#this mp is long

[cream-and-five-sugars]

All good romance is earned.

— Monty Oum

[sleepypocketsock]

Finally.... after one thousand years...!! I wanted to wait a little bit after i submitted my entry before posting this, but behold! my submission for @catmask and @frogcroaks monster design contest!

You can also view thistle on toyhouse for more lore!

[steddielations]

We all agree Steve has the biggest praise kink ever, he absolutely does, but in the meantime, Eddie’s just getting off free, walking around openly saying that flattery works on him

Let's talk about how Eddie ‘hides behind his hair and holds back a smile at the smallest compliment’ Munson, would be fighting for his life dating Steve 'holds hands during sex, randomly says you're beautiful, turns on his charm like a secret weapon, confident sweet talker no matter how lame he looks' Harrington.

Eddie's probably used to people being entertained by him, but not being endeared, and now he has Steve fucking Harrington winking at him after Hellfire, looking at him like he’s something special even when he's sweaty and has Mountain Dew sticky fingers, casually saying, "Why did they ever call me the King when you look that good up there on your throne, hm?” It’s a miracle Eddie isn’t constantly falling to his knees. Sometimes Steve’s compliments get Eddie so flustered that he just has to hide his face in Steve's neck and bite him.

[papyrusgayfont]

one thing I really like about the more recent Mob Psycho merch art is how Serizawa looks a lot happier and more like how he is in the Reigen manga/end of the series than he did when he was first being put included in merch art

like just based on what I’ve seen, more times than not, a lot of earlier Serizawa merch art would have him looking kinda nervous, or like surprised, or serious, or almost like he’s yelling

of course they would have him smiling sometimes but, again, from what I’ve seen, it wasn’t often

but I’ve noticed that in a lot of recent (as in, September 2023 to now) Serizawa merch art, he’s smiling, he looks happier, and he reminds me of how he looked at the end of the series and in the Reigen manga, where he’s happier, he’s more confident

(I think the Reigen birthday art is my favorite here because. Just look at him. He looks so happy his smile is so big look at the flowers AHHH I LOVE HIM 💥💥💥💥)

Now of course there is still merch art where he isn’t like, happy and smiling, but it also doesn’t really feel like the previous merch art, like he doesn’t feel anxious or nervous or like he wants to yell here, he just seems serious, which he can be when he needs to be

it really seems like things have flipped, like at first it seems like most Serizawa merch art had him be anxious or nervous about something, and the times where he was happy was few and far between, but now he’s smiling and happy and confident most of the time, and the times where he’s serious feels few and far between

it reminds me a lot of his character progression from when he was introduced to the ending/the Reigen manga. like at first Serizawa is a lot of anxious and nervous because he’s starting a new chapter of his life, and he has to navigate himself through that, and by the end he’s a lot more confident in himself, he’s found his role in life, he’s a lot happier, he’s made friends

I know that literally none of this was intentional because it is. merchandise art. why would they show Serizawa’s character progression through it. but it’s just something I’ve noticed, so, hey, I thought I would talk about it lol

[metukika]

my favorite guy

[kineticallyanywhere]

Time & Space pages 1-2 ( This is the start || ao3 (not yet!) || next ) Starts less than 24 hours after the death of Willy Stampler. With the job done, there's finally time to sort some things out. They just need the right amount of space.

[southfarthing]

my mum says i can come over and yearn with u. if thats alright with your mum

[ireallyamabear]

CASSIAN RHAPSODY

appreciating Cassian Andor on this appreciation friday on @andorshitdaily - there can never be enough Cassian

[buddiebeginz]

Artist: Caducado 

[humming-fly]

Happy to report I have finally started listening to Malevolent and to no one's surprise I am already obsessed (I'm almost done with s2 atm please don't send me spoilers yet sdlkfj)

I'll skip over my usual formality of having one normal art post before diving into shitposts let's not waste anyone's time here

[iguessricciardo]

@.danielricciardo great weekend from start to finish. very happy 😊 grazie @.alphataurif1

[cream-and-five-sugars]

how it started vs. how it’s going

[sapphicteaparty]

GAME AWARDS 2024 🎉(by me)

good evening gamers. it’s that time of the year when we (I) give awards to the most outstanding games of the year*. so here are the games that the critics (also me) decided should be recognized:

previously on game awards:

2022 | 2023

[luckystarchild]

Today I was the Ambassador

I had a migraine and sat in my workplace's storage warehouse for a bit to rest, away from noise and in the dark. Glasses off, phone away, just sitting in a chair with my eyes closed in the quiet. I had taken medication that makes me quite loopy, and it had kicked in a little while prior.

Soon a dude I didn't recognize wandered into the warehouse to take a phone call. Loudly. And when he was done, he called out to me from like 50 feet away, "Sorry, I didn't see you there! Hope I'm not disturbing you!"

And I, politely, because I wasn't sure which of my colleagues this might be, and because I'm generally a friendly person who doesn't shy away from social interaction, replied, "It's all good. I have a migraine and am just resting in a quiet place."

To which he replied, "A migraine? What's that like?"

[Long post below the cut, sorry]

For the next ten minutes he stood over me asking questions. What's it feel like? How do you treat it? What causes it? Why do you get them? How bad does it hurt on a scale of 1-10? I reiterated several times I needed quiet, but the hint went untaken, and he kept asking questions. I still didn't recognize him, but I had my glasses off, so I thought perhaps this was someone new, and I felt I needed to be polite just in case.

Eventually, curiosity assuaged, he said, "You never know what a person's going through. For instance, you told me you had a migraine, and I could've walked away. But I didn't, and I came over here, and now I know all about migraines and how bad they are!"

Me: "Yep, that you do. That's empathy for you."

Him: "Yeah! I could've just told you to shake it off. Like I could've told you it's just a headache. But I didn't!"

I was pretty doped up on my migraine meds and therefore not feeling belligerent, nor particularly sharp, but even through that haze I recognized the multiple points of irony studding the conversation. Alas, I was too doped up to think clearly about how to end the interaction, and I just said something like, "People say that a lot to me, to be honest, and I'm glad you didn't."

Him: "People say that a lot? What do you mean?"

Me: "Well, pain is invisible. Some people don't believe me when I say I have a migraine and need to sit somewhere quiet and dark." (No reaction; nuts.) "Some people don't take a minute to empathize. They just tell me it can't be that bad."

Him: "That's terrible. People really say that to you?"

Me: "Yeah. My mother does every time I tell her I have one."

Him: "Oh wow. Do you have a good relationship with your mother?"

Me: "Oh. Uh. No."

Him: "Wow, really?"

Me: "Really. But I came out as queer a few years back though, so the migraines aren't the reason why."

Him: "What's that mean?"

Me: "Which part?"

Him: "That you came out as queer. What does 'queer' mean? How are you queer? Can you explain it?"

This is where I kind of came back to myself through the medication fog. That was a deeply personal question. Many of the questions had been. I only belatedly realized the level of prying happening (see again: medication) and it occurred to me I still wasn't sure who this person actually was. Did I even want to share this with this person? Blearily I put my glasses back on and looked at him. Really looked.

He was wearing a Trump hat. Blue. "Take America Back," it said. Not being the instantly recognizable red to which I am accustomed, and without the aid of my glasses, I hadn't recognized it for what it was.

I also realized I didn't know this guy. He was not a coworker. But my addlepated brain slowly pieced together that there were contractors in the building working on [some maintenance project or another], and this must be one of them.

Normally I would not reveal anything about my queer identity to a stranger in a Trump hat. People wearing them have chased me shouting threats and obscenities based on presumptions they made based on the cut of my hair and my style of clothing alone. Normally I wouldn't be caught dead revealing anything about my gender or sexuality to a stranger in a Trump hat. But here I was, already deep in it, and in an isolated place, and suffering from pain, and being stared at expectantly by someone whose nature and temperament were yet a mystery to me.

But.

Generally speaking, I can tell when someone is asking a genuinely curious question. It feels markedly different from someone asking a shit-heel question that will lead to eventual antagonism. And this guy was not acting like the latter. He looked at me frankly, and his body language was neutral, and while his questions were blunt, he hadn't raised his voice. So far, he hadn't actually been antagonistic. Just blunt, and insistent, and maybe a little tone-deaf.

So, perhaps against my better judgement, I said: "Well, in my case, both my gender and my sexuality inform my choice of the word 'queer' as a personal label. I'm bisexual and nonbinary. 'Queer' covers both gender and sexuality, and for me it feels comfortable to use as an umbrella term." Realizing I did not want to arm this person with a word he shouldn't have carte blanche to use, I added: "But some people in the LGBTQIA community don't like the word 'queer,' so I wouldn't use it to describe a person unless you know that's the term they prefer. The word was once used as a slur, but some of us have reclaimed it, and I'm one of those people."

Him: "OK." A beat. "What's 'nonbinary' mean?"

So I explained. And it took a long time, because (as I soon learned, and expected from the outset) he did not know the difference between sex and gender, nor that male/female are used to describe sex, and that man/woman and male/female are not actually interchangeable terms when discussing gender and sex. He didn't not know there was something called a gender binary, nor that anyone could exist outside it. He didn't know what 'cisgender' meant (he had never heard the term). He didn't know that your sexuality and you gender exist independently of each other. He didn't know the words he could use to describe himself, if he were so inclined.

There was... a lot to cover.

Me: "So, I'm to assume you are a cisgender man."

Him: "I don't know what that means."

Me: "It means you were assigned male at birth and told you were a boy by a doctor/your family, and as an adult, you identity as a man. The identity you were assigned and the one you feel fits you best is the same. It's never changed."

Him: "Yeah! That's right!"

Me: "May I assume you're heterosexual?"

Him: "What does that mean?"

Like I said: There was a lot to cover.

And cover it I did. I was patient. He had some trouble with the lingo, of course, since it was all so new. He got words mixed up, and I fear there were parts I didn't explain properly. I wasn't exactly prepared to have the discussion that day, and I was in pain besides. I spent the entire time on tenterhooks, carefully waiting for any hints of antagonism or mockery in case I needed to fish or cut bait.

No mockery came. He got a little frustrated, I think, when he messed up some words, but he never snapped, or argued, or tried to tell me I was wrong about any of it. He just seemed curious.

"But what does nonbinary feel like?" he wanted to know. "Does it feel weird? Do you walk around feeling weird all the time?"

Me: "Kind of, yeah! Ever since I was a little kid, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I didn't feel comfortable around girls, or around boys. Neither label fit me."

And he listened as I relayed a few anecdotes illustrating how that felt. And when I mentioned that my parents never really understood me as a kid, his brow furrowed.

Him: "They didn't get it?"

Me: "No. My parents were cattle ranchers."

Wide eyes. WIDE eyes. And that reaction cemented a hunch that had been growing in me since we started talking.

I live in Texas. I grew up here. I know how people think, even the ones I disagree with. To me, this guy seemed the type who might vote a certain way due to the influence of those around him, but one who doesn't know much about politics or anything outside his family or in-group. The one whose family "always votes Republican" but has never actually bothered to look up how a tariff works—and I know the type. I know how to work with someone like that. You have to find in-roads to empathy with these folks. Speak their language. If no one has actually fed them damaging misinformation (and it did not appear that anyone had!), there's an opportunity there to do some good.

Thus, sensing we were at the point of terminology overload anyway, I changed tactics. It was time for emotion, and personal experience, and giving him a touch-point for empathy. He was from this state, and the reaction to my folks being cattle ranchers was telling. So I leaned into that, hard.

Me: "We lived in the middle of nowhere, and my folks don't get it at all. There was nothing in my upbringing to really influence this. We were Baptists, on a ranch, in Texas. I didn't know a single gay or transgender person, but here I am."

Him: "So your parents didn't know anything about it at all."

Me: "Nope."

Him: "It was all you, and from when you were a kid!"

Me: "Yeah! They were absolutely baffled when I started telling them I didn't feel like a boy or a girl. It was just how I felt, and they didn't understand for a second."

Him: "Wow. WOW. It really was just a part of you, huh?"

Me: "Yup."

Him: "It's just how you felt inside. Wow!"

I realize these transcriptions, if read looking for sarcasm, could seem disingenuous. But he sounded sincere. He sounded utterly, painfully sincere. He looked surprised, and baffled, but also rather excited. Like he'd learned something new and was happy about that.

We chatted about a few more subjects after that: he wanted to know what transgender means, and why transgender people feel the way they do, sometimes without having the language to accurately convey his questions. But I listened, and I tried my best to educate. I stressed that gender is something people feel, and it can be hard to understand, but that it's up to an individual to know who they are best. And he nodded along, and never once argued, and asked questions frequently along the way.

We get tired, though, all of us. I was tired, and even though he was still asking questions, I think he was reaching information fatigue as well. So eventually I walked back to something we'd discussed before that I thought he could feel good about. End on a happy note. That feeling would hopefully stick once we parted ways, and color the memory thereafter.

"Y'know, you mentioned empathy earlier," I said. "Walking in another person's shoes."

Him: "Yeah!"

Me: "I think it's OK to admit we don't always understand exactly what a person feels, or why they feel it. It's OK to say you don't really get it. But if someone is living their best life, and they're not hurting anyone, it seems like we should just let them live it. That's what we'd want for ourselves, right?

Him: "Yeah, I agree with that!"

Me: "Transgender people are less than 1% of the world's population, too. So when you see people getting really mad over transgender people, it's like...why are they so mad? We're just living our lives. Don't they have bigger issues to worry about?"

Him: "Oh yeah. Much bigger. You're right!"

The conversation ended after that; maybe a few more light remarks, but nothing worth noting. I invited him to ask more questions if he had them and if he saw me in the building again. He said he would, and he thanked me, and we parted ways.

I relayed the conversation to a friend not long later. They stared at me for a second before asking, "Why in the world didn't you just walk away?"

And the honest answer, at first, was that my migraine made thinking clearly too difficult! But once I focused up, I made the decision to continue the conversation.

My reason for staying will probably resonate with folks from various groups: I stayed because in that moment, I had become the Ambassador.

When encountering a person who seems to have never met anyone from your group, and they realize you are a part of that fabled minority, you are placed (whether consciously or unconsciously ) atop a pedestal. In that moment, you are not an individual. Like it or not, you have become the spokesperson, the mouthpiece, the Ambassador of your entire social group. Anything you say can and will be used against your entire social group by whoever has elected you the Ambassador. If you react poorly, or yell, or scream, that person may leave the interaction thinking everyone in your group will yell, or scream, or react poorly to them. If they deem you, the Ambassador, unreasonable or rude, they may think everyone in your group is unreasonable and rude. And they may carry that opinion with them into the world, and they may inflict that opinion onto someone else.

This is unfair, of course. It's awful. Because these questions are invasive, and personal, and uncomfortable. Reacting poorly would be totally reasonable when asked something so deeply personal. Boundaries are healthy, and if you don't feel safe enough to discuss your gender/sexuality with a stranger in a Trump hat, you should absolutely walk away. Your feelings come first.

I'm lucky, though. I have an accepting workplace, and people who love me exactly as I am, and a support system. My state is a terrible place for queer folks, but given the above, I have some insulation from the worst of it. I'm also gregarious, and I've had some training talking to people off the cuff. If there's anyone who can manage playing the role of Ambassador for the afternoon, it's me. I have the spoons, so to speak. I can be the Lorax for half an hour, and I can try (try!) to give the random dude in the warehouse a quick education on my community.

He's just one guy. But he may know others. And if you can get through to even one unlikely person, why not make the time to take that chance?

So that's what I did today. He might not remember the terms we discussed, or the finer details on gender expression, nor the difference between sex and gender. But I hope the man in the Trump hat remembers the queer person who spoke calmly, and treated him kindly, and didn't get upset when asked invasive personal questions. And maybe (just maybe), I hope in my optimistic little heart that if someone else in a Trump hat tells him transgender people are a scourge, he might remember me, the queer kid who wasn't indoctrinated and came from the same Texas roots he did, and say, "I dunno. They're just out there living their best lives. That's what we want for ourselves, right?"

I can only hope I read him right. I can only hope he was truly listening. But even if I was wrong in that, I'm still glad I took that chance. Big things have small beginnings, as they say, and it never hurts to be kind.

(The only lesson I didn't teach him was to be careful asking such invasive questions, but given this all started over a migraine, I don't think I would've had much luck on that front, anyway. Haha!)

[highdio]

Pleeease, write your thoughts about the musical lol. I really like your Dio meta posts <3

Just a disclaimer: this is really opinionated but I don't like to drag media for its own sake. There were lots of things to like in the Phantom Blood musical, just ... Dio wasn't one of them. Also, Mamoru Miyano threw himself into the performance he was asked for, so it's hardly his fault. It's just always amazing to me that people feel the need to rewrite Dio into someone else when the way Araki's written him is already perfect, complete and a lot of fun.

So, where to start? Basically, the Phantom Blood musical re-writes Dio, giving him a different personality and different motivations through OOC stage direction along with a bunch of original dialog and scenes. What results is a version of Phantom Blood where "Dio" is just a normal guy without charisma who had a bad childhood and spends most of the story being miserable. Dio as he's written in canon has an uncommon charisma and appeal that's allowed him to remain relevant as one of those 'all-time great' villains. Scene after scene in the musical prove that its creative team either didn't read the manga or just really didn't like Dio.

fwiw Araki wrote Dio as thoroughly fleshed-out, with consistent traits and behaviors and consistent motivations behind his actions. He also left a paper trail of interviews and author's commentaries that develop Dio even more fully beyond the manga. So there's really no excuse for media that treat Dio as some sort of empty vessel waiting to be filled by narrative cliches we already know and expect.

It's annoying too, because, along with its OOC content, the musical is peppered with occasional manga-consistent moments. It's like the musical is camouflaging its Very Bad Take on Dio by having Mamoru Miyano periodically re-enact the canon character's most famous panels. The musical wants simultaneously to take credit for bringing Araki's vision to life on the stage, while at the same time completely undermining its most important element: a capital V "Villain" who, according to Araki, "accepts and embraces his evil nature, and follows his dark path without hesitation." This is the biggest change the musical makes to Dio: musical!Dio has none of the confidence that allows canon Dio him to move so decisively and destructively through the narrative.

Musical Dio is introduced by a scene where he's bullied on his way home, before breaking into a song about how terrible his life is, where "everything is always taken from [him]" ("it's hell …I feel nauseated …[I'm] under a cloudy sky.") The song is alternately tearful and hopeful. "I'm going crazy from being robbed!" he laments and then pollyannaishly muses, "hey, Joestar, can you turn my [cloudy] skies to blue?"

If Dio being introduced as a sad sap and self-described perennial loser hoping for any break sounds attitudinally unfamiliar that's because it is. Araki went in the opposite direction: he started his story by subverting the cliche - wide-eyed poor boy victimized by circumstance leaves his sorrow-filled life hoping for a new start - and instead gave us a kid with surprising, even sinister agency. Dio is not just given a hero's upward narrative arc (something Araki crafted very deliberately), he's introduced improbably in his first scene from a position of control. This fact is important because in the manga it's a position he won't lose until four chapters and nearly 100 pages in, when Jonathan finally fights back. From the time young Dio is introduced - reading a book with his back turned to his bed-ridden father who he's secretly poisoning -

- to the time he's systematically broken down his adoptive brother's spirit by alienating him from his friends, taking Erina's first kiss, and of course kicking his dog, Dio is shown as being in control and on top (Erina drinking the muddy water is the only exception). It's OOC to imagine 12-year old Dio feeling sorry for himself because at the time he's introduced, he's already made a habit of getting what he wants. By the time he sets off for the Joestars after killing his first dad, he's already developed full confidence in his abilities and the inevitability of his rise to riches (something Araki has him explicitly state and then underscores with a panel illustration of a steam train signaling the rise of Modernity).

But the writers and director of the musical don't find this characterization interesting enough or something. So they lose the canon entirely and in its place they invent a version of Dio who's despondent. And they didn't get Araki's steam train memo so they miss the Modernity theme (even though Araki's tied Dio so tightly conceptually to the idea of the Modern that he has him "use a 20th century boxing technique in the 19th century"); instead they double down on class difference being determinative. It never occurs to them that Dio is written specifically by Araki with the freedom to move outside of his social status because he sees it as artificial (the "evil elite" monologue later reveals Dio thinks of the whole social contract thing is arbitrary and voluntary).

Throughout the musical, Dio (although it's not fair to Mamoru Miyano since he isn't responsible for writing this mess, let's use mamoDio from now on because it's easier) seems to idolize the Joestars for what he calls their "beautiful blood." Not "beautiful" because usable calories for the vampire he will become but "beautiful" because noble. The Joestars' noble status and the honor that's apparently behind that status become the shining "star" toward which mud-bound mamoDio flailingly, failingly reaches. I don't need to tell you that in canon Dio doesn't have respect for nobility.

"Mud and stars" is heavy-handedly introduced as a dominant theme of the musical. According to the play, Jonathan, noble and bright, looks to the stars while human Dio, pathetic, conflicted and even confused, can only see life as a mud-soaked prison.

Now, the mud and stars thing was only used in Part 1 as a single text element on a Volume 1 illustration but, in spite of its marginality, it's becomes a liturgical text for some fans looking for an explanation for Dio's actions beyond what Araki gives them in the actual narrative. To this sort of fan, a guy who embraces his inner talent for evil and never had the misfortune of developing a moral compass isn't the right type of villain because he's unapologetic. If the villain doesn't have excuses how can you apologize for him? So they need Dio and by extension Araki to give them a "good enough" reason to accept Dio's ever-escalating atrocities. If the reasons Dio has for doing the things he does lie outside of what's considered good or acceptable, they are simply rejected and new reasons are invented in the hope of making Dio much less objectionable.

Now, like I said earlier, Araki's repeatedly told us in his writings that Dio has an upward narrative trajectory, not a downward, "mud"-bound one. The mud and stars duality fails to describe the narrative journey of the two main characters: both look upward to transcend their circumstances and travel along a shonen manga hero's rising path. (In fact, it's Jonathan who needs a good push to realize his potential, something Dio happily provides). And it's Jonathan, not Dio, who Araki first gives a downward arc, being handed defeat after defeat for those first four chapters before gaining his footing and progressively rising to Dio's challenges. "Mud and stars" isn't just a bad choice of metaphor, it's a misleading one.

Back to the musical, mamoDio is the exact opposite. An air of sadness and insecurity haunts his performance. An original scene where George presents the mud and stars dilemma as a lesson highlights Dio's lack of confidence and the depression that lurks behind it, as Dio bemoans how people doomed to "struggle and die" cannot possibly summon the hope it takes to look up to the stars (he's talking of course about himself).

Likewise, and here's where mamoDio's failure as a character really comes into full relief, seven years after this, when Dio's machinations are revealed and he's about to be arrested, before he uses the stone mask, mamoDio drops to the floor and spends the better part of a musical number in tears, bemoaning his sorry life ("I'm trapped in a prison covered in mud… no matter how hard I struggle I'm crushed…") and his lack of noble blood.

(btw this is after the manga scene where Dio fake cries; here, mamoDio is genuinely distraught).

Contrast this to the actual scene in the manga. His expressions in these panels are memorable because of how assured Araki draws him. Dio's entire world - his poisoning scheme, his grab at what one can assume would have been the entirety of the Joestar estate - is about to end but instead of despairing, he launches into a philosophical soliloquy. His body language is haughty: this isn't mamoDio crawling on the ground and decrying his upbringing and lack of noble blood, instead this is a man who apparently, almost irrationally, perceives himself as noble. When he uses the mask, Dio is smiling widely. Metaphorically speaking, he's looking at the stars.

When mamoDio uses the mask? He's on his knees. He's in tears. On one night he interjects, "Mother…" In short, he's conflicted.

One of these depicts Dio. The other does not.

Now obviously the writers and director of the musical must think making these seismic changes adds something to Dio's character. But (and I feel like this is a theme whenever I write these things) I'd argue it only makes him more basic. It makes him predictable and formulaic, someone we've seen in countless other stories.

(Oh! and did I mention mamoDio repeatedly calls himself "useless"!! Because he does this.)

Now, because mamoDio has no confidence and as a human acts out of desperation, when he becomes a vampire he still isn't Dio. Mamoru tries to make his vampire Dio evil and scary by expending a lot of energy, running about the stage and sticking out his tongue ad nauseum. When you look at how Araki has Dio move physically throughout the manga, it's the opposite of kinetic. Dio is a point of fixity who's charisma draws others toward him (ask me for more on this if you want because there's enough here for its own post).

Now for the worst of the worst: at the very end of the production, after the manga ending that features Jonathan's death and Dio's (presumed) defeat as a head imprisoned in Jonathan's arms, the musical takes an original twist in which, following a finale number featuring most of the cast, mamoDio is lead offstage by Jonathan. You read that right. mamoDio is hunched over, resigned, and Jonathan seems to take on a paternal role. Although the lyrics would have you believe this has something to do with "two fates becoming one," it's clear from the stage direction that any embers of Dio's ambition are being tamed and extinguished as Jonathan takes Dio's grasping hand, subdues him, and leads him docilely into the darkness.

It turns out Dio's vampire arc was just a phase, a hurt and lonely child lashing out and making a mess for attention.

His body language here is obscenely out of character. Consider the following because, as I said in the opening, in spite of what all these re-writes of Dio would have you believe, Araki crafted Dio with specificity and consistency: Araki only draws Dio (with very few exceptions) 1) standing tall, looking down at you; 2) back turned, looking back and down at you; or simply 3) back turned, (performatively?) ignoring you. Dio is never on the ground except when he's knocked down (think, young Jonathan finally fighting back in the Joestar home or, much later, Jotaro stopping time and landing those punches). By constrast, mamoDio has spent an incessant amount of time of the ground, crouching, kneeling,, bowing, hunched down. Who is this guy? So his hunched-down exit in the final moments of the production, literally being led by Jonathan (controlled??), is so amazingly stupid that if I didn't have a gif as proof, you might think I'm just making this stuff up:

There's plenty more to unpack that I won't address here: ghost Dario. The lack of grave-spitting. The complete absence of true joy or leisure expressed by Dio especially during his vampire era: no woman eating her baby, no owlcats, no Poco's sister. No chaise lounge. No roses(!). No fun. Not for Dio. That would be too manga-consistent. That might mean Araki wasn't giving us the appropriate message that bad guys are actually just sad guys.

tl;dr Dio isn't in the Phantom Blood musical. He's replaced by a normal guy who's motivated by a lack of self-esteem and despair that he wasn't born into an upper-class household, or something. He's boring. The result? There can be no Part 3 in this musical's world (and presumably no Parts 4, 5 or 6, no Giorno, no Jolyne, … you get the picture) because mamoDio just gives up. It's a nicely produced little tale about Jonathan Joestar and some random other guy who at some point gets a funny green coat.

[akalegos]

mob psycho log

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