, he wants no habit of distancing himself, hurting others. His sanity is one of the very few things he has left. As long as he maintains himself and his beloved, his death couldn't feel more peacefully accepted.

How afraid Susanoo is to actually let people in, only a mortal can simply imagine, thrown in a future so vastly different then his last.

-

An immovable god in the face of evil.

Susanoo's life is bound to be surrounded by calamity; gods of this world often are. This god rushes into battle the moment his people are threatened, a call for help answered with a loud clap of raging thunder, fast as lightening, a fierce strike upon the forces of darkness. A judgement for those who dare harm the weak. He will sacrifice himself to protect those he trusts. That fear of hurt-the pain and loss, hid under a cover of steel-like ambition and warrior spirit.

Clearing the skies of a man like this takes kind patience, Susanoo is an immortal spiral across the overcast, dark and looming. His storms are merciless, fierce, but the rainbows right behind shine such a bright lovely light. There is a strange, phenomenal contrast of balance slowly trailing Susanoo everywhere he flies. Humans and monsters alike fear provocation when he actually isn't a bad person, not easily offendable.

People judge the judge. He has low social skills and is calmly introverted, a tightly wound god.

Hugs heal, a remedy amongst good companions. A friendly gesture so loving in its simplicity, a charming tie of fingers and arms. Interlocking persons, closer than ever before. Lonely people naturally desire personal things, especially lonely humans and gods.

No one-nothing makes Susanoo happier, cleans his wounds faster than a hug from his most beloved one. His arms are primed to the brim of God-like power, the purest source of weather and sky. A surface tension of lightening, thunder and cloud-like flesh.

A hug from Susanoo is guaranteed perfection. Hugs are a physical motion of connection, a bind between to dedicated people. A promise. It descends on you like a forgotten breeze, a motion you longed for since you first heard it sing, saw it linger and hover over your hands and face. You never thought Susanoo, a man of judgement, a powerful god of weather, would look at you like you're at the edge of the Earth.

The corner of Heaven and beyond.

He-your precious Susanoo-doesn't leave without leaving something behind, a happy reminder. Susanoo talks to you in the softest ways, even in silence his heart speaks volumes, damn near vulnerable if gods can be that way. To Susanoo, hugs are another way to feel, to connect. Longing sways in an ancient body, careful calculating movements. Either by brushing a few strands of your hair out of your eyes or a tender knuckle kissing the side of your cheek. A gentle aura of summer solace, a smell of minty mist. The afterglow of heavy rainfall.

It is a living dream, to be cradled softly in his arms, you and Susanoo are dead to the world like this. Quiet and content, moments like this are why people live, die clinging to another. Love is a twisted curse; humans have gone mad and killed for it, but it is addicting. And it is human.

Worth protecting. Burning in his memory for a thousand years and a night more.

Of love, enough to burst his poor heart. You found him, holding so tightly like he will vanish out of thin air, lovely tenderness, a kindness tasted on the tip of his tongue. Gone from the world, away from you. You don't want to let go, nor does he.

(You suppose that means both of you are selfish beings. For you though, to know despite everything, you will still be happy; live a long life, not in pain, but at peace? Susanoo will go as decided, selfish as he needs to be to protect you and that graceful smile, catching the stars in those wonderful lips. A face he grew so content with for so long after eternity long existence-banishment in cruel isolation.

Even after so long, century to century, he forgot not a single detail of yourself. Of your expressions, and certainly never your happiness.)

Pain-any resentment-dies when you hold him, pitifully and without remorse. A child comforting in their favorite teddy bear. To the dusty shelves of his inner mind, alone to wither and die, forbidden merits and shards to time.

None of that is important.

Not as important as returning home to his beloved-slowly eroding to the sands of time, your crescent moons never wavered-the warmth of a familiar light after a long day of hardship.

To that hug-a delicious sentiment, the romantic bind.

Your promise he always misses.

[gofancyninjaworld]

2020 in One-Punch Man. Part 1: Manga

How shall I describe this succinctly?

It's like ONE and Murata looked around them, saw a raging pandemic, massive disruption to all walks of life, uncertainty of when, if, or how it might affect them, took a massive drag of their cigarettes and said: “Fuck being conservative.  Let's go wild. Fuck making our current arc a webcomic retread with fancier fights.  Let's introduce more lore, let's have more characters interact in ways one would never have imagined, let's have characters do things that hadn't previously been thought of and make this really exciting.“

If you were holding onto the webcomic as your guide to what next, 2020 was not a good year for you. 

723 pages in 24 updates (including revisions) changed the status quo ante in deliciously unanticipated ways!

Where we left off in 2019, we were following the webcomic pretty faithfully, with most manga-original elements being removed at a fast clip.  Phoenixman was dead, the mercenaries had died a brutal death, the ninjas had been resurrected but had run off buck naked, Orochi was dead, G5 was very much destroyed, Drive Knight had appeared but had obligingly limped off, taking Nyan with him.  The S-Class heroes were in trouble with the cadre exactly as expected and Saitama had met up with Flashy Flash.  Tatsumaki had finally found Psykos. Yup, no real changes here.

2020, HAHA! 

Awaken!

Throwing manga-specific elements away? As if!   They took the great opportunity that preparing chapters for publication to critically review and revise the story so as to first, make it move at a faster pace and second, to be enriched.   It’s meant that chapters for volume 22, 23, and 24 (to come) have been redrawn to accommodate the changes and we got the benefit of many of them between April and August of this year.

We started with Phoenixman’s fight with Child Emperor.  It started innocuously enough with Phoenixman resurrecting, but then we got a much more interesting chunk of knowledge -- the existence of a metaphysical world modelled on one’s on psyche where the assault on Child Emperor’s sense of self took a much more existential nature. 

From a purely physical battle (and some nifty cool info about the Subterraneans) to an otherworldy battle happening in parallel with the physical battle:

It ended up a very interesting examination of Child Emperor’s character and his relationships with other heroes, as well as telling us something else freaky about Saitama’s ability to be anywhere he damn well wants to be.

Ah, and Phoenixman lives. Albeit as a little chick (for now).  He’ll probably be back, but not just yet.

The mercenaries were next.  They didn’t die.  Not because Amai Mask had a change of heart, but because Iaian listened to the niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach and turned his team mates around to intervene just in time. 

As you’d expect, trying to guide the mercenaries back to the safety of the surface has been an incredibly challenging ordeal for the disciples. It’s revealed much more about the way the disciples trust each other and lean on one another, and yet, when there was no option to do so, Iaian stepped up wonderfully to fight to save the mercenaries.

We’ve also learned something interesting about why mercenaries exist at all in a world supposedly at peace.  I look forward to seeing where this plot might go next.

Elsewhere,  we got to learn a little less about Puri Puri’s dancing and swimming lessons, but we got some really awesome nods to the mythical in Bakuma (the baku is a long-nosed creature formed out of all the bits left over after creation that eats dreams) and Electric Catfish Man’s sudden sense of doom is both reference to the way catfish are supposed to detect earthquakes and just damn cool. 

A monsterised exploitative business man taking the form of a demonic dream-eating monster that consumes weaker monsters so as to exploit their abilities is so appropriate on many levels (and unreasonably hot!).

Yes, Waganma does make it to the surface, along with Saitama and Child Emperor.  Saitama gets chased away by a Sekingar outraged that there’s a clueless hero just wandering aimlessly around.  Child Emperor goes back underground and I loved to death Waganma being pierced with remorse as he realises that the hero is going to go risk his life anyway.   He’s spoiled, but his keeping quiet came from a place of being a scared human being desperate to be saved  (a surprising number of fans did not like that -- they preferred to think of him as a psychopathic monster incapable of remorse).

Orochi still has a date with a gloved fist, but he’s getting to live a little longer than he did before.

Overall the story is tighter and there’s a lot more interest as well as future plot hooks than there were.  I’m interested in seeing how it gets tied up in the next volume sometime in 2021.

Reddit did not take it well.  Summary of discourse:

sorry not sorry, I lost patience around the 500th whiny post

Advance!

What about the new chapters we got?  Also here, ho ho ho, that status quo has gotten a good kicking!

Orochi came back.  Not the most surprising surprise in the world, given how carelessly Saitama punched him. Also not surprising that he came back stronger; Phoenixman had wonderfully demonstrated that monsters can bounce back from near-death situations much stronger.  But his form... such a disgusting, slimy, ever-shifting mass of tentacles and dragons, consuming all in its way led to the third craziest development: his fusion with Psykos to launch a new monster.

I’ll spare you the disgusting intermediate stages but the end result has been the birth of Psykos-Orochi and with that, what had been a total sweep for Tatsumaki turned into a much more dangerous enterprise where every mistake of hers got punished brutally.

Why is that only number three?  Because Tatsumaki raised up the entire base to try to encompass the whole monster (and it turns out that she was thinking far too small -- the monster had actually eaten large sections of City Z) and Psykos-Orochi uses the space to launch a beam so powerful that it literally cuts off part of the Earth itself.  It was a real I see it, but I don’t believe it moment.

if you didn’t spend a few seconds just staring in disbelief, you’re not paying attention. OMG.  Boy is the Earth in trouble.

Why is that only the second craziest thing?  Because of why this fusion monster was able to do as it did. ‘God’ doesn’t just go round looking like a semi-tangible being giving random homeless men magic powers.  Yup, the Earth really in in trouble if some supernatural being is smushing monsters together to make a stronger one and then granting it extra powers.   Just like that, the struggle has turned cosmic.

Tatsumaki trying to figure out how to fight back and save City Z from being swept away by a tsunami, save the heroes, and save the planet from further damage by the beams all at the same time was one of the most spectacular fights to date. 

As I said earlier, this monster has presented Tatsumaki with a real fight where the slightest mistake on her part leads to severe punishment.  She wound up in trouble when she underestimated how extensive the monster actually was and let up on twisting it too early, only to have it come right back and skewer her hands. 

Thankfully, Genos came in and saved her from that pinch, then held the monster at bay long enough for Tatsumaki to finish saving the strike team so she could give the monster her undivided attention.

Which is a very tame way of saying that that was an incredible development in capability.   That some of the fandom had trouble accepting (they suck). Watching their protests has been an exercise in special pleading.  They have no trouble understanding how Murata uses scale...until it came to accepting the size of the explosion resulting from Genos smacking away Psyko-Orochi’s execution beam then it had to be a fisheye lens (visibly incorrect, but who’s talking facts here?).   Have had no trouble understanding how Murata portrays escalation... until it came to accepting that Genos is strong then no, somehow the monster had to be weaker.   Have had no trouble with the freeze frame language that Murata uses to portray things happening at great speed... until it came to accepting that Genos could move really, really fast.   For some people, the new is only welcome when it confirms and validates preconceptions.  Anyway, that’s my rant done!

the most unlikely of partnerships and they’re still going despite having taken a hell of a battering since this scene

Guess who’s back?

We’ve also been seeing more heroes come back to the fray.  The emergence of the Tower of Doom acted as a clarion call to every hero around and able to move.  Metal Bat sneaked out of hospital to come running back.  Tank Top Master hitched a ride with Mumen Rider to go to City Z.  He intended to stick around and save people, but seeing how much wider scale the fight was,  he literally threw himself into battle. 

Drive Knight decided he literally had to have a piece of the action,  took up a ton of power from the nearest substation and came flying in to intercept a desperately escaping Psyko-Jet... ah, I didn’t say?  Yes, the monster turned into a machine to run away once hard-pressed.

And we finally got to see what Blast actually looks like, courtesy of a flashback of Amai Mask’s.   He definitely looks the part of a caped superhero and it’s little wonder he’s stuck in the imaginations of so many.   But now I’m even more interested in seeing what his deal is and what is he’s like now

The one thing we know for sure will be happening is that Garou will not be denied his destiny.   He’s coming.  But what else is happening?  Ah, that’s all in the air.

Bring on 2021!

[creepy-crowleys]

Mission Log: Mortal Sins

Objective: Investigate Halt Orochi operation “the Breach”. Halt Vampire Crusade. Recover subject “Emma Stone” - still missing

Location: Carpathian Mountains, Romania - Points of Interest: Harbaburesti (village), Iazmăciune (village, cursed), Roman Baths, Network of Soviet-era bunkers (Red Hand) 

Investigation Summary (1 of 3):

Week 1: Arrival at Harbabureşti (July 9 - July 15)

I arrived outside the village of Harbureşti to find it under attack by local ghouls.  With the assistance of Carmen Preda, my assigned contact with the Council of Venice, we were able to break the siege and reach the still-inhabited parts of the village. Between Preda and the locals I was brought up to speed on the current situation:

A few months before my arrival, vampires began gathering in large numbers in the Carpathian mountains.  In the weeks prior, they became hostile to the point that siege engines were eventually observed just out of view of the village.  In addition, a new and virulent infection had taken to spreading through the human and nonhuman populations alike.

I was informed of a story that an Owl, Eagle, and Dragon had fought against a similar attack on the land centuries ago, and were believed to still be relevant to the recent events.

Much of the first week was spent establishing my presence in the village and pushing back against the encroaching threats. It was also during this time that I came across my first references to the Red Hand, an occult research branch of the Soviet military, and their work on developing vampire super soldiers.

Week 2: Ravens and Owls (July 16 - July 22)

Work within the village continued for the first half of the week, this time helping to restore the natural defenses created by Cernunnos (Cern, the Horned God, Mr. Stag Head), the resident deity of the surrounding forest.  

I doing so, I also became involved in investigating the murder of a villager and ended up uncovering the murder of three other people as well.  When the culprit realized that I had closed in on him, he attempted to kill me as well and lost his life in the confrontation.  The killer, Aron Sasu, left behind a journal detailing his spiralling mental health along with repeated mentions of voices from the darkness and ravens closing in on him.

I was attacked by a revenant shortly after locating the body of his last victim.

After the last victim was laid to rest, I was approached by a small owl and ended up following it on a whim.  On arriving at her home, she revealed herself to be Cucuvea, an ancient immortal and the same owl from the story I had heard in the village.  She entrusted me with a portion of an artifact left to her by Vlad III Dracula to be used against his wife, the vampire queen Mara, who was responsible for the Vampire Crusade.

Cucuvea informed me of the existence of the Drăculești, urging me to meet with them to learn more about how to defeat Mara, and entrusted me with half of a silver egg she’d received from Dracula, believing it to be an important part of his plan.  

I spent the rest of the week repaying Cucuvea by helping to take out some of her many enemies.

Week 3: The Girls Who Cried Wolf (July 23 - July 29)

I continued working with Cucuvea for the first part of the third week.  It was during this time that she shared some of her personal history with Lilith and her immortal followers in the region known as the Deathless. 

According to Cucuvea and further confirmed by independent scans, the shockwaves from the Tokyo Incident disrupted the binding magic containing the Deathless to specific sites, allowing them to spread and regain their power. With Cucuvea’s help, we were able to restore the binding at a nearby site.

While there, I came across evidence of someone else having been at the site recently: a wallet with an ID and a camera containing pictures of an at the time-missing artifact.  Using the ID from the wallet, I tracked down the owner’s last known location and from there located two of his travelling companions: his sister Céline and girlfriend Aurélie. The owner, Laurent Giroux, was discovered to have gone missing after the cabin they were in was attacked.

It was determined that Laurent was affiliated with a member of the Morninglight, Adrian Zorlescu, who had ordered him to recover the artifact from the Deathless’ church site shortly before the vampire uprising.  The artifact in question turned out to be a Filth source that had already compromised Laurent, a mercenary team also dispatched by Zorlescu to claim the artifact, and the nearby werewolf pack that had attacked them.  All those infected were destroyed, as was the artifact when it was discovered to be too dangerous to contain.

Following this, I returned to Céline and Aurélie to aid in defending the windmill they had found shelter in.  Investigation of the windmill’s origins and construction revealed it to have been built over a potent anima well with the express intentions of being used as a shelter in the event of an emergency. Time and neglect had worn down its defenses, but they were able to be repaired and the windmill was established as a secure outpost for the duration of the crisis.

Week 4: Triage (July 30 - August 5)

I returned to Harbabureşti early in the week at the request of the villagers, as well as to gather supplies and volunteers to maintain the windmill outpost.  Much of my time was spent assisting the shorthanded medics with an influx of injured survivors from a neighboring community.  During my work, I came across references to that of Dr. Varias, a Red Hand scientist and father of the village’s current doctor, and pursued them to uncover some of his research.

Week 5: Experiments Past and Present (August 6 - August 12)

When I informed the younger Dr. Varias of my discovery of his father’s materials, he confessed that he had been digging on his own in one of the Red Hand bunkers prior to the crusade and been forced to abandon what he’d found.  I convinced him to give me the location of the bunker and entered it myself.

The bunker contained a number of the experimental subjects used by the Red Hand, most of them starved to the point of nonfunction.  I single successful model was found in the depths of the facility and was destroyed.  All recovered data was forwarded to the Labyrinth.

On my exiting the bunker, I encountered John Smith, self-titled Vampire Hunter.  After some negotiation, it was decided I would test out an experimental poison he was developing on the vampires occupying the facility the bunker had been a part of.  The poison was a resounding success when introduced to the vampires’ blood stores with over 40 vampires dying within half an hour of their last meal.

Week 6: From the Valley to the Stars (August 13 - August 19)

While clearing out the vampire camp, I came across evidence that they were running counter-surveillance on a young woman camped not far from the facility.  Through her I was introduced to the Drăculești, descendants and followers of Dracula and dedicated monster hunters who had returned to the area to fight a final battle with Mara.

With Zaha’s assistance, I was able to devastate another of the vampire’s siege camp early in the week and we began work on a ritual to ward the farmlands surrounding Harbabureşti from the most dangerous of their attackers.

On August 16, I tracked the source of a strange radio transmission I’d picked up on a few days earlier to an observatory off of one of the Red Hand facilities.  Despite repeating the same message on loop, the speaker was determined to be broadcasting live from somewhere inside the facility and was possibly in need of rescue.  I accessed the bunker through an opening broken through one of the outer walls by vampires.  

Exploration of Facility-9 revealed it to have been host to a cosmonaut training program that converted anima research, and from there to a study of what the Red Hand dubbed ‘anti-anima’ (now dubbed the Filth).  Prolonged exposure to high levels of both forms of anima eventually lead to the deaths of most of the researchers and subjects, though the facility’s AI and many of its defenses remained active.

On deactivating the facility AI, I was engaged by the program’s sole surviving subject, identified as Halina Ilyushin - see attached file for further notes.  Ilyushin was determined to be too dangerous to be negotiated with or restrained, and was killed in the conflict.  The facility has since been cleaned out by Illuminati agents.