#very true about that western comic thing

[ajaxbell]

Fangs of Fortune (Bai Ze Ling): perfect on pure aesthetics alone, but also it will tear your heart out while being very gay.

I was lured in to this show by Tumblr gifsets and friends on Bluesky talking about how queer and poly this show is. I'm old and I've been in fandom more than half my life. I know how to read queer subtext. I'm also pretty well versed in cdramas, so again, I know how to read subtext. So I went into this ready to, well, read the subtext.

But no this show is just puts the queer it right there in the text. The vague information we have about Chinese censorship repeatedly left me asking, 'wait how are they getting away with this?' Like some of these jokes and implications are just so blatant it seems incredible this show ever made it to being broadcast. It just feels very much like queer media made for queer people even if t's more subtle than something western like Queer as Folk.

Even without the heavy coloring of gay this show is incredible and so much more than I expected from the title and the promo. The premise is essentially the death of the goddess, who governed relations between humans and demons, leads to an influx of demons in the human world. This brings together the goddess's disciple, Wen Xiao--seeking to restore the goddess's power. WX's childhood sweetheart, Zhuo Yichen--seeking to restore the demon-hunting bureau after the powerful demon Zhu Yan killed his father and brother. It opens on Zhu Yan, in human disguise as as Zhao Yuanzhou, volunteering to help the imperial court restore the demon-hunting bureau to quell the chaos. They are joined by Pei Sijing, a retired female general from the rival demon hunting sect, and a very young doctor (and comic relief) named Bai Jiu. It starts off as a sort of monster-of-the-week with a grim Scooby gang doing detective work and fighting monsters. Each major demon has a mini arc that relates to the larger case (restoring the power of the goddess to balance the realms), and they are repeatedly blocked by either the demons or the rival demon hunting sect. Each mini arc also acts as a mirror or parallel story to slowly revealed backstory of all the main characters as well. In true cdrama fashion it's a mix of adventure, intense emotional drama, romance, and comedy. And queer and poly jokes and romance. It also has a kind of manga vibe in the way the comedy is woven into the more serious story, and in the fantastical depiction of the characters and how the story unfolds.

It is also just insanely beautiful. Every single shot is lovely. The costumes, make up, and hair are incredible. The casting director made all the major demons inhumanly beautiful. The sets are spectacular. The effects are nicely done. Every bit of has the vague surreality of a fairytale. The perfection of each shot ads to the manga vibe, as if we're seeing each critical storytelling panel come alive. There's recurring water-based special effects that are just gorgeous. Based on aesthetics alone this show would be worth watching to me. That it is combined with a complex, very emotional story is a spectacular gift to the watcher. A lot of the negative reviews of this complain about the staginess or that it's overly contrived in how each scene is shot. But I think it's gorgeous, works perfectly with the storytelling, and if we criticize art on whether it achieves the goal it intended then this show is doing exactly and perfectly what it means to do and doing it beautifully.

Additionally the acting is also very good, but Neo Hou is the stand out for sure. I enjoyed him in Back from the Brink, especially the later part of the story, but in Fangs of Fortune he's transformed, utterly embodying the role, the way Dylan Wang is Dongfang Qingcang in Love Between Fairy and Devil. Neo Hou has the right look, a slightly uncanny beauty perfect for a gorgeous immortal not of this world. The show does incredible things with his styling between the various looks and personas the role requires. But in acting he somehow manages to utterly transform his face and demeanor to manifest each aspect of the character as story demands changes from him.

There is a lot of crying in this drama. Like early on I joked that there was going to be a character crying a single perfect tear in every ep. Lol nope. Multiple single perfect tears per ep and many outright full on sobbing scenes. This show is just waiting to rip your heart out and you see it right from the beginning. But it was such sweet pain all the way through. Just a truly engaging and utterly wrenching set of intertwined stories.

My only criticism is that the pacing falls apart in the last 3 episodes. But overall the story is solid through the end, though like so many cdramas, it's saved by the epilogue.

You should absolutely watch it if you want the chaotic bi polycule (it's her, her girlfriend, her boyfriend, her boyfriend's boyfriend who is also her boyfriend, their two idiot sons, and her boyfriend's ex-who is also eventually sort of his boyfriend again), or if you want your heart torn out and stomped on. Or even if you just like really gorgeous cinematic things. Also if you watch, please don't skip the ending credits, as they change as the arcs change, and the radiant joy Tian Jiarui has as he dances is an excellent antidote to the emotions of each episode.

[thankskenpenders]

At long last, the trailer for Sonic movie 3 is here, giving us our first look at Shadow! It looks like a fun time, though my excitement is probably more tempered than a lot of peoples' due to a few things I have mixed feelings on. Here are my off-the-cuff thoughts about it.

Shadow

Yes, it does seem like they've really nailed Shadow here. Fowler's attachment to the character clearly shows. The action looks cool and really sells Shadow as a serious threat. He's got his bike, he's doing Chaos Control all over the place, it's great. Keanu is very much just doing his regular voice, but it fits well enough. The backstory from SA2 seems to mostly be there, though I'm sure some details will be adjusted. Mostly I'm still just amazed that we're getting a major tentpole blockbuster movie this Christmas starring Shadow the fucking Hedgehog that treats him as a serious character worthy of respect. We've come such a long way...

I mean, just... what an image to see on the big screen.

I also really like the way they're setting Shadow up as a foil for movie Sonic, kind of his dark mirror image as a Mobian hedgehog whose family life on Earth ended in tragedy and turned him into a vengeful antagonist. It's pretty straightforward, but it works well.

Robotnik(s)

Welp. They put Jim Carrey in a fat suit. I suppose we knew this day would come eventually.

I guess a small part of me is glad that movie Eggman finally actually looks like Eggman in every way that matter, but they're completely playing it as a joke at his expense here. And, yeah, the Sonic franchise isn't immune to fat jokes, the early years of the franchise (particularly Western adaptations) gave Sonic tons and tons and tons of jabs about Eggman's weight. But I thought we'd moved past that. But here we are with a depressed movie Robotnik binge eating and gaining a lot of weight like Fat Thor and the other characters think he's so GROSS and look his clothes don't even fit him anymore, haha! There's so much of this crammed into the trailer. I can only pray they don't do this in every fucking scene he's in in the movie.

I do like the plot of Sonic reluctantly teaming up with Robotnik to try and stop Shadow, though. It's very different from SA2, but we knew it would be, and I think that gives the movie some potential for Sonic to have kind of a dark turn of his own that mirror's Shadow's. I have a feeling that Sonic will try to get back at Shadow for something he does - maybe hurting Tom or something like that - and in the end Sonic sympathizes with Shadow and decides they have to stop their cycle of revenge, teaming up to stop some final threat.

Oh, and, of course... Jim Carrey is also playing Professor Gerald. Who might still be alive? Or maybe it's a hallucination on Ivo's part? I don't know, but either way, I'm here for it. Everyone joked about them doing it and then they went and did it. Yes, it risks playing him as a joke character, but the shot of him and Shadow mourning Maria while surrounded by GUN soldiers makes me believe he won't be a total joke. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the true final antagonist of the film, which would diverge a lot from the games but would work as its own version of the story.

And again, WHAT an image to see on the big screen lmao

Everyone else

The human cast is VERY downplayed in this trailer, but let's not forget that they're still going to get a lot of screentime one way or another. The Sonic 2 trailer barely showed anything from Hawaii. Where oh where is my best friend Wade?

Speaking of the Wade show, Knuckles... frankly still seems to be mostly a comic relief character heavily influenced by MCU Thor here, getting some jokes in the trailer but immediately getting Worfed by Shadow when it comes time to fight. Tails seems to be flying the gang around in a real-ass helicopter, and his big pilot's helmet is funny, but otherwise he doesn't really do anything here aside from getting stomped by Shadow. I really hope they don't get sidelined too hard, but frankly I fully expect them to, Tails especially.

And, of course... I can't help but think about who isn't here. Namely: the girls. Yes, three movies and one streaming miniseries into this film franchise, exactly zero of the female (animal) characters from the games have made the jump to live action. Please allow me to bitch about this.

Despite her being both 1) a main character in the game this movie is loosely adapting and 2) my fave, I suppose I can understand why Rouge isn't here. Paramount took one look at that bat cleavage and went "nope," cowards that they are. There was some speculation that Kristen Ritter could be playing Rouge, but we now know she's just playing someone at GUN. But, again, I at least get why they'd be hesitant to include her.

But Amy... Amy is such a glaring omission at this point. There's no excuse. She's the female lead of the franchise. She's one of Sonic's closest friends. (Honestly, these days it's more accurate to say Team Sonic is Sonic, Tails, and Amy, not Knuckles, especially in the comics.) And she's also a key player in Shadow's arc in the game. Shadow has his change of heart because Amy reminds him of Maria! And yet, she's nowhere to be seen. It sucks.

(I know some fans are still holding out hope for Amy, but the toys for the movie already leaked and she didn't get anything, so I have to assume she's not in it.)

It's not like I really expected either of them to be in this movie, but that doesn't make it less disappointing that they set up the film franchise in a way that makes it logistically difficult to include 90% of the characters and conveniently managed to leave all of the girls in the "low priority" pile. Yes, I know everyone points to how much Tails was downplayed in the third act of Sonic 2 as evidence that it's just so impossible to introduce more than one new Mobian character in each movie and give them the focus they deserve. Yes, I know having to come up with a story excuse to bring more characters over to Earth is an obstacle, especially when they're gonna have to devote time to Shadow's backstory. But these are excuses. It's a writer's job to figure out solutions to problems like this. They could make it work if they really wanted to. I'd take Amy having a suboptimal amount of screentime over her not being in it at all. It's just not a priority for them. That's what disappoints me. You can justify these absences from a logical perspective, but I just care way more about Amy and Rouge as characters than I do about Shadow, so there's no way for this to not sting.

But, at the end of the day, for what the movie is actually trying to do, it seems to be pulling it off well. Aside from the fat jokes. I don't like the fat jokes. But the Shadow stuff is good. As always, this live action version of the franchise is never going to be my ideal version of Sonic, but it's turned out far better than it had any right to, and I'll probably have fun when I go see this in theaters and hear Live and Learn.

[bisexualmcqueen]

may i offer this thought for the feral racers hc

racecars are like loyal little guard dogs (not little at all. those are metal beasts) with the people they love. they just kinda like. imprint on people and its like an immediate switch to feral mode when they perceive threat and danger to loved one. and they do that thing where they try and make themselves bigger to intimidate enemies.

idk if its something similar like this has posted about or discussed before but uh yeah. the feral racers hc just kinda read to me as racecars being like dogs. wolves. instinctually wild animals. i like how strip and doc being particularly old veterans translates into them being Extra Dangerous or Extra Feral, something like that. though i dont even think racecars get normaller the newer/younger. i think the next gens are just a different flavor of freak (i.e. chewing, zoomies) like they're domesticated sort of in a way

YES YES exactly

ok many thoughts. lets see here

so ive been thinking about this and. the thing is. that part of what makes this headcanon so fun is that theres actually canon precedent, in a way.

Lightning for example. is crazy protective. like instantaneously. zero forethought, action only, putting himself between the Danger and the Friend.

some examples:

in cars TVG, Chick hires the DRH to rob Mack so Lightning will be without supplies for the upcoming race. when Lightning hears that Mack was very upset about it from Sheriff, he gets so pissed off he takes to the streets, tracks the DRH down, and proceeds to spend all night chasing and beating the shit out of them until they drop his stuff. not because he was Robbed, but because they Upset Mack.

i think its funny that Sheriff doesnt say Anything. he just nods in agreement. ...not that i think Sheriff could have stopped him though. Lightning is sort of Insane about Mack. Mack is the greatest. [two quality versions. one oldschool for nostalgia and one more HD]

in the comics (admittedly ive only read in sections), Mater was beefing with Bubba, Lightning also started to get pissed off at Bubba being rude + protective of Mater:

i dont know if Lightning would be good at fighting or get his ass beat terribly. either way, i want to watch.

next up is my favorite example: the thunder hollow crazy 8 race. Lightning LEAPS in to help Cruz several times. it is my fucking Favorite.

HERDS HER BACK OUT ONTO THE TRACK

and then he jumps in front of a speeding attack-bus and takes a metal sawblade to the drivewheel for her. NO thoughts, head empty, protect Cruz. love this man. apparently, type-c school busses can be between 10-20,000 pounds. crunch.

and my last example on this topic: the radiator springs 500 1/2:

these racers show up in town looking for trouble. its supposed to be a silly little western parody, but in terms of this headcanon it comes off as territorial as hell imo. wdym other racecars show up at his house to fight him. hello. and then they insult Stanley, which deeply upsets Lizzie:

cue getting their asses kicked by mcqueen. that is HIS freaky old woman.

[i love this short]

so yeah. my terrible guard-dog-horse-thing-car.

Doc is largely The Same:

14 billion KEEP OUT signs. shooing Lightning away from his friends family because he is A Perceived Danger. another racecar standing in his lawn barking. yeah. you territorial old wet rag.

I agree with what you said its very in line with the vibes of the headcanon yes. true and real. def like dogs/wolves, and i personally try to throw some cat/horse stuff in there too. again, i blame being an x-men/wolverine fan.

a few other tidbits from source material for funsies:

^that ones wallpaper, apparently. for like a Room. in a house. my cars wallpaper merch thats 2018 xrs drag racing diecast merchandise.

Doc was so amped to do racecar stuff again he wakes Lightning up in the middle of the fucking night to run around in circles with him the moment he shows back up in town.

they lost Guido in the fucking sand.

Cars Origins: Struck By Lightning quick aside: "everyone's going to think something is wrong with me" Lightning these are not mentally stable thoughts im so sorry.

second topic: generational/evolutionary differences.

first of all i would like to point out that my basis for strip especially being some sort of craazzy toothy freak is entirely the headcanon of @youhavehitawall that i adopted out of coolness. non has some lore about the weathers that explains it, but basically it boils down to a repeated expression of racecar genes getting more pronounced the more generations it travels down (so long as its an expressed gene).

now for the nextgens (funny calling them that in 2025. theyre all in their 30's lmfao. not saying thats 'old', but they arent rookies anymore, damn does time fly). [disclaimer: dont quote me on this, my knowledge is an approximation] in real life NASCAR, they used very old technologies right up until about 2012. carburetors, leaded gasoline, 4-gear h-box frontend transaxles, reticulating ball steering, etc. most of these things vanished from the dealership road cars between the 60's and the 90's. Meanwhile cars like Lightning and Cal are still running this stuff in the mid-aughts. so when the nextgens came along, they showed up with fuel injection, e85 15% ethanol fuel, 5-speed sequential rear-mounted transaxels, rack-and-pinion steering, bigger aluminum wheels, bigger calipers, and less ground clearance/more areo, there was a very sudden and massive shift in what sort of technology was being run in the piston cup. tech-wise, Lightning +co were very similar to cars like Chick and even Strip. the change in tech could be a good marker for other genetic shifts too. cars change much, muuuch faster generation-to-generation than mammals. its Moore's Law in a way: theyre machines. add that to the incredible 12-week turnaround in which every team booted their driver and replaced them with a 'nextgen', and ive had to spend some time wondering Why? why??? thats brutal! Doc certainly warned us, but goddamn. imagine if that happened mid-season in any real sport! holy shit! (i still want to know more about the fan's reactions to this...) in the context of this headcanon, i Also wonder about what you said, the nextgens being feral in a little bit of a 'different' way. maybe theyve got easier-to-handle temperaments; an added bonus to their overall higher speeds+better track times. uhm. Jackson being the temperament-outlier here, maybe.

to be fair, he did get fired after throwing too many fits.

Cars Origins: Storm Chasing

But yes... racecars!! they are a lottt to handle. the driver AND the incredibly powerful machine mashed into one?? hooo boy. honestly i am a bit fearful of racecars irl. very loud, very fast, smell bad, they breathe fire, etc. why not reconcile that by making the talking ones into Beasts. theyre already crazy, already quadruped, my brain just starts assigning horse/wolf to them. and some of it comes down to me loving logan-wolverine tropes. protective growly little guy with pointy teeth. yeah can i get 5 more of these little fanged bitches.

ok i have to stop yapping now this turned out quite long, but i still have Things to Say about this headcanon/worldbuilding. i didnt even get into the amazing bonds racecars seem to have with their teams/families (the 'imprinting' thing you mentioned!). very fun!!

thanks for the ask!!

[writingwithcolor]

Afro-Latine Jewish woman maintaining cultural connection in an isekai comic

Anonymous asked:

Hello! Mixed Latin American nonbinary Jew here. I'm working on a, relatively light-hearted, isekai-style fantasy comic concept of an afro-latine Jewish lady who gets sent through a portal to a colorful scifi/fantasy land, inhabitated by various imaginary creatures sorta like in Alice in Wonderland. She gains magic powers and goes on adventures, working as a scientist researching the land's magical energy. (some of the local creatures she befriends are entirely original species, and some are inspired by my local folklore, but otherwise I try to avoid culturally coding the creatures since they're mostly nonhuman looking). The story isn't supposed to touch any heavy topics like antisemitism or racism, but I've read about the cultural problems in ""normie protagonist finds a new home in a funky fantasy world"" stories, f.ex. how Harry Potter's narrative basically implies that Muggleborns have to abandon their original cultures in order to successfully integrate into the very prejudiced but ""cooler"" Wizarding World. My original goal was to break the mold that escapism fantasy usually revolves around white protagonists adventuring in heavily Western-inspired fantasy worlds, and poc-coded characters are usually nonhuman creatures or racial stereotypes. However the protagonist girl in my story comes from a loving, latine-jewish human family, and while she regularly visits them on Earth instead of just staying in the fantasy land 24/7, I'm afraid that making her story be about being happy adventuring in a separate imaginary land filled with nonhuman characters might turn into an ""abandon your family and culture"" narrative. Are there any ways how I could avoid this? Maybe making the fantasy land's worldbuilding and designs more Latin American or Jewish inspired and thus resonate more with her cultural background, or making it clear that the land is not ""perfect"" and she still loves her family?

One of the first things that stands out to me is that you haven’t set her up to need to abandon her culture in order to make a life in another place. She has the ability to go home and visit her family, but I also don’t see any reason why, if she lives primarily in the fantasy land, she couldn’t be portrayed as practicing Judaism actively in her new home. It’s true that Judaism isn’t solely defined by religious/cultural practices, but it’s also true that religious/cultural practices are one of the most recognizable and most uniting elements of Jewish identity.

I think it might help in this case to think about Jewish practices in terms of communal versus personal: that is, what are practices she would need to seek out a Jewish community for, and what are practices she can do independently?

Does she control when she is able to visit her family? If so, visiting for Jewish holidays so that she can be at a family meal or holiday services seems like a way to highlight that she is just as connected to her family as someone who moved to a different city might be. If she experiences/has experienced the death of a family member or partner, going home to be with a Jewish community for shiva or to say kaddish on a yahrzeit is another touch (for readers who may be unfamiliar, Jewish mourning practices are intensely communal and are intentional about bringing the mourner into an active support system and slowly reintroducing them to the world, and as such a mourner is likely to spend this time somewhere where they can access and be supported by a Jewish community).

As far as practices she can engage with on her own in the fantasy setting, it would be nice to see her observing Shabbat, either in a traditional way by refraining from adventuring and instead engaging in hospitality and prayer between dusk Friday and sundown Saturday, or in a less-halakhic way if she comes from a Reform or comparatively-assimilated background, by marking Friday sunset with candles, blessings, and a good meal, even if she is intending to continue her research through the next day. She would hardly be the first Jewish person to live in a place without an established Jewish community, and a festive meal can be shared just as happily with non-Jewish friends if they’re griffons and fauns as if they’re Christians and Muslims.

Here’s one idea that I think would be hugely meaningful as a way of establishing both that she intends to make her home long-term in Fantasy World and that she intends to carry Jewish traditions with her into her new life: hang a mezuzah.

Think about it: a mezuzah is the visual marker of a Jewish home, as much to the resident as to a guest. When she is home from her adventures, in her garden cottage or enchanted tower or wherever she returns to between adventures to record and categorize her research, simply showing a mezuzah in the background instantly makes the point both that she is intending to stay, and that this is a Jewish space. If as time goes on she adds other Judaica items to her space, it can add to the sense that her Jewishness is present and alive in this world, simply because she is present and alive in it.

If she doesn’t have a settled space or if you’re not planning on setting any scenes there, having Jewish visual markers on and around her can help, too. For low-hanging fruit, maybe she has a silver Jewish Star or chai necklace that catches the light now and then, but since you’re going for a light, fun vibe, maybe she’s packing her adventuring supplies in a bright-blue vinyl backpack emblazoned with “Temple Shaarei Tzedek Junior Youth Retreat 1998” (am I old? I’m pretty sure there are adults reading this who were in Junior Youth groups in 2003, but I’m willing to bet retreat swag hasn’t changed that much).

I do like the idea of including Latin American and Jewish elements in the worldbuilding, especially as an intentional way to combat the cultural dominance of Western European folklore over fantasy writing, but because your character is from and has access to our world, you have the beautiful opportunity to carry real-world markers of Jewishness with her as well.

-Meir

I adore Meir’s answer, but then, I’m the kind of person to whom “enchanted tower with a mezuzah” as an aesthetic is so near and dear to my heart that I wrote a whole fantasy series about it. Couple of random suggestions: one thing I really enjoy is exposing my gentile friends to Jewish food—I love watching the absolute shock of delirium hit someone’s face the first time they taste my charoseth. Imagine this little bowl of chopped apples and walnuts, looking vaguely dirty because they’re soaked in cinnamon-infused wine, so it’s basically dingy beige slop….so that first bite of sensuous, deep sweetness is a huge surprise. Pick your favorite equivalent and imagine the first time a centaur or a winged princess or whatever other fantasy character tries it at your MC’s behest! (Feeding brisket to dragons would make a great name for…something…)

I don’t think you’re likely to do this anyway but since these are public answers: “fantasy world fun, Jewish upbringing a chore” is a narrative I would not feel at home in or care to read. But that’s a rather predictable remark from me anyway ;)

And of course I support the “the secondary fantasy world is actually Jewish” solution too, having one of my own.

–Shira

[cleolinda]

Weekend links, May 11, 2025

My posts

Re: Silent Hill 2: I have now recorded something ELSE that I had to scrap due to multiple, UNRELATED tech issues, including but not limited to Firefox popping up and telling me to group my tabs into tab groups when Firefox WAS NOT EVEN OPEN IN THE FIRST PLACE. However, I have the main three-hour commentary on Maria and Western South Vale done, and I'll post it on Patreon (free) if you'd like to see it early. 

I just. Why. 

Reblogs of interest

All my condolences to Diane Duane, who needs help after her husband Peter Morwood's sudden death.

So. How 'bout that Pope.

("I believe the kids call it rawdogging.")

Salt Lake City and Boise adopt official pride flags to skirt Republican bans

Welcome to the DashCon of BookTok, the A Million Lives Book Festival.

I wasn't around to reblog very much from this year's Met Gala (theme: "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" and Black dandyism), but IMO my beloved Janelle Monáe killed it.

@jstor announces its Tumblr community The JSTOR Collective

Advisory: SoundCloud Quietly Updated Their Terms to Let AI Feast on Artists' Music

Oh also Discord is going public with a Blizzard guy as CEO

PSA: Yeah, I need to be more conscientious about sourcing as well in the age of AI

The Onion dispels the common myths surrounding autism

These Fragrantica reviews of Kerosene's Followed match every single thing I have ever read about it on r/fragrance and I would not touch it with someone else's pole

"Yuri Gagarin, the hobbyist photographer, at home with his wife"

Lunar Princess Ranni is the only reason I have considered playing Elden Ring

"My edo period samurai roommate keeps telling me how i’ll bring shame and dishonor to our apartment if I keep forgetting to wash the dishes"

Cicada Man, a comic

Soup Patrol

"picture of a cute innocent baby animal 'um this is who youre being mean to btw' thats not even true man youre a straight up vampire and you destroyed my village with your dark powers"

"The medieval warrior, realizing the consequences of his impulsive act, immediately approached the owner of the drone and offered to pay for the damage"

Why a dude might hold a 90,000 lb plane on a leash

Blatant anti-moon propaganda

Video

"We got ROBBED," another installment in the fine genre At No Point In This Video Did I Know What Would Happen Next

2 Old 2 Guard finally has a trailer and a release date

Viola Davis talks about the bias of whiteness in theater training

"Wearing my mom's dress to prove her wrong"

Josh Johnson talks about the first time he met a white kid

"Diver convince octopus to trade his plastic cup for a seashell"

"Time to FROLIC!"

The sacred texts

"happy 10 years of radical saturday everyone!!"

"Would sleeping with a centaur be considered bestiality?"

Personal tag of the week

"I will be adding to 'with mama' as often as possible": I kept my promise.

[centrally-unplanned]

@pareorogas showing pictures of a contemporaneous report on the first and second ever Comikets by some of its organizers, a very good find!

All...handwritten Japanese text with occasional crazy fonts and vertical-row alignment. Just great for efficient OCR'ing so I can translate it, really easy to do, very nice.

Something you may have heard before is that the first Comikets were female-dominated - and that is true, this confirms that. You may also have heard that is due to things like the popularity of the Gundam franchise, a series showcasing male heroes and anti-heroes; something that the fujoshis were "all upons", to say the least. I'm sure that would be true later, but the first Comiket was in December of 1975 - Gundam didn't come out until 1979. Space Battleship Yamato had only just aired the year before, genre anime for adults was very new. The more likely explanation is the one highlighted here - that this was a manga-franchises-first event, manga was just bigger amoung women at the time given the shoujo boom, and most importantly the event was advertised in a shoujo magazine:

This ad appeared in Bessatsu Shojo Comic, and the article above notes that doujin of works by the mangaka Moto Hagio (who published in that magazine) were the most popular ones being sold. Additionally there was a screening of, if I have the details right here, a "Dynavision" fan animated short adapting Gynasium in November, a work by Hagio. That is a term the creators (chiefly Comiket co-founder Yoshihiro Yonezawa) used to describe essentially panning & moving images of stills from the manga. It was 1975, a souped-up PowerPoint presentation was impressive then and took a lot of work to make!

All of this is to say that the first Comiket had the vision of being a diverse collective of eclectic artists - and it was, for sure - but that vision was partially swamped by a bunch of fans for a few specific properties doing their own thing. The article strikes a very concerned tone throughout about this - it is worried Comiket will collapse into being a "shallow event" riding popular trends, as opposed to being something with a life of its own. The founders of Comiket want people to come for the craft of doujin itself, not for One Specific Thing that happens to be there. As such, they mark the event a success but hope that the circles can "turn things upside down", not rely on "gimmicks", and push Comiket farther in the future.

I think the record shows they will achieve that! But I would be interested in more coverage of the early ones to see how they got there.

That last page by the way includes a list of all the circles that participated - not sure if that information was easily accessible before, maybe it was, but I am certainly glad to have it now! Reviewing them you see the things you would expect, like the "Erotica Alliance" - banding together to fight for freedom! But one of them struck me personally:

Middle Earth Studios Foreign Comic Book Sale

So Lord of the Rings was translated into Japanese in 1972, it was very popular in Japan. But foreign comic book sales? So funnily enough, Rankin Bass - yes the American studio who made the claymation Christmas Specials - was making an adaptation of the Hobbit for release in 1977, and by "making" I mean they outsourced all of it to Japanese studio Topcraft. So that was being animated at this time, I wonder if there was some fan stuff going on there, and that is the "foreign"? Or maybe they just mean, you know, it is a foreign work, domestic comics about a foreign franchise.

But I would love to know if western LOTR fanzines were being sold at the first Comiket. I want to believe!

[sonicjustbecause]

Sonic and diversity...

Tails - the one people would call 'a loser'

First one is Tails. Aside his twin tails (the most noticeable thing) he is not too different to me. He is cute, polite and friendly. Although he is shown to be a genius, I think he winks more to smart kids in school that are looked down by envious peers because their life is easier than the life of the other students, even if they have good personalities. Or to young kids who feel inadeguate for something. Tails is mostly very normal to me, but he is very relatable exactly because he is not 'over the top' and his traits are virtually shared with everybody.

The twin tails might represent some traits many kids have and are ashamed off, like freckles, buck teeth, red hair or protuding ears. Traits that most learn to love when they grow up. Just like how Tails learned to love his peculiar trait.

Tails doesn't have a hardtime to befriend somebody. He just needed to find confidence in himself.

Shadow - the one people would call 'odd'.

Shadow, he got a lot. I want to sayone thing about his outside look before: originally (SA2, for example) Shadow was not meant to look scary. He was meant to look cool. The first thing people noticed is how he resembles Sonic. Nobody in SA2 commented: 'How scary Shadow is'. Back then the only comment on his look were 'cute' (Rouge) or 'lame' (Sabrina) and the other characters talked to him the way they talk with everybody else. Not even in 'Shadow the Hedgehog 2005' people think he is scary, unless they don't see him with a gun in his hand (but, Cheese would be scary too if he had a gun). In Sonic Prime nobody fear Shadow because of his look.

The way he looks always made me think to those kids that don't follow the mainstream trend: metalheads, punk etc... Real life taught me that those guys are safer than many guys with a cleaner look.

I think the idea that Shadow looks scary was introduced in Sonic X and Sega lingered on it a lot when they decided Shadow had to be a edgelord.

The most noticeable thing in his behaviour is how socially awkward he is and how rarely he look at people he is interacting with. Even his friends. Did you notice how in Dark Beginning even Maria always needs to force his attention? She's so used to this she does it without thinking.

Is not like he is afraid. Male, female, important figures or regular people, the treat them the same. He truly has no idea about what to do or how to deal with social stuffs. Is interesting how in early games but also in recent media like the movies, he let people approach him instead of being him approaching others. Sticking around is his way to allow people to get used to him. Then he can relax and attempt to initiate something himself.

This image makes me think to those hand shaped tools for cats

Another thing is a long streak of Shadow's self loathing that virtually shows in all media, here and there: games (Sonic Battle and shadow the Hedgehog for example) Both Japanese and western comics (Archie, recent Shadow's manga), the movie, Dark Beginnings etc...

The impression he gives me is that he is not a true loner. Loners are happy to be alone. See Knuckles, he is a loner and he is cheerful, chuckling in his debut game. The rare moments you see Shadow being somewhat happy is always when he is with someone. Maria especially, but also Rouge and Omega. He doesn't like the crowd, he is still an introvert. But he also doesn't like being alone as much as people may think.

By reading comments on YT, Shadow (when he is not characterized as an edgelord) reasonates with troubled kids, with people suffering either from depression or from autism. But also with people who are simply introverts. For the latter, I've read on one comment on YT long ago about one introvert who was able to find his friends because he got inspired by Shadow, and after two decades his life is going fine and the friends he meet as a kid are all still his friends.

Tails and Shadow are two outcast, but they're different and reasonate with different people.

[spaceyprincely]

Boothill observations and theorys(?):

⚠️‼️Cw// leaks + possible 2.1 spoilers‼️⚠️

Hello tumblr I thought I’d share some observations I’ve made about boothill, an upcoming 5 star character. Particularly his name and how it relates to his cowboy aesthetic as well as his possible backstory. I also want to theorize his situation with Acheron as well. Well I’m not exactly an expert on theory’s so I doubt mine counts but I’ll share what interests me on boothill!

Boot Hill, Name origin:

First off, what is a “boothill”?

“Boothill” or “Boot Hill” are a type of cemetery most commonly referred to in western parts of the United States and America. What makes this cemetery unique is its association with cowboys, specifically ones that died in violent non natural fashion like shooting or hanging, “died with their boots on”.

How does this relate to Honkai star rail boothill.

- boothill is based of the typical western American cowboy , with the outfit, his accent , usage of guns, etc. so we have that connection .

- The HSR wiki says that he’s specifically a cyberborg. Cyborgs are typically depicted as robot human hybrid characters. Some cyborg characters like robocop and cyborg (dc comics) have backstories of becoming a cyborg by having had either died and came back to life through technology or damaged their human body greatly to the point they replace with artificial robot tech.

- Boothill in leaked eilodons shows his naked body. However you can quickly noticed his body is human. Not robotic like what we’ve been officially shown.

- Contrast this with his lightcone art, boothill has only part of his robot body. It looks like he’s being operated on.

- So how does this his name relate to his possible backstory

- As previously iterated, boothill is a name for cemetery of cowboys that died in violent ways. Pair this with how the leaked content having a human body which insinuates that he was at some point a human.

- So what I theorize: Most likely case is that boothill died/ got heavily injured, most likely due to a fight, so much that his only chance to survive was to make him a cyborg. The name boothill fits because he probably died in his boots (I’ll assume for now it happened on the job, maybe his job was the same before and after?).

- Interestingly There’s a leaked description of his lightcones. I’m not 100% sure about how true it is so I’ll have to take it with a grain of salt. However it details on him coming back to life after almost embracing death.

- - If boothill died, who killed him?

There isnt much to hint at who is to blame for cause of him becoming cyborg so far, given he’s a new character with little information.

At this moment, my best guess is the ipc which characters including topaz and aventurine are in. Boothill is revealed to not like the IPC as revealed in his introduction post. However there’s an interesting thing we need to observe.

- Notice how it states “the target of his revenge”, meaning the ipc most likely wronged him in some. I wonder if the ipc is the ones responsible for his death and transformation to being a cyberborg. But it’s likely it could be another reason for his distaste.

About Acheron

Cw/ this part gets into partial spoilers for 2.1 trailblazer main story quest

black swan receives a call from boothill. The call is immediately clear he is threatening Acheron with death.

- his tension with her seems very extreme to the point where hell even go after people affiliated with her when he threatened black swan under the impression she’s was working with her. And saying she shouldn’t exist.

do I think she was behind his death?

Unlike with the ipc one, I’m not really sure. I personally think that this possibility has less weight to it and there might be another reason for his dislike towards her. But it wouldn’t be surprising considering aventurine claims she brings death and finality.

- like aventurine, Boothill knows that Acheron isn’t an actual galaxy ranger however boothill himself is a galaxy ranger. Since Acheron is falsely claiming she’s a galaxy ranger, could this possibly cause tension with the actual galaxy rangers and her to be a target for them? I don’t really have much to theorize much more but would like to hear what others think

[misspjsuperior]

Some have thought my Vulva Mary to be some crazy absurd thing, some comically, others seriously with accusations of new age blasphemy. Others revere her but too often alongside anti trans rhetoric. But mystic Christian vulva art goes back centuries and also was more popular in the past in association rather to Jesus Christ which therefore naturally then creates trans undertones to the body of Christ. With the consideration of parthenogenesis in which the self conceived offspring is always born female I can feel a trans masc essence to Jesus Christ, bolstered by medieval art in reverence of the Side Wound.

I am by far not the only or first:

“ -this tradition reflects the mystical notion that the body of Jesus is “the body of all bodies” and that it therefore encompasses both traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics.

…

I can understand how, to people who aren’t historians of medieval religion or art, the suggestion that medieval Christians in western Europe frequently imagined and depicted Jesus’s side wound as looking like a vulva might sound bizarre and ridiculous. Nonetheless, this is something that they incontrovertibly did. To understand why they did this, we must first take a look at their historical and cultural context.

The Gospel of John 19:32–37 describes Jesus’s side wound as follows, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE):

Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth, so that you also may continue to believe.) These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken.’ And again another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’

It is not very difficult to see how medieval Christians might have perceived an opening in a person’s body that bleeds, secretes a clear liquid, and is penetrated as in some sense analogous to a vagina—especially when you consider the fact the Latin word vulnus, meaning “wound,” sounds very similar phonetically to the word vulva, meaning “vagina.”

On top of all this, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, the metaphorical idea of Jesus as a mother became extremely popular and influential among western European Christians, especially among those who were more mystically inclined. Female mystic writers seem to have found this idea particularly appealing.”

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I was following your post about grim dark comics like The Boys. And sometimes I wonder if people think bad things are more real than good things. Yes, the world is filled with sorrow and pain and injustice and lies. But that doesn't negate the existence of love and joy and mercy and truth. One of my favorite writers has a quote "Don't be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in." to be continued in a second ask

Pt. 2. I see all these progressive activists on tumblr and elsewhere and they all seem so miserable, just desperately unhappy. And I think they truly believe on some level that no one can or should be happy as long as one person is unhappy or miserable. As if it's a betrayal to enjoy a sunset or play with your dog or spend time with loved ones if there are people who can't enjoy that right now. And I hate that mindset, wanting everyone else to be miserable just because you are miserable is evil.

You hit the nail right on the head. You're basically seeing an intersection of two kinds of people. On one hand you have the people who worship at the altar of George RR Martin and think the highest form of art is miserable people being miserable in a world where goodness can't survive. On the other, you have the shirt rending "why won't someone do something" people who inject depressing news like it's heroin and base their entire sense of self-worth on how hard they fight for The Cause--or whatever The Cause is this week. They're the very real embodiment of this:

But all the whining about "realism" utterly ignores that goodness does exist. Misery isn't the default state of the world. At no other point in human history have so many people been lifted out of poverty. At no other point in human history have the poor of the western world had access to luxuries that kings of old would have sold their entire kingdoms just to experience for a day. Every day strangers go out of their way to do something kind for people they'll never meet again. Every day acts of kindness are performed that will go unrecognized and unrewarded. If the Shopping Cart Theory is true, then our society is pretty damn good because people always return the carts.

But you won't hear that on the news. Because the news both makes money and advances its social and political agenda by feeding us the worst of the world 24/7. So people who only consume the constant, never-ending newsfeed on TV and social media and in their schools actually think the world is, by default, what you see on CNN. And I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that's not my world.

[blushingdread]

Hi MLB fandom, I am a passerby that tried to watch the show for my GF and failed, but I have read a bunch of fanfics and I think Butterfly Emilia would be cool as fuck

Some headcanons:

The butterfly does long-range magic by connecting to others and giving them magic, they're weapon isn't a weapon. It's a tool for communicating with their champions. Emilia has this big ass old timey microphone bc she's a former performer (actress if i rember correctly?) And she's all for the dramatics (Gabriel would have a head set) Despite it not being a weapon, she still wacks people with it

She has seven different pieces of butterfly jewelry on her transform (2 earrings, 2 rings, brooch, hair piece, and one holding her skirt in the back) fighting her directly is very annoying because they have no idea which fucking one is her miraculous

You may notice she's not wearing a mask, just makeup. Her face has been run through every database known to man. The cloaking magic makes it impossible to actually figure out. She doesn't really see herself as a villain, and she doesn't read comic books. Her outfit is more of a performance outfit (Marinette likes western comic books and is super hero themed, Adiren sees himself as a magical girl)

Her main motivation is that she's a MASSIVE control freak with entitlement issues. She was born rich rich and stumbled upon God jewelry. She is drunk on power 24/7 and doesn't think consequences exist. She wants to revive Gabriel bc she loves him. She's terrorizing Paris bc she thinks her happy ending is the most important and doesn't care about anyone else

Gabriel "died" from using both the peacock and butterfly to make Adiren (who Emilia designed herself, with blueprints) despite the fact that Noorou and Duusuo told them that using two miraculouses at once was a bad idea. He's her SIMP

Natalie is her childhood friend who is used to her "eccentric" behavior, and isn't in on the evil

Monarch constantly hyjacks tv/radio waves to harass the heroes. "This would be all be over if you just gave me your miraculous", "Why do you have to drag out this conflict? I just want to fix the wrong thing this magic caused.", "did that old man tell you anything before he gave you those?" <- at first. She tries to have good pr by making all her akumas only capture and sometimes helping people, but eventually she shows her true colors and she's no longer able to make the media call Ladybug and Chat selfish for not giving her their miraculouses. After her flip switches, she still does this, but it's more obvious. "This is all your fault, you know."Maybe I'll just keep doing this at 3am :D." kinda shit

Let's Adiren go to school bc both of the Kawami were like, "He doesn't actually love you. You just made him love you. You're actually a shitty mom." And it hurt her pride so much that she let her control of him slip to prove that he prefers her, and then he wanted to public school and it made her so maddd that she constantly targets the school to scare him and chase him back into her arms "of his own free will"

Emilia thinks Marinette is absolutely perfect and fits in her family so nicely. Except for some minor defects, she can correct ♡ much to Mari's slow dawning horror

Very vindictive and petty. Like, have a butterfly follow Ayla around for a week for reporting on her petty. She is doing psychological warfare on the children

Let's Chloé be childhood friends with Adrien literally bc she makes him uncomfortable, seee how good your mom is compared to others + Really likes Audrey and having perks from the mayor which means they have to be childhood friends

[amothinaroomfulloflamps]

Do the TCF characters have body hair?

It's a weird question, right? I don't read a whole lot of fanfic, so idk how most people headcannon it. But I'm a 100% alcale shipper (no hate to other ships, I just like their dynamic) and a maladaptive daydreamer, so that means I'm in my head a lot thinking about how there relationship could play out.

A thought that literally just occurred to me is that we never get any kind of description of if Cale or Alver (or any other guy, for that matter) have to shave at all. I know body and facial hair in Koreans is less common, but the characters are distinctly stated to be western styled save world hoppers like Choi Han. On top of that, both Deruth and Zed are stated (and shown in the comic) to have facial hair. And it's made me wonder.

Cale is early 20s, physically, but when he gets older, will he grow a beard like Deruth? Does Alver have to shave off a little goatee every few mornings, or does the typical fantasy hairlessness of elves/dark elves apply in this setting and to him specifically?

A lot of bl/rofan/af comics draw the men very much hairless unless they specifically fall into the "big hairy brute" trope, and I see a lot of that reflected in fan works as well. I can't think of many fan art I've seen that give any of the characters any body hair at all, ESPECIALLY not king bottom Cale.

Anyway, I headcannon that older Cale will be very annoyed about the fact he has to shave every few days or gorw an annoying little goatee. The kids keep asking him to grow it out just because they are curious about what he'd look like. I also think he'd be the kind of guy to not have a lot of chest/back hair, with 90% of his body hair being forearms and calves and that stripe of hair that runs from under the belly button down to the pubes. And even then, it's not very thick, just the kind of thing you only notice if you get fairly close/touch it and realize it's there.

Alver on the other hand, I think would inherit the inability to grow a beard from the elf side but have a lot more body hair over all. I mean just look at Zed and tell me he dosnt look like a hairy motherfucker? I don't think he'd be BEAR hairy, but he would definitely have chest hair and more hair on upper arms and thighs than Cale would. The only thing is that you can't see it while he's disguised. So in pretty princey form, he looks like the kind of dude to not have any body hair at all, but when he's in his true form, you can see he's actually got a good amount of body hair in places.

Anyhow, that was my brain worm for the month. What do you guys think? What would other characters have? I think Rosalyn would have hairy forearms, but nothing else.

Also, I am aware that a lot of people hate body hair and don't like to have it/see it. But it's normal for people to have body hair. Thinking of characters in more realistic terms makes them feel more interesting for me, so if it's not an idea you enjoy then please just skip instead of commenting something that could make someone else feel bad about something they have no control over. Thanks.

[manicplank]

DUDE

I JUST ADORE THE WAY U MAKE HEADCANONS FOR JOHN AND PIZZAHEAD

LIKE-

PIZZAHEAD IS SUCH A GOOFY CARTOONY DRAMAQUEEN (AND ALSO AN GENIUS-)

AND JOHN IS...JUST A BIT SILLY SOFTIE

ALSO..LAUGH HEADCANONS?

(i just saw one about John having a loud and deep laugh and I just explored-)

I love pizza tower fandom

:3

I feel like John is an underrated character.

Idk after finding all the treasures and resurrecting him, I kinda fell in love

(I also love this fandom. It's the least toxic I've ever encountered.)

Without further ado;

LAUGH HEADCANONS bare with me I'm not great with describing laughter

Peppino: Might do a tiny giggle or full on cackles. I don't see him happy enough, so I feel like he has a good sense of humor. (He's both hehehehehe and GAHAHAHAHAAAAA). Sometimes wheeze if you make him laugh hard enough.

Gustavo: Definitely chuckles. I feel like he has a jolly, goofy laugh. Probably laughs at silly little things. Tries to make Peppino laugh a lot. Brick makes him laugh quite a bit. (Huh huh huh huh huh!)

Mr. Stick: Definitely has a nasally cartoony laugh like he has in game. Has a broken sense of humor. Probably laughs at the funnies or cheesy jokes. (Nyeh heh heh heh!)

Pepperman: LOUD and obnoxious. I really like the laugh the v/a did in temorinki's video. Like Mr. Stick, he has a terrible sense of humor. Really likes Garfield comics, thinks they're hilarious. (HAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA!!!!)

The Vigilante: Old man laugh, you can still hear his accent through it. He doesn't laugh much, he's a super serious guy. Imagine an older, slower, western Seth Rogan laugh. (Gyeh heh heh heh!)

The Noise: Has many laughs. His true, authentic laugh is a bit nasally and interrupted by sudden gasps for air (HAHA *inhale* HAHAHAHA *inhale*). He might snicker or laugh through his nose. He might even full blown cackle. (KAA HA HA HAA HAA HAAAAA).

Noisette: Also has a couple laughs. She giggles more and will snort if you make her laugh hard enough (she gets super embarrassed about it). She also has a loud cackle when she finds something hysterical. (Hehehehehe *snort* hehehe! or HAAAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAAAA!)

Fake Peppino: His laugh isn't much of a laugh and more of sounds. The sounds he makes while laughing are more similar to the noises he makes in game but shorter. (Hmm! Hmmmm! Hmmmm! or GHAHSGHEJSJSA!)

Pizzaface: His is basically just the in game, maybe a few different pitches up when something is REALLY funny.

Pizzahead: Giggles or cackles. Loves laughing at people's misfortune, thinks Peppino's misery is HILARIOUS. His laugh is basically the one he has in game. (HA HA HA HA HA! or Tee he he he he!)

Pillar John: DEEP and throaty laughter. Very jolly guy. His laugh is loud enough to cause an earthquake. Also has a very monkey-like laugh like the one he has in game. (GAHAHAHAHA!! or OHH HOO HOO HOO)

Gerome: Doesn't laugh much, but his laugh is kind of like John's; deep and jolly. He might give a small "heh..." here and there, but when he laughs, he laughs HARD. (GAAAAHAAAAAHAAAHAAAA!!!)

[knickynoo]

Back to the Future Part II, The Novel by Craig Shaw Gardner: Thoughts, commentary, and general ramblings

Part 6: A weird-looking old man and a little guy in a leather jacket.

Previous posts here

• Instead of describing Doc as a “crazy, wild-eyed old man,” Old Biff says, “a weird-looking old man,” which is just so personal, lol

• There’s an interesting scene where Marty is almost caught in Biff’s garage. The shouting between Biff and his grandmother isn’t there to alert Marty, and instead, Biff just walks straight out to the garage. Marty thinks it’s Doc who has come to rescue him and calls out, which Biff hears. Marty then hides in the car, and waits as Biff looks around a bit before getting distracted.

• I really want the full scene of Doc scrambling to get that new hat and bike so he can head over to Biff’s house. The book mentions that he’d bought the bike a few hours prior (then had to wait for it to get dark enough) but I’d love to see how that played out. I also want Marty doing his shopping for his Inconspicuous outfit.

• Marty has a very funny response to Doc reminding him to be careful at the dance since his other self is there with Lorraine. “Yeah, that’s right! Hey, that’s cool, Doc. Maybe I’ll say hello to myself.”

This is followed immediately by, “’No!’ Doc felt like he might have a heart attack.”

And what I want to know is: is Marty just being a wisenheimer, or is he genuinely considering stopping to chit-chat with his other self? I could honestly see it going either way with Marty.

• This chapter is giving me a few good chuckles so far. Marty enters the dance and it says, “He stepped through, and found himself in the same alcove where he’d had that heart-to-heart with his future parents—the one about being nice when your son sets fire to the rug.”

Why don’t we have any definitive information on The Rug Incident? That story should’ve been included in the comics. I need to know what unfolded that day. Why did Marty set the rug on fire? Was it purely accidental? Did little Marty go through an arsonist phase?

I demand answers.

• When we return to Doc, who is still riding his bike all over the place, he ends up at the Peabody farm. There’s a cop there talking to Mr. Peabody, who’s recounting the alien encounter he had. Which…doesn’t make much sense to me since this is a week now since the “flying saucer” originally crashed into his barn. But I guess this has been an ongoing ordeal, and Otis has been trying to get someone to take him seriously.

Anyway, Doc is worried that they might actually stumble upon where he’s hidden the DeLorean behind the billboard, so he goes over and announces that he saw the spacecraft take off wayyy in the other direction. The police officer and Otis immediately take off in search of it.

• I wish I got a dollar for every time in this novel that Marty has said, “Yo, Doc!” because I would have many dollars.

• Lester (Wallet Guy) describes Marty to Biff as, “A little guy in a leather jacket.” So true, Lester. He IS just a little guy in a leather jacket.

• Ok, OK!! So! Two things to mention about the scene after the dance where Marty runs into Biff outside the door. After Biff calls him chicken, Marty once again recalls that, per his mother’s repeated suggestions, he’s supposed to count to 10 when he’s upset. And as he wrestles with his feelings, he thinks, “Maybe he always felt he needed to do this because he was so short.” !!!!! May I direct you to this ask and poll? There you have it, folks. Marty (book Marty, at least) is quite aware of his height and ALSO aware that it might be the reason he wants to fight at the slightest provocation.

• I already always feel bad for the Western Union guy when I watch the movie, and this makes me feel even more sorry for him. He gets no closure!!! He will NEVER know what the 70-year-old mystery letter was all about. The most disappointed voice Marty has ever heard!!

• We close with the scene of Marty running back to the clock tower. However, his revealing his presence to Doc is pretty different in the book than it is in the movie. We’re told, “Marty stepped out of the shadow of the courthouse. He tapped Doc on the shoulder.”

I mean. It definitely doesn’t have The Flair of Marty running full speed and dramatically spinning Doc to face him, but it is funny. He just. Steps out from the shadows and gives him a little tap. A gentle, “Um, hi, hello, I’m back.” Amuses me to think about.

This is how I imagine it, btw.

• The book ends with Doc passing out and Marty legitimately fearing that Doc may have just DIED before his very eyes, and how will he ever get home now?

I guess we’ll find out in the part III novel! Stay tuned.

[thekingofwinterblog]

Man the one thing Bionicle will allways have my respect for is the whole giant robot reveal amd planning, that shit was cool.

Like I never read any books or comics (just watched the movies as a kid lol) and of what I read of the lore I feel iffy, but just that idea alone is legendary

Funny thing is, the movies are actually the single WORST part of the bionicle franchise XD

Not only are the 3 good one, only decent movies at best, but they were made explicitly FOR fans, and fans alone, and has no shame about not telling you stuff because they fully expect the viewer to know all the lore through the books, the comic books, or games.

They are also absolutely terrible in terms of action, as the Toa in pretty much every other medium are stupidly powerfull, with elemental powers easily on level with an avatar state avatar if not beyond, physically capable of lifting over one ton, and as the toa mata estimated during their fights with the Bohrok swarms, while they might ultimately win if they just went all out, they would certainly destroy the island of Mata Nui(about the size of mainland denmark) in the process.

To say the movie toa arent quite on that level is... kinda an understatement XD Not to mention that the comics actually fills in scenes in between cuts in the movies, or just makes actual movie scenes better. It's kinda a mess to follow.

overall, I've always described the Bionicle franchise as the actual Star Wars extended universe. It's a whole mess of in-canon with each other stories, that has a very clear cronological flow, but would have been way better if they just made a tv series that covered the main story(which was basically the only thing bionicle DINDT have).

That said, i can tell you exactly why you think the lore is iffy. It is related one one, single sentence.

"Doing in the wizard".

Doing in the wizard, is a story telling trope, where something that was presented as magical or mystical, is later revealed(wheter it was planned or retconned in later) to actually have a mundane, scientific explanation.

And man, is Bionicle the single WORST example of this trope ever made.

So to explain this, and how it all relates to the series big twist reveal, I need to explain how Bionicle started out, and what it became over time.

Because when it began, Bionicle started out as a myth in the making.

On paper the story of the story of the six toa coming to deliver the land from a great evil is as stock as you get it.

But what made it special from day one, was that it managed to capture the feeling of a deeply spiritual tale, of faith, destiny, and myth.

The story of the six toa coming to deliver Mata Nui and his chosen people is treated, both by the narrative, and the people in it, as a great religious story, with the coming of the six Toa Mata essentially being this universe's coming of christ.

There is a moment in the mata nui online game that really encapsulates this, as when Tahu first meets the Ta-Matorans he is supposed to deliver, they attempt to trap him, and he easily breaks free, but then the fighting is halted as Vakama, the turaga(basically priest king) of the ta-matoran shows up, orders his men to stand down, after which he walks up to Tahu seemingly to talk, only to kneel down before him.

because for him this is basically the equivelant of the coming of christ. the divine prophecy that came from God himself is finally coming true.

Now Bionicle has a lot of things to love, as other than the movies, it has great action, it's characters are generally actual people with flaws and developments, and it has lots of awesome moments, amazing and deep world building that is stupidly thourough, and sweet character moments, and of course one of the biggest twists in fiction... but it is this very religious and spiritual tone that sets Bionicle apart from pretty much... everything else western childrens media has ever made.

It is this deep, unfliching and honest portrayal of a world that feels like a myth come to life that drew so many people to this story when it first came out, what ellevated it over yet another story about good and evil clashing.

The people in this story feel real, not only because they generally have actual character(some way more than others), but because they Believe in their world. as in, they believe in Mata Nui, his tennants, his story, and the six saviors he promised would come to deliver them and wake up their god.

this is how you create a real, genuine setting. it is why Bionicle has a feel to it that you never see in western childrens media(nor that often in adult either), other than some very, very few exceptions, due to our deep aversion to showintg religion to children.

and then of course there are the gods in question.

Mata Nui and Makuta. the two brothers who set this story into motion. The first who came here to this world, and created the matoran, and the second who followed him from paradise, and cast a spell that put mata nui into his current deep, deep sleep.

Now these two could have been just another set of "evil brother who who was jealous of, and hates his good brother and attempts to usurp him".

but that's not quite what we get.

When the toa Mata finally do confront Makuta, they get his perspective on it all. Now they ultimately write this off as just an evil villain trying to justify his actions... but if you actually break down what makuta is saying, he is a way more interesting villain than the very simplistic reading the devil figure the matoran believe he is.

"Destroy me? You cannot destroy me. No more than you can destroy the sea, or the wind. Or - the void."

"You are like the sea? The sea bears life! The sea bore us!"

"I bore you, for I am Nothing. And out of Nothing, you came. And it is into Nothing that you will go. I stand with Mata Nui, side by side. I am his brother. The people of the world are builders. But look into their hearts ... and you will find that they also have the power to destroy. I am that power. I am destruction. And I WILL destroy you."

ultimately, the story of the gods Mata Nui and Makuta is not the story of heaven and hell, but instead a story of yin and yang.

Mata Nui is the god of light, and that is the element that everyone associates him with... but thats not his main trait. his main trait, his defining virtue, is creation. That is what he is most famous for after all, creating the matoran and this island home for them.

Similarily, Makuta is tha god of darkness, as that is his element... but his main virtue is destrution.

as the creators themselves noted, using a lego methaphor, mata nui is the drive to create new things, to make something bigger and more interesting out of the parts you have... but Makuta is the drive to destory that creation, to take the lego set apart either before creating something new, or to put it away into the box so that you can use it later. before you create something new, you must destroy.

And this ties into the actual story as well, as one of the big main plots from the start is that to reawaken their god, one of the things that would happen, is that the toa and the matoran would have to give up on Mata Nui the island, their home, their promised land, as only by it's destruction could their god reawaken and lead them to the paradise he originally came from.

its really, really good stuff, and one of the things that ellevated Bionicle over so many other children stories.

now, you might have noticed i said, and continue to say, early bionicle.

There is a reason for that.

and it ties into two very, specific turning points in the development of the story.

the big twist that Mata Nui was actually a giant robot was always going to be the center of everything, the explanation for all the wierd mysteries of the series. Even if his final form didnt end up being quite as big as this above concept piece made him out to be, the overall point stands.

The god of the Matorans was a gigantic robot, and his childrens proper place was inside of him, both to live their lives, and to serve as part of the great ecosystem that was the universe inside of mata nui.

Mata Nui the island, which he created for the Matoran to live on, was always a temporary thing, and their true destiny was him brining them back to "Paradise", aka the great planet of the solar system this story takes place in.

Spherus Magna. a planet that was broken into 3 before he left, and left a hellscape.

his original home that he left long ago.

Now, you might have noticed that i said not a word about what Mata Nui's backstory on said planet actually was.

The only thing that is important as it was originally portrayed, was that Mata nui left the planet for whatever reason, ended up on the water filled moon he currently rests on, and his brother followed him there from paradise.

now, you could create a scenario where there was some scientific, "Mundane" reason for all of this, but if you read this summary so far, the first thought in your mind is probably that what broke this planet into 3 pieces was probably related to something Mata Nui and Makuta, the two known gods of this universe, did. Maybe it is the reason why Makuta no longer has a body, and ended up on this moon in a much weakened form as basically a spirit who can only inhabit souless machine parts.

and im going to take a wild guess that this is probably what was originally planned... but you see, there was a shift at some point. actually on two points.

The first shift was at the very start of Bionicle as we know it, for the series was actually meant to only last 1 year. The toa would defeat makuta, then awaken Mata Nui, and that was that. The end.

However, Lego, who was at the verge of bankruptcy at the time, saw potential in the setting, and given it was a hail mary to save their company said "Screw it, lets expand on this universe!

and so the original one year story became 3 years.

now this artifical extension could have been disasterous, but unlike so many other similar tales, it was the exact opposite.

Mata nui the island got more fleshed out, the big mystery got more build up, the characters got to go through more development, both in the form of a kickass new upgrade, but also character arcs as a result of their power increase going to their head.

new villains, new places to go, new developments.

all leading up to the point where it was now decided that they would end the story. The arrival of the seventh toa of light, which would be where makuta was finally defeated, and at the end of the planned movie that would be the finale, mata nui would finally awaken.

Except this part didnt happen.

at the last moment, Lego essentially pulled the plug and decided to extend the series, and the point where they would reveal the big twist for a second time.

that said, the following storyline of the big flashback to explain metru nui was always going to happen, its just that as originally envisioned, this would be a flashback as the Toa, Turaga and Matoren traveled to Metru nui, as Mata Nui was flying through space back to spherus magna.

So essentially the story was over, but lego got to get one more line of bionicle toys out of it, while the bionicle team got to have fun one more time.

But thats not what happened, as not only did mata nui not awaken(it would take 3 more storylines past this point before that happened), but the big flashback was where everything went wrong so to say.

this is where bionicle shifted hard from a story trying to be a myth with very clear religious and spiritual overtones, into full on sci-fi.

and you can tell that shift occured very clearly as they abandoned all their original plans for how metru nui was supposed to look like in the poster above, showing the very alien like enviornment that was mata nui's insides, into the far more boring and safe(as well as full on science fiction) setting in the poster below.

now im not going to say that everything that came after this point was bad, far from it, there was a lot of really awesome stuff that happened afterwards, but it was the critical turning point where Bionicle steered away from the essence that made it more than just another toyline, an attempt at creating a myth that while it had sci-fi aspects, was ultimately a story of faith, destiny, and trying to find ones place in the universe, into just another sci-fi story.

Basically you can sum it up as the point where mata nui went from a god who was also a giant robot, into just a giant robot.

and man, does it make the lore, and tone a mess.

while the new universe does make logical sense, it lacks the soul(pun very much intended) of what made bionicle, bionicle.

and you know what the really sad thing is?

The final part of the story, where Mata Nui is FINALLY awakened, only to lose his own body, and find himself trapped in his mask as its launched into space before crashing back on the shattered planet that he came from, could so easily have fit into this mythical storytelling.

what actually happens is that mata nui learns he was actually just a giant robot created by some scientis in a lab 100 000 years ago to travel the cosmos, learn about the universe, then come back and fix the broken planet. then he repairs his own, unstable, proto type body that wasnt really working out, makuta senses him and follows him, they duke it out, mata nui kills him, then uses the last of his energy to fix the planet, before dying. oh, also rather than being his actual brother, makuta was actually just a computer program mata nui created. and Makuta isnt even his real name. his actual name is Teridax. im not kidding. oh and the actual thing that destroyed the world? it was a fight amongst some tribesmen using the resident dues ex machina substance that began oozing from the planet's core. again, im not kidding.

here is how you could easily fix it, while keeping in the same tone with what was suggested in the first three years about makuta and mata nui's origins.

The exiled and humbled divine being, cast from heaven, and forced to wander the world he himself played a role in wrecking so long ago, as he travels across the world, and befriends the people he essentially left behind to create the matoran in a better place, rather than fix the mess he, ironically enough given his defining attribute, created.

basically a bionicle take on the atonement/labors of hercules.

and then, having wracked his brain on how to solve the problem of his brother having taken control over his own body, he stumbles upon the solution.

his brother's own, broken, non-active body, which after their ancienct, and catacylsmic clash his brother left behind to follow him to the ocean moon.

and so his journey becomes to essentially take a page out of his brothers book, and do what he did to him in reverse. Repair the mighty body of a god, and then take contrel over it.

after the great journey of hardship and pain, now comes the ressurection before ragnarok, the final battle.

see how easy it is to rewrite this story about what is essentially two computer programs fighting over different continent sized bodies into a story about gods fighting a thematic and climactic showdown on the ruins of a planet they themselves wrecked to pieces to begin with?

but of course the story has to end, and it ends on a note tying into the original message. you cannot create, withouth destruction coming first, and so to win this conflict, mata nui has to destroy something. himself.

His own body.

Like any good jesus analogue, he gives his own life in a sense, as he chooses to give up on the possibility of regaining his own body and with it, regaining his true power and goodhood for the sake of the future of his people and this planet, driving his own skull into the oncoming moon that served as his home for all these years.

and with his final bit of power as his brother's dying body begins to give up on life, he spends the last moments of godhood to do what he, the god of creation should have done from the start. fix the mess he and makuta left behind.

putting the massive planet back together into one whole, while also terraforming it into the green wonder it used to be.

then, we end the story as we began. with a prophecy, where Mata Nui predicts before his toa, as his spirit returns to slumber once again that he will return, but for now, they must make their way forward withouth him, in this new world, that they now must make their own destiny here on the Paradise he promised them so long ago.

I dont know about you, but i think that would have been a lot more interesting that desperately trying to rewrite the entire setting to be full sci-fi because you didnt want to continue with the spiritual and religious themes that you never managed to shake off anyway.

mind you, it's not impossible to have this kind of twist and make a good story about it, but when you commit to telling what is essentially a religious tale that is basically the coming of christ, Ragnarok, the exodus, and the eternal kingdom on earth into one, you are not going to be able to swerve into making it full on sci-fi withouth it feeling, really, really jarring.

And guess what? it makes Bionicle Lore feel really, really jarring. Or iffy as you put it.

[velvetvexations]

AND ANOTHER THING!

People talk a lot about how very very early Golden Age Superman initially attacked abuses of structural power but I really need you to understand how completely weirdly unusual that was at the time.

I've read a fuck-dozen of comics from the 30s through the 60s and almost every single one of them treats Crime, as a concept, as some kinna malevolent force equivalent to Satan and his legions of Hell, as though some people are just born evil and choose to make the lives of their good law-abiding neighbors harder to earn petty cash from numbers rackets. Supervillains in comic books were, for the longest time, just criminals who happen to be really flamboyant about it, they're muggers, jewel thieves, bank robbers. Once in a blue moon one might be ambitious enough to try taking over the world, in which case they're cast in the same mold as Napoleon Bonaparte and the way Western media treated Hitler before the true scale of the Holocaust became known, sometimes buffoonish bullies who need a good kick to the seat of their pants.

Now that's so antiquated that Catwoman is an unrepentant thief and this doesn't really stop her from literally marrying Bruce much less teaming up with him. Some supervillains may still have profit motive, but generally speaking the drama is no longer "how will we get the Hope Diamond back from that dastardly arch-fiend?". But back then, to have Superman going after war profiteers and slumlords was hugely different to anything before or for a very long time after. It's a shame it was forgotten so fast.