#this is actually one of the shorter ones with Dennis in it

[ominoose]

Out of curiosity, which Oscar characters do you think would like to be with a short s/o? (And which ones do you think would like a tall s/o?)

𝐎𝐬𝐜 𝐈𝐬𝐜 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐒/𝐎

*rubs hands together in 5'1* I'm writing this with the s/o being somewhere under 5'2. Ty for the ask!!!

Characters: Cecil Dennis, Jack Jackson, Jake Lockley Warnings: None

𝐂𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐬

Will be condescending about it and not mean it. Goes "Awww" when you do things because you're so small and condensed and adorable, even if you're angry, he gets a form of cuteness aggression.

Adores spooning you, squeezing you into him with his arms around your torso like you're his teddy bear. Also loves you spooning him and does call you his "little backpack".

Loves to have you across his lap sideways when watching tv and rests his head against you in some way.

If you stand on your tiptoes to kiss him he'll swoon.

𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐨𝐧

Will be condescending about it and mean it. Chuckles and teases you when you can't reach something and have to ask him for help, but he won't admit he puts things on the high shelf on purpose every now and again.

His teasing is in fun, because he refuses to actually underestimate you. If you're staying at his trailer, you're trusted with the same tasks of tending to the homestead that he does if you're physically capable. Your height isn't a hold back to him, its just as another attribute just like your hair length, albeit one he finds particularly cute.

It does give him an ego boost to have height on you and he does dearly love to bend down and give you a cheeky kiss.

𝐉𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞𝐲

He takes on a traditional role in relationships, in a chivalrous, gentleman kind of way. He absolutely does not seek stereo-typically submissive partners, nor even feminine or female ones, but if you have a shorter height than him it will make him melt.

Won't grab things for you if its out of reach unless you ask, he refuses to make you feel lesser when you're there and capable yourself. When you're not there, you'll wake up to your favourite mug down and set for you, or a vase you'd mentioned wanting to get down from the top shelf is now on the counter, newly washed and filled with flowers.

Picks you up to take you over any puddles or even place you in the car. Picks you up to put you into bed. Picks you up to put you in a bath he ran for you. Picks you up to kiss you.

He will make a few little comments about it, with a smirk. He's sassy, he can't help it.

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

New Fic: a mouth full of teeth and nothing to sing

Hello! Here's a quick little one shot inspired by my love of Hen so far in Season 7. It's mostly about friendship, so I am AO3 gifting it to the lovely @pantsaretherealheroes <3 <3 <3

Summary:

Post 07x03, Hen struggles to process the cruise ship rescue and drunk driver call in the midst of ongoing tension with her friends.

Snippet:

“Did something happen out there?” Karen asks, home from dropping Denny off at school. She insisted on taking the day off work to stay with Hen after the whole ordeal, despite Hen’s insistence that she’s fine. “I mean, other than the obvious.”

“A lot happened out there,” Hen says, sitting at their dining room table with a bowl of yogurt and a steaming mug of coffee. “Pirates, smugglers, a bomb, a hurricane… Honestly, what didn’t happen out there?”

Karen takes a seat across from her. “I mean, did something happen to you ?”

Hen shakes her head. “No. Like I said last night, no injuries, nothing.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Karen sighs. 

“What do you mean, then?” Hen asks, tone shorter than she intends. 

“I mean, you seem more than tired,” Karen explains. “And with everything that happened before you realized the ship was missing, I guess I’m just worried about you.”

Hen keeps very still as the words wash over her. 

Truth be told, she’s a little worried about herself now, too. Worried about the way her own hurt is erasing the sugar from her coffee, causing her strawberry yogurt to taste plain. Worried about her friendships. Worried about the way the people she trusted to see her actually perceive her judgment. 

“It’s been a tough couple days,” is what she says, instead. 

---

Tagging @epicbuddieficrecs @theotherbuckley @sevenweeksofunrepression @slowlyfoggydestiny @devonwritesstuff @diazsdimples @exhuastedpigeon @aquamarineglitter @loserdiaz @steadfastsaturnsrings @your-catfish-friend @incorrect9-1-1 @hawaiianlove808 @babytrapperdiaz @watchyourbuck

Please let me know if you'd like to be added to my writing tag updates!

[radroller]

BATMAN COSTUME RATINGS

First I critiqued Captain Britain's closet of costumes, then Hank Pym's unending undertaking of unique uniforms, but now i'm bagging the biggest bass on the boat: BATMAN. And on Batman Day no less!!! While I’m hard-pressed to think of a major Batman design that is outright bad, but how do they stack up against each other? Also for simplicity’s sake we’ll be looking at Bruce Wayne’s different costumes, as i could make an entire separate post about the other Batmen and their costumes. Now, without further ado:

1939 Original: 6/10

A striking silhoutte brought on by the ears and cowl, a menacing visage with piercing eyes, and ever-charming purple gloves! Batman’s characterization as a merciless crimefighter didnt last beyond the year of his debut, but those initial appearances laid the impression of someone who fiercely combats evildoers by striking fear into their hearts. The problem is that these early appearances lacked consistency, a consequence of them still figuring stuff out. Sure whenever we reference back to Original Batman nowadays it’s excellent pulpy noir fun, just look at the upcoming Caped Crusader, but if you actually read the original comics Batman can sometimes look kinda…stupid. Particularly in his very first story, not being able to see his ears in profile shots is just WRONG. But still, those unforgettable vibes win out in the end, and are what carry on from this take on the character to this day!

40s/50s Batman: 6/10

The turn of the decade brought big changes for Batman, now he was colorful, barrel chested, and smiles aplenty! Presumably this change was made to appeal to younger readers (alongside the debut of Robin soon after) in a way that the scarier original Batman look didnt manage to. More emphasis was put on Batman’s status as a daring adventurer, a resourceful super sleuth, and fatherly figure to the kids at home and his ward Dick Grayson. Naturally this is reflected in his costume! The shortened ears and more expressive eyes exchange the creepiness of the original design for a sleeker look with friendlier features. The cape has become slightly shorter as well, and is more often used as a cape than a cloak so as not to conceal Batman’s muscular figure. But the biggest innovations by far are the new gloves with the iconic forearm blades, and a friend that’ll be with Batman for decades to come: the color blue!!! Just a fun look for all the giant typewriters, Zur En Arrh, cavaliers, and boners.

60s Yellow Oval: 8/10

As the Silver Age chugged along so did Batman stories, and it was a mixed bag for the guy. While the more stern and serious demeanor that became more prevalent with him (despite remaining approachable and kind) led to what i feel is one of the quintessential characterizations of the character, the routine in the comics began to wear a little thin at this point. This was compounded by some of the sorriest supervillains with the lamest gimmicks you’d ever see, with even the ones that would see eventual promise like Poison Ivy not achieving their full potential for decades to come. However at the same time Batman was now a TV star thanks to the 1966 show, and experienced a surge of popularity as a result, at least for the few years it was airing. It was an interesting time for Batman, but not so much his costume as it pretty much remained the same with one exception: the iconic yellow oval. And while that isnt much i sure do love it for the color balance, it really brings a little extra something during this blue period for the Batsuit.

Bronze Age: 10/10

Now THIS is some good shit right here. The 70s marked a shift back to Batman’s gothic roots thanks in large to Denny O’Neil’s time with the character and the art of industry greats like Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, Gil Kane, and Dick Giordano reflected that. And this suit….GOD. While largely the same as his 60s design as that was still his most recognizable look thanks to the TV show, the taller ears and MUCH longer cape gave Batman a more dramatic and cool air than ever before. Not as scary as he was originally yet not as campy as he had since become, a happy medium! At the same time, this is the bluest Batman ever was, which i’ve always found interesting. I always took it as Batman not shedding the most important things he gained over the previous 30 years, the warmth and compassion he was capable of alongside being the Dark Knight Detective. It incorporates all of the best choices about Batman designs into one ultimate look. I can’t think of much that tops it, and maybe DC couldnt either given that it was still being used well into the early 90s, well after much darker looks had been shown in blockbusters like DKR, Batman Year One, and The Killing Joke. It’s just that good!

Troika: 6/10

I ADORE this suit. The all-black look of the 1989 movie is so striking to see in comic form…at least in theory. You see I call it the Troika suit because that’s the name of the arc that first featured it, but the image i use comes from much later when it was refined to look more…well, like Batman. The eponymous storyline had him looking like a feverdream with foot-tall ears and a cape so huge it was as if he was wrapped in goth bedsheets. Idk if they were influenced by Todd McFarlane’s Batman art and later successes with Spawn but i am not a fan. It’s just peak 90s excess, but in a much uglier way than Azrael’s batsuit ever was imo. Though i must stress, in a less exaggerated artstyle this suit is perfectly solid, even great, and i love seeing it in Chuck Dixon’s later 90s Bat books. So i give it a decent rating regardless.

No Man’s Land: 7/10

Speaking of late 90s: this suit technically appeared before the aforementioned arc, I personally associate it more with JLA, but No Man’s Land is definitely the most significant thing that happened during its tenure. It’s basically just the Troika suit with a dark grey bodysuit. Not much more to it than that, really. And while i actually prefer the Troika suit to it, this one is much less often a nightmare for me to look at, so it wins out ever so slightly. Only other thing to mention is that it sometimes includes pointy shoulders that I’m mostly neutral towards.

Hush: 9/10

Once again this suit was actually seen previously in the Officer Down storyline, but it was the artwork of Jim Lee in the Hush arc that cemented it as the definitive modern take on Batman’s costume. Much like with the Bronze Age suit we have a design drawing from the strengths previous ones: a long flowing cape, a huger bat symbol than ever before, and an overall darker color scheme evoking all the blockbuster Batman stories from the 80s, the Animated Series, and various movies. It’s easy to see why it’s lasted so long, even after Bruce would go on to change and update his look he’ll still be wearing this in crossover events, non-continuity books, or even main continuity ones where he had a different outfit at the time but nobody gave a fuck. It’s sleek, it’s relatively easy to draw, and it’s striking in team lineups, a perfectly functional good-looking design. Despite the fact that i associate it with a depiction of Batman i’ve long grown weary of, the fact is that this suit is a classic and deserves the use it gets…though it isn’t a favorite. In my opinion it’s just a little too quintessential, in a vacuum it’s the perfect look but next to some of these other looks from over the years it’s lacking a certain something to push it to the top.

Batman Inc: 8/10

In retrospect I think it was a poor choice to make Dick Grayson’s Batman suit basically identical to Bruce’s then-current one before he suffered a bad case of being dead (but not really). DC let Dick keep being Batman so as not to seem like they were demoting him (got over that pretty quick), and thus when Bruce returned to life he had to be given a different suit to differentiate the two. If anything Dick should’ve had the more distinct look, because they could’ve or would’ve gone farther with it than what they did with ol Bruceman. As a result half of the time you can only tell them apart based on musculature. That’s my ONE criticism with this suit, it isn’t much of a change at all from his modern-classic appearance. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the return of the yellow oval for as long as it lasted, but just about everything else added (the speed lines, utility belt, loss of the black undies) I’m kinda neutral on. It’s an amazing suit and I have super fond memories of it but I just don’t have much to say beyond that.

New 52: 5/10

Im not gonna beat a dead horse when it comes to the New 52, especially with Batman, because he actually fared better than just about anyone else. The more edgy, less colorful aesthetics a lot of the reboot books were pushing fit him pretty well given we were between Dark Knight movies and he mostly wears black and grey anyway. But this suit design....damn. I get what they're going for but it comes out so damn busy, and for no real reason. I was neutral on the speed lines from the Batman Inc suit but this is just too much! And how about the bat symbol peels off? Why? It's just a choice I can't fathom, even the hyper grounded Batman movies don't have stuff like that going on with the suits. This coupled with it being the least colorful Batsuit by a significant margin, even compared to the Hush suit and even when not in the dour muted lighting FCO Plascencia used during darkest arcs on the main Batman book. But critically, I have to say that even among the lame redesigns of the reboot, this suit always strikes me as dull. Partially because, once again, it's playing it safe with Batman's overall look. It makes all the changes they did make feel like obligations, like they're admitting there was nothing wrong with Batman but everyone else was getting huge updates so he needed some greeble thrown on. And I think this is a large part of why a lot about this design steadily got ignored by artists. Or at least toned down, I think overtime it mostly came out looking like his Batman Inc look without the yellow oval. The one thing I will say I genuinely love about the New 52 suit is the armor detailing on the gloves and boots. I don't think it's entirely necessary for a Batsuit, but it's really cool nonetheless. A nice innovation from a suit I consider passable at best.

Rebirth: 10/10

To preface: this is maybe my favorite Batman look ever. After three years of what is basically the same suit this feels like a breath of fresh air. And that's crazy because it's by no means a huge departure from what came before. But what it brings to the table is SO cool and slick in all the ways i love a Batman suit to be with JUST the right amount of color. And that color is purple, with this lovely new cape lining! Coupled with a lovely complimentary yellow lining on the now-black utility belt and a border on the bat symbol that makes it pop! I love that latter choice, it's a perfect compromise between the classic and yellow-oval varieties of the bat symbol. Just a nice color palette in general, I wonder if Snyder and Capullo got attached to the color scheme of the original Batman costume when they referenced it in Zero Year. It's like Batman coming full circle in terms of design, a neat little note to end on for the history of his various looks.....

Conclusion

....Or it would be, but Batman has reverted to the Hush suit as I'm fairly certain he always will at this point. And it's a shame, though unavoidable given the status of Batman as DC's big cash cow. That said I'm not going to end this post harping on the woes of brand homogeneity, we're here to talk about Batman! The epic highs and lows of his pointy eared silhouette, the cape that trails his crusade against evil, and the symbol that he wears proudly to signify his undying dedication to that endeavor. Batman will forever be one of the most striking superheroes of all time on looks alone, and a compelling figure in the realm of comics. But what do you think? What's your favorite Batman costume? Is it one of the minor ones I didn't list?

[simplynims]

A Quick Meeting

Wanted to brush up on my writing skills by writing an interaction between Dennys sister Wrinley and Ashley. "Dennys" doesn't technically have any siblings in canon (As far as I'm aware) so I mixed in a little bit of Dylans canon lore in here for fun.

A buzz of the front door rang out through the apartment as Ashley stands there waiting outside on the welcome mat. It had been a fun month or so of hanging out consistently with Dennys and the others. They were originally going to meet up at one of the bars and grills in town for drinks that night but Dennys car gave out as soon as she arrived back home from work. With no car and the grill being too far to walk to, Ashley offered to pick her up at her place and go from there. But as he stands infront of her apartment door, he realizes this is technically the first time he's actually visited her apartment? Yeah, Denny has visited his apartment before a handful of times but has only stayed for a couple of minutes at best. The most time spent there was probably during his Mitski break down- Ashley stops himself for a second, scrunching his face at the sour memory.

Luckily for Ashley, he doesn't need to dwell on it for too long as the door opens up. Instead of the red head he was expecting, a shorter woman with brown curly hair and a curious look on her face greets him.

"Hello. Can I help you?" She says, peaking out through the cracks of the opened door way. "Uh, yes actually, Dennys lives here right?" Ashleys met with a puzzled look as he explains further. "Red hair, tattoos on her arms, face piercings?" It clicks for the girl as she realizes who he's talking about. "Ohhhh! You mean Dylan? Yeah, she lives here. You must be Ashley right?" She exclaims, opening up the door for him and ushering him inside. "Yeah, that's me. You must be her roommate?" The woman nods as she closes the door.

"Uh-huh! I'm Wrinley by the way, Dylans my sister." Wrinley continues as they lead Ashley into the living room. "She told me to let you in if you knock, she's still getting ready but I'll let her know you're here. Just hang out here, I'll go get her in a sec." With that being said, she quickly walks off deeper into the apartment. Ashley stands there awkwardly for a moment before sitting down on the couch. Dennys never mentioned she had a sister? Then again, she seemed pretty quiet about her personal life and he never bothered to ask about her family. Looking around the living room, it's a bit surprising how..Pink everything is? It wasn't in your face but a lot of the decorations were more on the pastel side of the spectrum. He assumed it was Wrinley who probably decorated everything.

"Dylans almost ready, she says they'll be out in about 5 minutes. Hope that's okay?" Wrinley appears as she plops down on the other side of the couch, a brownish cat hot on her tail before making itself comfy in her lap. "Oh, no that's fine, I can wait don't worry!" An awkward silence brews for a few moments before Ashley spoke up again.

"So, you're her sister? Never knew she had any siblings." He asked, trying to break the awkwardness between them.

"Yep! It's just me and Dylan so far here in the area, but she's been a good roomie. If you don't mind me asking, how'd you guys meet? She's mentioned she's made some new friends but she wasn't very specific, plus I'm kinda nosey and wanna know what she's up to." Wrinley admits, giving the small cat in her lap a few scratches as she listens.

"Oh, uh- We actually met at her work place a month or so ago, she was our waitress for the night." He explained, being vauge about the whole break up situation with Lexi on purpose. Wrinley might be Dennys sister, but he's not about to explain that whole situation with her just yet.

"Oh cool! I'm glad she's having fun. She's been much happier since meeting you guys I've noticed." She comments before continuing. "I know Dylan can take care of herself especially when she's out drinking, but make sure she gets home safe 'kay?" Wrinley points at him. "Don't worry, I'll make sure she comes back safe and sound." Ashley reassures her as Wrinley squints her eyes at him. She's quick to smiling again though as she responds. "Good! I'd hate there to be a missing persons report on the news with your name on it."

"Wait what-"

"Sorry about the wait, I had to look for my jacket. Are you ready to go?" Not a moment too soon Dylan makes her way over to the two. "Dennys, hey! Uh, yeah- Yes, lets get going." Ashley stammers out, still a bit irked by what Wrinley said. Dylan raises an eyebrow at the uncomfortable tension, giving her sister a look that Wrinley brushes off. "You two have fun! Text me when you're heading home 'Dennys', hehe." She teases, earning herself a playful roll of the eyes by Dylan. "I'll text you later Wrin. C'mon Ash, I need a good drink after todays bullshit." She groans, eager to down whatever alcoholic beverage awaits her at the Bar & Grill. After saying their good-byes, Ashley follows Dylan out to his car before heading off to meet up with the others.

"..Did Wrinley say anything weird to you while I was getting ready?" Dylan prodded during the car ride. Ashley hesitates for a moment. "...No, why?"

"Because I know how Wrinley is like and you get awfully sweaty when nervous." She points out.

"Okay first of all, I do not get that sweaty when nervous-"

"You do." Dylan teases with a smirk.

"SECOND OF ALL-" Ashley laughs. "Kind of? If threatening to put me on the news as a missing persons report counts as 'weird'-" Dylan snickers a little at that. "I wouldn't worry about it too much, she's a good person just protective is all. She wouldn't actually hurt anyone unless provoked."

"Good to know I'll live another day at least."

[911-on-abc]

Fuck-it Friday

Thank you sooo much to @wildlife4life for tagging me!! 🥰 (they are also writing an NFL au which you check out) I was going to share a bit from the scene after this one, but then this just popped into my head and I just had to write it. Enjoy!!

The video posted on the Ram's official social media accounts opens to a boy wearing a Ram’s jersey standing with a mic on the sidelines of the team’s practice field. Standing next to him is Evan Buckley, helmet off, but still decked out in all of his gear and uniform. Buckley smiles at the kid, while the boys speaks to the camera.

“I’m Denny Wilson speaking to you from the LA Ram’s practice. I’m here today with Evan Buckley, the Ram’s star quarterback.” Denny turns to Buckley, and the quarterback’s face breaks into a grin.

“Hello Mr. Buckley, I'm Denny.”

“Hi Denny, It’s nice to meet you.” Buckley says as he shakes Denny’s hand with a kind smile. “I hear you have some questions for me today?”

Denny nods at him. He’s about eight or nine years old and a good foot and a half shorter than Buckley. Both of them are fitted with microphone packs, so the microphone is redundant, but Denny still stretches his arm so Buckley can speak his answer into it.

“Ask away.”

Speaking into the mic, Denny asks, “Who is your best friend on the team?”

Buckley lets out a long exhale. “That’s a hard hitting question. I don’t know if I can answer that because I don’t want to make anyone upset because I didn’t choose them.”

“You can have more than one best friend. I have two.”

“Well then, I think I'm best friends with everyone on the team,” Buckley tells Denny. “We’re all very close and I like hanging out with them a lot.”

“Ooooh,” a teammate coos from off screen, “You looove us!” 

Buckley shouts to the player, “Shudup! This is my interview!” Despite his tone, he's grinning with a blush on his cheeks as he turns back to Denny.

“Did you always want to be a footballer when you grew up?”

“Not always. Before I wanted to be a footballer I actually wanted to be a firefighter.” 

Denny’s face lights up, “My mom’s a firefighter!” 

“That’s so cool! Do you want to be one when you grow up?”

“No, not really. My other mom’s a rocket scientist.” Denny says casually, like being a rocket scientist is on the same level as being a teacher or an accountant. Buckley on the other hand looks stunned.

“Oh, sh-” Buckley saves himself off with a cough. “I mean wow.”

“If you had a superpower, what would it be?”

“I think invincibility would be really cool.”

“Is that because you get hurt a lot?” Denny says innocently.

“Woah!” Buckley dramatically clutches his heart. “No mercy, huh kid?”

Unphased by Buckley’s dramatics Denny moves on to his next question. “Do you have any personal hobbies?”

“I like to cook. My coach, Bobby Nash, has taught me a lot. He’s a really good chef.”

“My grandma is teaching me how to bake.”

“Oh yeah? What’s your favorite thing to make?”

Denny perks up, “I like making cookies! And brownies!”

“So you’re a dessert kind of guy?” Buckley says.

Denny leans into Buckley and whispers, “Don’t tell my moms.”

Buckley nods and holds out his pinky to Denny, “Promise.” Denny wraps his pinky around Buckley and nods seriously.

Denny looks off screen like he is receiving a cue from another person and then asks his final question, “Have you ever been in love?” Denny asks.

Buckley’s face turns scarlet, but he answers the question anyway. “Yeah. Yeah I have.”

“Are you in love right now?”

Buck sputters, obviously caught off guard despite the previous question. “Umm… well…” He looks around searchingly, and then narrows his eyes as he redirects his attention towards Denny again. “Which one my teammates put you up this?” 

“You gotta answer the question Buckley!” someone sounding suspiciously like Ravi Panikkar shouts.

"Yeah! Don't hold out on us!" another person, a woman's voice this time, yells.

Buck lets out a laugh and then leans down to speak directly into the camera.  “No comment.”

I've very new to the fandom so if anyone wants me to tag them for these or when I post more from this au please lmk!! 🥺👉👈

[myfaveisfuckable]

Apollo:

This is the transest non canon trans man to ever exist. There are so many trans men in this fandom and a signifucant portion of us latched on to Apollo Justice and his rockstar dodging pussy. Klavier Gavin rockstar prosecutor canon disaster bi? Wants him. Can't have him, but he wants him so, so bad. Look the trans autism pussy hits different, ok? He shows up to work and he works, do not talk to him about non work related things he will not answer you. Very easy to fluster though if you flirt with him even a little. He'll get annoyed at you for it though, he's so insecure. Would love to get in his ass. He's probably memorized every law ever and could recite them while you blow him he's so hot. He is literally so dense, mans can tell when you're lying and still will not put two and two together unless it's in a court room. May or may not have been involved with his dead best friend but they were at the very least codependent. He straight up does not talk about himself ever and it makes for some interesting reveals. He would get right up to the point where you're taking him home for the first time to tell you it's all puss down there. He's also like very short. Ignore canon heights, they're wrong and do not make nay sense. He's 5'5" max, likely shorter. Short King we love you. Idk how much of that was actually relevant.

* I know bc I ate him behind a defunct dennys

Chuuya:

1. Have you seen this man?? His pussy poppeth severely

2. GOD this man has me in a chokehold.

The collar. The crop jacket. The flexibility. The noisiness. The wine mom milf coding. You just KNOW he could ride you silly.

I want him so bad it's not even funny. He's only tiddy height on me and I do not give a damn

* not proven to not have one* I know bc I ate him behind a defunct dennys* canon in my heart

[holding-monsters-hands]

okok wut do u think the body types of the dummies (slappy, mr (or wally) wood, dennis, mary ellen, rocky, etc) would look like if they somehow had a “human form”? i love seeing how most other ppl interpret it ! thank u sm for the rocky hcs btw they were fucking AWESOME <3 also pls drink water today ;-;

AA THANK YOU!! IM SO GLAD YOU LIKED THEM :33 also thank you for the reminder bc I genuinely forgot Ajsjsh <3

The dummies (& doll<3)’s body types in human form

These are all canon actually bc RL stine told me himself /j

Slappy is definitely a tall and lanky guy, I dunno why I get that vibe but he’s just a ghastly looking guy, with sunken in eyes and that creepy little grin.

Snappy is for sure a big boy, both in height and in his body type! he basically towers over his brother and anyone shorter than 5”7’

Mr wood def has a dad bod, with the belly to match- definitely being one of the most good looking brothers in his opinion.

Dennis is midsized! but I think he’d also have a bit of fat around his stomach and on his face, because I feel like he’d have quite the baby face.

Mary ellen is a chubby girl! I think she’s honestly the prettiest little thing, and It just suits her to have that gorgeous, chubby Aphrodite body! slappy definitely fumbled when he didn’t marry her.

Rocky has good ol grandpa body, but like an Italian grandpa body with the slightly muscular arms and the beer belly, what a distinguished looking gentleman :3

Keep in mind these are just the vibes that I get from them! and because i’ve seen way too many people try to make them into hot anime characters, when really they’d look like every day people, with actual, realistic bodies.

[pinkprimrose05]

ARC-V Month Day 16: Actually, He Would Say That

Look, we all like our cast with their pros and their cons, but sometimes there's just something... missing, when you look at canon portrayal. Some more depth. Some trivial details and silly nitpicks, to add to their flair... which are exactly what today is all about. Show us your headcanons and most random thoughts!

Ah yes, headcanons: my favorite way to patch up the swiss cheese holes in any story ever, and the personal cherry on top I place whwn there are no holes to patch. For someone who claims to have a lot of them, I've shared a rather small amount of my headcanons so far... but that changes today!

___________

1- In a world where the counterparts stay separate, when all is said and done, the Lancers decide to keep in contact at Sawatari's suggestion -shocker, I know- and so they make a groupchat to talk about mundane life and things that strike their fancy. Said groupchat is... actually decently normal considering its members, but you still see flashes of the weirdest shit sometimes- like Dennis' massive collection of kaomojis, Reiji's 10-page long essays on why black coffee is overrated, Shun's inability to stand back and watch this nerdy fuck slander the superior coffee blend, Serena's copious cat stickers and reaction pics, Tsukikage's concerning stash of blackmail screenshots (99% of which is enabled by Sawatari, much to banana's mortfication), and Yuuya's oddly random, unprompted threats of homicide that he never fails to end with an innocent :D

2- Shuuzou has adopted all kids in the messy Akaba/Kurosaki/Hiiragi family tree, some metaphorically, most literally. He even got Himika to sign off custody of Reira, but left Reiji to his own devices because he just- doesn't know how to go about it with the guy. He's still invited to family & friend gatherings, however, and ends up getting called "son" no less than seven times in front of the whole family and the Sakakis. Legend has it that Reiji is still looking for ways to disappear into the ground to this day. Don't get him wrong, he appreciates the sentiment, but everytime he hears the word he straight up bluescreens.

3- As little screentime as they get to actually appear and talk, the monster spirits are very much still willing to communicate with humans- with a few exceptions, of course. Some of the older spirits like the Magistus quartet and Agents have strong reservations toward making themselves known after the dimension split fiasco(s), but then there's little ones like the Wights and the Ghostricks, who just spontaneously spawn into the human world on Halloween (to the dismay of Maiami City's police department, which had to contend with 57 reports of vandalism and stolen candy and various small acts of mischief the first time it happened).

4- The reason behind the Performapals' synergy and eventual archetypal overlap with Odd-Eyes actually goes a few ways back to one of their shows as a wandering troupe. While preparing for departure, Hip Hippo stumbled upon a lone dragon roaming in the wild on their own, and told his companions about it. One hour in and lots of excitable discussion later, their troupe gained a special new member who would soon become their main attraction, and together they resolved to improve their talents, to put on the best show under their master's conduct.

___________

Admittedly... this is quite a bit shorter than I wanted it to be. There are still many headcanons I've yet to put into words, buuuut I'm afraid this submission is a tad late already, so I'll have to ever-so-subtly shove some of those into written works and post the rest on their own later (someday. sometime. eventually. for sure.)

Thanks for sticking around, anyway- here's a cookie for your trouble! 'Till next time ;D

[keaalu]

Pendennis Castle (and friends)

I feel like I've been adopted by the spirit of Pendennis Castle. (Perhaps I lived there, in a former life, firing cannons for King Henry?)

Point being, the very first time I caught the Riviera Sleeper to Cornwall in 2017, the diesel loco that pulled the train was Pendennis Castle - and ever since then, the name keeps. Coming. Up. So I think I have slightly adopted it.

This holiday, I went to Falmouth and explored Pendennis Castle itself (“Castle On The Hill Castle”, haha). But more excitingly, look what I encountered in Didcot!

Pendennis Castle! (And holy moly she is a big beastie. And constantly LOUD, her chimney roaring away like a massive kettle you forgot to take off the boil.)

Granted, standing on the station next to her, she's obviously huge - I was STILL not as tall as her. But it’s only when you’re at ground level right alongside, staring up at at this towering piece of noisy engineering and realising that the top of your head doesn’t even come to the top of its wheel, that you realise what absolutely monumental vehicles these actually were. I had to stand on tiptoe to look into her cab.

She's at the coal stage here (above), about to have her tender refilled. The camera was on my eyeline. Even in these photos you can't really grasp how thunderingly enormous this old lady is. 120 tonnes! And even when she was not doing anything at all (her crew weren't even aboard), she was noisy.

Here's an even bigger one! This is King Edward II, who escaped the scrapyard by about 30 minutes and (I think) was in such a state it took longer to restore than it was in service. (I asked the tour guide and it's slightly shorter than the Flying Scotsman but heavier, at 135 tonnes, and more powerful. Apparently there was a bit of a pissing competition between GWR and LNER over who had the better engine, which resulted in these behemoths being designed. They had to do lots of weird things with it because otherwise it wouldn't have fitted through tunnels/alongside platforms/etc.)

Yeah. These are big beasts. (Even the dinky little tank engine they had outside weighed in at almost 23 tonnes.) If I get anywhere with this thing I'm noodling away at, I really want to try and carry that off.

It's quite sad, in a way, seeing them preserved and just sitting there - getting lots of love and polish, granted, but I wanted to see them escape onto the mainline and really run. Watching Pendennis Castle shuffle up and down her 750m of line was a bit like watching a racehorse pace around in a paddock.

Of course I was busy taking notes. (I didn't quite get brave enough to ask the volunteers "so if you were in the middle of nowhere, just an engine and crew, and you'd stopped for some reason, and the driver then had a heart attack, how would you get help?")

(Something something someone runs down the tracks to a lineside phone to call the signalmen to put a stop on the line, and the engine sits whistling the hell out of an SOS because he's not quite got the steam pressure back up to run, until a policeman comes along to help.)

In a final turn for the weird, this holiday, I was just getting ready to leave my hotel on the final day, and heard the toot of a steam train. That can't be a steam train, I said, it's a mainline railway station next door. But I hurried away anyway, and look what was sat in Bristol Temple Meads station! (I left the people in for scale. Even here, the loco is lighter than Pendennis - 72 tons vs 81 tons.)

She left literally not even a minute after I got to the platform, so that was a huge touch of luck. It's a special one-off service running on the mainline up to Shrewsbury. So this is on my list for next year!

(If there isn't already a character in TTTE called Dennis, WELL THERE SHOULD BE. Who used to work the tin mines and speaks Cornish so no-one fucking understands him.)

(The sleeper is my favourite way to travel on holiday. Go to sleep in London, wake up 250 miles away in Penzance!)

[captmickey]

3, 6, 15, 17, 35

3 - Are there any specific themes you enjoy exploring in your fics? I am the BIGGEST sucker for the power of love/friendship. Corny, cliche, bland maybe, but I love it. However, I also really love the theme of courage through adversity? And combining the two is just... there's a lot of room to explore. Like, how even in the worst situation, when things feel to be at their bleakest, things will turn out okay, no matter what. Especially with friends/family/partner etc. 6 - Do you prefer writing shorter, standalone fics or longer, multi-chapter stories? For the most part, I do like writing the usual standalone, especially with my uh... tendency to veer off into a different idea (or life comes and kicks me in the head and I am back at the back of a Denny's fighting my depression again for motivation), but multi-chapter fics excite me because I get to stay just a bit longer in that world and really expand on it, really flesh out the scene, the banter, the tension... even the quiet moments. It doesn't feel it needs to be rushed and I'm not just randomly hoping from scene to scene and can take my time on things. 15 - Do you plan your fics or prefer to let the story unfold as you write? I... I really need my plans ha ha, otherwise I get stuck somewhere, get frustrated, and then abandon the story (or at least put it on the backburner.... looking at you, Brotherhood). And by plan, it's usually anyways a beat sheet of sorts, much like @threeadventurers, where it's a 'this has to happen in the story, I don't care how, but it's an absolute must!'. Although, sometimes, even with the plan, the story will go in a direction that's better then what I had jotted down and I now need to find a way to implement it with the original plan. Happened already a handful of times with Sea of Adventurers and the latest chapter of Brotherhood. 17 - What's the most memorable comment or review you've received on one of your fics? Hmm.... a lot of the comments/reviews are usually memorable to me, but I distinctly recall someone saying how Tales from the Inventory was the most in-character fic that they've read in a sea of fics from Poker Night at the Inventory. And I remember grinning so widely at that comment because they also said it was one of the funniest and I always panic if I write a character wrong or the comedy is not funny etc. And I remember just, beaming, when it came to Perspective from a Royal Guard and how it was considered one of the top KQ stories. Did not think of it as such myself, but I'm also someone who will re-read that comment while kicking my feet. (And that's not mentioning 3adv comments/reviews. I cry all the time to those haha) 35 - What do you enjoy most about being a fic writer? ....Actually getting my imagination put into words. Like, comments and the such is great, I live for that... but as someone who also draws, sometimes I'm impatient or the pose isn't working or sometimes I just don't feel like inking/sketching/coloring etc. So when I write the fic, it's just a word version of what I imagined, and sometimes it's even better than what I could have drawn. It's just... it a relief to get a thought out into a story and share it as kind like a show-and-tell kind of thing.

[gotbuckleys]

denny’s got a school play and karen somehow ends up saddled with contributing to costuming but she’s way over her head and needs an extra pair of hands like yesterday and refuses to let the shitty PTA mums in on her struggle so she hits up the GC with a “do we know anyone 1. available and 2. creative” and buck replies with “tommy is taken but he is creative 😉” and karen sends back four eye rolling emojis before tommy calls karen with a “do you actually need a hand with something” and karen replies “that depends can you sew” and tommy surprises her with a confident “i can actually” and finds out tommy picked it up from someone’s wife when he was regularly going to the VA. hen comes home at midday to karen and tommy seamlessly churning out farm animal costumes on the kitchen island with megan thee stallion blaring out at 85db and she snaps a picture and sends it to buck who is still on shift and who immediately replies with “can you ask tommy to sew replica turn outs while he’s there im too scared to take my actual ones home in case it turns into another borrowing the fire truck situation” and hen is like “not before i convince karen to cut and hem her spare lab coat much shorter”

[ghostoffuturespast]

"Les Preludes" for the wip game pls

WIP Game Here

Les Preludes is mostly a laundry list of ideas, and there's very little attached writing to it. I prefer not to commit to an idea until I'm actually ready to get to typing. (Makes it much easier if I have to walk away.)

The idea for this series though was based off of the idea of "symphonic poems", since this series is named after Franz Liszt's Les Preludes. I utilize a lot of poetry in my current V/River Ward long fic, and thought that this would be a neat extension of that while also allowing me to write some shorter things. Little moments, or poems, about their lives at different points as it were.

One of the fics I'm excited to write about in this series is a horrible pun. The title is based off the song Foul Play by Dennis Brown and the entire premise of it is River Ward working a murder case and picking up some chicks...

And by chicks, I mean chickens. Fowl. I know.

Thanks for the ask! 🧡

[superman86to99]

The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special (November 2022)

We take another chronal jump to the future because we CAN'T not talk about this special, which reads like it was specifically made for us. This 80-page book is made out of four stories by each of the creative teams who worked in the original "Death of Superman" saga back in '92 (minus editor Mike Carlin, inkers Denis Rodier and Dennis Janke, letterer John Costanza, and uhhh whoever did the lettercol back then). The stories are:

"The Life of Superman" (by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding)

The first official Jurgens/Breeding joint since... 1999, I think? I didn't realize how much I missed seeing their combined signature in that little circle; you know the one. This is by far the longest story in the book and, while I enjoyed it a lot, I kinda wish they'd made it shorter so that the others could have more breathing space (especially since the plot will continue in an upcoming miniseries written by Jurgens).

This one is set during the ??th anniversary of Superman's death, when a now adult Mitch Anderson (you know, the asshole teen who thought Superman was lame until a monster came crashing into his house and he needed someone to save him) visits little Jon Kent's school to talk about that historic day. This is a cool starting point because it parallels Mitch's first appearance being forced to sit through a televised Superman interview during class at the start of the "Death" storyline. The main differences are that these kids are much more polite than he was and TVs are way bigger now.

Anyway, Mitch's story is a huge shock to Jon, since the fact that his dad died and came back to life just never came up at home. Jon is upset with Lois for not telling him, so she spends a few pages recapping the entire "Death" storyline while walking Jon through Centennial Park, where Superman's empty (or is it????) (yes it is) tomb still stands.

Meanwhile, a mysterious creature has managed to demolish a whole building in Metropolis without anyone seeing it clearly, but reports indicate that it kinda looked like Doomsday. The Kents eventually come face to face with the creature right in front of the Daily Planet building, and it does look a whole lot like Doomsday, only with four arms... and, later on, wings. Jon names it "dOOmbreaker" (that's how they keep spelling it) but I kinda like his earlier suggestion of "Doomerang" better.

Superman is having a pretty tough time facing Doomerang, since not only is it as strong as Doomsday but it can also evolve and adapt while fighting, instead of having to die first like the original. While Superman fights the monster in front of a crowd of people who are standing way too close (do they want to get good phone pics if he dies again?), Lois goes off to use her journalism powers to find out where the hell it came from. She finds out Doomerang is actually a city worker who helped clean the debris left by the original Doomsday and then took one of his broken spiky bones home as a souvenir. Somehow, the bone has been mutating the guy into another Doomsday for years and conveniently finished the job on the day of Superman's deathiversary.

Lois brings the bone over to Superman, who decides to destroy it to prevent Doomerang from mutating even further. Blasting the bone with heat vision doesn't destroy it, but it does turn Doomerang back into a regular person, meaning that Superman manages to end this particular fight without killing the monster OR dying himself. The end! Until that mini I mentioned comes out, I guess, since it'll probably involve the magic Doomsday-duplicating bone wreaking even more havoc.

"Above and Beyond" (by Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett, and Doug Hazlewood)

The sweetest story in the bunch, which is no surprise given that Ordway was always the best at pulling on our heartstrings. This is about Ma and Pa Kent having an understandably tough time watching their son getting pummeled to death on live TV. In order to take Ma's mind off the Doomsday fight, Pa pulls out her old scrapbook of Clark's exploits (which dates back to John Byrne's Man of Steel #1 in 1986) and they go over some other tough fights Superman has managed to survive. These include his tussle with Metallo in Superman #1...

...and the time he brought down Mongul in Warworld during his exile in space. Yes, THE BEARD IS BACK (along with the skimpy space gladiator outfit).

Superman leading a bunch of DC heroes to fight off Brainiac's invasion in "Panic in the Sky" also warrants a mention, which leads to has to be the first Agent Liberty cameo in decades. Side note: all due respect to Brad Anderson, who did a great job coloring the first story, but seeing Glenn Whitmore's colors in this one immediately makes it "feel" more like an authentic '86-'99 comic. (Note: see Don’s section below for a different take on Anderson vs. Whitmore.)

Back to the story, Ma reveals that she had a second, secret stash of Superman-related news clippings where she keeps track of the hundreds lives Clark has saved by quietly transporting donated organs across the country (without even charging for it! Hear that, Flash?). The point is that they reflect on how life can come out of death, unaware that that's literally what's going to happen to their son pretty soon. A beautiful observation illustrated via pictures of Superman punching villains. What more we possibly could ask for in a Superman story? (Other than it lasting more than 10 pages.)

"Standing Guard" (by Roger Stern and Butch Guice)

The Superman/Doomsday fight retold from the perspective of Project Cadmus' Guardian, filling in some of the gaps in the story and answering some questions only a massive Superman nerd could have, like "How long did it take Guardian to drop off Maxima at the hospital?" or "When exactly did he pick up Dubbilex?" Luckily, I am a massive Superman nerd, so I loved it.

So, we see Guardian learning about Doomsday's cross-country rampage and helping Superman in that small town that gets blown up, then in the tree city of Habitat, and then being too late to help him in Metropolis (not that he would have made that much of a difference). The story ends at the morgue where Superman is pronounced dead, when Dubbilex alerts Maggie Sawyer and Dan Turpin that Cadmus' Director Westfield is coming in to take the body for his experiments and Guardian says he's not letting that happen.

It didn't "end there," as you know (or Superboy wouldn't exist), but it's a nice moment. It's cool that, despite how much Guice's artwork has changed, this still feels like an Action issue from back in the day. Part of that is that Stern reuses a lot of old dialogue, but it's also due to his careful attention to detail when it comes to continuity and his knack for keeping characterization consistent -- Guardian, Dubbilex, Maggie, and Turpin are straight out of the '90s. Again: I wish this was longer.

"Time" (by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove)

Finally, this story shows us what John Henry Irons was doing right before and right after Superman's death. This one takes the opposite approach as the previous story: if Stern and Guice made sure to meticulously dovetail their scenes into existing continuity, Simonson and Bog play fast and loose with it to tell the story they wanna tell. In the old comics, we were told that John was buried under a building while trying to help Superman against Doomsday. This one retcons his origin so that John actually gets to see Superman's corpse.

This contradicts John's first appearance in Adventures #500, when he comes out of the rubble days later still thinking he can help Superman stop Doomsday (though he could be excused for being a little confused under the circumstances). However, this retcon provides a pretty strong ending for the story, which is mostly about John trying to reach Doomsday in his single-minded obsession with helping Superman, only to get sidetracked helping people trapped by the destruction in Metropolis. By the time he reaches the front of the Planet building, Superman and Doomsday are already dead. John is devastated, but then he gets up to continue "making a difference" and helping people, setting up the moment when he gets trapped under that rubble.

Yep, that's the psychic lady who later comes up with the whole "Superman's spirit possessed John" story; haven't seen HER in a while. This issue features other long-neglected characters like Keith the unlucky orphan, Myra the orphanage lady, and even Zoid, the kid with the glasses and the camo jacket who gets smoked by a Toastmaster™ in Steel's debut issue.

Overall, this special is like hanging out with old friends, and I love that it doesn't shy away from some aspects of the "Death of Superman" saga that usually get retconned away in all the retellings and adaptations. For instance, when Lois tells little Jon that Doomsday defeated the Justice League, we see the actual 1993 JLA including Bloodwynd, Booster Gold, and yellow ring era Guy Gardner, as opposed to Batman and Wonder Woman or something. One of the pinups even shows up long-haired Aussie Lex Luthor Jr., who is not a character DC seems eager to revisit (just because of how confusing he would be to casual readers, I guess).

This is a great labor of love by all involved and I'm glad it exists. However, I do have one major complaint: no Bibbo. 0/10.

And now, WAY more commentary from the great Don Sparrow after the jump!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and while I grabbed a few different covers, I think the most standard cover was the one with Jonathan Kent gripping Superman’s old cape with an image of Superman grappling with Doomsday set behind him (with further callback scenes on the foldout image).  This centre image is a callback to a couple of famous images—of course, this scene is the very first image in the original Superman #75, but also reminded me of the (excessively airbrushed) cover of the Wizard Magazine Tribute Edition.  Speaking of colouring, the colour throughout this issue is absolutely stunning, and the combination of the 90s style of art with the three-dimensionality of Brent Anderson’s colour is really really appealing.

THE LIFE OF SUPERMAN:

As we move into the story itself, I’m struck with how well the Jurgens/Breeding team can draw these kids looking like actual kids.  We’ve covered it quite a bit in the Byrne era that comic artists can drawn young people as tiny adults, but here, all the students’ dimensions and faces seem accurate.  There’s also a quiet effort at greater diversity among the Metropolis classmates, which is nice to see.

A few pages on, we see the modern Superman for the first time, and it’s wild seeing the Super-team of the 90s drawing the costume of the present age.  Granted, the changes are small, just the movie-style cuffs, the three-dimensional s-shield, and slightly more angular belt-loops, but it’s interesting how familiar and new it feels.  I also think Jurgens is drawing Superman to look a little bit older now that he’s a father.

A few pages after that, we see Lois for the first time, and unsurprisingly, Dan and Brett draw a great looking Lois Lane.  Her outfit in particular says “urban working mom” in a stylish way, and I dig it.  I’ve already mentioned Anderson’s colouring, but I can’t praise it enough—he treads a fine line, by ameliorating the underlying inks, without over-rendering.  He uses largely flat planes of colour, rather than airbrushing every curve, and it’s a really nice marriage, the panel of Lois’ stray hairs leaving a shadow on her cheek is a great example.

As we intercut between Lois’ retelling of the Doomsday storyline, and Superman investigating the new “monster”, the fear in Superman’s eyes as he recognizes his assailant is really well done.  So too is the emotion on Lois’ face as she retells the iconic “cape at half-mast” moment.

It’s a small thing, but I also like the sartorial choices they make for Clark, when he meets up with his family after Doomsday (somehow) scampers away off camera.  Our first glimpse at Doombreaker is a very close recall of a drawing from this same team in the Superman/Doomsday mini (that we should be getting to soon on this very blog!).  Superman taking flight to battle Doombreaker is a poster-worthy image (hurt a little bit in my opinion by the random Superman logo dropped in behind him for no reason).  There’s not a wrong note in this entire portion of the story, so it’s hard—I want to highlight all the art!  But the final panel of Superman flying away is an all-time great.

And to analyze the story a bit—it’s everything I was hoping for.  I was surprised to see the young Jonathan in this book, as the near-adult Jonathan has been so front and centre in the modern stories.  I’ll admit, I missed the dynamic between he and his parents that was done so well by Jurgens, and later Patrick Gleason, so to show this story as a flashback to when Jon learned about what happened to his dad was a really smart way to go.  It also seemed like an antidote to the 1990s that brought us the Death storyline.  This wasn’t a mindless slugfest, and despite the 90s-ness of the name “Doombreaker”, Superman didn’t solve this fight with brute strength.  It took compassion, and investigative reporting on the part of Lois to solve that day’s dilemma.  Right down to the title, it was an uplifting and hopeful story.

ABOVE AND BEYOND:

We are instantly transported back to the original 1993 story as we see the Kents holding each other in front of the television set.  Grummett and Hazlewood certainly have not lost a step, as their art looks as crisp and detailed as all those decades ago.  Glenn Whitmore’s colours are a bit of a comedown after the Brent Anderson chapter, but not distractingly so.  It’s fascinating to see Tom’s interpretation of so many iconic moments of Superman’s career (the Gladiator costume is always a particular highlight because it was such a departure at the time!).

It’s a testament to both Jerry Ordway’s writing, and Tom Grummett’s rendering that this story featuring an elderly couple, and very little non-flashback action threatens to steal the whole book.  The performances on the Kents faces tell a story as compelling as any action-adventure yarn, and it’s wonderful to read, and a very nice little PSA for organ donation, which is a legitimate way we can save lives through our own death, as Superman did.

STANDING GUARD:

Jackson “Butch” Guice inking himself here, and it’s a little scratchier and more textured than we’re used to seeing.  Still has the long limbed, leanly muscled figures we know from his work, but it’s perhaps not as sharp as the work he did on Action Comics, or more recently when he teamed up with Bryan Hitch on a Captain American mini-series, which was some of the best work I’ve ever seen of his.  The faces in particular seem under-drawn a bit, apart from the clearly-based-on-Tommy-Lee-Jones drawing of Dan Turpin.

And as Max pointed out, it seems like an odd choice to leave Bibbo out of a story in which he originally appeared.

TIME:

In a way, this was one of the most essential stories of the book, chronicling the exact first moments after Steel burst out of the ground in the wake of Doomsday’s rampage.  I had always thought he was under the rubble for days, and only emerged after Superman was already dead, but this new story reveals his full actions that day.

The art is a bit inconsistent, but very Bogdanove.  He copies older panels directly, which is effective, but sometimes jarring when they come before and after panels which are inked very differently than Dennis Janke’s hatching would have done.

The linework here reminded me of Kyle Baker, with its thin, precise minimalist line.  As usual with Simonson and Bogdanove, it’s a more ethnically diverse corner of Metropolis, and Bogdanove excels at drawing a variety of facial types.  At times the hulking John Henry looks a little wan, which again can be jarring with what we know of Bog’s version of the character. 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Jurgens’ story is just about perfect, in the way that it calls back almost every element of the original Doomsday storyline, starting—as it did in the 90s—with a classroom setting, and students arguing about who’s the greatest hero.  And how much do you love that Jon isn’t embarrassed of his dad, but rather argues he’s the greatest?  What a kid.

I love Jurgens’ writing of Superman and Lois as parents.  It’s a great moment when Jon voices his displeasure of having to learn about his own father’s death, even temporarily, in a classroom.  To her credit, Lois immediately cops to the fact that they didn’t handle that properly, and apologizes.  It’s the right move, and it’s great to see.

If I have one quibble about the art in the Jurgens’ story, it would be the lettering.  I found the clearly-computerized font for the word “Doombreaker” to not look great in the panel, especially how often it was repeated, and some sound effects are handled better than others.  The “Brakka-chak!” when Doombreaker shoves Superman into a building looks ok, but the “swit swit swit” earlier in the story where Doombreaker spins Superman by his cape just looks so computer-y and tacked on (besides being an odd transliteration—I kinda want to believe that it’s an excited USO show awaiting MASH star Loretta, chanting in anticipation).  But seriously, I do miss the feel of hand-lettered sound effects.

My personal favourite moment is perhaps a weird one, but I’ll explain!  My son’s name is Donovan, and since he was a little tyke, we have always called him “Dono” for short.  So it was very cool to see Jimmy Olsen calling Jonathan Kent “Jonno” for short.

Not to nerd out, but honestly, what do you expect at this point?—there are a couple factual errors within this issue.  One is in the first story, where Superman says it’s new for Doomsday to “speed-evolve” as Doombreaker does.  But Doomsday did the exact same thing in 1994’s Hunter/Prey mini-series, as he speed-grew new bones to cover his ear canals, and also his knuckle bone spurs became weird ropes at one point.  What gives, man?  Also, in the John Henry Irons story, they erroneously have John giving Lois credit for naming Doomsday. But the first person to call him Doomsday was Booster Gold.  Maybe John means she first used it in print?  [Max: I took it as John simply not knowing Booster used the name first... though, if Lois used it in print and didn’t specifically credit its creator, knowing Booster, she’s got a lawsuit in her hands.]

GODWATCH: Been a while since I’ve focused on the faith elements in these stories, but this issue has plenty.  First, when Lois tries to warn Superman, she invokes prayer.  Then in the story with the Kents, their mention of sacrificial love read to me like a Christian concept, and Lee Weeks pinup literally references the cross.

CLAY MANN PINUP:

Anyone who reads this blog even semi-regularly knows I’m something of a connoisseur of “Lois-looking-great” art.  As he showed in the Tom King Batman run, when Superman and Lois went on a double date with Catwoman and Batman (one of the best comics of the last ten years, if you haven’t read it!), Clay Mann draws a stunning, but realistically proportioned, Lois Lane.  Clark’s tailoring is decidedly 90s, but it’s a corker of an image, and my second favourite of the bunch.

LEE WEEKS PINUP:

An absolute stunner from one of my favourite artists and comic people.   The big red cape reminds me of a Bill Sienkiewicz piece, but it has that naturalistic, brushy feel of all of Lee Weeks work.  Great concept, great layout and great drawing.  My favourite of the bunch, actually.

WALT SIMONSON PINUP:

Unmistakably Simonson’s linework, with Laura Martin’s colours just lending a little bit of extra texture.  While Simonson’s looking a bit looser than other days, it’s still a strong piece, even if I’ve never liked the ram-horned look on Doomsday.

FABIO MOON PINUP:

Naturally, Moon’s quirky style is going to be a departure from the dynamic realism we expect from Superman comics, but the style matches the mood very well, here.  The concept of Jimmy using his signal watch for a Superman who will never come is a great and sad idea.  I do find the unidentified extra Planet staffers a bit distracting, though.  That might be Ron Troupe with his blazer over his shoulder (I guess his ”JAM” sweatshirt was in the laundry), and the mustachioed fellow could be Steve Lombard, as drawn in Superman stories from much later than the death storyline.  The other two ladies?  Not sure.  Maybe Alice and Cat Grant?  Or is it Daphne and Velma.  But the fact that I’m debating about it shows that maybe they could have been left out.  [Max: That’s definitely Alice for me, and therefore Cat next to hear because it’s just be weird to have an extra random person.]

BILL SEINKIWEICZ PINUP:

There’s Bill himself! He is such a master of energetic and photorealistic artwork that I have to wonder if he had someone dress up as Doomsday for this shot. Another interesting artistic take.

GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ PINUP:

A great circular layout, bringing the eye into the centre (and Superman’s face) both with the framing of Doomsday, and also the muted colours at the edges. Managing to include Jimmy and Lois is just the icing on the cake.  Great.

JAMAL CAMPBELL PINUP:

Another powerful, if simple image, with Lois’ grief front and centre, and the “Reign” storyline that followed behind her.  My only quibble is I prefer drawn lettering rather than computer fonts, but that’s a minor one.

CARMINE DI GIANDOMENICO PINUP:

I quite like the Superman movie inspired crystals as a motif, and the layout is well designed.  Doomsday looks frightening, which is a strange contrast from the placid expression on Superman’s face.  Buuuuuut, I have a few issues here.  Generally, I think computer artwork can make an artist a bit lazier, and we see that here.  The arms are literal mirrors of each other, which just feels a bit unnecessarily hurried. And one of my major pet peeves of the modern era is artists refusing to draw the actual Superman logo onto the figure.  Here it is slapped on (with at least some colouring to denote his chest muscles) in my opinion too high onto the uniform.  Lastly the planet Earth behind him (another thing modern artists often skip drawing) is not even a high-resolution image, and you can see the jagginess even in print.  

CULLY HAMNER PINUP:

In my top three of these pinups easily, it’s exactly what I want from a pinup—seeing familiar and beloved characters from the story, looking as they did in the original story, but interpreted in the signature style of the artist.  Terrific sense of motion here with unique, blocky colours in that Hamner style.  Love it. On the whole, I was surprised and pleased with how worthwhile the issue was.

[poodlestepdad]

after the last emo night

To quote Little Mix, “This is a shout out to my ex”.

We all expect Andi to quote a song lyric to express how she’s feeling. Her formative years were spent on MySpace, after all.

But really, this is a shout out to my ex. I saw you at an Emo Night. Not the last one that happened in the city, just the last one that I went to. It was put on by Flip Phone, the drag brunch people. I’m surprised you were there.

I’m not surprised due to homophobia. You weren’t homophobic, and I doubt you’ve developed that trait in the past several years. Places like 8Kun and FBI-monitored Discord chats about extremism aren’t where you’re hanging out. No one is radicalizing you at this age. If you hadn’t been radicalized via your upbringing, it’s certainly not happening now. 

This whole thing is going to make it sound like I thought about you when I was there. I didn’t give a shit about your presence except when you very obviously looked at me. I tried scooting my friend and I away from you and the woman you were there with, but you seemed to end up either just in front of us or just behind us throughout the night.

To quote Taylor Swift, “The punchline goes: I got older, but your lovers stayed my age”. I am not going to disclose when we broke up, or what age I was. No one needs to know which ex I am speaking about except me. I was 25 when I began dating my now-spouse, so our relationship obviously was prior to that. 

Did you know I’ve publicly dated as many people as Taylor Swift has publicly dated? Taylor began officially dating Joe Alwyn about six months after Sam and I did. She and I have a lot in common, including at least one ex who shows up in public with women years their junior.

*At least* one ex.

She has written and recorded a lot of songs that are, at least in theory and in the minds of internet gumshoes, about her exes. I have written a lot of subtweets and deleted Tumblr posts about my exes. You knew that I always wanted to be the vocalist in a band, but my mental health is too poor. You never told me that, to your credit. That’s the only credit I’ll give you here.

Your hair is shorter than it was when we were together. I didn’t think it was you at first. Your facial hair looks pretty terrible. You should go back to shaving it off. Your hairline is receding. In a way that is reminiscent of Drew Afualo, you deserve that hairline. 

You may have seen that my spouse is bald. They’re hot as fuck with a bald head. They embraced the bald head confidently and I’m constantly blown away by how good they look.

But you? You’re holding onto that hair despite it’s recession. Shave it off, bro. You clearly already cut it due to thinning. You look like someone’s greasy uncle.

Probably even the greasy uncle of the woman you were there with.

This makes me sound bitter, I know. I’m not bitter. If she is actually happy with you, if you’re not manipulating her into that supposed happiness and using her for your own growth, then I’m happy for her. She’s very pretty, and small, and slender, and probably about 23. She deserves happiness.

But you look like her dad’s way-younger brother who works at a Denny’s as a fry cook and flirts with the 18-year-old waitresses.

Messaging 18-year-olds on Facebook wouldn’t be too far off from what you did when we were together, would it?

To paraphrase Grayscale, “[You] swore one day that [you’d] marry [me], yeah [you] said it”. But to finish that lyric, you were never able to make my mom laugh. Or trust you. And my dad definitely didn’t like you, so no apologies to him needed, as the song goes.

You looked back at me so many times. You even kicked my foot once as you passed me to get a drink, and I pretended that I didn’t feel it. It was pretty pathetic that you did that. It was pathetic that I noticed, to be fair, but at least I wasn’t the one vying for my ex’s attention in person.

Why would you keep staring at your aging, married ex-girlfriend? Leave her alone. You could also say hello and make things less awkward, so I could tell you to fuck all the way off and that if you say another word to me, I’d punch you in the throat.

You’ve lost weight and I’ve gained it. I could potentially win this fight. I’d get in a few good blows before my friend or other random women who know the Girl Code (™) pull me off and swear they didn’t see anything. 

To paraphrase The Academy Is…, “I saw things that I shouldn’t have, and I’ve gone too far to turn it back”. We didn’t meet in high school, but the emotions I have towards our time together feel similar to the emotions I have about my time in high school. It was mostly miserable but I still feel nostalgic. I wish I could go back and do things differently. In the case of high school, I wish I’d chosen not to go to Oconomowoc. In the case of you, I wish I’d left when you showed me an exit the first time. I wish I’d left when I felt the need to ask an open-ended question about what we were, not knowing what your answer would be.

And here’s the thing. Here’s the twist. We’re bringing it back to Taylor Swift.

We all know that Andi relates all her thoughts via song lyrics.

“How many days did I spend thinking about how you did me wrong?”

So fucking many.

“But one magical night, I forgot that you existed.”

And that’s the thing, I forgot that you existed. I forgot the hurt. I forgot the broken promises. I forgot how terrible you made me feel, both on purpose and unintentionally via your actions. It’s been a long time. But tonight, you had the audacity to continually try to make eye contact with me. 

To quote Fall Out Boy, “Let’s play this game called, ‘when you catch fire, I wouldn’t piss to put you out’”. I wrote all of the above while drunk after the last emo night. I promptly forgot all about it. I forgot about it until I was preparing for therapy yesterday night and thinking about opposite actions for the feeling of shame. I do sometimes feel shame- I feel like I let you treat me the way you did, for as long as you did. But I think about what the folks in therapy told me, and what my therapist told me today. There’s nothing I could’ve done to deserve being treated that way. I hope you feel guilty sometimes. The world isn’t fair, but I hope you’ve reflected enough that you feel guilty sometimes. 

“It isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference. So… yeah.”

[duquete]

denny’s  headstone  would’ve  read      :      i  swear  i  lived.      and  this  is  actually  such  an  important  acknowledgement  for  him.  vital  in  fact.  the  song  itself  resonates  deep  within  my  bones  for  his  character.    we  all  knew  denny’s  canon  fear  was  hospitals  for  obvious  reasons,  but  did  you  know  his  second  fear  was  that  people  would  only  ever  remember  this  version  of  him?  the  sick  version.  the  version  of  him  that  couldn’t  walk  around  a  hospital  unsupervised  in  case  his  lvad  battery  ran  out.  the  one  who  had  become  dependent  on  iv  meds  just  to  make  it  through  a  day,  and  spent  the  last  five  years  of  his  life  following  doctor’s  boring  orders.    this  is  not  who  denny  truly  was.    denny  was  a  man  who  took  chances    &    risks;    he  was  the  rebellious  drop  -  out  who  defied  his  rich  parent’s  expectations  and  travelled  the  world  on  his  motorcycle.  he  enjoyed  every  simple  pleasure  he  could  find,  from  watching  colourful  sunsets  on  a  cold  morning,  to  spontaneously  bungee  jumping  just  for  fun.  the  brave  firefighter  who  willingly  ran  into  burning  bridges,  who  never  grumbled  on  the  odd  days  he  got  called  out  to  save  a  cat  from  a  tree  because  who  doesn’t  love  animals?    the  guy  who  tried  different  foods  or  experiences  without  hesitation.  he  went  to  every  concert  he  could,  even  if  he’d  never  heard  of  the  act  before.  he  explored  an  array  of  hobbies.  one  was  never  enough.  martial  arts,  yoga,  even  dabbled  in  stamp  collection    (  that  one  didn’t  last  long  ).    he  did  it  all.    his  life  might’ve  been  cut  painfully  shorter  than  it  should’ve,  but  that’s  who  denny  was    &    that’s  how  he  wanted  to  be  remembered.

[chaotic-hypnotic-erotic]

Mesmero Misunderstood (AO3)

Author rant on.

They're much-maligned, it would seem, at least in my fanfics on AO3, but there is a reason why I put so much love into my version of Mesmero.

A long time ago, I read a book, The Magician by W Somerset Maugham, about a character called Oliver Haddo. I thank Nick Edwards, one of a few friends of mine from college days who's still with us, for getting me a copy of that book.

Haddo was a thinly-veiled parody of Aleister Crowley.

I remember a scene where Haddo wandered into a salon, and basically everybody there - who, just a moment ago, had been trying to outpose one another - started telling him to read the room and yelling at him that he wasn't welcome there.

They ridiculed his ambition to be a magician. They cast aspersions about his drug use, his bisexuality (which was illegal in the UK at the time), and his beliefs (which came from Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, unheard-of in Western societies at the time).

The author was writing about Haddo, but he was screaming out his vitriol towards Crowley on the page.

Maugham wasn't the only one to take the piss out of Crowley. Aleister was "Mocata" in Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out (don't bother reading it - the racism just stinks), and "Karswell" in M R James' Casting The Runes which got turned into Night Of The Demon, a 1957 British horror film.

Oh, and the great poet W B Yeats commemorated Crowley with a scathing sonnet. Nah, just kidding, he threw Crowley down a set of stairs. How erudite.

That Maugham salon scene stuck in my head, a lot.

Which is where Mesmero came in, as a character.

The first Marvel Rare Pair challenge in 2022 invited me to write about pairings of Marvel characters whom nobody had yet paired before. The creation of my AU version of the X-Men:Evolution character Mesmero seemed the perfect opportunity to explore some truly rare pairings. But what was more, it gave me the opportunity to do something else.

I wanted to explore what it was like to be a mutant, shunned by other mutants.

I wanted to hold up a mirror to the general mutant community: you can't call yourselves the victim of hate if you yourselves hate others.

And inside the frail, diminutive body of this fictional Mesmero, I inserted myself.

The Mesmero you have been reading about in my AO3 stories are all elements of my personality. If Mesmero seems to have a thing for tall blondes, it could well be that that is something in me speaking. I'm apparently 155 cm tall, which makes me shorter than Wolverine - thus Mesmero is exactly the same height as me.

I've received some comments to my AO3 fic about Mesmero, and they have actually been hurtful. And they have come from people who support Loki. As in "God of Mischief" Loki.

This one comment stung so fucking hard.

Hopefully for Mesmero's sake, they stick to their garden and helping the people who go to them asking for help instead of seeking it out and "convincing" others they need their "help" when they haven't.

How "GO HOME TO WHERE YOU FUCKING CAME FROM" is that?

Anyway, I have a multi-part Mesmero story brewing. But you know what, I think I'll stay off AO3 altogether for a while. I don't really care much for comments like that, so I'm tempted to gather all my Mesmero stories and delete them from AO3, put them into a novel, post them to Substack or Bluesky, and stop writing Marvel and MCU stuff. Concentrate on my original characters, my fave settings, and maybe start up a Blogger blog to put them onto, also.

Don't tell my characters to go home. Don't tell them to stay in the garden or else. Don't tell my characters that they take without consent.

Don't project onto Mesmero. You've been hurting me.