#they later meet at a bookshop and talk manga

[samuraiondo-mace-1177]

I have an AO3 now so tell me if ya would rather have it put on there! :]

I can't stress enough about how hard it is to write like a proper fanfic when you've been scriptwriting for a while, so I apologise for the quality

(I felt like I had to write like a fanfic instead of showing you guys script cuz I'm sure you'd be bored reading that)

oh god oh jeez oh fuckk uhhh

Nanba and Asahi, everyone :]

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Night settled over Yokohama. Distant twinkling stars blurred with Isezaki Road's overwhelming neon lights. Cars drove through the days-old puddles from the last spring shower.

It had been a standard shift for Nanba. The same as any other day. As tiring and brain-numbing as it was to be a Medical Equipment Instructor, he found himself with a pep in his step.

He'd planned out his entire evening. Stop by somewhere for dinner, grab stuff for tomorrow, and relax by catching up with the manga he read back in medical school.

Nanba turned out of North Isezaki Road, down past the Revengebooks shop on Tsurukame Highway. Humming 'Baka Mitai' as he sauntered along.

He flicked his wrist out of his pocket, and pulled back his sleeve to reveal his leather-strapped watch.

21:03

Nanba slid his arm back into his trouser pocket.

Ever since he left the hospital, one question kept its claws in his brain.

What was he gonna get for dinner? It had to be cheap but filling. He wasn't gonna try something new, that's for sure, but what? It wasn't gonna be curry either – his garden hadn't grown much, and anywhere selling carrots or potatoes would've been shut around then.

"Hmm... maybe here would be good."

An aroma of rich soy sauce and faint spices drifted through the air – coming out from the Poppo ahead on the corner.

"They've probably just finished cooking Karaage and Korokke... maybe I should pick some up..." Nanba muttered.

He continued down the pavement until he noticed a stranger.

Man. Mid-late 20s. Western origin. Skin as white as foamed waves, with a mottled, bumpy scar that took over the right side of his face and neck.

The stranger ran his hand through his tousled, wavy chestnut hair – sighing as he looked over at the homeless camp across the road.

His dull teal waistcoat struck out against his charcoal formal shirt and light-grey suit trousers.

The man looked over at Nanba – the two held eye contact.

One eye was covered by a cloth eyepatch. The other was half open, heavy bags, with a lifeless sage green pupil that hooked onto Nanba's warm, hickory eyes.

They both swiftly looked in opposite directions, in fear of being caught staring for too long...

Until they found themselves face-to-face, outside of the Poppo's doors.

The man was a bit taller than Nanba, maybe just by a few inches.

Despite his intimidating appearance, the man was intensely blushing and sweating from the interaction, and proceded to make a straight b-line to the manga section. It was almost robotic-like in nature.

Nanba brushed off the situation and went around the shop like usual. Getting random snacks for movie watching or his game sessions with Ichiban. Drinks, sweets, and other generic supplies. Including, a copy of the Manga he was going to binge read for the evening.

He went to the final aisle, looking for tomorrow's lunch.

A sandwich? Onigiri? Nah, they were good, but they're more of a snack food, something you'd grab on your break. Maybe a bento box? They're pre-packaged and still taste pretty good when microwaved.

The question then was; which bento was he gonna pick? The luxury Yakuniku? Nah, that was a costly ¥2980... Guess it had to be the standard ¥800 lunch set...

Nanba, distracted, accidentally placed his hand on something else when reaching for a set.

"Huh?"

It was someone's hand.

His eyes trailed along their arm, up to their face.

It was the man from earlier...

Nanba watched as the stranger's one wide eye kept switching focus between him and their hands. His face washed over with pink - he was so warm, you could practically feel the heat emiting from his face.

He quickly snapped his hand back and sheepishly scratched his nape.

"You can- You can take the Bento set... I'll just grab a different one." He murmured as he inched to the side.

Nanba turned his head slightly and lifted an eyebrow.

"I'll grab a different one. Your hand was already on it." Nanba replied. It wasn't a big deal to him since he was the one who accidentally touched this guy's hand.

"Se-Seriously! You can just take the bento!" He continued, whilst his head dug into his shoulder as he waved his hand frantically.

"Uh... Sure then...?"

Nanba grabbed the set and tucked it into his arms, along with the other groceries. He spun on his heels, facing the cash register with its stone-faced employee.

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The man sighed with relief and grabbed a bento box, whilst Nanba went to pay.

After exchanging a light 'irasshaimase' and an 'arigato gozaimasu', Nanba grabbed his box of Karrage and left to head home.

When the man plucked up the courage to finally pay for his own stuff, he noticed something slipped out of Nanba's arms.

He slammed a 1000円 bill down on the counter, grabbed the item, and darted out the Poppo.

"SIR!"

"Huh?"

Nanba stood outside Sakura Lane, waiting for whatever this wreck had to desperately tell him.

The man slouched, slightly squatting, as he caught his breath with his head hung low. He shook his manga volume infront of Nanba.

"Ya... Ya left this..."

Nanba turned the volume to the side, and pushed it back to the man.

"That isn't mine. I already have that one."

"Haw? Oh, that isn't it..."

He flipped his hand around to reveal a box of Pocky.

"I found it on the floor... after you left..."

"Oh, uh thanks... uhm..."

"Ah! The name's Ito. Asahi Ito."

"Thanks, Ito-san."

"You're welcome-... I didn't catch yer name..."

"I'm Nanba."

"Yer welcome then, Nanba-san!"

The two silently stared at each other.

Asahi tapped his pockets, and started to back away with a straight mouth.

"Well then... I'll be seein ya around then Nanba-san!" Asahi said. "Have a nice night!"

"You too, Ito-san..." Nanba muttered. "How the hell did his demeanour just... shift? He was like an entirely separate guy?"

Nanba shrugged it off as whatever and left for his apartment.

I'll answer yer question: "Why is Asahi so nervous in this? I thought he was flirtatious and outgoing?"

I've stated before that his outgoing-ness is a mask, and him being goofy is his true self. He can be flirtatious, but it's more with close friends or strangers he didn't hold eye contact with for more than two seconds and then proceed to talk to. In addition, the character got dumped a couple months prior to when this is set, so I felt like his social anxiety would be off the charts.

"His awkwardness is unrealistic :("

*autistically stares at you with generalised anxiety disorder and severe social anxiety* Ok, but seriously, this is kinda more of an exaggeration, but I used to be like this so it's more closer to my past self.

"You shouldn't have used 'lifeless pupil' for Asahi since he is very much alive"

I agree with ya there, altho, the point was supposed to be 'he seemed lifeless behind the eyes' if that makes sense? Also giving this idea that Asahi seems like a cold, heartless being to juxtapose against his actual interactions plus Nanba in this scene. Like, they both feel unworthy of love, but Nanba has started to learn he is worthy, whilst Asahi is still stuck believing he isn't.

(sorry, I love analysing my fanfics and OCs. If this was set at an earlier point in the day, you would've heard me rant about flower language too (GOD I LOVE FLOWER LANGUAGE AND HANAKOTOBA)

The reason for a fanfic, and not a comic, is actually because of I wasn't able to get a good reference.

(my hair looks like Nanba's and IW Kiryu's atm shsjdgsk)

[poupeesdecirque]

Travel Blog - Büsum (North Sea) - 20/21/22 September 24

Took me the whole week to finally have time to write the travel blog for my trip to the north sea. I can tell it was an amazing weekend and a lot of things settled for me, Mom & I had time to talk and we didn't have each other much this year bc it was either me or her traveling or working.

I didn't expect work to mess with me so hard that I wasn't even able to think of putting the photos onto the laptop... I am currently trying to work through a huge backlog. But more important if you are interested read further, a post with some HQ impressions of the trip is queued up and will be posted later on :)

Friday

It was not the first time for us to travel to Büsum, i like the small town it's very relaxed and I love the wattenmeer, i love just walking there and therefore I was looking forward a lot to this trip.

Did you know the area there is known for cabbage? So yes that field is a lot of ... cabbage.

Arrived we were able to check into the Hotel and visited a restaurant that had opened last year in the place a very good pancake place was once before. They had closed in spring though as there was a fire ... I am glad they were able to reopen.

After eating a Kaiserschmarrn we walked around the town. We had planned to take photos later on so we decided it would be best to check restaurants for dinner while taking a stroll. The weather was beautiful and reserving a table was the smarter choice here.

There were truly quite a few interesting things to see... like those french bulldogs (if you take a photo you were asked to donor something for animals which we gladly did).

Then we went out for photos. I took overall 5 dolls with me, can you spot which one got photos here :D?

The day ended with us having dinner at a rather traditional place. This is only the second time I had fish without batter... I am proud I have progressed so far from being a picky eater. It was quite late already, we fell into bed.

Saturday

As you might know I am an early bird... I took the time and went out for a small walk to enjoy the sunrise a bit before we attended the hotel buffet.

The hotel we stayed in is over 100 years old and the walls are decorated with 100.000 shells from all over the world, it was impressive.

My only complain here is that the serving sizes were itty bitty small... like 1 serving of yogurt was 1 teaspoon.. for someone who loves their yogurt it felt weird to get more than two servings (which was still only two teaspoons) :') the buns were like 1/4 of a normal sized one.

Anyways after breakfast we had planned to hike. Morning the Watt would be ours as there was supposed to be ebb and in the afternoon we decided to walk in the other direction this time as Mom never went to Deichhausen.

Inbetween we went to a Cabbage festival, met Mom's cousin and got some snacks. We had to hike over the Deich and there were several herds of sheep munching through the grass.

In Deichhausen we just relaxed for a while before we went back over the Deich and were greeted by a lots of sheep again.

There was also the Manga Day and we went to a Bookshop (I actually restricted myself oh boy so many good books) and I got those three previews for free, it's the first few chapters each. I haven't had the time to read them yet.

Here is my snack from inbetween and what I got for dinner. The Burger is with a potato-vegetable patty, topped with halloumi and roasted veggies. Side was Coleslaw and sweet Potato Fries. If you know me... you know I need to end my day with something sweet.

Then we watched the sunset once more (top photo). I was incredibly beat as I managed to walk almost 35k steps that day and even watching TV in the evening was too loud for me.

Sunday

The last day came way too soon as we only had the half day to hike once more, then we wanted to check out an old car/US car meet up, and ofc the drive home.

Once more itty servings at the breakfast. Can we talk about the croissants? The cereals next to them are NORMAL sized... so tiny.

We took a long stroll in the Watt before we headed to the meet up.

It was really interesting but I have to say the noise, the people and the sunlight lead to a sensory overload for me, I dodged two panic attacks and just wanted to flee :') so we did.

Before we went home we OF COURSE had to buy some cabbage. ... there is a lot of cabbage on my menu this week.

Traveling back took forever because of traffic and blocked roads (4 hours for a 2,5 hour distance). I'm just glad the next time I travel to Hamburg will be by train.

[equalseleventhirds]

more than 5 ppl liked this post so welcome, i am here to be Annoying

(i still haven't finished s2, bcos other things have captured my time and attention. like going to work. and designing games in my head but never writing them down. and reading manga online. and trying to get every outfit in totk. last night i ate a box of mixed deli meat bits bcos it was on sale. i have a rich & interesting life, u see.)

anyway.

here is Some Parts Of Good Omens Season Two As It Could Have Been In My Head Based On Bookverse Instead Of On Season One, Sort Of (except we keeps some bits, like gabriel's existence, bcos otherwise it gets too complicated. but like, in mood it is based on bookverse. u get it.)

the very very strong opening scene that i've got in my head goes like this:

gabriel wandering around outside as per the show. people perhaps are rubbernecking and giggling, but also, i think it's funnier if most ppl are doing their best to mind their own business. this is supposed to be london (with aziraphale's burning bookshop gaining a gaggle of interesting soho night people, not interested. funnier!)

he stops to stare with vague, affable interest at some sign or decoration or whatever. somethign depicting angels or demons, maybe some form of beelzebub, maybe something to do with the ressurrectionist.

linger on that for a long moment, as a distant whirring sound gets louder and louder.

cut to: nina on a bicycle, muttering under her breath about something that's annoyed her. customers. her partner. something. from her pov, she's going down a hill, street remarkably clear, and vaguely in her very-much-ignored peripheral we see gabriel from the back. and in her peripheral he shrugs, straightens up a bit, and turns to walk into the street with a big, vague smile.

and is promptly hit by her bike.

yes we're paralleling the anathema bike scene with crowley & az. yes it has to be nina, bcos maggie comes into this another way.

and only after this can we cut to crowley and aziraphale and whatever they're up to.

now, crowley and aziraphale were not fired and cast out of heaven and hell to earth or whatever in the book. both sides have a wavering of their Certainty About The Plan (bcos god is ineffable and, notably, silent) and wander off to have a think, wait to see what happens, and pretend very very hard that None Of This Mess Ever Happened, What Are You Talking About.

which means that in my version of this story, crowley and aziraphale are still ostensibly doing their jobs (as much as they ever do). but, to bring shaz and muriel back into this, bcos i do like them, let's say that heaven and hell are still kind of miffed and suspicious of c&a, so they send shaz and muriel to watch them.

now the easiest way to establish this is to put all four of them in one place (shaz and muriel watching crowley and aziraphale). we could do the duck pond, or the ritz, or any other clandestine meeting place. or have individual meetings again; i do think it's funnier if muriel and shaz are still very unfamiliar with earth and crowley and aziraphale keep trying to casually drop them corrections about things. comedy etc. i am not particularly bothered abt these meetings. perhaps shaz or muriel or both accidentally let on that something big and terrible is happening in heaven, but clam up about what, exactly, it is. worried glances etc.

let's do maggie now. maggie shouldn't be renting from aziraphale at all. come on. he probably still buys records from her.....actually, no. crowley buys records from her. and she probably says something to him about going out of business, and he shrugs and says well, that's life, and pushes up his sunglasses and leaves. and then a little while later, some astoundingly wealthy record collector stops by her shop and happens to find an incredibly rare and valuable record, or a rich relative she didn't know about dies and leaves her a fortune, or some weird mobsters come around and tell her landlord to keep the shop open or else. some wild miracle happenstance.

aziraphale teases crowley about this. crowley grumps about how he doesn't want to go to the trouble of finding a new record shop. aziraphale points out that the bentley plays cassettes, and crowley says yeah, but he got this record player not even 50 years ago, he has to use it, and anyway he had a hand in this new 'streaming music' business and he's got to have backups at home for whenever there's an issue there. aziraphale asks him pointedly about ebooks.

nina lets gabriel into her coffee shop to patch him up and check if he's okay. it is not across from aziraphale and maggie. she doesn't encounter aziraphale or crowley at all yet, that can't happen until later. the fly buzzes around the coffee shop, gabriel is incredibly vague, nina, in frustration, names him jim, puts a bandaid on him and makes sure he's okay (he is weirdly okay but she brushes it off), puts him in cargo pants and flannel, and, somewhat worried but aware that she can't do much else for him, lets him leave, as he feels like he has something important to do. the box is left in a corner of the shop.

meanwhile maggie gets a record back from the ressurectionist that has transformed, puts it away in a drawer somewhere with many other copies, and goes across town to her favorite coffee shop (nina's) to have coffee. she passes by gabriel on her way. she sits in a corner table and notices the empty box, but doesn't say anything about it, absolutely not.

...i'd quite like another minor plotline to cause the power outage, but there are no more really noticeable human characters from s2 and no more side supernatural characters i can put with them. could make some up but i suppose the next best option is for gabriel to have an encounter with a new human as he's wandering, and to very absent-mindedly, not even noticing what he's doing, perform a miracle. which shorts out the power on the whole street and locks nina and maggie in the coffee shop.

at which point alarms go off in heaven and hell, altho they can't quite pinpoint where gabriel is. crowley and aziraphale, still working for their respective bosses (ostensibly) get the alert, turn, look at each other, and go 'gabriel?'

which seems a good way to end episode 1 probably

........and frankly at this point this has turned into my own fanfiction, anyway i've put far too much time into this. time to go live my very interesting life (eat dinner and play more totk probably)

the more gomens2 i consume the stronger the urge grows to go 'if x event had happened in the bookverse it would've been y instead'

but that would be fun only for me and like, five select mutuals, and would simply torment everyone else and probably draw the ire of some fans. so i won't.

[theskyeandsea]

The Hope Cure || Morgan & Skylar

Location: Tower Music and Comics

People involved: @mor-beck-more-problems, @theskyeandsea

Hands idly tapping the side of her leg, Skylar waited outside of Tower Comics, her phone resting in the pocket of her jeans. She didn’t want to be scrolling through her phone when Morgan arrived, that would be rude, right? And it had been really nice of her to offer to visit the store with her in the first place. Skylar winced-- she really didn’t know much about what Morgan did and didn’t like, besides her Etsy things, magic, and some kind of hospital drama that had been playing when Skylar had visited her home. And here Morgan had invited her to go out and do something that she specifically enjoyed. Mmmm. She needed to be more attentive to other people; just because she was going through her own… situation, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to help people. Sighing, she shook her head. Maybe next time she would invite Morgan to watch something at her place? Or try and help her with magic that didn’t involve knives. Mm. She’d figure it out. Noticing someone walking down the street in her peripheral vision, Skylar glanced up and she saw the other woman approach her. “Hey. Thanks for meeting me,” She said with a warm smile. 

Morgan gave a wave and a big smile at Skylar as she approached. She’d lost track of whether exactly she’d given enough recompense for the debacle with the blood magic or if she was opening another door that would have to be balanced. With the kids in town, it was easier to give, send energy outwards in little ways, than to take their compassion, their understanding. Those were precious gifts, gifts that curses might take notice of. But either way, Morgan needed a break. So did Skylar. There were enough angsts and traumas to go around in this place-- maybe they really could just help each other, and this whole thing could even out to zero without causing much of a cosmic stir. That would be okay, right? 

“Hey!” She said, coming closer now. “Of course! I’ve been needing to get out of the house. It’s an awful time of the semester. But I guess you know that from the kids you work with too. Why don’t you show me around?”

Nodding at Morgan’s words, Skylar let out a sigh. “Yeah… That’s a fair point. There’s a lot that’s been going on lately. It’s been keeping me on my toes.” Though she wasn’t a teacher, she was getting used to the shifts in mood with her students. Now that most of the big holidays were over, the younger kids were counting down the days for spring break and her high schooler was stressing over his up-coming SAT test. So, there was a lot going on, on top of all the general… weirdness happening outside of work. “Mhm, for sure.” She said, holding open the door for Morgan before slipping inside. The comforting smell of the comic shop welcomed her, of old paper and a slight scent of dust gathering on some of the old records that lay on the other side of the shop. “So, there’s a bunch of serialized comics over here, some manga in that section, and then graphic novels. They’ve got a really great selection.” Skylar said with a nod towards the shelves full of books, the tables laden with box after box of comic books.

The comic store had a comforting smell inside that but Morgan’s body more at ease. It was the same as libraries, as bookshops. Soft, cool paper and ink, bound and accessible. Knowledge, history, story. Morgan only had the vaguest of ideas about what made those categories distinct. There were a few famous titles she was familiar with, but most of it, especially the manga, was uncharted territory. “I know you said you like manga,” Morgan said, scanning the shelves. “Any recommendations? I still haven’t seen all of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and uh, I saw Spirited Away once? When it first came out and everyone was talking about it. Not sure if that’s much to go on, though,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “How are you, by the way--?” She gave the question gently, as if that might make it lighter. Skylar had been through it lately, just as much as she had, and all the worse for being so young, and so much more on her own.

“I like a lot of different things, honestly. And the thing with manga, there’s all kinds of genres-- you have your basic fighting shounen stuff, slice of life romance, sci-fi fighting robot things, and some neat LGBTQ stuff too.” Skylar rambled as she led them towards the corner of manga. The typical books were out on full display, Naruto, Bleach, Blue Exorcist, things like that. But, she’d never really been too interested in the big action kinds of things. “Mmm. If you liked Spirited Away, you’d probably like some of the other Hayao Miyazaki movies. I don’t know if they’d have it here, but he did a manga series for Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. It’s worth checking out, either reading or watching.” She said with a nod. Focusing on the spines of the books in front of her, Skylar tilted her head as she mulled over the question. “I’ve been better.” She decided, as she pulled out one of the books from the shelf, looking over the cover for a moment. “But, I’m getting through things. One day at a time, you know? How about you?” She asked, turning to look at Morgan intently, “Are you doing okay?” 

“Valley of the Wind?” Morgan repeated. “Sounds beautiful, just from the name.” She scanned the shelves, picking up pieces with artwork centered on magic, or gentle landscapes. Some of these seemed to just be about kids getting by, harmless trouble, and puttering along with ease. She could get on board with nestling up to one of those, if only to dream of everything being so easy. She looked sidelong at Skylar as she spoke. “Anything you feel like talking about?” She said, plucking up a book. “I can listen pretty good in person too, you know.” But of course, Skylar, sweet kid she was, wanted to know about her too. “I’m getting there. Pushing along, as we do. Still compiling information about my-- curse, thing. Knowledge really is power, but the picture it’s giving me isn’t a pretty one.”

“Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” Skylar said with a nod. “It’s a beautiful movie. It’s about a lot of different things, but I think it’s a story about the power of compassion.” She shrugged. The idea of facing adversity and suffering with kindness and understanding, it was… more applicable than she ever thought it would have been when she’d first watched the movie as a child. “Ah.” Biting the inside of her cheek, she shook her head. “Not really. Just, erm, trying to adjust. Still trying to deal with some of the, the fallout.” She said before turning her attention to the books. If she looked at the books, then Morgan wouldn’t see how watery her eyes were getting at just the thought of talking about her family right now. But, she couldn’t help but think about the lies, about her phone call to her mom, about how her phone calls never went through anymore. Skylar hummed, not entirely sure how to respond at first, “I’m sorry that it’s not going well. But… you’re one step closer to figuring things out, right?”

Morgan smiled, caught by the universe again, she thought. Compasion, kindness, suffering. She couldn’t seem to get away from those no matter what she told herself to the contrary. The people she met were too nice, too brave in the face of their suffering to be used or endangered recklessly. The longer she looked, the more imbalance she found, and there wasn’t enough energy or enough strength to hold or fix it all. If she could just get the shadow lifted from her shoulders, though, she could try. She could shove as many of them into her arms as possible. If she didn’t drown mysteriously in the river or get wrecked by a tornado or get trampled in the street or fall off a cliff like her ancestors had at various points in their cursed lives. 

She caught the strain in Skylar’s voice and paused, looking over at her. “I’m sorry for you, too,” she said seriously. “They shouldn’t have lied.” She turned her attention back to the stacks, picking up another volume to look at later. They were trying to take a break, right? “And, uh, yeah I’m--building a timeline. I think it happened while my great-great grandmother was young. But the details are, it’s either in some record that didn’t know or care about any of them, or it’s some personal account that’s trying to put words to something you just can’t. You run out of ways to say your world broke, and why is this happening anyway? It’s endless. And you start to wonder if this is all just a bad trailer for the future, but--” She could deal. She would. She had to. “Knowledge is still power. I think that’s going to be true for both of us. So, found anything good?”

Eyes flitting over the covers of some of the manga, Skylar’s attention turned to an old classic. Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji, a character who’s entire purpose and abilities hinged upon something he feared and actively shied away from… A lump formed in the back of her throat. Mmm. There really was no getting away from things, was there? Swallowing, she met Morgan’s eyes for a brief moment as the woman spoke. “They shouldn’t have. But, they did. And now I’m trying to… deal with what it all means. It’s okay, though. I’ll be okay.” Skylar said with a timid smile. She’d told Remmy that it would be okay, she’d tried telling herself that it would be okay. But, the more and more she thought about it, how could things ever be okay? How could she ever be okay, when she wasn’t even human? She just… wanted to be normal.

 Drawn out of her thoughts by Morgan’s own situation, Skylar focused in on the other woman’s words. A bad trailer for the future? “Morgan…” Reaching out, Skylar touched her shoulder gently, hoping that the gesture would provide some kind of comfort, “I’m sorry. You’ll find something, though. I know you will.” Clearing her throat, she slipped her hand back into the pocket of her jacket and shook her head. “Mm, not really. I’m kind of in a comic book mood. Have you ever read any comics?” She asked, leading the way towards the boxes of comic books, neatly organized and arranged.

Morgan instantly felt guilty for getting distracted enough to ramble to Skylar. This wasn’t hers to carry. Of course she wanted to, because she was kind and she knew, way too well, what it felt like to be alone, to feel outside of the world, to be the kind of tired that Morgan sometimes felt. Maybe that was why she’d slipped in the first place. She smiled with genuine softness at the girl’s gesture. “Thanks. And I’m still hopeful to, for the record. Things…aren’t always the way they should be, you know? But that doesn’t mean we give up. We owe it to ourselves to manifest the life we deserve, or at least, to try to, even if it’s an uphill climb.” But they would get there. Skylar would find her peace within herself, and Morgan would break her curse. They had to. What other options were there?

We owe it to ourselves to manifest the life we deserve. That was some deep stuff that Skylar really didn’t want to unpack right now. Because… what did she deserve? Her entire life, she’d been nothing but a burden on her family and now, the more of the truth she uncovered, the more she questioned things. “Mhm. We can’t give up.” She said with a nod. Even if she didn’t fully believe it, she had to try. Things would get better, they would. Walking over to the comic section of the store, she started going through some of the Marvel comics. Her fingers paused as she looked at the box labeled “X-men.” They were her favorite comic books, some of her favorite heroes came from those pages. Pulling one of the issues of the Astonishing X-men out of the box, she skimmed through the pages. The Hope Cure. Something that would cure the mutant, that would fix them. Make them human. “With curses, is there any tried and true method to breaking them? Or is it like a… case by case basis?” 

Morgan leaned against the shelves and started poking through her small armload. Reading right to left was a heck of an adjustment. She didn’t notice Skylar’s attention wandering to the X-Men title, but listened and went on. “Oh, case by case, always,” she said. “Sometimes there’s something specific written into the spellcraft, and sometimes you can use one spell to undo another. There’s no one size fits all solution to anything. Mine’s complex enough that I can’t do anything without knowing what, exactly, was put into it. You can fall into some bad messes trying to put the wrong key in the wrong hole. It has to be done carefully.”

“Case by case.” Skylar echoed as she slid one of the comic books out of its protective sleeve and began to thumb through the issue. Her eyes fell on a particular speech bubble, a woman at a podium offering an answer, The mutant strain can be eliminated. Safely and irreversibly. There is such a thing as a second chance. A second chance. What she wouldn’t give for any kind of chance at a normal life. “How would one spell counteract another one? Wouldn’t that just make things worse?” She asked, still holding the open comic book. “That makes sense why you’re trying to sort everything out. It’s like… you need all the pieces of the puzzle before you can begin to put it together.” She said, hoping that the metaphor made sense. She wouldn’t pretend to understand any of this magic stuff, but this was the best way she could conceptualize any of this.

“Hm?” Morgan had been trying to work her way through a story about wolf siblings, but zoned out somewhere along recounting the various means of spell breaking. “Yeah, you need the whole picture, the history of the thing, and its intentions. If, say, your apartment was flooding from a leaky pipe, you could sop up the water in a room, but it wouldn’t be as helpful as finding the leak and fixing it. But, obviously, sometimes you really just need one room not flooded. A patch job is still a job. Not for me, but in general. And some spells were written just for, well, dispelling others. Voiding the bargain of another spell, basically.” She finally looked up enough to look at Skylar properly again. “Find anything interesting?”

Running her fingers along the panels of the comic book, Skylar mulled over Morgan’s words. If her situation could be compared to a leaking pipe, her entire apartment was underwater, all the pipes were burst, and she was just trying to keep afloat. But, if magic… if magic could do something about it, if a deal could be made, if something could be done to get rid of this… part of her. She was willing to try. “Is that another case by case situation? Or is it always a one-to-one kind of thing, like… if two people were cursed with a similar thing, would the same spell work on both of them? Or is the magic unique to the person and their situation? The, the intention?” Skylar asked, trying to use some of the wordage that Morgan had brought up. Slipping the comic back into its sleeve, Skylar shook her head. “Not really. Just an old issue I’ve read before.” 

“Similar, not guaranteed; identical, yes,” Morgan said. She looked at Skylar thoughtfully, puzzled by her sudden interest in spellcraft. It was sweet, in its own way, trying to work her head around Morgan’s situation, even if she didn’t have the access to magic to do anything for her. “You don’t need to know all this stuff, though, okay? Magic is weird and complicated. There are so many pathways to achieve something, so many calculations, so much to balance--I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing else and still have more to learn at the end. It’s a lot, for anyone, and you already have so much, Skylar.” She smiled at the girl, touched by her efforts nonetheless. “But, if you’re that curious, I can try and explain the theory stuff to you. But, I’m still a way’s off from trying something big. Okay?”

Humming in understanding, Skylar’s eyebrows pinched together, brow furrowing. Mm. Maybe if she did research, if she tried to find other instances of things where people had been turned into animals and then cured-- Beauty and the Beast, Princess and the Frog, there had to be a grain of truth there, right? If Interview with A Vampire was real, there had to be something that could help her. “Hm?” Startled by Morgan’s gentle tone, Skylar blinked. Wait. She thought-- oh. “It’s okay, really. I want to know more about this. If I’m in this… I want to know as much as I can. And I want to help you, really.” She said. That part was true, she did want to help Morgan. She really did. The other woman’s situation was… awful. Tragic, even, in a way that she could never fully understand. So, if she could help Morgan while also getting some answers towards her own… cure, everyone would be a winner. Right? “Theory sounds good to me.” Skylar said with a nod.

But you aren’t in this, Skylar, Morgan thought. You can’t be. But the girl wouldn’t understand that, would she? She would see someone else hiding something, or pushing her away, and it wouldn’t matter that she was doing it to keep a cosmic target off her back, the fact of it would hurt enough. If Morgan were truly her mother’s daughter, she might withhold everything, even her support altogether. But she couldn’t do that now any more than she had been able to as a child. She knew the sting of being on the receiving end too intimately to stomach inflicting it. She’d find different lines to draw, and hopefully it would be enough. “Just the basics first, of course,” she clarified gently. “And--there’s other people in town, your age, who have a grip on the magic thing, at least broadly speaking. But, okay, there is one thing I can show you that pretty much applies across the board.” Morgan flushed as she took out her keys, sheepish even though Ruth was no longer looking over her shoulder. She snapped off one of the charms and dug for some pocket lint. “Magic wants to be balanced, it wants fair value in the universe. That’s not how things are all the time, obviously, but with magic--you can give--” she put the items on the pop socket on her phone and reached down into the universe, sighing with ease. The items clinked together, melded into a silver seal with a jacket like Skylar’s, melded again into a fifty cent piece, the kind Morgan had grown up coveting. “--and you can receive. Nothing is a waste, if you’re doing it right. Everything you’ve lost finds its way back somehow, even if it’s a little different.” She gestured again and returned the items back to their form. “And that, Skylar, is how I know we’re going to be okay.”

Taking in a breath to steady her nerves, Skylar nodded at the other woman’s words. “I’ve talked to a few of them--” She stopped herself, not wanting to out anyone without knowing if they’d told Morgan themselves. Rio had taken that away from her, she didn’t want to do that to anyone else. Instead, Skylar focused on the Morgan’s hand, at the charms on her key chain. Listening intently, she watched as the tiny objects that sat in her palm come together and formed a half dollar coin. Everything lost finds its way back, even if it’s a little different. Did that mean that… Was there a chance? That she could be normal, that she could just be… a human? Could magic help her? Looking over at Morgan, Skylar nodded, “We’re going to be okay.” She was going to be okay. One way or another, she would find a way to be okay again.

[ayakashiramblings]

ABC NSFW Headcanons: Aoi

In celebration of Aoi being released, here we are, coming for him! … Wait… no…   Also, I am going to age him up to 18 years old because again, that’s the legal age in Japan. Finally, ignore the ‘Location’ part. 

A - ‘Aftercare’ (What they’re like after sex)

Boys, meet your king and take some notes from the student, y’all. 

Wipes you down and helps you shower, keeps you hydrated and even wraps you up in a burrito of blankets. 

He does ask ‘How was it?’ because I have a feeling you are his first so he isn’t experienced but would let you set the pace.

B - ‘Body’ (Body Part of Yours he Loves)

Aoi is the kind to worship you.

But let’s be honest. You’re his first woman. 

He will HAVE to go for the boobs. 

It doesn’t help they are the only things stopping him from being completely consumed in your heart.

Tease him with them and he will lose it.

C - ‘Cum’ (How does his cum taste like/look like)

He is not even 20 yet but the poor boy is overworked. 

So when he gets a release, it will be in HUGE amounts, albeit not in a complete one-shot and in gradual intervals. 

The good news is that he probably cooks for himself so knows to eat his veggies. 

Moreover, he doesn’t consume alcohol which would have affected the taste/amount of the semen. 

He did indicate a slight interest in Ramune bottles though so I don’t think it’s going to be THE perfect taste. 

Definitely in the top 2 though; slightly sweet with a tangy after-taste.

D - ‘Dirty Secret’ (DUH)

Has always wanted to paint… on your body.

It could be of anything, some sensuous flower, fierce animal or your favourite quote from a good book, he just wants to mark you in every way possible.

So why not his own art?

E - ‘Experience’ (Does he know what he is doing?)

One word. 

Student. 

He’s probably blushing like mad even after trying to discreetly read the books he loaned from Ginnojo… 

Which lead to an awkward study-buddy kind of thing as they debated between themselves on how certain positions were even possible.

Both failed the theoretical but at least Aoi will get practical points later...

F - ‘Favorite Position’ (Again, duh)

He wouldn’t know much in the beginning but after a bit of experimentation, he settles for...

Coital Alignment Technique. 

That technically was only defined in 1988 BUT that is not the point.

The giver lies above the receiver, moving up until his erection is pointing “down,” the dorsal side of the penis pressing against the clitoris as he penetrates.

Essentially, it’s like the Missionary but adjusted so not only can he bring you closer to a good orgasm, he gets to see each and every one of your expressions and be exposed to the pulse near your collar bones.

G - ‘Goofy’ (Serious or humorous?)

I know some might think he is all for serious lovemaking due to his stringent nature but I disagree. 

He and MC seem more in-tune with each other than the rest of the team, and he is more empathetic and considers her needs and likes, without basing it on societal values or whatever norms.

If there is a funny moment or this is part of cheering MC up, he is more than willing to pull out a joke. 

Sure, he might be dying from sheer mortification if you laugh too hard but your smile is enough for him to forget about it and laugh along and learn from it.

H- ‘Hair under THERE’ (Pubic Hair Treatment, does the carpet match the shades?)

He’s a clean-freak, he’s good with his hands, what do you mean he doesn’t manscape??? 

Pry this thought out of my cold, roaming hands. 

And yes, it’s the same shade, if not slightly lighter.

I- ‘Intimacy’ (How they are doing the moment, romantic aspects)

This one depends on several factors honestly. 

If he actually overcomes his fear of peering into people’s emotions, he might want to feel the warm embrace of your heart (with your consent, of course). 

He does get embarrassed and may cover up any cute gestures with abrasive words but nothing will stop him from letting you know how much he appreciates you... even if you may or may not need a Tsundere-translator in the midst of it all.

At least he nails the whole atmosphere, making it nice and soft just to be in each other’s embrace.

J- ‘Jack Off’ (Masturbation)

Before MC? Hell no. 

Dude only works himself up to a frenzy over dirty dishes and broken paintbrushes. 

Meeting MC? Starts aggressively chopping anything in sight and taking out his frustrations in the cooking.

He then realizes the ingredients are getting more pounding moments than he has and starts to relieve himself when he is absolutely sure no one is around to stumble into his room.

Poor boy doesn’t know where to start though and it is only when he imagines his hands being yours does he get anywhere.

K- ‘Kink’ (One or two of his kinks)

I think I have said this before but unwrapping you like a present is a gift in itself.

Ribbons, ribbons, oh so pretty...

Look me in the eye and tell me that tugging on his long, luscious locks doesn’t get him off.

Consent. No, but seriously, him being constantly reassured that you want this as much as he does just encourages him to explore more.

L- ‘Location’ (Favourite places to do the do)

On Oji’s bed so that the old man can’t sleep anymore on that mattress.

Ok, but really, he would love it in either of your bedrooms so that HE can take care of cleaning up the mess and no one else. 

Anywhere is fine, the wall, the bed, the floor. Just let him have access to some cleaning supplies.

M- Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Anything about you being happy. 

Heck, you could be smiling over some random 2D dude getting his route released in a few hours in some manga and he would be hiding a raging boner.

Did I mention ribbons? If not, then ribbons.

N- ‘No.’ (Something they wouldn’t do, turn-offs)

Whatever it is, no foodplay. How dare you waste food made from ingredients Oji-san FINALLY remembered?!

No threesomes either because he is always worried you might get Kuya involved...

O- ‘Oral’ (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

He is a GREAT giver. 

Not only that, HE ACTUALLY KNOWS NOT TO JUST FLICK IT.

Ginnojo, does your bookshop have some hidden Sex Bible or something?

Firm, repetitive rolls before sucking on the engorged clit, all the while letting his one free hand grab onto some other erogenous zone of yours.

Initially, super reluctant to receive because “MC! It-it-it down there?!”

A bit self-conscious about the taste and if you can actually breathe. 

Until you start to let your tongue wander over the whole of his length.

Now, he likes to give and receive.

P- ‘Pace’ (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual?)

He’s going for a marathon session whenever possible. 

He loves lengthy lovemaking where all his senses are aroused. 

That means sexy music and lots of foreplay to get a stimulating hour (or two).

Q- ‘Quickie’ (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

He would LOVE it ONLY if you made a feisty quickie at work. 

Rip off his clothes, and go at it as soon as he walks through the door. 

That I-need-you-now approach boosts his confidence and his lust.

R- ‘Risk’ (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

Honestly, only if you suggest it. 

And he has ensured that it will not jeopardize your safety. 

And that it is technically physically possible, he has all the equipment...

Essentially, as long as both of you are prepared, he is more than willing to.

S - ‘Stamina’ (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

The first few times is a soft ‘2’ because he doesn’t know his own reactions (yet). 

However, he quickly learns how to control yours and his release.

Suddenly, he wants to go at it like rabbits over long durations.

Seriously contemplates making a schedule.

T - ‘Toy’ (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

If you wanted to try one, he will... struggle to buy them. 

So he isn’t so keen on them.

Also because he prefers learning your body’s natural responses to his touches and not through some plastic equipment that is...

Wait, why is it rotating?

Is it another wand?

U - ‘Unfair’ (how much they like to tease)

In the initial stages? You are the Queen of teasing this poor fool.

But remember, he can get his revenge as a Seer. 

Basically, you are going to regret it MUCH, MUCH later.

... Provided he gets either drunk enough to say it or you two are like maybe, 1 month into the relationship.

V - ‘Volume’ (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

He is more into heavy panting, and airy, hot breaths.

Because he wants to focus on your moans and is a bit self-conscious. 

But occasionally, rough grunts overlap with your sounds, especially the closer the two of you become.

W - ‘Wildcard’ (Random Headcanon)

You and his first time will make him extremely worried about hurting you, even if you aren’t a virgin.

Because one good/bad thing about his appearance is that sometimes girls randomly chat to ‘her’ about their lives… including very, very, very bad sex. 

Until you make him discover the joys of voyeur vision. 

Slowly undressing for him, and then starting to pleasure yourself. 

The sight had made him weak in the knees, and he had quickly joined in to learn the ropes.

Oh boy, he is a great student. :D

X - ‘X-ray’ (How is the package?)

Hidden in loose boxers (to hide any reaction to certain actions of yours)

I’m going to be honest, he is probably just average in terms of length. 

BUT GREAT GIRTH.

Even better that his glans is nearly the same size as his width. 

A bit curved towards the stomach, with some prominent veins.

Y - ‘Yearning’ (How high is his sex drive?’)

High. Super high.

This is going to be first and hopefully the only partner. 

He wants to ravish you at least 3 times a week.

A bit interesting it falls on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Z - ‘Zzzz…’ (How fast do they fall asleep?)

Initially, it takes him a good half-an-hour because he is so busy tending to you until you get him to relax with pillow talks.

Soon though, he likes to cuddle with you before hitting the hay.

[habstein]

Hello little details scavengers, it’s hab again.

You know, in the past I talked about good days, bad days, and weird days (which is both good and bad). I like weird days, coz it represents the balance of the universe and it’s like little soft voices whispering to my ears “don’t worry hab, bad things happened, but it could be a weird day and you’d be cheered up in no time” ☺️

Well, today is a weird day.

—-

First, I almost lost the chance for a scholarship. So last week, the dean of the English department sent the monitor of my class a list of students who are eligible for the annual Kawai scholarship (no, it’s not kawaii =.= even tho i think i’m cute enough for a kawaii scholarship ((((: ). But she didn’t tell me. I was NOT informed by any means, at all. Lucky me, a girl that I’m pretty close with in my class told me about it. She was like “Hey, I saw the list of potential candidates for Kawai scholarship and your name was on the top. Have you contacted dean and filed a form?” And I was like “What? I know nothing about this sht?!?”. I asked the monitor if it’s true and she just texted me “go see dean”, nothing else, not even explain one bit about the why and what and how 🙄So I went to dean’s office. He was clearly unhappy when seeing me, he said: “I told the monitor to tell you to come here 5 days ago.” I was surprised, and a bit scared ☹️ I said “I’m sorry, professor, but I just received the news today.” “I asked your monitor, she said she’d already told you. You’re telling me she lied?” -.—.——. Well... I’m an, how to say, amicable person. I don’t want anybody to get in trouble, especially when I don’t know the root of things. Like, idk if she has any reason to not tell me, and I don’t like to assume, so I just told dean that “Maybe she texted me on the wrong number. I’ll make sure she gets it right next time.” Thank god the mood lightened after that. The professor explained to me what was the scholarship, who could apply for it, and what specific things I had to do in order to get it. And he emphasized that I have to do it fast because today is already due date for applications. So there I went. I ran from places to places around my uni to get this thing signed and the other thing stamped. And for a person with anxiety to perform several tasks at once while meeting all these new people at their fancy offices and most importantly UNPREPARED (mentally), it’s pretty exhausting. But well I made it. I’ll tell you the good news if I get that scholarship. Of course I remembered to thank the dean for his encouragement and support. And I’ll definitely buy my good fella in class a bigsize cup of bubble tea. I just cannot thank her enough.

——

That and a midterm test make this morning a busy one. Later in the afternoon, I saw sth on my fb feeds that made me sad. It was just somebody’s bits in their universe, meaning not my business and I should be wise and look the other way. But me being me, I read the whole thing and it was like someone carried my whole body and put me in this tiny box of numbness. I know I sound crazy to you, because I can’t tell you exactly what I read, but it affected me, and not in a good way. Well, tbh, I have lots of experience dealing with numbness, so I dealed with grace, I listened to my Tea playlist and went to work. After work, when I was struggling to get my motorbike from the parking lot coz it was squeezed between two huge bikes, I thought about the bits that I shouldn’t have read and was a bit down for a sec. I then decided to go to a nearby bookshop to get the latest issue of Gintama. They’re republishing the series in my country, so I’m collecting new issues whenever they’re out. There’s a queue at the counter and I stood right behind a little boy. The boy seemed to be whining for a mechanical pencil but his mom said no so he angrily stomped towards the stationery shelf to put it back (it looked cute actually, his stomping action 😂). But then he came back with even more stuffs and put them on the counter. Well, by then I realized that this tiny human was one of my students that I taught way back in June. He was among the naughtiest and smartest kids in my class. In fact, there was a day when it’s a bit stormy so there were only two students coming to class and he was one of them. He was scared because there were so few of us that if there were burglars they would easily kill us and take everything 🤣 So I spent the next 15 mins to reason with him that 1. No burglar would sneak into this class to get just a laptop and a phone (he thinks my phone worths a fortune 🤣) and 2. I know karate so I would fight to the death to protect him and his classmate. And you know what? Little troublemaker said “But teacher I don’t want you to die.” Sooo yeah... I remember him very well.

When seeing this small stack of new unnecessary stationery on the counter his mom said “Khang (his name), you still have many highlighters and pens at home. You should use those pens before buying new ones.” To which he mumbled “What’s the matter? I can afford it =.=“...

- Mẹ nói thì con phải nghe chứ Khang ơi ^_^ (You should listen to your mother, Khang.)

- Ơ.. cô Hoàng Anh!! (*gasped and called me Ms. Hoang Anh)

He turned around and looked at me with the widest eyes. Idk why but kids don’t think that their teachers also go to bookshops or the supermarket). I gave him the biggest smile, like one when you meet an old friend. He tugged his mom’s shirt slightly and proudly introduced me as his English teacher from summer. He was genuinely excited to see me and that just made me so happy. When I finished paying for my Gintama and got on my bike to go home, he ran out of the bookstore just to ask this:

- Cô ơi cô mua gì đấy? (What did you buy, teacher?)

- À, truyện tranh. (Oh, comics.)

And he just laughed like it’s the funniest thing in the world. He thought I’m an old person and that means I don’t read comics or manga.

—-

That little unexpected encounter really made my day. I was so happy I smiled like an idiot all the way home. A storm just passed yesterday (you know, Mangkhut storm) so it just rained a little. Teeny tiny drops of water on my skin and the fresh cold air of autumn through my hair. Who would have known happiness is just as simple as the mark you make on someone else’s life. If you meet someone and they remember you along with all good things, then you know you are happy.

[bloody-scans]

I guess it’s my turn to make my input.

It’s Caramel (mostly known as Hydra) over here.

First of all, I apologise the lateness in this post in comparison to my teammates. As you can see by Mika’s post, I was the one who warned the whole team about what happened, however I didn’t have time to write this before because I’ve been taking care of the forum and I was only done by the time I had to leave home to have a driving class.

And yes, I am learning how to drive right now and that means I am bad at driving and yet I’ve been driving in some street somewhere with all these feelings (which i will try describing later on the post) build up all over my chest (can you imagine the disaster that could lead to if something went wrong? Bit thankfully that wasn’t the case)

I also apologise on the size this post is certainly going to have once it’s finished. I have many things crossing my mind to say and my brain is estimating this post to be roughly pretty long even though I am only starting it right now. (And I may forget to say something meanwhile as usual!)

Anyway, I am also going to make TWO posts in a row now so please pay attention to this blog’s posts.

Now, if you have no idea what’s going on yet (some people may have come online now because timezones), PLEASE READ THIS POST.

One thing I’m sure you’ll find astonishing my my post is that you probably imagine me pissed off as hell saying all possible swear words in 20 languages to insult one single person - the person who is the responsible for all of this. Well, big surprise to you all and even to me: Today I’m in a good, kinda-melancholic mood so I’m laughing at everything: our own misery, your own misery (by “you”, I mean “people who have patience enough to read all this bunch of words I’m writing right here”) and, mostly, at the all the effort this person, firefly-lynn, had in the past few days (?) / weeks (?) / months (?), to just make everything end like this - it’s one of those stories that could sound heroic, the save the nation of people who don’t want to buy manga just because of the effort when they could read it for free (lols, it’s so funny to repost stuff people tell no to, right?) but I’m, mostly, laughing at how stupid this person has shown to be.

Whoever they were, I must confess they sure have some brains, they figured out the only thing that could get around a flipbook: taking screencaps and mounting it all. As a person who takes screencaps for the own digital manga I buy, the one who uploaded all the three versions (flipbook, not flipbook and the version to retranslators) we made of each chapter almost every chapter, it’s easy to tell what got reposted was the version on the flipbook.

To do it with screencaps, it means this person had to take around 3 or 4 screencaps for each page, to crop them, put them all together and to crop selectivately, mostly on colour pages, to make it seem like they weren’t taken from there.

All of this is a big pain in the ass, we are surprised somebody decided to do it on 18 chapters and 2 specials. Putting aside that what they did was a huge lack of respect but a big bunch of people and entities, this is something that needs a lot of effort and patience to be done.

But all this effort and patience make it even more stupid. The big question is: “Why now?”

I assume they decided to do it now exactly because we were close to the end of the manga and it has already been one year since we started releasing in private, so they thought we wouldn’t find it out. But, truth is, I did find it right when I woke up, a few minutes after mangafox made the chapters public. And do you know why?

Because I do keep track of when the scanlations I work in are reposted because I’ve got the app mangazone:

So yeah, if that was their worry, that was pretty much pointless and they could’ve just done the whole thing right when we started posting privately, it’d end up on the same - us cancelling the scanlation.

So yeah, to that user over there: thank you very much, you just fucked up.

As Mika said, feel free to send them your appreciation as well.

Oh, as I was writing this part, I noticed something new. These chapters were uploaded on mangafox by two users actually: firefly-lynn and shirley07.

Shirley07 is the person who also reposted our releases on that beautiful christmas day of 2015 in which I went to sleep because it was late, released just over here and then on the next morning everybody was messaging me our releases had been reposted in no time.

I remind you all that this person got a message from Serya confronting them last year AND SHIRLEY07 APOLOGISED. And now they did this. And we know they read this blog.

HELLO SHIRLEY07, WE MEET AGAIN AND YOU FUCKED UP AGAIN. How glad are you for making our team almost cancel releases once and make us actually cancel releases on the second time? You must feel so great right now.

The most interesting thing about this person is: THEY ARE AN ADMIN FROM MANGAFOX. They are one of those people who get money from reposting other people’s works.

Serya talked about this on her post so I won’t get into details but please, if you never did it before, please start considering into visiting just the scanlators’ website. If you visit online manga reading websites, you are giving off money to the people who are ruining everything for you: both official releases and scanlations.

If you just want to know if a certain manga has a scanlation, GO TO BAKAUPDATES. I repeat, GO TO BAKAUPDATES. And then copy that scanlation team’s name on google.

Only the scanlations that have links to websites like adfly or donate buttons may make money from the work they are doing. The other scanlations are doing everything FOR FREE. But even about those that get some money from it, they are basically working, so it’s more acceptable to give money to them than giving it to these people who just repost chapters.

How can we all fight this menace to the manga world? Not visiting it. It’s simple. Please, do your part.

I can tell you there isn’t a word in all 6 languages I can speak that describes what I feel right now. Any “fuck you” to those people isn’t enough, it isn’t even 1% of what I want to say. What am I feeling right now? Is it “Anger”? Or “Sadness”? Maybe it’s “Disappointment”? It’s a mix of all of them and some other more. It’s just a big mix, it’s so huge that I feel pretty apathetic with all of it.

I deep down knew this would happen. My mind always told me “this shirley07 person isn’t trustworthy” and here we are again, one year later lamenting over the same shit.

I had a pretty terrible day today.

But at least these people’s stupidity provided me some good fun. I had fun laughing at them because they really seem to think we wouldn’t stop the scanlation.

Seriously, this word is very far from enough but it’s the most understandable way of saying it, so here goes, directed toward mangafox users firefly-lynn and shirtley07, my most sincere:

FUCK YOU.

You’re welcome.

Now I’m gonna play Elsword, like I’ve done in the past two months. If anybody who plays that game wanna kill monsters with me to drop some steem after everything that happened, please feel free to do so. I’m on the NA server. And so is Mika. Join us, we are big losers.

Now that I’m talking about Elsword, me, a big Elsword (the character) trash, found once a fanart of Rune Slayer (which is one of Elsword’s different paths) wearing Bloody’s hoodie (yes, from Bloody Mary!) and I’ve never felt so blessed in my life. Please take a look if you love both too.

Also please, look forward to the post I’m going to make after this one.

Thank you very much for all your support, we are so sorry for everything. The support you’ve given us will never be forgotten.

Our even biggest apologies to the people who can’t read the official manga. Mostly because I am aware some bookshops in the UK got the information that Bloody Mary’s official release got discontinued after volume 4, and, therefore, they may never have the rest of the manga for sale and who knows what may happen in the rest of the world. (I solved the problem of the person who reported this to me because they can read japanese, so I sent them my own raws, but who knows who else may be under the same situation?)

PS: If you don’t have a mangazone account to see them, here’s a tweet one of our readers made with the comments I wrote on Bloody Mary’s area of the app this morning

PS 2: I’m sure I forgot to say something...

-- Caramel

[funkaliciousfrog]

I’m bored, so I’m temporarily turning into a seasonal anime blog for a single extremely long post. 

I’m checking out more new anime than usual this season, and I’ve been in the mood to write lately. So, I thought it’d be fun to record my expectations for each show and my impressions of their first episodes. Even if no one but me ever reads it. 

Joran the Princess of Snow and Blood

That one show I’m watching partially just cause Aoi Shouta is there. I’m interested to see if he can pull off a female character who dresses as a man, which as he put it himself is the “gyakku-pattern” compared to his usual roles. Tbh watching shows just cause Shouta is in them hasn’t worked out super great for me in the past (I didn’t really like 2.43 or Kimi to Boku, and Hamefura was just alright), so we’ll see what happens here. It’s an anime original so who knows how the story will end up. But going off the trailer, at the very least we’ll get some cool aesthetics and sick fight animation.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the plot of this show is gonna involve some politics, since it takes place in an alternate 1930s where the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate hasn’t ended yet. Yeah, you might need to skim a Wikipedia article or two on Japanese history for this one. The main characters are assassins, working undercover for the shogunate and fighting some group of superpowered shapeshifting animal people. The protagonist works in a bookshop by day and lives with her very young sister who does all the housework. She also has some kind of crow-related powers that haven’t been explained yet. In fact, there’s a lot of things about the setting that were only touched upon and I guess will be elaborated on later. 

The character designs and background art are very nice, but something feels off with the actual animation. Things move in weird stiff ways, some of the special effects are kinda ugly, and the fight scenes in particular are disjointed at points. Although I think that disjointedness came more from the storyboarding than the animation itself? I can’t say for sure since I’m not one of those sakuga expert people. But, I can still tell the production value here isn’t quite as high as it appeared from the PV. The premise has potential, but as the story unfolds we’ll see if it’s good enough to carry the less than stellar animation. 

And as for Shouta, all he really got to do this episode was be dapper and talk in cryptic insect-themed metaphors. Oh, and randomly pull out a lightsaber, since I guess they have those in this show? I’m mostly curious to see how the people who don’t pay any attention to voice actors will react when his character’s actual gender is revealed. 

Mashiro no Oto

Hibike Euphonium was one of my first anime and remains one of my faves. So,  I’m always interested in shows about classical music and/or playing instruments. The manga has won multiple awards so it should be a good story, and hopefully this adaptation is just as good. As another show about a traditional Japanese instrument, the Kono Oto Tomare comparisons will be inevitable. But honestly, I’d be happy just learn some stuff about the shamisen cause I think it's cool. 

This was quite the whirlwind first episode. Our main character Setsu has been playing shamisen with his grandpa since he was a little kid. But, turns out his grandpa is displeased with his grandson’s sound, so he makes it his dying wish that Setsu stop playing shamisen. Once his grandpa does die, Setsu feels distraught, impulsively gets on a bus to Tokyo, ends up living with a random gravure idol for a week, picks fights with her no-good wanna-be rockstar boyfriend, at the very end a SWAT team shows up... it’s a lot. 

And I don’t really know how it will proceed from here either. After speeding through this escapade in Tokyo, I think (or hope) that the pace will settle down starting next week. And going off the poster we’ll eventually end up in a high school shamisen club, somehow.

I really enjoyed the bits and pieces of shamisen music in this episode, it just sounds so cool! I hope to eventually get more specific information about the instrument and its repertoire. All I really want from these shows about extremely specific topics is to be educated! They also played either the OP or ED at the end, and it sounded pretty neat. Unlike Kono Oto Tomare they actually put the instrument of question into the song, which I appreciate (though I still like all the Kono Oto OPs and EDs). 

The art in the PV didn’t seem like anything that special, but the episode itself actually looked very nice in the important moments. I especially liked the snowy background art from the beginning. They also took an interesting direction with the character designs: everyone is drawn with very thin lines and most of the time without cel shading. Sometimes it looks like an aesthetic choice, and other times it just looks kinda cheap. The animation itself is nothing crazy, but at least from my uneducated perspective the shamisen playing looks pretty believable. 

After 2.43's Fukui-ben from last season, I guess this show will be my new source of Japanese regional dialects. Apparently Setsu’s accent is so strong that the girl he’s staying with asks him if he’s a foreigner, which I thought was funny. They don’t mention where he’s from, but he and his family use the same “-be” ending as the main character from the Great Pretender. Which isn’t helpful cause I can’t remember where he was from either. But anyway, for some reason it just amuses me every time someone says “dabe”. 

(A footnote about Setsu’s accent: I’ve done a bit of research, or rather literally just typed “be” into jisho.com, which I can’t believe actually worked, and it seems to be some type of Touhoku dialect. His voice actor, Nobunaga Shimazaki, is from that area so I guess that checks out? Although according to the Wikipedia page it’s used as a generic rural accent in media, so maybe they don’t care about the specific region as long as he sounds like a country boy.)

Farewell, My Dear Cramer

Finally, an all-girls sports anime! There are a few out there already, but I haven’t seen any of them yet (except maybe Chihayafuru, which has a mixed gender cast but an awesome female lead). As far as I’ve read, most have mixed reviews and tend to lean into other genres and/or have a lot of fanservice. So, I’d really like this show to be the female version of a straightforward realistic sports show like Haikyuu that is missing from all our lives. But it looks like it might be a drama about sports instead, which potentially could be just as good. It did come from the Your Lie in April mangaka after all, if you couldn’t tell from the weird lips. Besides that, the art in the trailer looks really nice. 

So apparently soccer, especially women’s soccer, is an unpopular sport in Japan? The protagonist Nozomi thinks she’s too good for girl’s soccer after playing with the boys for all of middle school, but is convinced to join the girl’s team in high school anyway. Then we meet a couple of her new teammates who were similar prodigies in middle school, and jump right into a scrimmage between the first and second years? 

It’s kind of a weird first episode. While it does technically establish the setting and characters, after the first few minutes it kind of feels like we’ve just been thrown into the mix of things. There’s also a noticeable lack of music in a lot of scenes which makes it feel even weirder.

The character designs are less of a problem than I thought they’d be, although the lips and sometimes the eyes still do look a bit strange. The simple, almost graphic quality is actually kind of interesting. It’s also very refreshing to see a variety of female characters that just look and act like normal high schoolers. They’re really just here to play soccer, not to be sexy or cute or really attractive to the viewer in any way. 

Although we do get some nice soccer playing in the ED, the animation in the episode itself definitely isn’t at Haikyuu levels or anything. They avoid actually animating a lot of the action with speed-line backgrounds and barely-moving shots where only the hair and clothes flap in the wind. 

Nozomi has the same voice actress as Kaede from Gal and Dino, and her performance there was one of my favorite parts of that show so I’m looking forward to more from her. Aoi Yuki and Tomoyo Kurosawa, definitely a couple of notable names, also show up in this episode. 

Fruits Basket Final

More Fruits Basket, lets gooo! Second season was awesome so I have high expectations. I’ve already been slightly spoiled on a few things about the ending, but I’m still looking forward to seeing the specifics of the mystery of the Soma family curse wraps up. 

We pick up right where we left off last season with Kureno dropping the ~big reveal~ about Akito’s gender on Tohru. Turns out she’s a girl, but raised as a boy by her mother from birth for yet unknown reasons. Then he talks more about her parents: her dad Akira seems to be dead (yet another mysterious white-haired Akira Ishida character for the books), and her relationship with her mother Ren is messy to say the least. 

Finally, best girl Saki shows up and saves the day! She brings Tohru back to her house, and along with Arisa gives her the reality check we’ve all been waiting for: she is going to burn herself out if she keeps on putting others’ needs before her own. 

Interestingly, even though she seems to be a pretty bad mom, Ren is in the right here about the unhealthy relationship between Akito and the zodiacs. Is she really being kept inside because of physical and mental illness, or is that just Akito’s excuse for locking her mother away? I suspect it’s the latter. Akito loves a good power trip, and if Ren were allowed to talk to the zodiacs she could possibly undermine the hold Akito maintains over them. It could also be a combination of both reasons, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

The OP is awesome! The photo backgrounds incorporate the 2D characters well and it just looks very nice. The song’s R&B-ish sound also stood out instantly from the pop ballads Fruits Basket usually gives us. Once it comes out on Spotify, I will be adding it to my playlist along with Chime and Eden. Btw, if you haven’t heard the full version of Eden I recommend you check it out cause it really goes some places you don’t even get to hear in the TV-sized version.

On a side note, this show has some real fashionistas. Rin, Haruhatsu, Saki, and this episode Arisa have great outfits. That cropped shearling jacket with the skinny scarf? 👌 It’s also adorable how Saki and her little goth brother coordinate their looks. I will never forget that time they casually rolled up to an okonomiyaki restaurant rocking black opera gloves. 

Zombieland Saga Revenge

More Zombieland Saga! The best part of the first season imo was the comedy, but I’m guessing we’ll get more into the mystery/drama part of the show here: more information about Kotaro and his motives/methods, Tae’s identity, etc. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also hoping for more bops like Adabana Necromancy and Saga Jihen. 

Oh how I missed this show’s manic energy...

Since the end of the last season, it seems Kotaro got overzealous and booked an arena for a concert that only sold 300 tickets, putting the group into a whole bunch of debt. So now the girls are all working part-time to pay it off, and they’re not nice jobs either: factory worker, farmhand, construction worker... milk-deliverer? Do they even have those in Japan? Now there’s some #commentary on showbiz. 

As for Kotaro, the whole thing has left him in such a haggard state that he’s managed to grow his hair down to his collar bones in a month flat. Now he spends his days bar hopping and rambling even less coherently than usual (although Mamoru Miyano is clearly having as much fun as ever). Franchuchu are left to prepare all by themselves for their anniversary concert at the tiny venue where they made their debut. But, they decide they’ll use it as a chance to sing the unperformed encore song from the arena concert for Kotaro, thinking it might relight his spark. 

We do get a drop of new information about the plot: turns out there’s a strict deadline on the Zombieland Saga Project, which is the real reason why Kotaro so upset. Maybe whatever necromancy he used on the girls will wear off after a certain amount of time and turn them back into corpses? The bartender at his favorite spot is apparently in on the whole zombie thing, and he’s the one who finally snaps Kotaro out of it. He sprints over to the anniversary concert and literally starts throwing hands with the unreceptive metalhead audience. To finish out the episode we get a glorious slow motion brawl sequence as Franchuchu sing the encore song. 

I don’t know if that encore will be the OP or ED, or if it’s just a insert song. It was alright I guess. To be honest I liked Iron Frill’s songs more than Franchuchu’s in the first season, and I feel like that will continue to be the case this season. I’m excited to see the new OP tho, even if it’ll be hard to beat the iconic Adabana Necromancy. And on a vaguely related note, it was cool to see the real Zombieland Saga ost album, Franchuchu The Best pop up in the episode.

Pretty Boy Detective Club

This one has people intrigued because it’s written by the author of the Monogatari series (which I haven’t seen yet) and animated by Shaft. There’s also the extremely Ouran-esque setup, with Maaya Sakamoto even voicing the cross-dressing main girl. Also I just think the title is funny. Honestly I don’t really know what to expect from this one besides the usual Shaft aesthetic, so we’ll see what happens. 

Mayumi wears glasses to keep attention away from her pretty eyes, but while stargazing on the roof she gets caught without them by Ayumu Murase in a detective hat. He ropes her into the Pretty Boy Detective Club, a shady secret organization at her middle school. We enter the clubroom and meet the members, a bunch of over-the-top eccentric tropey characters that wouldn’t be found in any non-anime middle school in a million years. Shoutout to that one guy in the hot pants. Then Mayumi reveals that she’s been looking for a star she saw once on a family vacation, and the boys decide to take up her case. 

I knew I was really in for something when I was hit with musings about Voltaire right out of the gate. Although from what I’ve heard about the Monogatari series, this kind of ~intellectual~ monologuing is totally on brand. And I don’t know if anyone else picked up on the subtle hints they were dropping in those monologues, but I sense that, maybe, perhaps, beauty is going to be a theme in this show...? Maybe it’s going to be some kind of #meta #commentary on pretty boys anime? That could be interesting, although there’s also a chance they’ll just play it straight. They even have an idol-anime-esque ED sung by the the main cast, so honestly it could go either way. 

As expected from Shaft, the visuals are all on point. I love both celestial and geometric imagery so this show’s aesthetic feels made just for me. The shifts in art style are also pretty neat. As for the character designs, my favorite part is probably the snazzy school uniform with the galaxy printed ties and striped pants and skirts. Although Murase’s character momentarily sprouted one of those flesh-fangs that I HATE they look so NASTY. 

I has a pretty fun time with this episode, it was just so absurdly Anime. I liked hot pants guy and his poses (tho I don’t love that he’s 12), and delinquent guy who was just tired of everyone else’s nonsense and casually ate food off the ground. They were at the beach too, so it probably got all sandy? And when this popped up I died laughing; truly words to take to heart.  

(A footnote about the ED: I thought I had spotted an Elements Garden member in the songwriting credits, and then of course I had to find out if they actually made it or not. The lyrics were written by RUCCA, who isn’t actually in the group but collaborates with them frequently according to the Google Translated version of his Japanese Wikipedia page. He’s written for quite a few Elements Garden produced Aoi Shouta songs, which is where I recognized his name from. The composer is Masatoma Ohta, who as far as I can find isn’t associated with Elements Garden but did a pretty good job emulating their sound. Both of them have done a lot of work for seiyuu, idols, and seiyuu-idols, so I guess that’s why I instantly understood what this song was going for lol.)

[patheticphallacy]

Hallo!

So let’s start this post by referencing the major creative crisis I went through this month, stemming from a blogging rut I found myself in beginning in July. I’ve got through it now, and I have basically the next month and a half of content already scheduled in preparation for my return to Uni, but the rut was real, guys.

I spend a lot of time on my posts and I found myself very low regarding the content and the amount of response I get to what I post. I know blogging is a lengthy process, I’m not going to immediately get response considering the blog is only just over two years old, and I genuinely love writing these posts and reviews. It’s a worry I tackle often, but sometimes it just gets to me and makes me feel kind of hopeless of ever getting over my general anxiety regarding interacting with other people. I keep my distance just because I don’t know how to make friends in the community, and I feel like that translates over to my blog sometimes too, but I’m really trying to change that by talking to more people!

Other than that: August was boring. I read, I watched random stuff, and I worked overtime shifts so I have enough money for rent when Uni starts. I’m honestly a pretty boring person during off-time from University just because of how far away I am from people, combined with my lack of money. Maybe next Summer will be more exciting.

I also want to add that my blog is going to be a lot busier now the end of the year is approaching. I always seem to have a calm period in November, but every other month, expect chaos! Good chaos, though. Friendly chaos. October is a great month for me as I love horror and supernatural things, which means I have twice as many post ideas.

READING WRAP UP

    Assassination Classroom Volume 3-4 by Yusei Matsui– I expect to read more Assassination Classroom this month, but I ended up starting another popular manga series (that’ll come up later). I did enjoy these two volumes, and we got some intriguing looks into Korosensei’s backstory. 

Ibitsu by Haruto Ryo– I hated this. Straight up. It felt very targeted towards the humiliation of teenage girls with a lot of unneeded torture and nudity, and I just felt sick after reading it, and not in a way I can enjoy with some stories. 

Bond of Dreams, Bond of Love Volume 1-4 by Yayu Sakuragi– This is an age-gap romance between an 18 year old and his childhood friend who is… six/eight years older than him, one of the two. There were some really weird moments, for sure, and I won’t dispute that the age gap was kinda gross at points, but I feel like by the end the conversations on adulthood and the main character finally having his frustrations recognised meant a lot. 

My Love Story Volume 7-13 by Kazune Kawahara– I’m in a perpetual state of mourning now that I’ve finished this series. It’s one of my all-time favourites. The ending is so heartfelt and they get into heavier issues towards the final volume that I feel helped carry the main relationship from feeling young into adulthood as the characters began college. It addresses jealousy and feelings of incompetence, while never belittling the trust these characters have in one another. It’s handled so maturely and so unlike other stories, and I’m satisfied with the conclusion, even if my heart is broken. 

    My Hero Academia Vigilantes Volume 4 by Hideyuki Furuhashi– Not as good as volume 3, but has some solid character development and we finally have a showdown of sorts. This does end on a cliffhanger, fair warning.

Starlike Words by Junko– Reaaaally didn’t like this. Poor development of character and relationship and the nudity felt gratuitous and gross, especially considering these characters are only 15/16. 

These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling– Another one that disappointed me. I have a review for this linked at the end of this post, just know that I had issues with the treatment of toxic relationships and a victim blaming attitude. 

Peter and Alice by John Logan– An OK read that’s very meta, a play that imagines the meeting behind Peter Llewelyn Davies and Alice Liddell in 1932. It’s very tragic and the weaving of the characters they inspired into their own stories was incredible, but I found myself thinking the whole time about how this… probably didn’t happen. I know I should have suspended my disbelief, it just felt impossible. 

    One Piece Volume 1-11 by Eiichiro Oda– EE. This series is great! I literally started the longest running manga series I’ve come across so far and I don’t regret starting it, even if I did at first. The first 100 chapters have flown by with incredible character development and a wonderful world being shaped, and I adore it. 

Their Body and Their Afterthought by Shelby Eileen– Not my favourite poetry collection. I don’t want to be too harsh, but it felt like it reiterates what I’ve read in other collections on similar themes and issues without ever offering anything new with form. 

I Hate Fairyland Volume 1 by Skottie Young– I previously read this volume years ago. After a re-read, I’ve lowered my rating. I’ve just read way too many different comics and manga and whatnot to not be slightly critical. The art is still great, but it felt like I was struggling to get through this at points, especially after starting volume 2 and having to stop from boredom. It feels repetitive. 

Sunshine, Sadness and Other Floridian Effects by Shelby Eileen– This collection was better than Their Body, luckily! It has some stunning imagery, calling up impressions of water and the turning of the tide in tandem with loss coinciding with moments of happiness, and I do recommend it. 

    Faithless #3/#4 by Brian Azzarello– Starting to get bored with this series. There’s only so much shocking stuff and nudity without any kind of explanation for it before you grow tired. I’ll carry on reading for a few issues; I’m just ready to drop it if nothing much keeps happening. 

Pochamani Volume 1-5 by Kaname Hirama– Ohhh this was such a great series! It’s out of print so I had to read it online, and only the first five volumes are actually translated, which was so disappointing but I still recommend this series. It’s got the first fat main character I’ve seen in a manga series, and has so much conversation surrounding body shaming and positivity and the constant grappling with self-hate when you have a fat body. It means a lot to me, and seeing a romance where a fat girl is adored by her boyfriend is so wholesome. 

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell– I literally started this last year and it took me that whole period of time to read 140 pages, and then in the space of a week I read the last 150. There’s definitely a sense of elitism and anti-genre fiction (especially what is typically branded as targeted towards women) which aggravated me, but the general humour was great and there was an interesting insight into the running of independent bookshops. 

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling– I feel like I’ve gone OFF about this book on here in August, but this book deserves it. It’s an intense psychological sci-fi horror where main character, Gyre, goes on a caving mission that ends up being more than it first appears. I love the relationship that develops between Gyre and Em, and I highly recommend the audiobook!

My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul– I have a whole review on my Goodreads that I feel summarises my issues with this book. I enjoyed this, but same with Shaun Bythell’s book, there’s a definite sense of elitism in some ways. I think Pamela Paul was willing to paint herself negatively in some respects and show the harmful thought processes she could have, and I appreciated that. My review is a lot more elaborate! Sorry!

  Pen & Ink by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton– This is a fun side-by-side of tattoos with the explanations behind them from the people that have them. The stories are whacky and fun, in some places, but are also sentimental and heartfelt in others, and I like the different thought processes behind getting them and the way everyone still seems to love them. 

My Hero Academia Volume 19 by Kohei Horikoshi– SO. GOOD. The real strength of this series lies in how well developed the characters and their relationships are, and this volume especially reaffirms that. Aoyama is so sweet and if he’s the traitor I’ll riot! 

  TBR JAR PICK FOR SEPTEMBER IS: WILLFUL MACHINES by Tim Floreen! My best friend picked this one out for me, thank you friend!

THINGS I WATCHED

I FINALLY went to the cinema again and watched BTS: Bring the Soul. I loved it.

I re-watched Daddy Day Care (don’t ask, it’s literally the only film I watched on Netflix the whole month and I hate that) and it opens with Ben– Eddie Murphy’s in-movie son– climbing out of bed and putting on the exact same Spongebob slippers my sister and I had when we were younger and it was amazing. I’ve never felt so nostalgic over something so unintentional in a film.

Not a watch, but a listen: the Teenage Scream podcast hosted by Kirsty Logan and Heather Parry, where they read and breakdown classic Point Horror novels from the 90s.

As always, I watched random stuff on deep dives on YouTube. This included: An Aesthetic History of The 1975, fat people don’t belong in magazines (it’s not what it sounds like), Being Lowborn w/ Kerry Hudson (an author interview! yes!), and I guess I’ll recommend the latest paperbackdreams video because I love Kat’s channel!

POSTS

University: Second Year Breakdown

A Bookshelf Tour: Part 1

REVIEW: These Witches Don’t Burn

Shakespeare Plays as Taylor Swift Songs

REVIEW: The Luminous Dead

Top Ten Tuesday: Read Books I Wish I Owned!

A Bookshelf Tour: Part 2

If you liked this post, consider buying me a coffee? Ko-Fi. 

Goodreads|Twitter|Instagram|Letterboxd

August Wrap Up Hallo! So let's start this post by referencing the major creative crisis I went through this month, stemming from a blogging rut I found myself in beginning in July.

[vampire-knight-resources-blog]

Matsuri Hino Interview (May ‘06)

Taken From “Magical Manga - Our Interview with Matsuri Hino” by Jenifer Morgan

Featured in Shojo Beat Volume 2, Issue 5

Source (x)

Once upon a time, Matsuri Hino was a bookshop keeper. One day she decided to become a manga artist, and all of nine months later, in 1995, she published her first manga title, Kono Yume ga Sametara (When This Dream Is Over), in Japan's LaLa DX magazine. Despite her swift ascension to professional manga creator, Hino's rich illustrations and enchanting storytelling make her success anything but surprising. Today, all four volumes of her popular series MeruPuri are available in English. Her newest title, Vampire Knight, follows hard upon its heels—serialization in English will begin right here in Shojo Beatstarting this July! In honor of these exciting events, we asked Hino to give us some insight into her magical stories and her craft. Here's what she had to say.

Shojo Beat: Have you always had an interest in fairy tales and magical kingdoms?

Matsuri Hino: I read most of the Western fairy tales and Japanese folk tales when I was a child, and they I've had an active (or blossoming, perhaps) imagination since I was a child. I have so many stories I still like. Also, I've liked American movies for a long time, so they may have influenced me unconsciously. I enjoy creating manga so much, because it's like I am doing all of movie making alone, including storytelling, script writing, costume design, camera work, and directing. It is hard, though.

SB: Did you pattern the elaborate costumes of the characters in your series MeruPuri after those of real-life royal families? If not, how did you come up with the designs?

MH: I took tips from Turkish native costumes to create the formal clothes of the prince. Other than that, I enjoy coming up with costume designs by randomly mixing my preferences and my little limited knowledge of clothing.

SB: In MeruPuri, what sparked your interest in creating a supposed love affair between a teenage girl (Airi) and a little boy (Aram)? What was your frame of mind as you developed the romantic aspect of the story?

MH: I thought it might be interesting to create a heroine who cherishes her own world (a life plan, happiness in everyday life, and so on), then meets someone who overturns all of her values. This resulted in the "prince from the magic kingdom" setting, and in order to keep the air of a fairy tale, I thought it would be better to make Aram a young boy, who is not sarcastic, but honest and pure. I thought it would be romantic to girls' minds to have such a boy think hard, grow a little, and say "I love you" without even an ounce of a lie in his heart.

SB: What do you find most fulfilling about your work? What is its most challenging aspect?

MH: What is most fulfilling is the very act of transforming the materials in my mind into manga, a form of reading material. As a joke, we often compare it to delivering a baby. And it is awesome when I draw something that I feel is interesting. By contrast, it is really painful when I cannot draw something I feel is good. In those situations, I continue to redraw until deadline.

SB: What was the most difficult part of writing and drawing MeruPuri? What was the easiest part?

MH: Difficult parts included drawing Aram's unruly hair and understanding Aram. The easy part was...I cannot think of one.

SB: How important is it for aspiring manga creators to attend art school? How about writing classes? Please describe your background.

MH: I did not learn anything except for what I got out of a mandatory art class at school. But I've liked creating things since I was little, and I started drawing manga as a hobby when I was a teenager. These things had a significant impact. I don't think it would be disadvantageous to go to an art school, but what's important is having an inquiring mind and aspirations.

SB: How do you balance your time between your work and private life?

MH: Since starting serialization of Vampire Knight, I have been working almost constantly, except when I am eating, taking a bath, or sleeping. This is crazy. My doctor warned me that I could die from overwork. But I love this job and it is fulfilling, so I'll try to think of it as part of my job and keep up until the end of serialization. But I do not want to die, either, so I'll try to take care of my mental and physical health as much as possible.

SB: Would you ever consider taking up a profession other than that of manga creator? Are there other fields you'd like to pursue or wanted to pursue as a child?

MH: When I was in grade school, I wanted to work in a flower shop or become a nurse or a painter. When I was in junior high, I wanted to be a scientist or an auto mechanic. When I was in high school, I wanted to be a manga creator or do a job deeply involved with economics. When I was a college student, I wanted to be a novelist or do a job related to architecture or interior design. I had so many jobs I wanted to do, but manga creator is the only one I could decide on and act on. Though I still have an interest in many occupations, I will focus my energy on drawing manga as long as I have things I want to draw.

SB: Do you like to sing karaoke? If so, what are some of your favorite songs?

MH: I love it, even though I haven't been able to go recently. I like lots of songs, including enka [Japanese ballads], anime theme songs, and pop.

SB: Would you say you are an optimist or a pessimist by nature? How does your attitude affect your work?

MH: I aim for an "optimistic self," but I easily become very pessimistic. However, I am strong, because I know that I have the power to pick myself up after feeling down, when I have to—though the waiting time is long and painful. To make sure these negative feelings don't have a bad influence on my work, I try to always keep an objective view.

SB: Your Vampire Knight series will be published in English for the first time this summer. What attracted you to the subject of vampires?

MH: I have been attracted to both fairy tales and vampires for a long time, although I can't remember why. If I start talking about one of my favorite subjects–vampires–it is going to take too long, so I won't do that, but it is a subject that is very romantic and makes my heart race.

SB: Hanabusa Aido of Vampire Knight can freeze anything with his touch. Do other characters in the series have special powers?

MH: Yes, they do. I'm planning to reveal them one by one.

SB: Which Vampire Knight character do Japanese fans favor, Zero or Kaname? Why?

MH: There are a few who've said they like both characters, but currently fans are totally divided into two groups, and their popularity is fifty–fifty. Zero has a hidden kindness and Kaname has a mysterious personality. It is hard to generalize why fans like them, but they are reading deeply into the characters, and as a creator, I'm very happy to see that.

SB: Do you have a message for American readers who will be encountering Vampire Knight for the first time?

MH: Because I want to cherish my internal image of vampires, I have drawn some aggressive scenes, but my goal is to show the romantic excitement of shojo manga, so romantic feeling and action will be coming along. I hope you enjoy it!

[poupeesdecirque]

Travel Blog: Leipziger Buchmesse Friday

Timcampy's Adventures, meeting Friends & Religious Gold

Day two of the Bookfair. Today I was about to wear the new variant of the Runaway Outfit again, which I had made for the Polaris back last year AND the new Innocence I just made one week before the con.

Day two started very early for me ... I woke up at 3 in the morning and with a cat using me as trampoline and the overstimulation from the day before I was alerted by everything.

But I wanted to cosplay still. And even work with Make up again. I am super unskilled with Make up for Cosplay because aside the curse I haven't used any since my teens and just started doing it in ... October. I have learned quite a bit since then like switching to a different type of make up that doesn't need 5 days to be scrubbed off, that's better for my already sensitive eyes.

I also snapped off one of the nails from the Innocence and learned I need ... assisstance when visiting the bathroom while wearing it. oof.

I'm thankful I was not the driver for this day and just was able to chill for once after being stuck in traffic the evening before.

This time we actually started with taking different photos before the hall got too full, we even made a small video.

For the fair itself the section for comics/manga had started as a part of the fantasy and children's section ages ago and 10 years ago it got its own hall and even was expanded last year to 1 1/2 halls. Hall 1 was mainly artists this time with a HUGE department for artists and several rows of an artists alley along with some merchants. The half of Hall 3 was different publishers like Crunchyroll, Tokyopop, Nintendo and bigger merchants or even other conventions.

I have to say my feeling of hunger was not existent that day but I felt my eyes were getting worse, I even had to put on my glasses for a while, hoping it would be better. Was truly motivated me was that the german DVD/Blu Ray Publisher of D.Gray-man still recognized me and asked me to return with the 1st Uniform to take Photos for promoting the series on their Instagram and I was just .. wow. Still can't believe they asked me.

While we wandered the glass hall several times for finding my DGM Mutuals we decided to give the other sections a visit as Alu had a mission and as we walked through the religious section one vendor gave us a little bible book and ... "real gold" ... uhm.. Mister you know I'm running away from the church yes? :'D

After that we went to one of the big book shops and of course I had to look up some cook books. My guilty pleasure. But this time I didn't end up buying a ton, I only got one.

Back in the glass hall I was finally able to locate my DGM Mutuals and we made a pile of Tims as you can see. Haha. I'm so glad I am brave enough to talk to people again, it was an issue in the past that I just shyly crossed their ways and wished they would notice me, but nope, not this time. I also walked to other cosplayers and told them I love their costumes. Just to brighten up their day.

A few more impressions from the location itself. If you look closely you can spot the D.Gray-man Nendos of Allen, Kanda and Lavi. Oh and I finally got a pocket watch again! Mainly for my past!Allen Cosplay if I will wear it again, the owl reminds me of the bookshop emblem we see in chapter 249.

As we later sat down in the glass hall, we got myself a snack for photos and put aside our stuff and I didn't notice but a friend of a friend took Timcampy and played around with him. Until they complained that parts weren't made to their liking and that was the point I was close to snapping. I can tell my was over everything already with the little sleep I had, my eyes acting up, running around all day long already.

I tried to get lost while we went on another window shopping trip and actually bought a Ramen and an Udon bowl. Just to drop the bag 2 minutes after buying. Then I only had a Ramen bowl and a pile of shards. All went downhill then I didn't want to talk, I didn't want a hug, I sat down and tried not to have a panic-mental-breakdown-whatever. I even went out into the rain just to RUN to get the steam off. I went to my friend Julia who luckily involved me into small talk that calmed me down. But the day was ruined. I returned to my friends but some of theirs popped up and started a conversation, usually they are very lovely and I like them but I just couldn't listen to someone talking anymore. I left them to just walk around.

It was late already and it had started pouring, for now I decided just to stare at the rain running down the glass.

My friends wanted to calm me down, hug me, but I declined. I didn't want to talk. We went back to Schu's place, I had dinner and went to bed, rolling myself into a blanket like a burrito.