#but Robot Dreams released last year... and it's pretty good... just saying............
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pick your furry awakening Spanish edition/j
#before I'm burnt at the stake let me say that I know geronimo stilton is italian#but it still had a big influence here#what these three have in common is that they're related to brb international— an Spanish licensing and production company#mostly known by it's animated tv series; especially in the 90s#both d'artagnan and willy fog were directly produced by brb international alongside nippon animation— a japanese animation studio#god I miss spain x japan collaborations in animation they were literally my childhood#but going back to stilton; brb owns its rights both in Spain and Portugal#everyone and their mother has heard of stilton here#but I think those people turned into artists rather than furries... still pretty close tho#anon go to sleep#actually; on another note... it's been a while since Spain has produced anything starring anthropomorphic animals#but Robot Dreams released last year... and it's pretty good... just saying............#almost all the art behind the movie is online and it's really really good#don't look at its fandom tho that's- just don't
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merry christmas fellas, here's my little summary of art
Generally I'd say I've improved a lot throughout this year. Got a proper drawing tablet, switched drawing programs, finally begun working on using more then one type of brush... it's certainly been journey! A journey with many ups and downs, but one I am glad I went on anyhow.
Under the cut is individual uploads of every piece of art in this image, alongside a writeups about their creation. Cheers!
[1/25/23, Medibang Paint]
Starting off with a pretty alright one, drew this to commerate the release of a game I'd been interested in for the past 4 or 5 years. I think it could use some tweaks, but for something drawn in mobile medibang I'm still pretty proud of it.
[N/A, N/A]
This is where my february drawing would go... IF I HAD ONE !!!
I did not draw much digitally in February, on account of my tablet randomly breaking right at the start of the month. I did draw some stuff traditionally, but I don't feel like fishing it out at this moment lol
[3/31/23, Krita]
One of my first proper drawings in krita, and of a character I should really draw more of. This was made for trans day of visibility & comes with a trans pride palette to boot, though I ended up choosing the normal palette since the other one kind of sucks. Also could've done better on the posing, but I was still getting used to the ins & outs of drawing tablet usage so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[4/22/23]
Drawing I made for earth day, honestly a solid contender for best thing I've drawn all year. I did pretty good on the pose, still dig the background a fair bit, & overall think the piece came out damn cool!
[5/12/23, Krita]
An expirement with line thickness, featuring one of my favorite ocs. Despite it's roughness you can tell I had gotten a hang of Krita's core functions by now.
[6/17/23, Krita]
Cover art for the prolouge of CAT-Astrophe Comic, the webcomic my brother & I have been working on. Overall been really happy with my work on the comic so far, I've slowly but surely been getting better at each part of the process and am still making good progress on pages n such ^^
[7/9/23, Krita]
Fanart of a character from a game, drawn for my pal Rinbin after they bought me Rain World. This single handedly inspired me to draw more robots, definitely one thing I 100% intend to follow up on next year.
[8/1/23, MS Paint]
Drawn based off of someone elses post, I don't remember what it was really. Honestly still really damn proud of everything in this!!!
[9/7/23, Krita]
Drew some snakes/snake adjacent pokemon for snektember. I'd say this is around the point where I "mastered" krita, by this point I actively knew how to use a majority of featues & had even begun downloading outside brushes.
[10/20/23, Krita]
Overhaul of a character I made & barely used in 2022, her name is now Olive. I based the whole squidog thing off of something in a dream.
[11/26/23, MS Paint]
Fanart of a webcomic I really fucking like !!!!! Not much more to say I just really dig this one, fucking love drawing in MS Paint.
[12/20/23, Krita]
And, as if to repeat last year, I end this one with a DreamSide main cast image!
Really proud of how much all of my designs have improved throughout the year, from the small tweaks to gigantic overhauls! I finally feel ready to take the next step forward, so to speak.
And that's everything! Thank you all for your time, and accompanying me on this journey. It was certainly a rough one in many aspects, but every year is rough for me so I've gotten used to it. See you all later :>
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Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado

Release date: 13 August 2024
Genre: science fiction dystopia novella
Synopsis
Forty years ago, archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed of the mysteries they would unlock in their respective fields using pocket universes— geographically small, hidden offshoots of reality, each with its own fast or slow time dilation relative to Earth time—and the future they would open up for their daughter.
But that was then.
Forty years later, Raquel is in disgrace, Marlena lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck and no longer speaks to her, what’s left of their daughter’s consciousness resides in a robotic dog, and time is a commodity controlled by corporations squeezing out every last penny they can.
So when a new pocket universe appears, one that might hold the key to her failed calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself to her wife, live up to her own failed ideals, and confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.
Content warnings
War, death
Child death
Mass death
Grief
Indentured servitude
Colonisation
Mentions of racism
Homophobia, lesbophobia
Pandemic/epidemic
Review
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!
The concept is rather interesting—what would happen if our capitalistic society discovered pocket worlds with faster and slower time dilations?
As all good dystopians do, the future depicted in this book is not too far from the reality of the world we currently live in. The picture this book paints of such a world is all too plausible, given that, you know, *gestures vaguely at everything*. I don't expect this book to come up with a solution to late stage capitalism, and certainly not a solution that can be implemented by a single woman. I think the ending offers as much hope as can be realistic, but at the same time, I find that pretty depressing, that there's a limit to what we can realistically hope for.
I think this book could have done with a larger page count, just to flesh out some of the details, but as it is, this book manages to tackle a good range of topics, as well as bring up some interesting points of discussion.
I struggled a LOT with reading this, mainly because I live in constant low-grade anxiety about society's inevitable collapse due to capitalism and also the climate crisis, but I think that says a lot about how well this book is written! Anyways, the main reason I read is for escapism and this book is definitely not that. However, I do highly recommend this book for how insightful it is.
#time's agent#brenda peyando#booklr#book review#readblr#ARC review#lgbt#queer#lgbtq#queer books#lgbtqia#sapphic reads#sapphic books#sapphic#wlw books#wlw#lesbian#lesbian representation#sapphic representation#wlw representation#wlw reads#science fiction#scifi books#sci fi#scifi#dystopian#speculative fiction
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Here we are... Best Animated Feature noms...
My predictions were 4-out-of-5...
THE BOY AND THE HERON, NIMONA, ROBOT DREAMS, and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE all got in...
The one I got wrong was TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM, which to be fair, I did say in my previous post that that one was the wild card out of my predictions. Despite the high praise and tons of nominations TMNT:MM got elsewhere, in addition to a single win, I guess those who were nominating it for the Oscar just didn't think the oozy gross-out turtle action-superhero movie cut it.
Instead, we have ELEMENTAL, so Disney Pictures gets at least one slot this year. The last time they were shut out entirely was for the features of 2011, the year they released the critical dud CARS 2 and the completely dumped WINNIE THE POOH. I was pretty sure that this year, they also wouldn't make it. ELEMENTAL's critical reception was fine at best, nowhere near the acclaim MUTANT MAYHEM got. WISH was both a critical and commercial dud, so that had no chance, only ELEMENTAL did... Maybe the Academy just didn't feel like pulling a 2018 and nominating two superhero action animated movies. Maybe they decided to have just one IP-based movie in the race, and opted for an original story. (As NIMONA and ROBOT DREAMS are based on pre-existing source material, BOY AND THE HERON references a novel that plays a part in its story.) Maybe something else about it wasn't all to their liking. Maybe Disney is just that powerful that they got themselves a slot.
I still think this is a strong line-up, and again, it speaks to how robust this year was for features both mainstream and independent.
And I will admit, even though I wasn't in love with the movie, ELEMENTAL getting into the race is very nice, I feel. Director Peter Sohn's first Pixar feature, THE GOOD DINOSAUR, was both a box office flop and didn't get a nominated for the Oscar (it shared the year with sister Pixar movie INSIDE OUT). It was also a film that he inherited after its original director got removed from it. ELEMENTAL was his personal project from the ground-up, and after a rough opening and all the press jeering that it was going to be this big flopperooni, it had excellent legs at the box office... and now... It has a Best Animated Feature nom. Talk about staying power! Maybe Pete Docter should think twice about that statement he made back in the summer, about trying to go back to Pixar's "roots" in trying to figure out what audiences supposedly want from this studio.
Anyways, Pixar usually gets a nom every year. For 2022's animated features, TURNING RED was in the running. 2021, LUCA. 2020, SOUL, which won for that year. Last time Pixar didn't get a nom at all was for 2016, their sole feature that year was FINDING DORY. Got good reviews and made beaucoup bucks, but it shared a year with Disney Animation's ZOOTOPIA and MOANA, two heavy hitters which ended up getting the noms. So, outside of FINDING DORY, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, and CARS 2, Pixar usually never misses a nom whenever they release a single movie in a calendar year.
Most of Paramount's Oscar noms in animation were for DreamWorks movies they released circa 2006-2012, which are all now Universal movies since Comcast owns all of DreamWorks Animation outright. Funnily enough, the inaugural Best Animated Feature nominations included Paramount's JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS, which was up against eventual winner SHREK, and MONSTERS, INC. Paramount then began distributing DreamWorks movies in 2006, and scored nominations with KUNG FU PANDA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, KUNG FU PANDA 2, and PUSS IN BOOTS. For a non-DreamWorks nom, there was RANGO, which won for Best Animated Feature of 2011... Ever since then? Only one movie, ANOMALISA. The films they released from 2015 to now just never made it: SHERLOCK GNOMES, WONDER PARK, SPONGEBOB 3, RUMBLE, etc. MUTANT MAYHEM really had a good shot at getting in... Maybe TRANSFORMERS: ONE surprises later this year, I don't know. Paramount's animation history post-80s is so weird...
Anyways, congrats to everyone. I'm personally rooting for either BOY AND THE HERON, or NIMONA.
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The risk of love
Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader
Summary: Sirius have been bestfriends since forever. Things change when he runs away from home
Warnings: Mentions of bruises and torture
Word Count: 2,798
Sirius Orion Black was the best and the worst person of your life.
He made it so easy being around him. He was as much a part of your life as the air around you. Even James, your childhood best friend didn’t compare to him. Your face would just brighten up whenever he entered the room. He had a charisma that attracted you to him. And you’d fallen for him. When? How? You didn’t know. Because it happened so slowly you couldn’t even pin point the exact moment. You were in love with every bit of him, even the darkest corners.
When you had first realized it, you did everything. You did everything to convince yourself that you weren’t in love with your best friend. You would beat down the bubbly flutter that emerged in your chest every time he was around. It was stupid. It was really stupid to be nervous around Sirius. Because if someone knew you, it was him. But each time he would touch you, even a simple brush of his hand would stir up something inside you making you go crazy again. You would shield yourself with your hands and legs trying to make these foreign, unwanted feelings go away only to be crushed by his thoughts again. You tried not to hate every person he kissed right in front of your eyes, as your stomach twisted up in dangerous knots and every good thing seemed to fade away. You wiped away the adamant tears that refused not to fall. You held your legs close to yourself deep into the night to stop the unbearable pain Sirius never knew he caused. You came up with every logical explanation to not fall for him, the mind abided, the heart didn’t. Come to think of it, when did the heart ever listen to logic?
Your feelings for him were ironic. You loved him with every speck of your soul and hated him for it. Because if there was one thing you couldn’t have, it was him. You had come terms with it long ago, knowing you’ll always love him and that he’ll never even know. And it was okay even though something crushed and shattered within you, seeing his lips red and swollen and his neck littered with bites every other day. You would gulp and force your lips to turn upwards at his proud smirk. You would hide behind your cup as your ears would pound. Remus knew. James did too. They would look at you with a pitiful expression that made you want to scream. But it was okay, because he was happy. That was all that mattered.
You were sitting in the common room perched over the coffee table, writing an essay. James sat beside you but he hardly looked at you. All he saw was the fiery red headed girl talking to a first year. Remus sat opposite to you reading the book thief yet again. Sirius came in and plopped down next to Remus, chuckling a little at James expression.
“Merlin! I hope I never fall in love!” he commented snatching Remus's book who released a ‘hey!’
“You don’t want to fall in love?” Remus asked him.
“Nope. Can’t end up like him!” he said pointing towards James who narrowed his eyes at him.
“But Sirius, you will fall in love one day.” James said shrugging.
“Nope. Don’t want someone after my necks for dates and all that cheesy romantic stuff!” he huffed rolling his eyes.
“Who said everyone wants all that greasy romantic fluff?” you asked raising your eyebrows.
“Well, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Well then, what do you want?” Sirius said smirking at you in challenge.
“I would rather have a quiet relationship, knowing my partner loves me and cares for me like no other.” You said simply.
“Aha! But you see I don’t think love is as pretty as you make it to be. Take James, for example! He says he is in love with Lily there, but has got nothing but hurt in response.”
You all felt silent for a while. You could see the smug look on Sirius’s face and all you could think was how wrong he was.
“We don’t choose who we fall in love with, Sirius. It just happens. And it makes us more human. It’s better to get heartbroken than never experience it even once. It’s… it’s like a drug, once you have a taste of it, you keep wanting it more and more.”
“Yes, but why want all that pain? Why take the risk?”
“And you say it as a cocky proud Gryffindor.” You sassed. You sighed. “Because if we never take the risk, we leave out the chance to be the happiest we can. Because love makes us powerful, happy and strong. Would you rather sit on your death bed thinking what would have happened if you chose to give love a chance?”
Something flicked in Sirius’s eyes before he looked down and changed the topic to the next day’s plans.
***
You were at James house over summer. Your parents had gone abroad and Mrs. Potter was only too happy to take you in. You sat playing exploding snaps in James room late at night when there was a crack at the window. You both looked at it as yet another stone flew right in. James stood up and went to investigate, with you just behind him. You saw a dark silhouette under the dim street lights. Wait. Was that Sirius?
The two of you ran towards the front gate, bolting through the stairs. Your heart stopped as the door opened and you saw Sirius. His face was all bruised and his eye was swollen. You sucked in a breath, taking in his state not knowing how many more scars his torn clothes hid. Your head pounded as you stopped yourself from panicking.
“You said I was welcome at your house if I-“Sirius started but James had already took him in.
“What happened?” James asked quietly as you all went to his room.
“Mother and father were particularly angry tonight, didn’t mind a few crucio’s” your heart stopped as you looked at him. His face was static, hollow. You wanted nothing more than to pull him into your arms but he seemed so fragile that if you did just that, you thought he’d break.
So you walked in a dazed state not knowing when you reached the bed. You went to the washroom where you knew the first aid kit was. James decided to not wake his parents and tell them in the morning and Sirius was too happy to oblige. He didn’t want to talk now. Soaking a rag in cold water, you kneeled in front of Sirius who sat at the edge of the bed. He didn’t quite meet your eyes. You took your trembling hand towards his face only for him to turn it away. Your heart broke a little, seeing him so scarred and broken. You knew he wasn’t scared of you. It was an involuntary reaction. You gulped, placing the rag on his skin as he hissed softly. You cleaned his face and hands while James made sure to change the water very often and bring in some clean clothes.
“You need to remove your shirt.” You whispered pulling back. Sirius obliged, nodding, working like a robot. You swallowed the lump that formed in your throat on seeing him. His chest was red and blue. You knew Sirius would pull away the moment he saw your pitiful gaze, so you worked in silence and schooled your expressions. He gasped and hissed a little at deeper cuts and you whispered apologies to him. You bit back the tears that were threatening to fall.
You had never seen him silent and stoic for so long. Your heart thumped in your chest as you performed healing spells on him along with James. James gave him clothes to change in the washroom. As he went inside, James looped an arm around you and you finally let tears fall. You buried your head in his chest as he rubbed your back.
“He- He-“
“It’s okay. He’s okay.” He shushed you as you tried to calm down. You wiped away your tears as you heard the bathroom door creak.
“You can sleep in the second guest room, come on, I’ll take you.” James said leading him there. You sat on the bed with a thump. James came back moments later and gave you a reassuring smile.
“He’ll be alright. Go to sleep, you need it.” You nodded dragging yourself towards your room. You stopped at the door. You turned around and walked towards Sirius’s room instead. Opening the door slowly; you somehow made out Sirius’s outline.
“Who’s there?” his voice came all rough.
“It’s me” you whispered.
You went around the bed and sneaked under the covers slowly. Sirius tensed immediately feeling your weight on the bed. You came closer to him and spooned his back, looping an arm around his waist. Sirius froze. He felt your warmth radiating into him and gulped. He slowly relaxed as he felt the silence wash over him. He liked it, your arm around him. He felt safe for the first time after running away. He didn’t dare move, should he break the spell that brought you here. He didn’t know when he fell asleep.
***
Sirius woke up in a daze, taking the unfamiliar surroundings in. The events of last night slowly hit him and he turned to see the side where you lay last night. It was empty. Sirius gulped. Was it a dream? He didn’t want it to. It was one of the best sleeps he ever had and it was because of you. He could still feel your warm hand as you looped it across his waist, your fingers light as feather as you healed him. His eyes stinged with tears and he let them fall for once. His head pounded as he took in the situation he was in. He took in deep breaths calming down and going to wash his face. There was a knock on the door and he called to come in.
He turned to see you in your pajamas holding two bowls.
“I have breakfast!” you said offering one of the bowls to him. He smiled a little taking it. The two of you sat in silence, eating. Sirius had never been a quiet boy. Seeing him like that saddened you but you were ready to provide him any comfort you could.
Sirius didn’t say much all day. You and James made sure to talk about good and happy things. It was rare to see him smile, even rarer to see one that reached his eyes. At night you did the same thing you did the previous night, you slipped in beside him. He didn’t tense up as much as the last time, so you counted that as a win.
You all fell into a rhythm. Sirius woke up with you and James bringing him breakfast. You would go out around the city the whole day, eat, drink, play and come home. You would slip into his room at night, holding him as you both fell asleep.
***
Sirius was coming to admire you a little more every day. You never did anything that made him feel inadequate or uncomfortable. You didn’t push him to do anything and he’d come to love those peaceful silences the two of you shared. He looked forward to nights because they meant your tight embraces that made him feel warm and safe. He started noticing how you were so beautiful in a very natural and raw way. He found himself smiling involuntarily at your laughs and giggles. He needed you close to him every moment of the day. And you happily gave him that. Come to think of it, you were one of the most constant people in his life and he felt guilty for not being grateful for you before. He wasn’t blind. He noticed how you were genuinely saddened by what happened to him. His heart contracted as he saw you crying into James shirt one day. He waited for the pending look of pity you would give him, but it never came.
Lying on the bed, James had corrected him over and over again to call his, he waited for you. He heard a creak as you came in. He felt a weight on the bed as you slipped in. He sighed at the familiar feeling of your arm around him. He closed his eyes but he didn’t want to sleep. He turned around to face your shining eyes in the dark instead.
“(Y/n).”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you care so much about me?”
“What are you talking about Sirius? You’re my best friend, of course I care about you!”
“But I am nothing. I would understand if you wouldn’t have seen me like this, at my worst. You see me and yet you care about me so much.”
“Sirius, I don’t care about pretences. I love you. You. All if it. No matter how bad or dark it is.” You whispered.
Sirius didn’t say anything right then. His eyes were glistening and he hoped you wouldn’t see it. You cupped his face, kissing his forehead. He was your best friend and you would be damned if you let anything hurt him. You would always love him, even if he didn’t feel the same.
But Sirius did feel the same. You had stirred something in him. He had started to want all the crazy romantic stuff. He didn’t want to admit it, but if there was someone he would risk falling in love with it was you. And it wasn’t a sudden realization. It took a hundred smirks from James as he looked at you with a loopy smile, a nudge from Mrs. Potter telling him how cute he would look with you, making him stutter for the first time in his life.
***
Remus visited you three a week later. The four of you goofed around planning all that you would be doing at Hogwarts. As much as Sirius was happy to see Remus again, you spent too much time with him. Sirius’s face had upturned a bit as he saw you run to Remus hugging him tightly when he arrived. He schooled his expression shrugging it off. But now it seemed that the two of you were attached to the hip. Sirius sulked as he saw you and Remus huddled together over a book. He felt jealous of Remus. He didn’t read books that he could talk about with you.
He went and plopped down beside you.
“Hey.” He said as you looked at him with a bright smile.
“Hey!” you said and turned to discuss the book again as Sirius pouted.
“(Y/n) I think you might wanna talk to Sirius over there or he’ll die.” James exaggerated as you turned towards Sirius who looked at James indignantly.
“What?” you poked.
“Nothing.” He grumbled, getting up and out. You frowned as he went away. Telling Remus to wait, you went after Sirius and grabbed his hand.
“Come on, tell me, what is it?” you said as he shook his head. You narrowed your eyes at him, thinking of something. You went forward and started to tickle him.
“(Y/n)!!! Stop!!!” he said as he rolled out laughing. You didn’t stop continuing your torment as he grabbed you and you fell on the top of him, giggling. As you both tried to calm down, Sirius noticed how beautiful you looked so close. Your (Y/e/c) eyes just sparkled with mirth and he couldn’t help it. He raised his head and kissed you. You gasped as his lips met yours. He pulled away as soon as he realized what he was doing.
You blinked slowly, getting up as Sirius did the very same.
“(Y/n) I…”
“Sirius, please tell me you didn’t just kiss me because you don’t have anyone to do it.”
“WHAT?” Sirius asked. “Are you kidding me?!? Don’t you see how much you mean to me? Can’t you see it? You make me smile out of the blue, make me wanna do all that lovey dovey stuff they do in movies and I wanna be your boyfriend. I get it if you reject me, but don’t-“
Sirius stopped as you pressed your lips against his. It was slow and soft. He wanted to feel it, the moment. He tasted your bubblegum chapstick feeling your soft lips against his dry ones. As you pulled back, you smiled at him.
“So what does being your girlfriend entail, again?” you said breathlessly as he pulled in to kiss you again.
A/N: Let me know what you think!
#sirius#sirius black#sirius x reader#sirius black x reader#padfoot#marauders#the marauders#marauders x reader#hp#Harry Potter#Anu writes#sirius black imagine
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Yet again ranking the 5 animes I’ve watched most recently
After losing the will to just sit down and watch it for quite a while, I’ve finally gotten through 5 anime series yet again, and, as is tradition for me by now, I’ve decided to just type out my thoughts and rankings of them, with my first two posts of this nature being here and here. As usual, this is just my personal thoughts, and the only other thing worth noting before I start is that, unlike last time, I do think everything listed here is at least decent on its own. With that, I’ll just get to it. 5. Robotics;Notes
Number of episodes: 22. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Robotics;Notes is an adaptation of a visual novel, which I actually just wrote a review on, which can be found here. Long story short, it’s the third entry in the Science Adventure series, the same series Steins;Gate is part of, unknown to most people, with Robotics;Notes technically being the sequel to it. Originally aired in 2012, the same year as the visual novel was released, and made by Production I.G, Robotics;Notes is in an interesting middle ground between the acclaimed and popular Steins;Gate animes and the downright awful and obscure Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child animes, and until 2020 was the only option those who didn’t speak Japanese had to experience it at all. Since I went into so much detail in said visual novel review, I’m mostly going to focus on how the anime holds up both by itself and as an adaptation. Ever since its creation nearly ten years ago, the dream of the Chuo Tanegashima High Robotics Research Club has been to finish Gunbuild-1, a lifesize recreation of Gunvarrel, the titular mecha of an insanely popular anime that’s credited with starting a “robot boom” within Japan, and the club’s current president, Akiho Senomiya, the little sister of the club’s founder, Misaki Senomiya, is extremely determined to see this dream achieved. Unfortunately for her, the club has fallen on hard times, with its funding being cut, its advisor being completely unreliable, and the few other members it has, namely Kaito Yashio, Subaru Hidaka, Junna Daitoku, and Kona Furugoori, aka Frau Koujiro, being quite difficult in their own ways, and often more than Akiho can handle. While Akiho puts her all into finally bringing the club to greatness, the otherwise apathetic Kaito finds himself involved with a mysterious AI called Airi, who exists within the augmented reality app IRUO. Airi’s creator, the deceased Kou Kimijima, turns out to have also created several AR annotations scattered throughout Tanegashima, titled the Kimijima Reports, which warn of a grand conspiracy that will utterly devastate humanity if unopposed. I’m not the most unbiased viewer, since I had played, and enjoyed, the visual novel months before watching this anime, but generally, it’s actually an enjoyable time. Some of Robotics;Notes’ biggest strengths were always its cast of characters and lighter tone, and for the most part, the anime preserves both well, keeping it mostly silly, but endearing early on. The artstyle actually matches up fairly well with the VN’s CGs, and the dub, which I watched just to spice things up, since I already knew the Japanese voice cast was quite good, is overall solid, with Clifford Chapin as Kaito, Lindsay Seidel as Akiho, and Monica Rial as Junna especially sticking out to me. As an adaptation, on the other hand, it falls short in quite a few places, namely when it comes to characterization. While obviously, no adaptation could feasibly fit in every detail from its source material, the Steins;Gate anime managed to preserve almost all of its cast’s characterization, whereas in Robotics;Notes, several characters lose prominent details to their backstories or personal conflicts, or act differently in scenes unrelated to that, making quite a few of them come off different. While instances of the latter case, such as Junna coming off as less shy and hesitant, don’t necessarily worsen anything for the most part, the former definitely does, as it makes the affected characters much less developed and interesting. Nobody suffers from this worse than Kaito himself, who loses most of his backstory, motivations, and arc, to the point of one of his best moments being changed from something intentional to completely accidental, with the end result making him come off as a completely different character, and an inferior one, at that. Additionally, around episode 16, the anime starts diverging pretty significantly from the VN, and not in ways that are improvements, to the point it even leaves a few otherwise preserved scenes in earlier episodes without context. Overall, I can imagine the Robotics;Notes anime still being a decent, if unremarkable watch on its own, and was certainly an interesting and fun way to reexperience the story, and definitely fares better than many visual novel adaptations, but I can’t quite say I’d recommend it. If Robotics;Notes interests you, the visual novel is very much preferred. 4. Nichijou
Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming options: Funimation. Here we have one of the most acclaimed anime comedies out there, an adaptation of Keiichi Arawi’s surreal sketch comedy manga series, produced by Kyoto Animation, a name that’ll be showing up here again later. Nichijou mainly focuses on two different trios of characters. There’s the ordinary high school girls Yuuko Aioi, a rather dim and reckless girl with terrible luck, Mio Naganohara, the most relatively normal one of the cast, whenever she’s not having explosive freak outs that involve beating people up, and Mai Minakami, a stoic girl who enjoys messing with people just for their reactions. On the other hand, there’s the far less ordinary Shinonome Laboratories trio of Professor Shinonome, an 8 year old girl who happens to be capable of building incredibly advanced machines, Nano Shinonome, a robot built by the Professor who desperately desires a normal girl more than anything, and Sakamoto, their pet cat who, thanks to a special scarf also made by the Professor, is capable of talking. The series focuses on their would-be ordinary lives, were it not for the seemingly daily chaos they get involved in, from witnessing the school principal wrestle a wild deer, to being trapped in an elevator for hours, to the school science teacher attempting to capture Nano for study. It also follows the antics of several other side characters, such Koujiro Sasahara, the seemingly upper class student who is actually just the son of a family of farmers, to Misato Tachibana, a very typical tsundere towards Sasahara, whose tsun side manifests as assaulting him with military-grade weapons, to little effect, to the equally quirky teachers of their school. Needless to say, it’s a very silly and chaotic series, and that’s exactly what makes it so memorable. The humor is pretty hit and miss in the first half of the series, but from episode 14 onwards, they thoroughly master it, with every episode having at least a few scenes that got me laughing. Beyond the silliness, though, the series actually has a lot of heart to it. There’s a few moments that change up the status quo, or even develop the characters just a bit, and some scenes are surprisingly sweet, if still played for laughs more often than not. There’s also a lot of continuity, which in later episodes often provide the punchlines to some of the best gags, which definitely encourages watching the whole series. The Japanese voice acting is fittingly crazy for each character, and the animation fits perfectly, as while the character designs are quite simple, there’s many would be mundane moments that have contrasting overly impressive and exaggerated animation that makes them very memorable. All in all, Nichijou is a very enjoyable series once it finds its groove, and about the only reason its not higher on my rankings is just because pure comedies aren’t really one of my favorite genres. Still, if you ever want a good laugh, you can’t go wrong with this. 3. Soul Eater
Number of episodes: 51. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Netflix, Funimation. Soul Eater is yet another adaptation, this time of a manga by Atsushi Ōkubo, produced by Studio Bones, who also did the Fullmetal Alchemist animes, and is quite similar to the original FMA series in that it outpaced the manga and, rather than simply overloading itself with filler, decided to go in an entirely different direction by the end. The Death Weapon Meister Academy is a school founded by Death himself, dedicated to the training of Meisters, who wield Weapons, humans with the ability to shapeshift into weapons, for the purpose of destroying Kishin Eggs, evil beings who have consumed the souls of others, and pose the risk of transforming into extremely dangerous demons. Any Meister who can collect the souls of these corrupted beings, as well as the soul of a Witch, can transform their Weapon into a Death Scythe, the personal arms of Death. Among the students of the DWMA are seven Meisters and Weapons who stand out in particular: the teams of Maka Albarn, a kind hearted and responsible, though temperamental, girl, her Weapon, Soul “Eater” Evans, a laidback and snarky wannabe “cool” guy, Black Star, a prideful and loudmouthed ninja who’s seemingly always out to make a spectacle of himself, regardless of how it hampers him, his Weapon, Tsubaki, a humble and levelheaded woman, Death the Kid, the son of Death and one of the top students in the cool, held back only by a crippling obsession with symmetry, and his Weapons, Liz and Patty Thompson. While these seven gradually come together as a team, a Witch named Medusa begins to put an ambitious and destructive plan into motion, one involving her “child”, Crona, and the strange, insanity inducing black blood that courses through their veins. Soul Eater has a lot going for it. A likeable and crazy cast of characters, even the side ones, like the maniacal Doctor Stein, or the surprisingly goofy and casual Death, or the tragic Crona, or the hilariously egotistical Excalibur, to a lot of fun action scenes, to its great animation and overall unique visual design, including the sun and moon having giant, creepy laughing faces. It has a lighthearted, comedic tone that doesn’t detract from the serious moments, and the main characters get some pretty good development as the series goes on. The dub is also great, with Laura Bailey as Maka, Micah Solusod as Soul, Brittney Karbowski as Black Star, and Todd Haberkorn as Death the Kid especially sticking out to me. In general, I don’t have a lot of significant criticisms, besides how the story is handled once the villainous organization Arachnophobia is introduced, which is also about where it begins to deviate from the manga. Most of the villains part of it never really feel like a threat, and the story becomes much more simple and typical compared to how the manga went, and when the ending arrives, it just kinda, happens, with several notable subplots just kinda left unfinished. It definitely feels like an underwhelming ending, and is a big reason why I place this lower on the list, but Soul Eater is still a pretty entertaining watch that’s worth a try if you want a decently lengthy, but not horribly long shonen. 2. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Number of episodes: 28. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Here we have the big one, an extremely memetic and famous series by Kyoto Animation, based on a series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, a series that was finally completed back in November 2020 after its start in 2003. Kyon is a lazy and down to earth high school student who wishes for little more for himself than an uneventful, normal high school life- a hope that’s abruptly shattered when, on a whim, he becomes involved with Haruhi Suzumiya, an eccentric, hyperactive, and thoroughly self centered girl, who claims to have no interest in ordinary humans, and instead wishes to discover things thoroughly unusual, such as aliens, time travelers, or espers, and forces Kyon to form a club, the SOS Brigade, with her to achieve this. Haruhi quickly pulls three other students into the brigade, those being Yuki Nagato, a stoic and quiet bookworm, Mikuru Asahina, a shy and passive girl often subjected to humiliation and abuse by Haruhi, and Itsuki Koizumi, a calm transfer student who acts extremely subservient to Haruhi. While Kyon initially writes off the club as an unreasonable use of his time, his fellow members reveal an unexpected truth to him: the subjects of Haruhi’s fascinations actually do exist. Yuki is an alien, of a sort, created and controlled by an entity known as the Data Overmind, Mikuru is a time traveler from some point in the future, and Itsuki is an esper, and member of an organization of similar people. All three of them have been sent to observe the oblivious Haruhi, who appears to have the unconscious ability to change reality itself according to her desires, and is at threat of remaking the entire world if not placated. With Haruhi apparently having taken a unique interest in Kyon, he finds himself taken along for all sorts of supernatural adventures spawned from Haruhi’s whims. There’s a lot I could go on about regarding Haruhi, but in the interest of not turning this into a full on rant, I’ll keep shortish. It’s more or less an insane mishmash of several different genres, from slice of life, to science fiction, to fantasy, just depending on what each individual story feels like being. The episodes are mostly adapted from the early light novels, mostly the multiple stories from the third and fifth novels, The Boredom and The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, respectively. It’s not often you’ll have any idea just what to expect from each individual episode, which makes the series very chaotic, but interesting. The characters are likeable and memorable, including the side characters, and the sheer ridiculousness of what goes on makes for many amusing moments. At the same time, the series is surprisingly complex, with many possible interpretations of its characters and the events they go through, furthered by the antics Kyoto Animation pulled when it was originally airing, such as airing the episodes out of chronological order, meaning the plot would often jump from the middle of an arc to something else. The end result is a very unique and enjoyable product, helped by the fantastic dub, with the actors capturing each character perfectly, from Crispin Freeman as the grounded and snarky Kyon, to Wendee Lee as the aggressively energetic Haruhi, to Stephanie Sheh as the gentle, yet secretive Mikuru. That said, there is one pretty disappointing part of it all, and that’s the second season, mostly thanks to the infamous Endless Eight arc, an eight part arc that’s more or less the same things happening over and over, with only the first and last episodes having anything noticeably different. Regardless of its own uniqueness, more than half the season is taken over by this, and something that may have worked if cut down to three or four episodes instead singlehandedly killed off the series’ goodwill. About the only redeeming factor of the second season is the five part adaptation of The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has some of the funniest moments in the whole series. Overall, Haruhi is still a very fun series, and I’m really gonna have to watch its movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of these days. 1. Trigun
Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Hulu. Finishing off this list is an adaptation of a manga series by Yasuhiro Nightow, produced by Madhouse and another adaptation that overtook its source material. Compared to how Soul Eater handled it, however, Trigun went down much, much better, to the point Nightow himself had nothing but praise for how the anime turned out, and the series is generally considered one of the best animes of the late 90′s. On the harsh desert planet of Gunsmoke lives a wandering gunslinger known as Vash the Stampede, the “Humanoid Typhoon” with a large handgun known to leave tremendous destruction in his wake, who amassed a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 after destroying the city of July, leading to an endless trail of bounty hunters out to collect the price on his head. In the middle of all this, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, two representatives of an insurance society which is often forced to pay for damages caused by Vash, track him down for the purposes of minimizing the chaos he causes. Upon catching up with him, however, the duo discovers that, contrary to his reputation, Vash is a kindhearted goof, and self proclaimed hunter of love and peace, who absolutely refuses to ever take another person’s life, even at great personal risk to himself. Vash continues his travels carefree, helping out whoever he can, with the occasional assistance of Meryl and Milly, as well as a traveling priest known as Nicholas D. Wolfwood, only to one day have an encounter with a mysterious and cruel man known as Legato Bluesummers. Vash soon learns that Legato has hired a group of assassins known as the Gung-Ho Guns to kill Vash, and leave a trail of bodies wherever they go, seemingly for the sole purpose of tormenting Vash. As Vash hunts down Legato, he is gradually forced to face his past, and consider whether he can truly stay committed to his pacifist ideals. In general, Trigun is just a very, very well made series. It has a likeable and developed cast of characters, with special mention going to Vash, who is a very compelling and sympathetic character, and Wolfwood, who makes a great foil to Vash with very interesting development of his own, with characters outside of the main cast being memorable as well, from Legato himself, to even some of the more minor villains, such as the varied members of the Gung-Ho Guns, or Brilliant Dynamites Neon, who makes an inexplicably strong impression for a one off villain not even important to the overall plot. The space western setting is quite good, and the designs are great, with many villains having distinctive looks that further help them make an impression. The action is great, and the animation is also quite good, and has that 90′s anime charm. The dub, while a bit rough around the edges, is generally solid too. From Lia Sargent as the ditzy but kind Milly, to Dorothy Elias Fahn as the hotheaded Meryl, to Jeff Nimoy as the weary Wolfwood, to Richard Cansino as the calculating and disturbing Legato, with special mention needing to go to Johnny Yong Bosch as Vash. Despite it actually being his first voice acting role ever, he does a great job in portraying the many sides to Vash, and absolutely sells many of the biggest moments in the story. Speaking of which, the series started quite lighthearted and wacky, with the first four episodes actually being filler, but gets gradually darker as it goes on. The earlier episodes are still quite enjoyable on their own, though, and manage to slowly reveal new aspects to Vash in each one, before finally setting his nature in stone in episode 5. What really sells the series and makes it so memorable, however, are the themes it explores, of the practicality of unwavering pacifism, and whether taking a life, whether for heinous crimes committed without remorse, or with the purpose of protecting others, is ever justifiable. While quite a few series have touched dilemmas like this before, what makes Trigun stand out with it is the emphasis placed upon it throughout the whole series, with many episodes touching upon it in some regard. It genuinely fairly looks at the different sides of it all, and the consequences of each, with many emotional moments coming from it as a result. While the manga did ultimately take a very different turn from the anime, the anime actually preserves several of the most important plot moments, and manages to come to a satisfactory conclusion of its own regarding the themes. Ultimately, Trigun makes for a very fun and interesting watch that I highly recommend. And with that, my ranking is complete. With the exception of Robotics;Notes, I can pretty confidently recommend every show on this list. Got some more shows I plan to get through soon, so another ranking like this may be soon in the making. Either way, till next time. -Scout
#anime#trigun#nichijou#haruhi suzumiya#the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya#soul eater#robotics;notes#long post
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Robotics;Notes DaSH review-ish thoughts
So I finished Robotics;Notes DaSH yesterday, and it seems like nobody on Tumblr has talked about it in much detail, so here I am.
I am in a huge SciAdv binge lately, so I went straight from finally playing Robotics;Notes Elite (LOVED it) to this. If you know SciAdv, there’s a good chance you know the story of Robotics;Notes Elite through the anime adaption (simply called “Robotics;Notes”) that aired back in 2012-2013. Robotics;Notes Elite is the first release of R;N in North America, but is actually an updated/upgraded release in Japan, hence the addition of “Elite.” But all of that is unimportant right now, because I’m here to talk about the sequel.
Robotics;Notes DaSH is undoubtedly the lesser of the two stories in the “double pack” that you can get in NA, but it’s still very important to the overall SciAdv mythos because it brings together so much of what came before. Itaru Hashida/”Daru” from Steins;Gate is the main POV character here. Daru travels to Tanegashima, the island setting of Robotic;Notes, in order to meet up with 20-year-old Nae Tennouji (who is a major character in both R;N stories as well as a supporting player in S;G) and for a secret “mission” he’s on that ultimately leads him to team up with all the R;N cast just six months after their initial adventure. See, Steins;Gate took place in 2010, but Robotics;Notes took place over 2019-2020, so Daru is now ten years older than he was when we last saw him, but the R;N cast is largely the same age as when we last saw them. Get it?

Anyway, Daru and Nae are the primary alumni of Steins;Gate here, but Daru also enlists the aid of some other S;G characters via phone calls and emails, and you get to check in with most of the S;G characters on “Twipo” (which is Twitter in the SciAdv universe). It’s interesting to get a bit of insight into how their lives have changed in ten years... or how they haven’t changed at all, in some cases. (I’ll circle back to this at the end.)
As a POV character, Daru can be kind of tough to take sometimes. I found him kind of obnoxious but mostly harmless in Steins;Gate... but when the sequel, Steins;Gate 0, rolled around, it illustrated just how gross he can be about “lolis” and the like (answer: pretty fucking gross). Sadly, even though he’s 10 years older now (and married! with a child!), that behavior is still in full force. With every single female character he meets from Robotics;Notes, Daru has some sexual harrassment to offer (even the 14-year-old Airi!). It may be played as a joke, but that doesn’t stop the way he tries to manipulate them into saying or doing things that grossly please him from being pretty goddamn repugnant. His perverted fantasies about them end up being surprisingly important to the plot, even! It can be unpleasant. It does help that the Robotics;Notes characters find him largely off-putting at first, but over time, he proves full of mature advice and useful wisdom for almost all the characters at some point. By the end, they come to honestly appreciate him and welcome him among their group in spite of his... extremely clear character flaws. And, well, Nae never takes his sexual harassment seriously, and Daru’s own internal monologue clarifies that he doesn’t exactly mean it either, so these things... help, at least a little. It all means that there are times where I find myself feeling repulsed by him and other times when I find myself managing to appreciate how he helps the R;N cast move their lives forward. So I don’t completely hate him, and besides, the tale ends with Daru promising to introduce the R;N cast to the S;G cast, so how could I despise him, really, when he’s bringing us that much closer to the dream of the SciAdv Avengers-style team-up? But man... I wish it could’ve been almost anybody else from S;G who teamed up with the R;N cast. Still, Daru’s talents fit the story well, so here we are.

Daru’s obviously grown in intelligence and... well, maybe a little bit in maturity, but what about the R;N kids? This IS a sequel to Robotics;Notes, after all, and despite Daru being the central character, you can still feel that this is a R;N story and not a Steins;Gate story. Robotics and A.I. remain at the core of the plot, the setting is the same as R;N, the graphical presentation is carried over from R;N (meaning that we get animated 3D models of the characters instead of just static artwork like in other SciAdv VNs), and, yes, the entire cast of R;N is present and accounted for. Most of them haven’t changed much at all from the first Robotics;Notes... with the exception of former lead character Kaito Yashio, who seems to have lost most of his defining character traits in favor of being a pretty generic protagonist. Both of the R;N games jump around in POV, but Kaito is really the only other character besides Daru to spend significant time as the lead POV character in DaSH. And although Kaito has some new trauma from the shit he witnessed in his first outing, he’s mostly pretty much just “some young dude” in this game. He no longer has that self-centered, sarcastic attitude, he no longer focuses all his energy on playing Kill-Ballad - in fact, he’s given it up entirely - and he no longer considers himself Akiho’s personal protector. He’s moved on to be defined mostly by his post-high school studies, and it’s kind of disappointing to see him lose everything that made him distinctive.
The other characters from Robotics;Notes get slightly better treatment. Akiho is still as hyper as ever, but her lack of planning for after graduation has caught up with her. Kaito has moved into the next phase of his life, single-mindedly pursuing his dream career away from Tanegashima, and Aki is back on the island, working as a part-time waitress and feeling like she’s left behind. It’s an interesting problem to focus on, but the thread is never completely resolved. Junna has a post-graduate job, too, but it’s not one that really has much to do with her as a character. She gets a side route focused on confronting her lack of self-confidence. Subaru gets a route in which his difficult relationship with his father is further explored and developed, and Frau... well, she gets two scenes in the main story where she comes to accept how the robotics club has affected her and made her grow, but she’s mostly relegated to the background. Even her dedicated route is just a lengthy joke that does nothing for her character. I was hoping they’d circle back to the storylines about the Gunvarrel anime conspiracy and her missing mother that were never actually resolved in the first VN... but sadly, those plot threads remains unexplored.

Aside from Jun, Subaru and Frau, there’s also a side route for Airi. It’s largely inconsequential, but it does contribute more depth to a character that barely existed in the first R;N, and it shows a kinder, gentler side to Daru in the process. The final side route belongs to Nae. It gives us a tiny bit mor info about how she went from being the little Nae of S;G to being the adult Nae of R;N, but it probably has the least to do with the main plot out of any of the side routes. Moreover, it contains a shocking reveal that is left unexplored and unexplained.
Regardless of which ones I found meaningful or meaningless, these character-exploring side plots aren’t canon anyway! In Robotics;Notes Elite, the side routes/alternate endings were actually ALL canon, which was a pretty weird way to handle the Visual Novel staple of multiple endings. However, it was also a great thing because of how it added weight to the proceedings when you were forced to work your way through every single route to see the “True End.” In DaSH, you still have to experience all of the side routes/alternate endings to reach the True End, but none of those side routes are canon at all. Which means that, in canon, much of the growth you see from the characters... never actually happens. I mean geez, Frau may not get much new development, but at least the growth she does show is canonical. Subaru and Junna’s routes have the best character stuff in the game, and they’re merely “What If” scenarios that see their lives developing and growing, only to have that growth later erased from the timeline. Oof.
As far as the main storyline goes, it’s revealed early on that the main villain from Robotics;Notes is back, and the delusions-made-reality powers of the two “Chaos” visual novels also feature heavily into things. Regardless, the story never gets as dark as even the first Robotics;Notes, let alone the rest of the SciAdv line. DaSH is easily the lightest of all the SciAdv VNs. There’s still a major crisis that threatens countless lives for our team to overcome, but the tone remains hopeful and optimistic. When I think of most SciAdv novels, I think of that moment around the halfway or 2/3 mark where shit gets real and something shockingly dark occurs. Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, Chaos;Child... they all had those turns where everything that was going on suddenly got that much more serious and personal. That kind of moment never comes in DaSH, though. More than anything, this is a chance to visit old friends and have some frothy fun with them.
And now, UNDER THE CUT, I’m going to just spoil where this game leaves all the Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes characters.
Steins;Gate Characters
- Once he “came up with” (*cough*) the ‘Worldline Theory,’ Rintaro Okabe managed to make in-roads with a number of geniuses in both Japan and America. He travels between the U.S. and Japan regularly to further his scientific research. He did create the Divergence Meter, and he reaches out to Daru for information/help when the numbers on the meter start to flicker near the climax of R;N DaSH. Okabe also maintains a Hououin Kyoma “bot” on Twipo that regularly spouts crazy the kind of “wisdom” you’d expect from his alternate personality.
- Makise Kurisu spends most of her time in America as a researcher in neuroscience for Viktor Chondria University. She still seems to be acting tsundere about her feelings for Okabe even after 10 goddamn years, even though Daru openly teases her about their relationship. She also expresses irritation with the existence of the Kyoma-bot.
- Faris is still running MayQueen and saying “nya” all the time.
- Luka/Ruka is still sincerely impressed with “Hououin Kyoma” after all these years, and often replies to the Kyoma-bot’s posts with genuine reverence. He is still working at the same shrine, although in what capacity is unknown.
- Moeka went back to being a journalist and is shown to be actively supporting the others in their work against the Committee of 300 and other evil entities.
- Maho Hiyajo got acquainted with the LabMems “around 10 years ago,” and apparently trusts them well enough to help Daru as soon as he asks.
- Mayuri is still around, although her tweets reveal nothing about her circumstances. She mostly just posts about what food she’s been eating or replies to the others with encouragement.
- Suzuha is two years old. She’s busy being two. :P
Robotics;Notes Characters
- After having a false start in the first R;N, Kaito and Akiho officially begin a relationship by the end of DaSH and declare their love for each other, so at least ONE of the major SciAdv couples is allowed to get together. Kaito is studying to be an astronaut at a school off-island, but he promises to visit regularly. It’s not clear what Akiho is going to do with her life, but she does manage to start healing the rift that grew between her and her sister over the past six years.
- Subaru wants to pursue robotics as a career. He’s still a senior in high school by the end of DaSH, and is also the new president of the Central Tanegashima Robotics Club. Unfortunately for him, the club once again is down to just two members, with Frau being the other one. It’s not clear where things stand between him and his father by the end of the canon route, but at least his father isn’t openly opposing Subaru’s robot work anymore.
- Junna is working for Space Candy. Her exact role with the company isn’t clear, but based on her assignments, it seems likely to be something in PR.
- Nae has permanently moved to Tanegashima and considers it her home now. She still works for JAXA there.
- Frau is still living on Tanegashima and still in high school. Evidently, it’s her weird-talking, perverted presence in the Robotics Club that has driven away all of the new recruits who tried to sign up after the club’s heroics in R;N.
#robotics notes#robotics notes dash#robotics;notes#robotics;notes dash#sciadv#science adventure#Steins gate#Steins;gate#itaru hashida#kaito yashio#akiho senomiya#visual novels#visual novel reviews
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sincerely, but no longer yours | chapter 2

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sincerely, but no longer yours | ex!kim namjoon x reader
☘ genre | angst, exes au
☘ summary | It started as a coping mechanism as getting the words out provided a form of catharsis. But now you can’t stop writing these love letters, even with the knowledge that they’ll never get sent. After all, who writes love letters to their ex?
☘ word count | 5.6k
☘ rating | PG-13
☘ warnings | none
☘ a/n | ngl this update is coming later than i intended 🙈🙈 life has been pretty demanding on me lately butttt here we go!! chapter 2 😌 as always, thank you all you lovelies for reading, and let me know what you think 💕

The blare of the alarm pierces straight through the pleasantry of slumber and has you fumbling blindly for your phone. It’s right there on the bedside table. You refuse to open your eyes to the morning light that streams into your apartment. Finally, your searching hand finds the coolness of the device that's vibrating away angrily where it sits. Within a few attempts, swiping with your eyes still stubbornly closed, you get it to shut up. Rolling over, you snuggle further down under the covers, basking in the cozy warmth.
Beep. Beep.
Of course the moment of peace is not meant to last. The five-minute snooze duration on your alarm provides but a temporary respite. You groan.
But you kick the covers off, letting the cold morning air be what shocks you into alertness. Remaining in bed is really tempting, sure.
Thank god you love your job enough to overcome the daily inertia of getting up.
You shiver a little as your bare feet hit the chilly floor. Pulling the oversized shirt that is your staple sleepwear closer to you in an attempt to retain some body heat, the thought of purchasing a fluffy robe is beginning to look less and less impulsive and more and more justifiable as a necessity. With the lack of said fluffy robe, you rush to the bathroom in search of the comfort that's found in standing under the warm spray of the shower.
Your daily morning shower always gets you sufficiently awake, or enough for you to at least be in the right state of mind to make your cup of coffee that will wake you up entirely. The coffee machine had been a splurge at the time of purchase. But it’s established itself well enough within your morning routine to be considered an investment at this point. Sipping your coffee- with cream and no sugar- in between your daily make-up routine has your insides all toasty and warm.
The hot beverage exponentially increases in importance on rainy mornings like these. It’s nothing too drastic, just a light drizzle. But it makes the concrete jungle that you live in feel extra cold, and in more ways than just in temperature. The lack of lush greenery and the stiff silence of the people rushing about to get on with their hectic daily lives often leaves the city atmosphere feeling gray and dreary.
But you can’t complain.
Not when you’re one of the exceptional cases that gets to do what you truly love. In fact, being surrounded by the robotic throngs that drag themselves to the towering skyscrapers that house these big fancy corporations of blah only makes you even more aware that what you have is something coveted.
Working as a museum curator definitely wasn’t your childhood dream. But your college days had awakened the deep passion for art history that had laid dormant in you for years.
And now, here you are. Living in the big city and working for a prestigious museum. Who would have imagined that small-town you would have achieved all of this?
You absolutely love it. This little space in the world you’ve carved out is yours. You’re chasing after your own dream and living out your passion.
Maybe that’s one thing you should be thankful for from the breakup. Being thrust into singleness had left you helplessly untethered at first what with the abrupt upheaval of all the plans you’d initially laid out.
But perhaps it was what you needed. You needed to be an individual. You needed to know what that individuality meant. And your self-exploration, free from just chasing his shadow, brought you to discover your interest in curatorial work.
Which, in turn, brought you to the city.
The very same city that the breakup had happened in.
The fates truly have a sense of humor, pulling you back to the place which was once the site of heartbreak and tragedy, but is now the launchpad for your ambitions and self-actualization.
Or, much more plausibly, it was not the fates but a matter of practicality and statistics. It’s a big city, housing multiple big-name museums. It’s only natural that the city would become the base for you to build up your career once you completed your post-grad studies.
Once upon a time, when things were still a little too raw, you’d sworn off this place entirely. The city was simply too filled with memories, both good and bad, of him.
But that line of thought simply couldn’t hold up for too long. After all, by that same logic, your own hometown would have had to be boycotted as well.
Through your extended reverie, your hands- well-seasoned to the movements they execute daily- had finished your simple make-up routine. One final spritz of setting spray, and you release your now damp hair from where it sat bundled in the towel atop your head. As you absentmindedly blow dry your hair, your thoughts wander off on their own once again.
Your decision to move out to the city was one that was made in full knowledge that Namjoon was still here. This city is not affectionately termed the city of dreams for nothing. As an aspiring writer and a boy with a city soul, it was the most natural progression of events that he chose to remain in the city after graduating from college. Living in the city made it convenient for him to meet up with his editor and publishing company.
Or so you’ve heard from Hoseok. It’s been years since your break up and neither of you have reached out to close that awkward distance that rifted between you. Anyway, when you were moving out here, you figured that in a city as big as this with such a dense population, there’s little chance that you’ll actually bump into him.
Okay. You apologize to whatever deity it is out there for your earlier dismissal of the fates. Now that you think about it, they truly exist, and boy do they have a sense of humor.
Who would think that even in a city as large as yours, you’d still manage to run into him? And not just once, but a number of times now.
The first time, it was in a diner just two streets down from the museum that you had planned to go to for lunch. That is, until you spotted him through the window, chatting with a companion, his tanned skin and dimpled smile the same as always. Suffice to say, your lunch plans changed.
Then on a quiet afternoon in the museum, your little workplace trio had slipped out together for a coffee break under Yeri’s insistence. Apparently, the new cafe down the road served an oat milk latte that was to die for, or at least good enough to drag you and Soo-eun out for.
Turns out the cafe’s reputation had reached Namjoon’s ears too, because there he was, seated by the window with a mess of papers filled with his scrawly handwriting. The choice of seating was so… Joon. He’d always justified his fascination with people-watching by claiming it to be an essential part of his creative process.
Thankfully, this creative process seemed to be going well for him and took his full attention, allowing you to slip into the cafe unnoticed. A true feat, really, considering how animated Yeri gets when she’s chatty. With your oat milk latte in hand- also this damn drink better be so good it brings you to your knees on the first sip given the things you’ve had to endure to obtain it- you’re ready to make your swift escape from this risky situation.
As Soo-eun pushes the door open, you steal a leftwards glance. Your heart stills for a second. A pair of familiar, striking eyes is trained on you, and they widen just a fraction upon being caught. You can feel your own features making their own reflex reaction as the shock runs electric through you.
The awkward eye contact is forcibly broken as you follow after your friends, refusing to acknowledge the moment the two of you just shared. That was all it was- a moment- but it felt like time came to a standstill the moment your eyes met.
This freezing of time seems to be recurrent in your run-ins with Namjoon. The next time you see him is when you’re riding the subway home. Your pubescent years had seen Namjoon shooting up in height. You can’t forget the countless times he’d had to stoop down for you so you could press a chaste goodbye kiss to his cheek. What an inconvenience it’d been.
But what a convenience it is in this scenario. His head, though bent over a book, towers over the rush hour crowd squeezed into the carriage. With his height, you’d spotted his presence within mere seconds of him boarding the train.
The shock that had jolted through you had you dropping your eye gaze and ducking your head, letting your hair fall as a shield to conceal you. And it was a pretty effective one, as your surreptitious monitoring revealed that he was none the wiser to your presence.
However your next challenge comes when it’s your stop next and he’s standing right by the exit. As the train pulls into the station, you pray hard that he returns to his book and remains sufficiently engrossed in it for you to make your escape. Keeping your gaze on the ground, you worm your way around the crowd, mumbling out ‘pardon me’s.
Perhaps that was your downfall, was what alerted him to your presence. You’re stepping out of the carriage and so close to sweet, sweet relief.
But something brushes your arm just as you’re passing by him- a hand maybe? Your breath catches. Time halts. You steel your nerves. Ignore it. Just keep walking.
As the whirring of the blow dryer switches off, so does your unrestrained recalling come to an end. Downing the last of your coffee- now barely warm- you bring it to the kitchen to wash away the dredges the same way you wash away the thoughts of Namjoon.

"One more week, everyone!" Yeri cheers, as she turns her chair, swapping her cushy flats out for some black heels. That can only mean one thing- she’s headed for a night out.
"Have fun, Yeri," you say.
"Fun? What is that? At this point in our timeline, all I know is the hustle, babe."
You glance meaningfully at her shoes.
"Happy hour drinks with one of our patrons so I can secure the loan on this piece that you listed as absolutely essential," she explains in response to your pointed look.
"Ok, ok. Go work your magic."
She smirks. "That’s right, trust me to be your resident miracle worker."
"Just make sure it comes on time, please. The exhibition spatial plotting on this one looks intense," Soo-eun pipes up quietly.
"Hey, where’s the vote of confidence in our heavenly trio?" Yeri says.
"I mean, we’re good at what we do, but exhibition design never gets any less stressful."
"Don’t worry, Soo-eun, we’ll deliver an excellent exhibition as per usual," you say, instilling in them the confidence that you genuinely feel when working with this team. "With Yeri’s charisma in securing the loans on the pieces we need, coupled with your eye in exhibition design, it’ll be great as per usual."
Ever since that first exhibition you’d all been thrown together for, the synergy between the three of you was undeniable, both to yourselves and to your other coworkers who were mere witnesses of it.
"And not forgetting your taste in selection of pieces too, ____. See, there’s the vote of confidence I was looking for," Yeri says. She applies a fresh coat of her merlot red lipstick and inspects her appearance in her compact mirror. Deeming herself presentable, she gets up from her desk, handbag casually and stylishly slung on her forearm. "Ok, I’m off. TGIF, everyone! Don’t stay too late working on those descriptions, ____."
You hum in response, your eyes glued to said descriptions that were only half-written at this point. Maybe a weekend working overtime is in order.
"Oh! Don’t forget, we’ve got brunch with Dong-In tomorrow. He really enjoyed your company the last time," Yeri says, as if she read your mind. There goes your overtime plans for the weekend that you were mentally pencilling in.
"Right. You make sure that you don’t get too wasted and miss brunch tomorrow."
"Hey, it’s a strictly professional drinking session tonight."
"Mmhm, but I’m sure you’ll find a group of friends for drinks after the meeting. When have you ever missed a night out on the town on a Friday?"
"Touche."
You smirk when she concedes. You love Yeri with all your being, but she’s a party girl at heart and you know her well. "Text me when you’re up tomorrow."
"Will do, babe. I’ve really got to run now or I’ll be late and lose you your art piece."
"All the best, Yeri!" Soo-eun calls after her.
"Thanks, and all the best, Yeri!" you echo.
Sinking back in the plush of your desk chair, you return to the write-ups and sigh.
"Just one more week, ____. Like you said, we’ve got this," Soo-eun encourages.

The next day begins much like the previous, with you fumbling for your alarm in your sleep-addled state and groaning when the five minute snooze duration passes way quicker than what five minutes feels like.
You go through your usual morning routine- shower, coffee, make-up, hair- but can afford to chill out with nowhere to rush to. Weekend mornings are to be savored for their unhurried pace. Getting up is a pain, but you relish the quiet, unbroken serenity of the mornings enough to haul yourself out of bed, even if you don’t have work to head out for.
To be frank, you’re enjoying the peacefulness of your morning so immensely that when 10am rolls around and there’s still no sign from Yeri that she’s awake- you’ve done your due diligence, you’ve dropped her at least five texts and multiple calls to check if she’s alive- the temptation to just ditch your brunch plans grows harder to fight.
Well technically, it’s Yeri’s brunch plans… So if she doesn’t wake up for them then it’s not really your fault, is it?
Dialling her number one last time brings you to her voicemail- Hey, it’s Yeri! If you’re hearing this, it either means I’m busy, asleep, or ignoring you. Just leave your message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Unless I’m ignoring you, in which case, … *beep*- and you smile as you find your scapegoat.
[10.07am] ____: hey dong in, mornnn, i don’t think yeri’s awake
[10.07am] ____: soooo i don’t think she’ll be making it to brunch at this rate
[10.08am] ____: should we take a rain check on this?
Your phone buzzes a little while later.
[10.11am] Dong-In: oh damn, ok then.
[10.13am] Dong-In: catch you another time?
You know that you should feel bad, but you can’t help the joy that washes through you at the prospect of being able to just stay home. Homebody tendencies die hard. Being conscious not to sound too happy, you type a reply quickly, letting Dong-In know you’ll check with Yeri when she’s free next.
The sudden freeing up of your day has you giddy with excitement. With your hair up in a bun and hitting play on your favorite Broadway musicals spotify playlist, you set about tidying your apartment as you sing to yourself. The mess in your apartment has been steadily accumulating in your neglect as a result of the busy schedules at work. But it’s gotten to a point where even you can’t stand it. And more importantly, Hoseok, with his particularity on cleanliness, is coming to visit next week.
When your apartment’s sufficiently clean, you make breakfast with whatever leftovers you can muster from your depleting food supplies. Consuming your pathetically pulled together breakfast omelette that consists of the last egg in the fridge and an overripe, almost-mush tomato cements the next item on your agenda. It’s time to go grocery shopping.
You’re midway to the grocery store when your phone buzzes in your pocket in quick succession as if provoked.
[12.18pm] Yeri: BINCH did you not go to brunch??
[12.18pm] Yeri: duDE
[12.18pm] Yeri: !!!!!!!!
[12.18pm] Yeri: ____ i s2g
[12.18pm] ____: well good morning to you too
[12.19pm] ____: you were dead to the world
[12.19pm] ____: i called you at least eight times and dropped you multiple texts
[12.19pm] ____: why are you coming at me this way huh
[12.19pm] ____: anyway i told dong in to postpone
[12.19pm] Yeri: ok oK too much shouting for this hungover bij
[12.19pm] ____: yeri it’s all over text…
[12.20pm] Yeri: typing in caps makes it shout in my head alrite
Yeri’s drama queen antics are truly one of a kind. It has you rolling your eyes, but you smile. Well now that she’s awake, you figured lunch and a hangout could substitute for your cancelled brunch plans. And of course, hungover Yeri is always in need of tender loving care. Your grocery shopping plans can always wait.
[12.20pm] ____: anyway your personal postmates is on its way to you so ‘hungover bij’ had better be grateful
[12.20pm] ____: see you in 20
[12.20pm] Yeri: ok i take it all back I LOVE YOU YOU’RE THE BEST

You get to Yeri’s place and it’s unexpected but not surprising that Soo-eun’s the one who opens the door to let you in. It makes sense, a weekend hangout would simply be incomplete without her. Plus, the task of nursing your hungover friend is not something to be taken on alone.
"Soo-eun!" You wrap an arm around her in greeting, which she returns.
"Hey, ____," she responds. "Yeri’s in the shower but she should be out soon."
"How bad is it?" you ask, releasing her and heading to the kitchen.
Soo-eun trails after you. "It’s been worse. And food will make her hangover better."
"It’s a good thing you’re here. We need your voice of reason to mediate the dumbass squabbles hungover Yeri and my impatient ass will undoubtedly get into."
Soo-eun simply laughs at your antics, shaking her head. She's well-accustomed to her role as peacemaker by now.
Another voice rings through the kitchen area where you stand with Soo-eun. "Wow, the disrespect! Breaking and entering into my house to gossip about me?"
Yeri enters, her usual bouncy ringlets now hang limp and wet, creating a damp spot over her chest where it sticks to her oversized t-shirt. In contrast to her usual self, hungover Yeri forgoes style for comfort.
"Case in point," you say. Before Yeri can bite back a response, you interject with a raise of the takeout bag in your hand.
"Hmph. I will forgive you this time. But only because you come bearing peace offerings."
"Only because you think with your stomach, you mean."
"Okay my hungover brain doesn’t want to argue anymore. Just want food."
With that, the three of you are crashing on the couch while Yeri takes liberal bites of her burger. The fries get split amongst you, picked at sporadically between your playful gossiping.
The upcoming exhibition- that's opening in a week, wow, where did all that time go?- is a pretty big one, and the three of you have been slogging it out for months now. At this stage of the project, having a weekend to kick back and relax has become a true rarity. It makes you treasure the time together even more.
But in that vengeful manner that time seems to get when you're enjoying yourselves, the afternoon slips by when it feels like it's barely even begun. Outside the looming windows of Yeri’s loft apartment, the sun is beginning to set. The tv is playing but it’s the equivalent of a murmur, just ambient noise as the three of you soak in the coziness of physical closeness.
None of you wants to shatter the quiet calm that has settled in like a blanket over you, but someone has to. And that someone is you.
You lift your head from where it rests on Soo-eun’s shoulder. Your light jostling causes Yeri to lift her head from where it lays on your lap.
You sigh. "I’ve procrastinated grocery shopping for the entire day. And the fridge isn't getting any fuller the longer I stay."
Yeri whines and plops her head back down onto your lap, pressing down forcefully to keep you from getting up.
"Or we could all go to the store together," Soo-eun says. Yeri's head pops up at the suggestion.
"Idea! Let's go!" she says, scrambling up from her reclined position across the couch. "You brought me Arby’s, it’s only fair I do groceries with you."
You turn to Soo-eun, but she’s replying before you can even ask. "I suggested it, of course I’m ok with it."
"Fine," you huff, but they both know it’s feigned annoyance. All three of you are as clingy to each other as the next is. "You can come along. But we’re only buying the necessities. Only. Necessities."

Your basket is full of non-necessities thrown in by Yeri. You really should have made a shopping list.
While Yeri is busy perusing the next aisle, Soo-eun removes the bags of chips Yeri had thrown in (because ‘this is a necessity! You never have any snacks when we crash at your place, I’m just thinking ahead for our future hangouts!’) and places them back on the shelf it came from. You smile at her gratefully.
Yeri returns with another armful of snacks.
"Yeri," you groan. "I came for fresh produce, not this. I already had an overripe tomato for breakfast. I’m not up for eating junk food as sustenance for the rest of the week."
"Well you could have had a nice fresh meal if you didn’t skip out on brunch. Poor Dong-In, I can’t believe you cancelled brunch with him."
"Hm," you say, walking ahead down the grocery aisle, "if you feel so bad for Dong-In, maybe you shouldn’t have overslept on us then."
Yeri chases after you to dump the snacks in your basket. "You could have just gone without me. He’s a nice guy, y’know."
"No way, that would be too awkward. What would we even talk about? We’re so different."
"You’ve only met him twice. Who knows? Maybe he belts out Broadway songs in the shower just like you and you can finally find the Phantom to your… Opera."
Walking just behind the two of you, Soo-eun’s laughter, though hastily masked by a cough, could be heard.
"It’s Christine. And if you’d watched the musical, you would know not to wish Phantom on anyone," you say.
"Whatever! I’m just saying, it takes more than two meetings to know someone. Give him a chance, ____."
"Wait." You freeze mid-step. You turn to Yeri. "Are you trying to set me up with Dong-In?!"
Yeri’s eyes roll in exaggerated exasperation. When she’s done, she folds her arms and her body language sends a loud and clear, "Duh."
You frantically pull your phone out from where it sits in the pocket of your jeans. Swiping quickly to read your text conversations with Dong-In in the light of this new information, you’re absolutely mortified by your lack of awareness and worried if you’ve come off as brash in your ignorance.
"Does he know? Am I the only one who’s unaware?!"
This time, it’s Soo-eun that pitches in. "Even as a third party, it was pretty obvious Yeri was trying to matchmake you two. So… sorry, ____, but it’s just you."
You sputter.
"It’s alright. Your obliviousness is part of your charm," Yeri says.
"And," Soo-eun cuts in before you can retort, "you have no obligation to feel anything for Dong-In. So if you’re not interested in him that way, you just aren’t."
Yeri huffs, but agrees. "She’s right. But- now that you’re finally aware- give him a chance alright?"

As it turns out, you never get to give Dong-In that chance. With the exhibition launching in less than a week, it's a crazy sprint to the finish-line, and your days are simply too packed to think about anything other than preparing for the exhibition.
The exhibition itself has a short lifespan- it'll be open to the public for a relatively short period of six months.
But accompanying it is a series of open lectures meant for public education of the arts. Yeri, who is simply amazing at patron relations, managed to rope in guest lecturers for the next few months. But the museum thought it would be an excellent idea to have one of their own resident curators to helm the first of the series of lectures.
And it was an excellent idea. Just not for the curator who had to take it on. And that curator would be you.
Sitting in the first row of seats in the auditorium, you try your best to refrain from looking back. You can hear the buzz of the audience behind you as they stream in. It sounds like a sizable amount of people. Looking back would only spook you out further, so you focus your attention on the index cards in your hands, running through your main points again and again.
You take a deep breath in, and heave it out in an attempt to release the anxiety built up in your chest. A warm hand gently pries your right hand’s nervous grip off your index cards.
"____," Soo-eun says. She's smiling assuredly at you when you look up at her. "You'll be great."
From your left, Yeri gives your shoulder a light shove. "Yeah. You've got this, girl!"
"We've seen the amount of effort you've put into this. It'll pay off," Soo-eun says.
Their words breathe a deep sense of confidence in you. After all, they're the ones who had to bear with your stress and they're the witnesses to consecutive late nights you've pulled in the office to get your script and slides done. This particular iteration of the script was a product of not just your work, but their benevolence and hard work too at editing and proofreading.
Squeezing Soo-eun's hand in yours in a bid to get rid of the jitters, you nod at them.
"We've got this," you say.
The clock hits time and you walk on stage, focusing on keeping one foot in front of the other and focusing on not- oh god forbid- tripping over your heels. The nerves are still present as you take your place at the podium, but you ignore the way your hands tremble ever so slightly.
You greet the audience, capturing their attention, and begin your presentation. And as you begin talking about your subject matter- the topic you've spent months researching and studying- the nerves melt away and your passion begins to take center-stage in your mind instead.
You're so immersed in the topic that you're just going and going, and soon enough you've reached the end of your script and the ‘Q&A’ slide is up on screen. Applause fills the auditorium, and you smile, genuinely pleased that people seem to have enjoyed your presentation. In the corner of your eye, you see Yeri cheering, and Soo-eun shoots you two thumbs-up.
"Thank you." You bow slightly. "I'll open the time up to the floor. If anyone has any questions, you may feel free to ask them now."
You scan across the auditorium, looking out for questions, when-
Time freezes in that way it always seems to whenever your eyes meet. Seated somewhere in one of the middle aisles but off to the right of the auditorium, long limbs crossed one over the other in his black slacks, Namjoon's eyes are wide as yours catch on him as if encountering a snag.
Oh. My. God. What is he doing here?
Peeling your eyes off him, you skim across the room again. Thankfully, a few hands are raised now and you take their questions, offering yourself a means of escape. But your attention is split and it takes intentional effort as you forcibly will yourself to look at anything but him.
"Okay, I'm afraid that's all the questions we have time for. But I'll be around with some of the other curators for a couple more minutes if anyone has any other questions about the exhibition," you say, gesturing to Yeri and Soo-eun, who wave at the public.
As the audience disperses, you walk off stage, hoping he'll just quietly leave.
No such luck, apparently. From your peripheral vision, you see him coming over as a few other members of the public come up to you to thank you for your lecture.
"Hey," he says, and the familiarity of his warm tone hits you like a punch in the gut, "um, you did a really good job today."
As if your break up hadn't happened the way it did, as if the numerous awkward encounters hadn't taken place, as if it didn't hurt you right now just seeing his face properly after all these years, you put up a front. You smile at him diplomatically.
"Thanks," you say. Your tone is kept even, professional. "How did you find it?"
"It was great, really. I've come to a couple of the museum's exhibitions, but this is the first lecture I've attended."
"Yeah, it's a new thing we decided to introduce for this particular exhibition."
"It's great, yeah. Gives more depth and insight to the art pieces and really makes the whole thing come alive when you see it from the curator's perspective."
You nod. "Nice. That was our intention."
"Anyway," he pauses and runs a hand through his hair self-consciously, "how have you been? It's been a long time."
You bite back the scathing remark that sits on the tip of your tongue. It's almost too enticing to finally let him have it after the years of torment he'd caused you after your break up. The torment that still lives in you, muted under layers of numbness that you've buried it under. Did he even feel the pain in the same measure that you did?
"I'm good." You're tempted to leave it at that. But there's just something in his eyes, something... like a plea? that makes it impossible for you to be cold to him the way your past self imagined you would be. "I've been living in the city for a couple of years now. I'm working in the museum as a curator, as you can see, and yeah, life has been good for me."
Before you can stop yourself, you find yourself reciprocating his question. Ultimately, you can't deny your burning curiosity at what he's been up to. "What about you? How have things been for you?"
"I finally got published a few years back," he says, and you nod as if this is new information to you. Truth is, on your summer break back home that year, your eavesdropping ways had brought the news to you as you heard Hoseok congratulating him on his breakthrough. He laughs lightly. "My life has kind of just revolved around writing, getting inspiration from different sources to write, then writing more. If it sounds really mundane, it's because it is."
"No way." You shake your head. "You're living your dream, Namjoon. Wasn't it always your ambition to be a published author?"
You regret it almost immediately, bringing up the past. Anything to do with the past is dangerous territory. Hell, having a conversation with him that's more than just polite small talk about cursory topics devoid of personal details and emotions (i.e. a conversation like this one) is dangerous territory.
He murmurs something, and you’re certain you mishear him. "You remember."
"Pardon?"
"No, I was agreeing with you. Yeah, it is."
In the background, your slides click off, and it pulls you out of your conversation with Namjoon.
"I think I've gotta go," you say, pointing to the podium where Soo-eun collects your belongings. "My friends are waiting for me."
"Oh!" Namjoon says, turning to look at where you're pointing. "Yeah, don't wanna hold you up any longer. Thanks for your time today."
He turns to go, and you can't help the nagging discomfort at the way things are left hanging between the two of you.
"Hey!" you call. He turns back. "Do you want to do dinner? Hoseok is coming out for the weekend, so do you want to hang out, the three of us? We're going to the diner two streets down from here."
Funny. Didn’t you avoid this diner to avoid Namjoon the last time? Again, it seems the fates truly have a sense of humor.
Namjoon's eyebrows raise in surprise, but it's momentary and quickly replaced as his features soften into a grateful smile. His dimples appear and you hate how, even after all these years, it still has the power to wring your heart out.
"That sounds really nice, actually," he says.
"Is seven ok for you?"
"Seven’s good. I'll see you and Hoseok then."
"See you," you say and he nods. This time, he turns to go for real.
As you watch his retreating figure, you wonder if you really made the right choice, opening the door for him to re-enter your life after all these years.
#btswriterscollective#btswritingcafe#btsbookclub#ficswithluv#btsguild#bts fic#bts series#bts angst#bts exes au#bts x reader#namjoon fic#namjoon series#namjoon angst#namjoon exes au#namjoon x reader#knj fic#knj series#knj angst#knj exes au#knj x reader
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Journal 8
I met the Queen of Mendev. Which somehow managed to still be impressive even after meeting the Inheritor a few days ago, which speaks pretty highly to her. Aaaaaand the Queen kind of sort of knighted me and gave me a promotion to commander of own legion and I don’t know what to do and I’m freaking out a little.
Right. Right—let’s just take it from the top.
Our little group had met up at Defender’s Heart when we got word from Commander Spriggans that there was an attack on the horizon. We made our way outside and saw an enormous force approaching. There were a number of those colossal Ulkreth demons that Hiskaria had seen demolishing buildings during the first attack, as well as a full army of lesser demons. They were marching on us rather than teleporting straight in—we figured specifically to show off their might to lower our morale.
Then, before the army could reach us, a second army from the East came charging into battle. Above them great metal machines flew overhead, and they dropped into the middle of the demon army these huge metal scorpions, which landed and began shooting the demons with beams from their tails. A person with green hair and glowing lines down their body gave a battle cry as they grabbed onto one of those giant metal scorpions and caused it to shoot that appeared to be an empowered disintegrate out of its tail into one of the Ulkreths.
The United Mendev-Numeria Alliance had joined the battle, just in the nick of time. With the use of their ‘Annihilator robots’, those big scorpions, and ‘laser guns’, and all sorts of other weapons I’d never even dream up they cleared out the demons. Even Hiskaria was about speechless. I think her words were something like “I thought Kevoth-Kul didn’t have that many of those”.
We were all incredibly pleased with how that went, and everyone was heading to Defender’s Heart for a victory ‘we didn’t get crushed by demons for another day’ drink, when a messenger came to get the four of us. Apparently Queen Galfrey had come to Kenabres herself. And apparently she’d been told about what we’d done the day before. And apparently she wanted to meet with us personally. She gave us the option of meeting at her personal war tent or at a place of our choosing. We decided it seemed most polite to meet at her tent. Melody and I decided to go dressed in the fine clothes we’d gotten from the kind shop keeper who had given us the free incredibly nice clothing for saving his wares the other day. Hiskaria and Luna…did not. It turned out it didn’t really matter. I will compared Queen Galfrey to the Inheritor in one way—she is a warrior as much as anything else.
When we arrived to the Mendev-Numeria encampment, we were met by the green haired person, Coremagon—an android, the first I’ve ever met. They had a particular quirk, in that they were not particularly good with emotions, and kept blowing up in anger. It also turns out they are Cassandalee’s herald. I would say I bet that was pretty cool for Hiskaria, but honestly considering her goddess talks in her head, maybe it was kind of mundane compared to how utterly in awe I would have been in her place.
I admit, I may have gotten Coremagone riled up a little. I wasn’t necessarily trying to. I was actually trying to help. Legitimately. I’m not exactly the best with emotions myself. I figured, it’s more pleasant to focus on trying to feel the good ones than the bad ones, right? That’s what I do, at least. Smile.
Well, apparently telling the herald of the god that they should smile is a bad idea.
I got thrown into the air by a whirlwind and landed on my ass.
They got told off by the queen though, so I got a little vindication.
We went into Queen Galfrey’s war tent and met the Queen herself. She was an incredibly striking figure. Definitely more warrior than bureaucrat. She waved a hand over her war table, and an enchantment in the table went off that caused a feast to appear, and she invited us to sit and eat while we spoke of recent events. We confirmed the reports she’d received of what had happened at the Grey Garrison, and she told us some of what has been happening at the borders. The Stormlord’s forces have been attacking at the borders of Mendev since the fall of Kenabres, and without the Wardstone’s barrier it is now only the armies of the crusaders standing between them and the rest of the world.
She said that while some people understand the gravity of the choice we made, and the lives we saved in doing so, others are calling us traitors for destroying the final shred of the barrier and the last hope of renewing it.
Queen Galfrey had a new task for us. As a member of the Crusades I am, of course, obligated to see this through to the end, but she offered to the others that if they wanted to help to clear their names and to do something to strike a blow against the demon hordes, she had a mission for us.
Her Majesty asked that we travel with a legion of her men to Drezen, to take back the captured fortress, and to retrieve the Sword of Valor, the very banner once held aloft by Iomedae herself, which if hung in the town again would expel the demonic forces. Currently the bulk of the forces from Drezen were with the Stormlord on the border, and the Queen intended to take her army to keep their attention there while a smaller strike force went in and took Citadel Drezen. I mentioned that we’d discovered that Stauton Vhagn was involved in the attack on Kenabres, and that he was holed up in Drezen as well. The Queen felt this was all the more reason to strike while the iron was hot and take Drezen back from him.
Luna said she would be willing to help, but she had no desire to lead an army. Queen Galfrey agreed that Luna and Melody were not members of the crusades, and therefore the choice was theirs to not take such a role. She also asked Hiskaria for her paperwork, and signed off on her release papers, before sending them off to be returned to Kevoth-Kul via some sort of magic portal. She said that technically Hiskaria was free to go now, as she had done more than enough to warrant her release in good faith. However the Queen had a feeling that Hiskaria would see this through to the end, and Hiskaria agreed that she wanted to do so as well.
With that said, Queen Galfrey declared that she was going to have each of us knighted and titled for our services. Should we survive this, apparently we’d each have land back in Mendev should we want it. That’s. A lot. That’s more than I ever expected to get out of all this. I didn’t come here to get anything, except maybe a little justice for those who died, and the ability to stop as many people from being made victims as possible. Actual physical rewards never really crossed my mind.
Actually surviving to the end of all this never really crossed my mind if we’re going to be brutally honest.
Melody was titled Lady-Lady Melody Legro, Lady of Grace
Luna was titled Luna, Lady of the Crescent Moon
Hiskaria was simply titled Lady Hope—Hope being her last name and something meaningful given her story.
And I guess now I am Sir Draven, the One-Eyed Knight.
I guess it’s a good thing I decided to quit being so self-deprecating about my scars after last night, or I might have felt a bit of a sting about the big thing that held me back all these years and kept me wallowing in the Raven Corps being what she decided to highlight in my title.
Okay. There might still be a little bitterness there. But—I’m working on it.
With this done, we were given a timeframe to expect to go—we will be leaving in three days time. Then we were dismissed, except for Luna who asked to remain to ask the Queen something in private. The rest of us gave her privacy and remained outside while she talked to the Queen about…whatever that was about.
Then we headed back to Defender’s Heart for a little revelry and to meet three new allies who the Queen had brought to our attention would be joining us with the legion. Aron Kir, a master spy with a strong knowledge base in siege warfare. His boyfriend and an old friend of Melody’s, Sosiel Vaenic, a Shelynite cleric and tactician with a vast knowledge of demons who didn’t really understand Melody’s desire to keep her heritage on the down low. And last, smallest, but certainly not least, Nurah Dendiwhar, a halfling bard who kept the sangrias coming throughout the night from a seemingly never ending box on her back. The three were extremely colorful and enjoyable characters who I was feeling very optimistic about working with.
Then while we were chatting, Commander Spriggans flagged me down. We shared a drink, and he handed me new orders from Queen Galfrey. Hiskaria was officially no longer part of the Raven Corps. And neither was I, since I would be leaving the city and therefore the Corps behind.
Instead, as I alluded to earlier, I had gotten a promotion. Commander of my own legion. I have a couple of days to think of a name and to get everything in order. Commander Tirabade—I guess I should be on first name basis with her now like everyone else? Irabeth is coming as well, as neither of us have field experience outside of Kenabres, but she has longer experience as a commander and is meant to be an advisor of sorts.
Inheritor help me that might be the strangest sentence I’ve written in this journal so far, Irabeth Tirabade is supposed to be my advisor on being commander of my own legion. It has been a few hours and this is still surreal to me. Aravashnial is coming along to lend his magic expertise as well, and Anevia wouldn’t be caught dead being left behind with Irabeth going.
Oh! I had forgotten in the middle of everything else, Queen Galfrey had some of her personal clerics see to Aravashnial and Anevia, so their injuries from the attack are no more. It is a relief, especially in regards to Aravashnial’s eyes. Queen Galfrey offered to do the same for my own eye, but I declined. I explained that I’d already learned how to fight with one eye, and I’d have to readjust if she healed me now. Which is very true, although perhaps not my only reason after the other day. It’s a good reminder, too.
More surprisingly, Horgus is coming as well. He’s going to be managing the army’s funds, field supplies, basically all around making sure the numbers are in order and we don’t run out of what we need when we need it, or get overzealous and overstock on something we don’t need. Which is all well and good with me, I don’t have a head for numbers myself. Hiskaria’s volunteered to help him and I’m more than happy to let her. She’s proven with her magic and assisting Aravashnial that she’s good enough at bookkeeping.
As for me…I’m a bit at a loss. I talked to Leto, of course. Asked him how he does it. Plays off being the cool confident leader like he does. Well—obviously it’s because he is. His answer basically boiled down to fake it until you make it, which is so not the answer I wanted to hear. There’s no way he’s been faking that confidence all this time. I’ve seen him, that easy charisma that just draws people to him. He’s in a league of his own.
I guess I’ll just keep pushing on forward like I always do. It seems to somehow work out, although I’ll probably have to hit a few stumbling blocks along the way. ‘Just act like you have confidence’, hm? I hate him sometimes. He’s infuriating. I don’t think he even knows how he looks to everyone else.
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50 More Underrated Horror Films To Watch If You're Still Bored and Stressed Out
Last year, I made this list to try to provide entertainment during a bad time. Honestly, we still in this, and it might be time to recommend some more movies.
Eyes of Laura Mars : Faye Dunaway plays a photographer that has psychic visions where she’s seeing through the eyes of a killer. Brad Dourif and Tommy Lee Jones and Rene Auberjonois are there, too, and all great. This movie has been illustriously dubbed a Disco Giallo, and if that doesn’t convince you, nothing will.
The Vagrant : A pitch black comedy that pits Bill Paxton against a vagrant that he believes is trying to ruin his life, but no one will believe him. Does that sound kind of insensitive? Wait for the twist ending, wherein nothing is as it seems. And when I said pitch black, I wasn’t kidding. VERY dark humor, just to warn you.
Antiviral : David Cronenberg has a son! Who is taking after him quite well. Celebrity viruses are a fad in this world, and the body horror happens, and watch it.
Party Line : Do you like psychosexual thrillers full of neon and big hair? This is a big recommendation if that sounds as delightful to you as it does to me. Also, Leif Garrett was a surprisingly good actor in this?
Beyond the Door III : No, you don’t need to watch the first two. That says most of what can be said about this. The rest that can be said is there’s a train and some weird religious stuff and a lot of gnarly deaths.
Pretty Poison : Early Anthony Perkins, playing to type... in a way. There’s a big difference between this and Psycho, and it’s the addition of Tuesday Weld. As much as I love Perkins, she steals the show.
The Editor : If you’re like me and have ventured deep into giallo territory already, then this is what you need. A giallo parody. That’s as wonderful as it sounds.
Absentia : Mike Flanagan’s first film. I might be making this sound more simple than it is, but the story can be boiled down to this premise: what if fairy tale bridge trolls were REAL? Turns out that’s absolutely horrifying.
Banshee Chapter : From Beyond meets MK Ultra. With Ted Levine doing a Hunter Thompson impression the whole time. *chef’s kiss*
Death Machine : You had to see this one coming. Killer robot on the loose. It’s Brad Dourif’s robot, and he’s super weird about it the whole time. This is a love letter to all those action-packed horror movies we love.
Dream Demon : This is the most Sapphic film I’ve ever seen where the two women don’t simply hook up during the course of the film. It’s glorious. I admit I barely noticed anything else. I was just so happy it was so gay. Please watch.
Visiting Hours : Michael Ironside is a killer on the loose. Some other stuff happens, but mostly Michael Ironside happens. William Shatner is there? But who gives a damn! Michael Ironside!
The Unborn : The ending to this. This is one of those movies that keeps one-upping itself, and you’re like it can’t go any farther. They wouldn’t dare. And then they dare. They go there. Pregnancy horror gone hog wild.
Jennifer : Carrie rip-off, but we loves those in this house. Only Carrie is Jennifer, and she has some God-given power to control snakes. Fantastic dismount at the end.
Satan's Slave : Religious horror. BUT. Not Judeo-Christian. Muslim. I love seeing other cultures get in on the religious horror trend. Let’s all be super scared of the evils that can befall us together!
Eyeball : Another good ole nasty giallo. Umberto Lenzi was super prolific, kind of workman-like, but he always delivered on good exploitation. Also, the title means lots of eyeball gore, be aware.
Splinter : Body horror turned up to eleven. The whole point of this movie is to introduce a creature that takes over your body and uses it to locomote, and in doing so, hurts ya real bad. The effects look absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and will burn itself into your brain.
Alone in the Dark : This is only a rare watch because no one has released it on blu-ray yet. *taps watch* Donald Pleasance and Martin Landau get to have a lot of fun. But my fave was a character known as Bleeder. Watch and you’ll see.
The Caller : The only reason I’m able to make these lists as varied and deeply cutting as I am is because of Vinegar Syndrome, and I owe them everything for bringing this one to my attention. I don’t dare say a thing about it. Watch this movie, take the journey, and get your mind blown.
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice : Oh boy. I went through a whole thing where I watched every Children of the Corn film, and believe it or not, I don’t regret that at all. They’re a lot of fun. This one, though, is the MOST fun. My favorite is the church scene where a guy gets a nose bleed. Oh so nasty.
Grim Prairie Tales : Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones in an old west horror anthology. They meet up and tell each other weird stories through the night. Including one where a man is eaten by a woman’s vagina. Hmm.
Amityville 1992: It's About Time : Amityville as a “true” haunting is... bullshit. I hope we all know that by now. But these sequels where hapless families inherit cursed objects that absorbed the house’s ghostly funk... These are great, and this one has the added bonus of Stephen Macht.
Ladromes de Tumbas (Grave Robbers) : A Mexican slasher made by Ruben Galindo Jr. America isn’t the only place where you can get a nasty movie where an undead Satanist chops up screaming teenagers. Thank God.
Memorial Valley Massacre : I’m taking a real chance recommending this one. Some people might find this as dumb as a bag of hammers, but I thought it was charming in what it clearly wanted to be. A killer is loose at a campground, but things are not as simple as they seem on the surface. If only it’d had the budget to really tell the story like it deserved.
Blue Monkey : A bug... that grows really giant... and a disease caused by the bug... get loose in a hospital. So it’s medical horror. And a giant bug movie. With Steve Railsback whipping ass the whole time. Good stuff.
So Sweet... So Perverse : Twisty and turny giallo starring Carroll Baker and directed by Umberto Lenzi. That keeps twisting until you’re like IS THIS THE ACTUAL ENDING? Those are my faves.
Diary of the Dead : Romero! We all know and love him, but this movie got a bad rap, and I’m here to say it deserves a second look. His entire zombie oeuvre is great, and this one is no exception. The man had a lot to say, and now more than ever, it all rings pretty true.
Black Mountain Side : The Thing rip-off, but if you love The Thing, don’t you want more The Thing? Plus, slightly different bend, but with just as much of those paranoid mind games we love.
Turkey Shoot : Maybe more exploitation than horror, but adjacent enough to mention it. This movie starts with a lot of world building, and if that bores you, please stick it out. You don’t want to miss the over-the-top kills and the very satisfying ending.
The Shrine : Folk horror with such a wonderful twist to it. You think you’re watching one kind of movie, then it becomes a whole other beast. A great beast. I won’t spoil it, so just watch it.
Mikey : Killer kid movie. But one of those that doesn’t rely on powers. It’s all about a child exhibiting the early signs of being a psychopath, and the kid they got for the lead is as solid at pulling that off as he’d need to be. Also, Ashley Lawrence appears as a concerned teacher.
The Wind : Meg Foster has the bluest eyes on earth. Also, Wings Hauser chases her around and is completely off his rocker, as usual. Great cat-and-mouse thriller.
Pulse (Kairo) : Japanese apocalyptic movie that kept shocking me and making me shudder in my seat. I can’t express how hard it is for a movie to get that reaction from me and what a feat it is that this one did. It haunts me still.
Martha Marcy May Marlene : Speaking of haunting. I just watched this one, and it feels burned into me. Elizabeth Olsen plays a young woman escaping from a cult, but is she really? Fantastic slow burn.
The Attic Expeditions : This movie is not bad. Stop saying it’s bad. It isn’t. It’s a wonderful mind fuck that will have smoke coming out of your ears. And I’ll just list some people in it: Ted Raimi, Jeffrey Combs, Seth Green, and Alice Cooper.
Primal Rage : Monkey bite man. Man go rabid. Girl go rabid. Shit hit fan.
Night Owl : Early 90s club scene vampire flick filmed in black and white with dark, nasty sex, and I just loved this. Give me that 90s techno arthouse vibe and let me live in it.
The Mortuary Collection : This one is up on Shudder, if you’re so inclined. Highly aesthetically pleasing anthology with Clancy Brown as the “Cryptkeeper” of this particular set of stories.
Death Warmed Up : Australian-made splattery, melty movie that goes all out. If you want to deepen your knowledge of the film movement in that place at that time besides just watching Mad Max, this is a good place to continue your journey.
Kiss of the Damned : If Interview with the Vampire was more... girls. Which means I dug it so much. Particularly the character of Xenia. More Sapphic horror!
From Dusk Til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money : If the first film had been filmed even MORE like Evil Dead. And starred Robert Patrick. RIGHT?
Scissors : Sharon Stone goes insane. That’s the movie. But also this was wild and the ending made me stand up and clap. And Steve Railsback plays twins. I just.
Crimes of Passion : Ken Russell directs Anthony Perkins and Kathleen Turner (both of whom apparently did a LOT of drugs during filming) in an erotic thriller. I feel I don’t need to say more.
Wer : Some murders happen, and everyone believes it’s this one guy, but his lawyer is like oh no it can’t be. But... he’s a werewolf. And it’s fantastic.
The Keep : Michael Mann’s second masterpiece outside of Manhunter. Nazis attempt to occupy a keep that houses an ancient evil, and they all get slaughtered. It warms my heart.
The Fury : Brian de Palma made TWO movies about psychic kids killing everyone in sight. This one has more of a political thriller edge to it, but it’s just as good. Just as fun. Just as in need of attention.
The House of Usher : Specifically the 1989 version. With Oliver Reed. And Donald Pleasance. You read that right. Both of them chewing scenery. Maybe that’s what was actually wrong with the house. The two of them chewed it up until it collapsed.
The Perfume of the Lady in Black : It starts off like any other giallo. And then it ends in a place where you ask yourself, much like David Byrne, how did I get here? It’s magnificent.
Fire in the Sky : Alien abduction! And I mean fucking scary, too. If you ever thought, “that wouldn’t scare me.” Well! I challenge you to watch the ending of this movie and not SHIT EVERYWHERE.
Deepstar Six - Do you like The Abyss? And Leviathan? And Underwater? Watch this. Just go do it. What are you waiting for? Sea monster! And also Miguel Ferrer says of some porn, “is it hot? Is it wet? DOES IT RIDE!?” And I want to say that about everything now.
Oh my God, that took a long time. Now go watch! Enjoy!
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Bring it on home

Comparatively easy listening from the set of records showcased this time around, but there's a world of grief settin' your jaw to grind. You deserve a neck massage and a cocktail; lean into these after you put your misery rectangle aside for a spell.
Astute Palate, s/t (Petty Bunco)
Emily Robb, David Nance, Daniel Provenzano, and Richie Charles got together and hammered out this LP during "48 sleepless hours" in Philadelphia. It's definitely a fairly rough documentation, but if you know the players, that's generally what you'd be gettin' into with 'em anyway. Gotta admit that I'm not a huge fan of what I've heard by David Nance - respect his hustle, though - and the same goes for the tracks he leads here; in particular, the studied classic rock caterwaul employed on "Stall Out" basically rolls my eyes for me. I am, however, fond of David Nance the Guitarist and his heroics on "Stall Out," and "A Little Proof" definitely has me more curious about his recent solo work I've skipped. These are pithy grievances, though: the album rules, as a whole, but it's just hard to stomach some of Nance's lyrics when they're side-by-side with bonafide jammers like "Bring It On Home" and "Treadin' Schuylkill." "Bring It On Home," in particular, with its Velvets-inspired chug and Robb's bleary vocals coolly beckoning you to do as the title says, heats to a boil with the blustery, fried guitar interplay. For me it wipes the floor with anything else on the album, and pretty much anything else I'll hear this year, so let's put all my petty complaints aside and declare this the Summer of Astute Palate, OK? Looks like the secret's out - the LP's sold out from the source, but can be found hiding in various distros and shops. Hunt it down, crack a tallboy, and embrace the sweltering heat of our melting planet with Astute Palate.
Maraudeur, Puissance 4 (self-released)
New and best LP yet from Leipzig's Maraudeur, self-released with some of the best packaging/artwork I've seen in a minute. My memory's usually a bit faulty, but I recall the band being a three-piece on their last, still very good LP from Bruit Direct Disques. I'm inclined to think that the group's ranks have swelled to five anyway, since the sound here is a bit more bright and full, lots of different moving parts zipping and moving around, giving the crisp recording some effervescence. Compared to older songs like "Computer Dreams," Maraudeur sounds sharper, capable of backing up any threats rather than coming across as deflated and listless. Even the slower songs on Puissance 4, such as "Slow Dress," thrive on tension, guitar strings set to snap amidst the robotic/hypnotic vocals. The band seems to have located a sweet spot between the simmering minimalism of Household and the technologically damaged vision of Chrome, and "TWYWYS" basically sounds like a collaboration between the two groups. Guitars are used as window dressing, favoring instead synths and showcasing the chops of the rhythm section. "Face/Figure" and my favorite track "C'est Caché" are the best examples of Maraudeur's rhythmic foundation, but nearly every track causes inadvertent head bobbing. While accessible and familiar on the surface, Maraudeur's dry humor, the carefully camouflaged layers of sound, and whatever is going on in "I Am Here" keep boilerplate post-punk comparisons at bay. Puissance 4 is a refreshing, addictive brew from the not-too distant future, and probably a blast to experience live.
Astrid Øster Mortensen, Gro Mig En Blomst (Förlag För Fri Musik)
New Gothenburg talent alert! Mortensen is apparently a newcomer to the scene, and her debut LP fits in nicely amongst the Förlag För Fri Musik discography. Gro Mig En Blomst features lonely and debased late-night solo explorations with guitar, piano and what sounds like an accordion, accented by electronic manipulations and the found sound that accompanies most FFFM records. It's dreary and stark, and can quickly bring the mood down when it's on. For me the most obvious reference point is Grouper's Ruins, in that both are recordings so intimate that it feels like an interruption to move while it's on. But I also get bits of Picastro's Whore Luck ("Hvor Kommer Mørket Fra?" sounds like it was plucked directly from that album), and there are similarities to Chloe Alison Escott's solo work, on the title track and "Piano i" and "Piano ii." Gro Mig En Blomst is a far cry from more traditional singer-songwriter music, dabbling in Stars of the Lid-like drone on "Brud ii" and jumping into the "Is there a record on or...?" genre on "Solen Er Et Lille Hus" and "Brud i." I can't say I go out looking for records this fragile and surface-level bleak anymore, but Mortensen's work is more often beautiful and calming than hopelessly gray. Another keeper from FFFM, sure to be one of the most sought-after records from the label, and for good reason.
Nightshift, Zöe (Trouble In Mind)
Travel back in time with me, if you will, to a time when "indie rock" was a genre label that had some meaning. After getting rid of the bad taste in my mouth and shaking off the embarrassment at who I was when I largely listened to stuff that'd broadly fall under that label, I'll allow that Nightshift is making a strong argument for some of the music released during the comparative naiveté of the late '00s/early '10s. Across Zöe, you get shades of Broadcast, Lower Dens' Twin-Hand Movement, the UV Race ("Spray Paint the Bridge"), Belle & Sebastian and A Sunny Day In Glasgow ("Power Cut" and "Romantic Mud"). The trick to Zöe is that it folds all these reference points in neatly and places it on a sturdy percussive base. I won't argue that every song here is memorable, but they're all enjoyable, and the songs that hit - "Outta Space," the title track, "Infinity Winner" - send chills down my spine every time. Guitars are plucked and scraped for leading beats, accentuating shuffling drums and giving the bass the spotlight. The vocals are dreamy and lyrics direct, and for the duration of Zöe you're relieved of the pessimistic present and allowed to rigidly dance to Nightshift's hesitant groove. They've charmed their way through my cynicism, and Zöe's been on heavy rotation despite my reluctance. Take it for a spin, and fall under Nightshift's spell.
Hugo Randulv, Radio Arktis: Samlade Ljud Från Den Norra Polcirkeln (Förlag För Fri Musik)
First solo LP from Hugo Randulv, an active presence in the Gothenburg scene with his involvement in Enhet För Fri Musik, Skiftande Enheter and Amateur Hour, among others. Though typically a guitarist, on Radio Arktis, he drops the guitar and instead fills both sides with glacial synths and dusty samples. The label's original write-up for this record called it "grand ambient," though to me it sounds and feels much more personal than something that would soundtrack the Olympics. His use of samples, most notably on "Radio Reykjavik," sounds intimately tied with some fleeting memory, the music serving to enhance or exorcise the feeling tied to it all. It reminds me most of the Fun Years' "God Was Like, No" in that both records used the tools common to ambient/drone music but applied a much more personal touch, that certain nameless attribute that keeps drawing a listener back in. Can't put my finger on it, but both records just sound like they had to be made, rather than serving as a genre exercise or one-off exploration. I don't know that Radio Arktis is going to change anyone's life, but it could, and I've been hypnotized by its wordless, sparkling gray tones for weeks. Even though the "solo musician embraces synths" thing is usually pretty tired and pointless, Hugo Randulv's contribution shows why it's an alluring proposition at all.
Sunhiilow, Beyond the Cycle (Ikuisuus)
More solo synth, this time coming from Valerie Magisson and her Moog Mother-32. Magisson's Sunhiilow project veers into new age/ambient with its bite-sized kosmische explorations. There's something about the combination of the short length of these tracks and the sense of movement present within each that allows Beyond the Cycle to transcend the lifeless drivel that's usually tagged "new age" and "synth." It seems intentional that Magisson was trying to capture the mood of each track title in its corresponding music, and she is largely successful, though its unclear if the title provided direction or was applied afterward. The somewhat jarring introduction of "Wilderness Bloom" and the stoned growth of "Circle Motion" are my top picks, but the album works best as a whole and played very loudly, the overall effect immersing the listener into heady zones traversed by the Nightcrawlers. Leave it to Ikuisuus to release an "ethereal ambient music" record that satisfies, and sounds and looks great to boot. Sunhiilow's a lot more tame than most of what Ikuisuus releases, but it's an accessible, recommended starting point to one of the best active labels. HOWDY.
#Astute Palate#Maraudeur#Astrid Øster Mortensen#Hugo Randulv#Nightshift#Sunhiilow#Petty Bunco#Förlag För Fri Musik#Ikuisuus
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4Kids Korner - Season 2 - Episode 3
I'm a bit late this week because I got caught up with work and school-related dread, but now I'm back to bring you more 4Kids products! This week we have an epic trifepic: Winx Club Magazine Issue one - the castle, Kirby Right Back at Ya - Ice Kirby (DVDouble-Shot) and Kirby Right Back at Ya - Kirby Comes to Cappy Town!
Let's start by getting the smallest one out of the way. Here's Kirby Right Back at Ya - Ice Kirby (2005)



There's something I oddly like about DVDouble-Shot. Starting In 2005, the DVDouble-Shot line was introduced featuring two-Episode DVDs of 4Kids most profitable shows as a way of promoting 4Kids TV. As for the consumer, the main selling point is that you could buy them for a low price, collect and possibly trade them with your friends, kind of like Pokémon cards. I like the idea of one kid saying to the other on the playground, "hey, wanna trade your Ninja Turtles for my YuGiOh?" How successful they were, I have no idea, but they're fun and easy to review on this show. Given their small portion size, practically every DVDouble-Shot is the same. This one had the episodes "The Chill Factor" and "DeDeDe's Snow Job," in accordance with the ice theme of the disc. It also features assorted promos for then-current and upcoming 4Kids shows identical to those seen in the 4Kids TV September demo disc (which I will hopefully review some time in the future.) Before we move on, though there's one little thing I want to point out about the box art. You can't see it in the photos I've provided, but the ice monster on the cover is far more pixelated than Kirby, if you look closely at it, so it appears to me that they lifted it right out of the episode and placed it on the cover. I guess that's just what happens when no official art of a character exists for your graphic designers to use...
Now that we have that one out of the way, let's talk about the stars of today's episode, which actually turned out to have much more historical value than most of the other stuff in my collection. So say hello to the Winx Club Magazine Premiere Issue, The Castle (2005)




This is a very special addition to my collection not only because it's part of what I consider to be 4Kids' absolute peak year, but since the book was presumably printed in January of 2005, it means this was one of the first pieces of of merchandise to feature the now-famous 4Kids TV logo. Heck it might have even been printed before then. As for the book itself, it's quite cute as it features everything an 8-11 year old girl wanting to be a hip and trendy 2000s teenager could want, and contains surprisingly few ads for Winx Club merch. And even more adorable, is the publisher's attempts to fit that description using words like "slammin'" in sentences. I call it a magazine, but it's really more dedicated to the comic included, "The Castle," which I would have read, but I needed to get some sleep the day I read it, so I skimmed the book's numerous activities, instead. But for those still interested, the comic is a retelling of Bloom's enrollment in Alfea, with original art that's pretty accurate to the actual show. But the book's real allure is the activities. Like the free trading card you'll see in the photo above. It even comes with a full-page description of what a trading card game is, making reference to YuGiOh in the process, which I thought was funny since 4Kids owned that, and also because it heavily implies that only boys play YuGiOh when the show itself has many female duelists. After that, you have a faux interview with Bloom taken from the perspective of a fellow Alfea Student. What I remember most clearly about that, is that Bloom says she listens to top 40's, which made me think "man, she's got some trash music taste," even though I, myself have said on multiple occasions off of tumblr that I listen to basically everything. Also included on the magazine are a paper fortune-telling toy, a best friend diary which includes a "secret crush" slot to fill in, a page for writing down predictions about the reader's future, and even a personality test which assigns your traits to a type of flower, as suggested by Flora on the page. The funny thing about this is that one question asks for the reader's favorite kind of movie, and one of the options is "anime everything," which I thought was funny since anime was just starting to get big at that time in America, and the online anime community was just starting to grow. Finally, on the last page, probably the most creative of all, is a step-by-step slumber party plan by Musa, which details inviting everyone over, having them show up dressed as their favorite popstar (like Brittany Spears, for example) and bring their favorite CD from said popstar, then taking turns playing them and talking about them. It sounds quite fun, and it made me smile imagining all the little kids who tried this. That's exactly what I think is awesome about children's entertainment: it makes them happy and builds their imagination. So that's the Winx Club Magazine, a really good buy, but I must admit they used the same art of the girls more than once on a few occasions, and also wrote in a plot hole in the interview with Bloom, where she says she discovered her powers as a child, but in the show she unlocks them at her current age when saving Stella from the first monsters of the series. So it may have a couple flukes, but still quite enjoyable.
And last, but never least, it's time for Kirby Right Back at Ya: Kirby Comes to Dream Land (2002)



This one is also historically significant for two reasons. One is that it was the very first release of one of the more famous non-Pokémon/YuGiOh shows 4Kids had to offer, but it also played a part in promoting the very launch of the Fox Box, as you'll see on the box art. This disc may only have the first three episodes of the show, but it super makes up for it with a plethora of special features, more than any of the DVDs I currently own, and that they strangely enough don't tell you about on the box. And speaking of the box, though you might not see it, the episode descriptions on the back are written entirely in comic sans. Yeah, it's clear to see 4Kids wasn't quite as sharp as they would be in the next few years... and the DVD menus are also written entirely in this font. But that doesn't take away from the outstanding value. much like the Fright to the Finish DVD, this one's special features are split between two menus. For this one, there's "More Kirby" and "Added Attractions," which is the far superior one, but more on that in a minute. The More Kirby menu features a character gallary telling you about the main cast, set to music from the show. Then there's "Kirbyoke," which is there to teach the kids the words to the theme song. And finally, we have a preview for the next DVD in the series, which at that point hadn't a proper name, so Mike Pollock's voice just refers to it as "Kirby Right Back at Ya Volume 2." Then, in the "Added Attractions" menu, we have a promo for Cubix - Robots for Everyone's first DVD release, a short promo for the newly-launched FoxBox.TV website, and the star of this review by far, "What's Inside The Fox Box?!" This incredible 14 minute long promo (which you can find on Youtube, by the way,) previews every single show in the Fox Box's initial lineup as a way of hyping up the network for it's September 2002 launch. Well, kind of... You see, 4Kids made multi-minute promos for their own productions, complete with plot synopses by Mike Pollock and others and theme songs for the shows. Meanwhile, Stargate Infinity, a third-party show, only got a promo featuring still images of the main cast, a paper-thin explanation of the plot and no opening, all clocking in at under a minute. So, yeah, pretty lame move on 4Kids part, but at least we get to see HD footage of 4Kids lost Ultraman Tiga dub. Ultimately, it's a really fun promo from 4Kids' very beginnings as a dedicated children's entertainment company, even though it uses some uncut clips of guns in Fighting Foodons since the dub wasn't finished at that point. One last thing to point out: the promo for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which hadn't even started production at the time,) features an unused theme song demo for the series which also made it's way onto the illusive Fox Box CD. So there you have it, one of the DVDs that started it all. Thanks for reading about it, as well as my other items this week. I will be back with more next week, so hang in there, and I'll see you all next time. Take care!
#4Kids#4Kids TV#4Kids Anime#4Kids Dub#4Kids Entertainment#Kirby#Kirby Right Back at Ya#Kirby of the Stars#Winx Club#Books#Fox Box#DVDs#Cartoons
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I N T R O D U C I N G: KERNEL ROT. a novel about a spotter (someone who finds), and the last pod girl (someone everyone wants to find), and a client (someone who wants a thing found). this is a sleeping beauty retelling turned sideways and upside down. i should warn you now that these are not good people. they are just people, the same as you’ll find anywhere and anywhen, in a world so bad that it doesn’t even deserve them.
GENRE: cyberpunk. POV: first person. THEMES: difficult women, identity, autonomy, commodification, beauty, exploitation, class, perfection and the lack thereof. CONTENT WARNING: mental illness, violence, drug use, body horror (around cybernetics),
The funny thing is that by now, basically everyone has a girl in a pod.
It’s a commodity, it’s a legend, and it’s everything people want. If you’re cheap, you get a big plasticine tank, reinforced so that a handsy bastard with something heavy doesn’t break it to try to get at the goods. If you’re smart, you get a pretty enough girl who says she’s got synthetic lungs, because no one’s going to check until she’s dead anyway, or a corpse shot full of high-grade preservatives from a second-rate chop shop. Then you suspend her in some cloudy water from the gutter or old pipes and you leave her there, naked and floating for everyone to gawk at. Pod girls are supposed to be the last perfect human specimens. They haven’t got any cybernetic parts grafted on because their job doesn’t involve sticking their fingers in the mechanical guts of drones and getting fingers crushed. They’ve never inhaled polluted air or ingested dozens of chemicals through food and water and their pores. No dirty veins or neon tattoos. Just clean skin. They sleep and they dream and they don't have to look back at the people looking at them.
None of the ones that exist around here are anything but facsimiles. They’ve got robotic eyes or a metal foot or tattoos or their eyes are cloudier than the water and they’re already dead. But you can sell an idea, even if it’s a little off, because people want it so badly.
There’s a lot of easy ways to pick up on a girl. They all look the same, you see. The word is that all of them are cloned from some dead girl, a Helen of Troy type, the girl people would launch invasions over. I don’t believe that for a second. You could grab a piece of sculpted plastic with some lipstick smeared on and suspend it in teal gel and people would still invest in it.
You know how much someone would pay for the last girl in one of those pods? The last one frozen a century ago, back before things got really bad? Too much.
People would kill for that girl.
It’s about scarcity, too, that basic tenet of economics. All the rest of them are gone. Here’s the facts: some of them got woken up and emerged into a world too infested with grime for them to stay clean. Others got out and were dead on release on account of who released them. A few very lucky ones probably get put on display by the rich rollers who bought them when they were still sleeping, and now they’re just caged old birds with clipped wings. When I think of them, and I often do, I think it would’ve been kinder if someone just pulled the plug. After all, some of the companies, like Niels or Avrow, make chemicals you can inject to extend your life even longer than the cybernetics might. The lucky ones didn’t get a chance to be hurt. They died when skin-hungry dredges starved and got stupid and tore out the wires, all the gel and chemicals keeping them alive turning sour and poisoning them in their metal and glass prisons.
Girls like that are made to die in a world like this one. That’s all there is to it. The math should be more complicated, but it isn’t. You want something so bad you’d kill it once you got your hands on it because you didn’t know what else to do with it.
And me? Well, I don’t kill things just because I want them. I don’t want much of anything any more except the basics - a bed, food, water that’s clean enough to not kill me, and the work that gets me all those things. Those are hard enough to get on their own. If I had time to want anything else, then I’d be a different person.
The fact of the matter is that I am still me, and in a place where most people want to be anyone else, that’s something. I’m still here. So many years, and I refuse to let go of a world that tries to pry your grip from it with every second you spend inside it.
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#writeblr#wip introduction#wip intro#cyberpunk fiction#me posting a cyberpunk story starring an older woman who is not nice or easy to deal with: oh boy this is gonna go over well
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The Transformers #22- Chaos Theory Part 1: Space Racism, Space Classism, and Space Pseudo-Romantic Tension Between Rivals
Before I jump into this comic, it is positively vital I talk about Drift.
Drift is an IDW original character, born on the page without any previous rendition. He was introduced in All Hail Megatron #5, which was Shane MeCarthy’s fifth solo writing credit for IDW publishing. He waited a whole five comics to introduce an original character, and Drift had reason and purpose to his creation- he was meant to honor Japan as the home of Transformers. He existed to show what a Decepticon defector would be like, and how both factions were losing the plot of the ideals they fought for. Pretty thought out stuff.
Meanwhile, in The Transformers #22, on the FIRST FLIPPING PAGE-
Okay, to be fair, Rung isn’t super important here. He will be later on, but as it is, he’s just a funny little creamsicle man who’s wandered into the scene. This also isn’t technically his first appearance within the IDW publications; in the Last Stand of the Wreckers, there are several character profiles, penned in-universe by Rung, going over the members of the Wreckers and their various emotional/mental ailments. This is still quite the step up for him, however. To think, he started out as a one-off psych joke in Eugenesis. He’s come such a long way. I’m so proud of him.
Anyway, our story begins in the past, at Maccadam’s New Oil House, where it’s time for Megatron’s character depth injection. He and Impactor are having drinks- Impactor’s had several glasses of what appears to be molten lava, while Megatron’s more of a children’s cough syrup kind of guy- and Megatron’s showing his friend his writing. You see, Megatron’s a bit of a revolutionary, and an intellectual one at that.
Megatron is dissatisfied with the current state of affairs on Cybertron, and as a man of the people- he is but a lowly miner at this point in time- he feels it is the duty of the public to incite change through the power of language and critical thinking.
That’s not really Impactor’s style though, as we find out when Rung gets tossed onto their table, and Impactor decides that the best course of action to take is to start punching the guys who’re throwing entire robots around in a bar full of very breakable glasses and drunkards.
In the present day, Megatron’s still hooked up to that full-body harness, and is currently being seen to by Ratchet… and Perceptor. When the hell did Perceptor get here?
Oh, okay, cool. Thank you, TFWiki.
Ratchet runs a bit different than one would expect him to here, not quite as grumpy as he’ll end up in MTMTE, and a bit superstitious. No, the role of the strictly-fact-based bluntness has been awarded to Perceptor this issue, who quells Ratchet’s concern with Megatron using his labelled black hole/antimatter powers by telling him to stop being stupid.
Meanwhile, in the observation room, Ironhide, Optimus Prime, and Xaaron are watching this scene go down. Xaaron’s here to act as legal council, since Megatron’s surrendered himself to the Autobots and is therefore a prisoner of war. Is this the first time legal precedent has been taken into account by the Cybertronian population in the IDW run? No, but it does seem as if Xaaron’s just about the only form of legal council they have. No wonder the planet’s such a mess.
There’s a reference to the fact that Ironfist is fucking dead, and then Xaaron leaves to talk to Wheeljack.
Don’t you smile about that, you absolute jag.
Something is bothering Optimus Prime. Megatron seemed off when they last spoke, as if he were putting on a performance. Which he kind of was, considering he invited the entirety of his Decepticon forces to watch him and Optimus beat the shit out of each other. Does Megatron want to- dare we dream it?- end the war? Only one way to find out: Ironhide suggests a heart to heart.
Back in the past, Megatron is being questioned by a cop, in the aftermath of what happened at Maccadam’s.
Did Megatron get his group’s tagline from some prison graffiti? I suppose inspiration can strike someone anywhere, at any time.
Springarm’s questioning Megatron, or at least he’s attempting to- seems to be having a hell of a time with both reading comprehension and having an outdated form. Cold construction gets its first mention in officially published media- an idea played around with in Eugenesis- and then Whirl shows up to save Springarm from embarrassing himself further. Whirl is a cop here, but don’t worry, he gets better.
Back in the present, Optimus is psyching himself up for his conversation with Megatron. He enters, has the audio in the observation room cut, and Wheeljack loses a bet.
Oh hey, Drift, been a minute.
Optimus wants a proper conversation with Megatron, but Megatron points out that it isn’t exactly fair that he’s strapped in place, filled with inhibitor chips, and primed to be electrocuted to death if he so much as sneezes. Optimus agrees with him, and releases Megatron from his bonds, then offers him a chair and a cup of tea.
So, Optimus and Megatron get to talking. Actual talking, not the “taking turns reacting” stuff they usually get up to.
And then Optimus more or less calls Megatron a hateful son of a bitch to his face. Which Megatron seems to take in stride.
I think Megatron is the only guy in the universe to hate so insanely hard that it turned off his ability to get hot and bothered.
Of course, Megatron doesn’t hate Optimus- oh, he could never. He just hates everything he stands for, and everything he does. Which, uh, doesn’t leave a whole lot left over to not-hate. When asked if he hates Megatron, Optimus isn’t nearly as composed and elegant about his thoughts. It’s like he thinks “hate” is a dirty word. So did I, when I was, like, six.
They’ve been at war for so very long, it’s gotten to the point where the entirety of the galactic council has kicked any Cybertronian representative out, because these guys clearly have some issues that just aren’t getting resolved. Maybe if they had more than a single mental health specialist for the entire population they’d get somewhere.
As it currently stands, Optimus just wants to know what the hell Megatron is even doing all this for. Megatron says it’s for control and dunking on lower lifeforms with space racism. Optimus thinks that’s a load of horseshit, and presses for more details.
There’s our first mention of the Knights of Cybertron, who become a major plot point in the IDW Phase 2 publications. We’ll hear more about them later on.
It seems as if Optimus and Megatron share the basest of values- both want peace. Optimus just isn’t really digging the whole “subjugate the people for a better tomorrow” shtick Megatron’s touting.
Megatron doesn’t like being compared to Optimus, who’s about as centrist as it gets- Megatron is a radical if there ever was one, and he’s been fighting for his beliefs for the last four millions years, tooth and nail.
Not that these robots have nails.
Back in the old days, the Senate divvied up the populace by alt-mode, and whatever you turned into, that was your job. Personal taste, interest, and talent weren’t factors. That’s why Megatron worked in the mines- he wasn’t allowed to do anything else. This is Functionism, another plot point that will be factoring into Phase 2 pretty heavily.
Optimus didn’t really oppose Functionism at the time, seeing as he was a rather privileged individual, and also a cop back in the day. Everyone’s a friggin’ cop in this continuity.
But enough about systemic oppression of the masses, it’s time to reminisce on the good old days- also known as every single time Optimus and Megatron have ever tried to kill each other. It’s a lot. Like, a lot. And then they have a good laugh about it.
This isn’t a healthy response to stress, you two. Someone throw Rung in there and lock the door for a couple weeks.
Optimus says that he wants to end the war. All Megatron has to say is that he wants it too, and it’ll end. Megatron doesn’t say anything to that. Optimus still hasn’t figured out just why Megatron surrendered, but it looks like time’s up, and he strings Megatron back up and exits the room.
Later, Autobot High Command is having a meeting, with Bumblebee, Ultra Magnus and Prowl having telecommed in. It’s an emergency meeting, over the complicated legality of Megatron’s trial. Since the Galactic Council isn’t returning their calls, they don’t have any sort of neutral third party to run this thing, and the Autobots can’t just hand out sentencing themselves, because they have a natural bias. Magnus suggests they give Chief Justice Tyrest a ring, seeing as he’s considered a neutral by the Galactic Council.
There’s another part to this issue though; because of the nature of this case, the prosecution gets to decide Megatron’s punishment, should he be found guilty. They start putting it to a vote, but Optimus says that it’s his decision since Megatron has been his responsibility for the last few million years, completely cutting Bumblebee out.
Y’know, Bumblebee. The current appointed leader of the Autobots.
Why do we even bother having elections, if Optimus is just going to pull this whenever it’s convenient?
Then Rodimus calls Optimus out on being potentially compromised, since he listened in on his little chat with Megatron. Optimus reacts to this about as well as he can.
That is to say, not at all.
Back in the past, it’s time for some good old-fashioned police brutality.
How in the hell do you even punch someone when the closest thing you can make to a fist is more akin to a torpedo in shape? I guess only Whirl knows.
Whirl’s decided that he’ll be killing Megatron for his two little buddies, and he almost gets to it before Springarm busts in and stops him. Megatron’s being released, on the captain’s orders, because the captain went through Megatron’s things and read his writing, revealing himself to be a violenceless revolutionary.
Impactor, what the fuck.
The captain is Orion Pax, by the way.
In the present, Optimus is back in Megatron’s room, because that will certainly help his case of being on the up and up. He wants to know why Megatron surrendered, and he wants to know NOW DAMMIT. Megatron asks him to rephrase the question, then goes full edgelord in an attempt to make Optimus react, because it’s the only way the two of them know how to interact at this point.

Megatron gets what he asks for, and Optimus realizes that perhaps attempting to murder his greatest rival minutes after having been revealed as a have a soft spot for the guy wasn’t the greatest idea. He leaves the room before things can get more awkward.
He runs into Ironhide in the hallway, who asks how things are. Not great, Ironhide. Not great. Optimus committed an act of violence on a bound man, thus feeding his hatred of authority figures.
In the past, Megatron finally corrects the etymology error everyone’s been making with his name.
Because that’s not a massive red flag right there.
Megatron’s free to go, and Springarm gives him his little journal back. Too bad Megatron’s been tainted by the ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ and doesn’t nearly believe as much as he once did in the power of the written word. He tosses his writing away, causing his first incident of property damage and foreshadowing his future.
That’s the end of the comic, but not the end of the issue. In the back of the book is a little blurb welcoming Roberts to the writing chair and calling him out as a bit of a dork, then a sign-off from Andy Schmidt as Senior Editor of IDW, which also calls him out as a bit of a dork.
So that’s the start of the Chaos storyline. Lots of setup here, both for Chaos and things further down the line. This is a sharp left turn from how the prior issues of this series have gone. It’s not just people punching one another in the face. I’m getting a feeling that character motivation is lurking in the wings here.
#transformers#jro#the transformers 2009#issue 22#maccadam#Hannzreads#text post#long post#comic script writing
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well, that escalated quickly

The first card of the Major Arcana, The Fool is generally a positive card indicating new beginnings. If it appears in your readings it could mean that you are on the verge of an exciting, unexpected new adventure. Your new adventure will bring you along a path which may require you to make a leap of faith but you will grow as a result of this new experience. This new adventure could be a literal new adventure, like travelling to a place you’ve never been before. The change this card can bring will usually be a welcome one. While the Fool is generally a positive card, its appearance in a reading can also indicate that you need to take the time to look before you leap. [x]
Even when reversed, the Fool is an indicator of newness; as well as the purity and open-hearted energy of a child. This is generally considered a positive card, with the caveat that it's important to take time to be sure that you are "looking where you're going." In reversal, The Fool can show that there is a need for a new beginning, but that there is some hesitancy about making it happen. [x]
When the Fool card is reversed, you are encountering an unfinished side of yourself, a part still caught in the shadows of ignorance or immaturity. An emotional reflex or psychological attitude could be holding you back from responding authentically and naturally.
Release yourself from any dogmas or taboos so your natural truthfulness and instinct for right action can be restored. [x]
Light some incense and find a crushed velvet vest and let’s get to issue 16 of Buffy.
Spoilers, as always underneath the cut. Also long and semi-rambly so if you’re new to this tumblr...yeah.
Short version: There’s a thing I’m not sure I like yet, the usual layer cake of THEMES and how it all ties together, and good character stuff.
Wow. So they’re really going there with Buffy and Evil! Xander. But it’s not like the comic hasn’t left crumbs of a potential -- something happening between them. Vamp! Xander’s first confrontation with Buffy was a crude sexual come-on, which she rebuffed very quickly, and then when he had his soul, there was an ambiguous hug between them in Hellmouth. Xander’s feelings about Buffy have always been pretty clear.
And while I’m not thrilled that in the year 2020 we still can’t have a platonic relationship between Buffy and Xander (like, I joke about this being a Point to the reboot that Joss insisted on, but of course that’s just speculation. But come on. He totally would), it’s not like the comic was not giving clues, clunky though some of them may be. Buffy’s Slayer dream of Vamp! Xander and Vamp! Her, Robin’s oddly insistent interrogation of Buffy’s feelings for Xander, the dinosaur gift of Zeppo, and Buffy’s own ambivalence toward Robin as a real potential boyfriend.
Issue 14 (which I still haven’t written a thorough post about) showcases (not explicitly written as such, but the characteristics are there) a PTSD-afflicted Buffy, who has lost both of her best friends in a matter of weeks. She’s not on good terms with her mother, Giles is still weird after his descent into magically induced MRA-ness and not exactly comforting her, and having to accept the reality of Kendra being a Slayer as well. There’s a lot of anxiety, jealousy, and survivor’s guilt thrown in there as well, and we all know Buffy’s favorite thing to do when she’s going through a lot of pain: ISOLATE HERSELF.
And then here’s Robin, telling her he’s on her side and is a friendly face and Buffy seizes that emotional life line and decides, well if I can’t like myself (this is referenced in Issue 15), Robin will do it for me. It’s a lonely, but understandable grasp at something normal and not...the reality of her present life.
Except Robin realizes he can’t be Buffy’s emotional support almost-boyfriend, and that Buffy has a martyr complex where she can’t be just the hero but also the villain in her own story - she takes on all of the fault but none of the help and love that does exist in her life.
He tells her that one of her problems is that she just doesn’t like herself.
And it’s a hard truth for Buffy to bear but she admits it.
Issue 16 dips into Buffy’s mixed up feelings re: love and connection and the thread that ties it together is the tarot card Jenny pulls from her spread to read to Dolly, her cat.
Best reveal of the reboot so far, no I won’t take any objections. Her cat! Is named Dolly! Possibly after Dolly Parton, stealth producer of BtVS!
Jenny, lone human adult voice of Reason, pulls the upside down Fool and I’ve included three meanings of it up above. The reason why I think it’s a common thread for this issue is because in Buffy’s slayer dream where she’s riding Zeppo the Symbolism? What Symbolism Dinosaur with Xander (with some terrible punning), Buffy says that they can’t let Zeppo drive, he’s too young and doesn’t know how to get to where they’re going. Xander replies, “Do you even remember where we’re going?”
And prior to this Buffy worries that they’re going too fast and to slow down.
This could signify a number of things - definitely new beginnings with Evil! Xander and the changed nature of his relationship to Buffy, Buffy’s personal fear that she doesn’t know what’s happening, only that it is too fast, and the fact they’re both so young. And for the moment, Xander will forever be this young. And with his reputation as being the ‘funny’ one, Xander could also be considered a Fool.
He’s in a state of being unfinished - he’s never going to experience the trials of regular adulthood, the personal milestones a human being has. And Buffy is unfinished in that she’s not done growing up, but she is also the Slayer, which requires a level of sacrifice that other girls her age wouldn’t experience.
Jenny pulling this card - well, there’s the unfinished nature of her relationship with Giles, they’re broken up but still pining over each other, and the fact that she doesn’t seem to have stayed in touch with anyone in the Scoobies? And her only confidante seems to be her cat. Which, no judgement, cats are good listeners.
Dolly is also a good detector of Ye Olde Supernatural Bullshit, as she senses something bad behind Jenny’s all of a sudden visitor, and Hulk! Giles a few issues back.
It is of course, Xander, who is gleefully pleased that it was that easy to trick Jenny into inviting him in.
Fade into black- sort of, as the next step is Xander playing mind games via text.
Right after Buffy has her weird dinosaur dream, she tries to google meanings of it, as well as sending Willow texts in a long chain of non replied thread, updating her about what’s been happening in Sunnydale in her absence. I noticed she used a similar - “I’ll be here for you” in her message to Rose, and I think that’s Buffy’s way of changing. She wants to be there for her people, instead of avoiding them.
And she gets a text (Miss me?) from Xander, which prompts her to run to Giles and Kendra.
This is a neat(?) reference to how Xander got catfished by Drusilla when she texted him from Buffy’s phone. God, the way this sentence sounds out of context to an TV canon fan.
ANYWAY.
Buffy states that Xander died the night the Hellmouth closed, and they had a candlelight vigil and his parents barely leave the house - which makes me think while Hank Summers is a bastard in every ‘verse, Boom! has a good dad for Robin, Joyce and Eric for Buffy, and apparently good parents for Willow and Xander as well. Yay.
Kendra, who is more objective than Buffy and Giles can be regarding Xander, theorizes that Xander’s disappearance might not be death in a final sense, but rather his soul disappearing. Which causes the question, where has his body been this whole time? Also, I see that I Robot, You Jane easter egg, Jordie.
Setting Jenny’s house on fire, that’s what. Giles gets a similarly upsetting text on his phone, and they run to her house. Buffy and Kendra immediately throw themselves into save the cat (and Jenny!) mode and run into Evil! Xander. Quite literally - Xander grabs Kendra by the neck and throws her out of the window from the second floor - don’t worry, she survives.
We can’t be fridging the POC this early, after all.
Then it’s Xander and Buffy’s first glimpse of each other since Hellmouth, and standard enemy banter ensues - Xander says it’s just them and Buffy snaps that it’s only in his dreams. Then the staircase starts cracking due to the fire’s heat and Buffy’s thisclose to falling off when Xander grabs her, and in his human mask tells her that it could just be them together, if she wants it. Buffy takes Kendra’s advice to stop feeling and just think, and kicks Xander in a jump with both her feet aimed at his chest. Also she says she’d rather die than let that happen, which...I really hope aren’t famous last words.
The fool card flutters down and lands on Buffy’s forehead, reminding her that she’s on a rescue mission for Jenny. Who is nowhere to be found, but Dolly leaps into Buffy’s arms, and she carries her out.
Giles, Kendra and Buffy reconvene at Giles’s and try to figure out why Xander targeted Jenny.
Giles, who started the issue being a concerned mentor has grown smaller and less confident toward the end as he asks Buffy and Kendra to find Jenny. Buffy vows that they’re going to make Xander pay. Giles sadly agrees and then leaves to show Dolly the garden.
Let me pause a moment to cry about the fact that Giles is showing Jenny’s cat the garden.
Kendra and Buffy bond, sincerely, for the first time since Kendra made her appearance. Sister slayers, fuck yeah! Also, I love Kendra’s characterization and I hope she stays for a long time. And not die.
There’s a thawing there as each switch positions - Kendra tells Buffy it’s okay that she feels the way she feels, as Buffy tells her, no, she’s right, Xander isn’t the boy she knew, and to treat him like he’s just a regular vampire.
Then she admits she’s not sure if she misses Xander, or if it’s something else, to which Kendra replies, “I think when you know, you know.”
And Buffy asks her like her and Rose - and Kendra confirms it.
Just as Kendra’s words end the issue, Willow - who could be OG timeline Willow, or an Alternate Verse Willow, comes into the light and holds Rose’s hand.
DRAAAAMA.
So. Xander and Buffy heading toward something, Kendra/Rose confirmed, Giles has now adopted Dolly, Jenny’s status: Currently Unknown.
And Willow?
Though with the Fool, there’s that meaning of new adventures and travelling to a place you’ve never been before. That sums up Willow’s current journey so far.
#buffy comics#boom! studios#boom! verse#thoughts and reactions#spoilers#also i knew all those past tarot card covers and just the symbolism in the cards had to come back#unless it was all a neat coincidence
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Tony catfight theory meets up with themand Bruce Banner black widow continue to have a bit of a romance that is destined to fail is the both very damaged in different ways anyway in South Korea Ultram is building the perfect library embodied himself with the my stone from Loki scepter in its head over the twins find out Ultram is planning on killing everyone in the world not just Tony Starks that I like well Tony Stark is probably better than the entire will be destroyed so they team up with the avengers even just vital Tron in South Koreaand let us get away with that perfect body he made stuck in banner try to put Jarvis into this perfect body all the avengers alike K you try this beforeand this happened so maybe don’t but they do it anyway what’s alighting from Thor’s hammer the body comes to lifeand becomes the vision where she is a good guyand is also kind of invincible he proves his intentions by lifting Thor’s hammer saw speak plan is to lift up’s cobiaand drop it like a meteor onto the earth killing everyone the venture shopping fight with help from war machine who actually got the memo this timeand experience Ella carrierand if he all Tronand all is all shallotsand save the day now without any repercussions though Pietro maxima dissecting Hawkeye also a kid who’s in Segovia doing charity work is killed in battle as is the family of helmets IMO a succumbing soldierand not terribly nice guy Simon was so angry over the avengers indirectly killed his family is planning on how to get revenge he realizes he can’t defeat them directly as if a robot army can do that I was a sad strange little maggot to do it instead takes a page out of the Loki bookand decides to tell them apart from the inside also during the battle Bruce Banner hoax outand decides to fly off the Quinn jet which eventually ends up in space somehow after while it crashes in the planet of scar that junk plaintiff before because being a form planet is pretty stressful banner staysand hope for him he’s done by Valkyrie who remember is now a drunk who scavenges stuffand she brings into the Grand Master this very weird eccentric guy whose brother is actually the collector from earlier he runs in arena gladiator fighting thing on this planetand the whole becomes his number one champion over the next two years Houck fights in the arena learn some basic speech becomes closer Valkyrieand overall is really just loving life after all this store still weirded out positionsand goes up to look for the infinity stones goes around the universe for two years looking for them which for the record is a marvel one shot I would love to see but is completely unsuccessful the managers back on earth now set up base in New Yorkand move away from ledgers tower with this big new fancy facilityand Blackwood are going train scarlet which falcon war machineand vision to become real avengers why the indestructible laser shooting hyper intelligent robotic in the Thor’s hammer needs training I’m not entirely sure on Tony’s also there but he’s a little preoccupied with the relationship problems he’s now having with pepper which leads to them taking a break while in space status is getting real sick of everyone failing to get his stones so he decides he’s gonna do it himselfand by that I mean he’s going to wait three years to do it but he start planning now which most in getting a bigger glove called the infinity gauntlet that would let them hold the stones once he finds them unearthed the shield team gets to the human campand shield was to register all been humans on a big list so they’re all accounted for something like a human’s version of the Scobee Accords which will get you over the humans at the camp predictably don’t like this also people start realizing that Daisy’s mom is kind of evil so a big fight ensues in the war which is really more of a battle between shielding humans he follows his nonskilled anklesand loses his arm also those chargingand human crystalsand up in the oceanand spend the pillsand also to stuff so now in human start popping up moreand more around the world also Mays ex husband Garner egrets in humidified enter into this horrible monster called flash also grant one was to try to start by Dragon even though the avengers just fishing that Daisy also says about her dad who wasn’t such a bad guy after all he gets his memory erasedand start a new life may decides to take a break from shieldand Fitzsimmons finally start dating however risingand going Simmons is in the same room as the monolith which shield has occasional memory that’s the portal through which you go to this terrible ugly planet with an original inhuman monster hive lives she was the inspiration for Hydra away quick positive video here I really hope it doesn’t feel like I’m talking down you guys by saying in case your memberand that’s her stuff a lot I genuinely does make this as easy to followand not confusing as possible is especially for people who are defense of the stuff that haven’t washed all this already of this information is slightly hard to keep track of you a second thatand gets into that placeand he said last night was abandoned there a long time ago they become friendsand survive together after many years of service Frank S returns home to his family from his militaryand shady servers daysand it’s super niceand emotional however around this timeand Cerberus leaks with Cerberus was actually about including the video that it is a guiding shot to this guy called David whose nickname micro will be back in a sec agent orange transfer for doing this because he’s not a big fan of Frank’sand so with the help of the Cerberus squad including Frank supposed best friend Billy Russo he sets up a three way gunfight between three gangs in a park to kill Frankand his family Frank’s wifeand children are brutally murderedand Frankish on the head but survives after this Frank is enragedand devastated answer decides take matters into his own hands he uses his military trainingand pure anger to hunt downand kill everyone in the gangs involved with his family’s death he does this under the vigilante guys of the punisher first just make a plan though so that takes a little time now micro is a hackerand NSA analyst these to help a Daisy when she was working as a hacker’s analysis info that Cerberus doing legal stuffand he starts leaking it so agent orange triesand killed his men shoot microand think they killand really the bullet his phoneand so survived because phones are bulletproof in this world Michael doesn’t hidingand pretends to be dead even from his wifeand kids who he watches from security cameras Scott Lange has finally finished serving his time in prison for his crime that really was not badand is released going to stay with his old cellmateand pal Luis he wants to see his daughter but his life is moved on to another guyand so that’s difficult in its with Luis his new friends Kurtand Daveand try to get a job at Baskin Robbins but Baskin Robbins always finds out tech is having run by Darren cross hang pencil protégé along with Hank’s daughter hope while Hank is on the world they some old tales of Hank’sand process about his own version of the suit called the yellowjacket only this one is way deadlierand fliesand shoots lasers cross also plans to sell this tech to Hydraand the 10 ringsand just the worst people thanks not too happy about thisand try to think of a plan to stopand even where Scott Lange ever since the very public Vista quick job I think Scott could be a good choice to take on the object stuff before gets into the wrong hands through a series of people think it’s got a tip about as mentioned Rob Casillas to see how good Scott really is what Scott eventually does only to find the entrance to he takes it tries it onand is terrified by the experience Hank is impressed with the skill cc but when Scott tries to return the suit he’s caught by the policeand cost breakdown in jailand tells of his pregnant with cross help is not awfully happy with how things are developing as she was to wear the MS student takedown cross but Hank does a letter because of how her mother died all those years ago so they trained Scott until he becomes great at the shrink tricky stuff even to friendsand called Anthony very good Scott also starts to get romantically involved with hopeand Hank reveals to help our mom diedand she is all well I totally understandand forgive you know dad even though you really could is only sooner I’m an adult you know they’re good now Scott needs advice from an old avenger space to steal the yellowjacket suit is there only to discover that it’s been renovatedand it’s now the new venture space is not by falcon who fights in man is defeated but also impressed by Scott’s abilitiesand less just called Scott’s good fortune that it wasn’t patient who was on patrol that day also by the way crosses going crazy because pen particles mess with the brain after all this Scott goes in to steal the yellowjacket suit but gets caught so him across FIFO while in a helicopterand then a briefcaseand in Scott’s daughter’s room to save his daughterand kill cross Scott go subatomicand saves the day but is temporarily trapped in the quantum realm where Hank’s wife Janet was left however he manages to get outand it’s all good after all this Hank believes that hope is finally ready to become a heroand so gives her the lost barber Scott is back his familyand his daughter Anna’s dosing hopeand never once happy now go back to the moon real quick a place we haven’t been for a while where the go inhumanand potentially the most unlikable character in this entire universeand human arguing about this American flag I am only mentioning this to see him forget that there’s an entire inhuman civilization just living on the moon while all this is happening back on earth the tomb salvaging company shows up in the area were scurvy’s to beand picks up small font Exceland some of this ends up in the hands of Hydra uses it to build a giant robot called ultimo but the manager show up at least those are leftand defeated now were getting into the Netflix world for a while first off Jessica Jones gets new job from Joy Meacham the sister of one Meacham was running red Enterprises will be manipulate it by’s dad was being controlled by the hand I give it a second to sink in again anyway she is Jessica to investigate the people around so she can blackmail them later if need be also Wilson Fisk is stilland by his he I mean jail because he such a big crime boss he start making connections there that Frank Castle has finally gotten all the resources he needs to kill the gangs he thinks were solely responsible for his family’s murder so starts going around doing that in the most brutal way possible starting with the Irish Mafiaand a gang called the dogs of hell is all happening in or near Hells kitchenand that Murdoch starts noticing the stuff so he starts investigating eventually as daredevil in a newand improved suit by the way he comes face to face of the punisher which ends with a bullet to the face that is seriously injured but survives fighting keep fighting that the vigilante stuff while Cassidy is going around the city killing pedophiles in such an entry castle manages to kidnap daredevil Jenny into a chimney where they learn about each other’s pastsand ideologies Castle takes a gun to daredevil’s hand pulse of the criminaland hasn’t had to shoot the criminal or he’s can do it because castle things killing your enemies is the way to go hello I thought a lot of the people daredevil Scott daredevil to try to kill anyway daredevil breaks outand has to fight through some angry bikers Castle unleashes on them later on Frank it’s kidnap by the Irish who brutally tortured him but eventually he gets out with their troubles help explain the situationand himand daredevil cool now but that is arrested that the craziness is now over but nope just now Electra shows up his old girlfriend then ninjaand potentially secret weapon for the handand she’s like a let’s find together because I see her doing that nowand so they do if I think he was a mainly with franking space to Karen what happened to his familyand the bondand become best is so daredeviland Electra are going around fighting the accuserand ultimately come across this giant pit the hand is digging in order to get Dragon bonesand to become immortal that still going on their tax by handand just until state shows up to save the day meanwhile on the lower side of things the punisher trial happensand during that Frank saw like an Angus into jail where he meets Wilson Fisk Fisk is like Frank nothings working everything but my biggest rival this person helped kill your family soand Frank Sykes say no more so he takes a that guy that this double crossesand try seven killed by Frank is just too good for that so Fisk lets them goand Frank tells Fisk to kill him when if he sees them again Frank it’s a geland mean wild animals like snow but again then ninja he thought he go before was brought back by the hand also their little kids being drained of their blood also for resurrection purposes through similar shenanigans the punisher keeps going around killing guys involved with his family’s murderand I will still have conflicting ideologiesand punish ends up killing an old Marine buddy of his Electra stick have a falling outand cystic trust tablets are killedand she didn’t like that so she tries to kill him will saves the dayand sticks kidnapped by the hand so Matt goesand save steak but while he’s doing that nobody reveals that Electra is a black skyand should be leading the hand she almost does but ends up joining their double insteadand the five images together real lasted I’m on right there after a hostage situationand Electra go up against like an infinite supply of hingesand Electra ends up sacrificing yourself for daredevil the punisher also shows up at the last minute to get daredeviland assist which is a pretty awesome moment not to lie no booze killed for real this time by stickand the good guys win except the hand takes Electra’s bodyand uses their Dragon magic to bring her back to life so she can work for them one of the five leaders of the hand the main one Alexandra comes to oversee her resurrection fog equatesand hours for Hogarth from Jessica Jones reveals he’s daredevil to Karenand the punisher goes off to kill everyone was involved with his family’s murder micro also wants answers about the whole Cerberus thing as a goes into Frank’s houseand puts the disk there with the video on it Castle’s unit in Afghanistan tortureand killing that innocent guy which Frank findsand takes with them tiny little break from the granite stuff here a witch just straight up which shows up in Londonand steals a magical artifact called the dark scepter however long case aliasand more masters of the Mystic arts show upand stop her a reminder that there’s magic in this world back to the streets now the gauge is now working at Pops barbershopand I know people disagree on what years these Netflix shows in particular take placeand they are confusing but based on the research I did this seems to check out anyway Luke also works of the barand one evening because he such a player he starts floating with detective Misty Knight the club Lucas working is also my cottonmouth now is a big shot crime boss’s cousin Mariah is a City Councilmanand is also pretty shady just more low key than enough strike is a hammer check from Justin Hammer for some good money but the operation goes wrong look secret half brother Willa striker is also involved here at the highest level is a big criminal now is now called diamondbackand is cottonmouth’s boss basicallyand so he sends in his body shades to make sure everything is running smoothly godmother still cool because these be friends back in the day but because the guy because the deal to go wrong is involved with pop one of cotton’s goons goes against disordersand shoots at the barbershop killing pop through this link in contrast to fightingand looks all like I really care for but not my radar so stop doing illegal stuffand calmness like know so we can start messing up his operation Luke also teams up with Claire Temple daredevil hotel buffet crimeand start a romance energy gets his hands on some bullets I can actually penetrate Luke’s impenetrable scan forand use them thoughand up having an argumentand so she murders him with a mic standand because the new big crime boss with shades help diamondback decides to team up with their setting out a plan to run the crime will do Harlem well Mariah does all the boring political stuff diamondback also shoots a cage twice with those magic bulletsand reveals that he’s actually his brother Claire takes her to the doctor who originated the experiment on themand they send an asset or boiling water something painfuland basically he’s restored to full strength while diamondbackand Mariah are running like a spear campaign against the cage to turn the people filed against them they do this through politicsand super shock loves Lucas backand FaceTime back in the police eventually diamondback shows up in a terrible super suitand even the punch each other for a bit is the end against diamondback partly with helping New York Spiderman style despite all his heroicsand proving himself a good guide to the policeand the people Harlem Lucasand back to prison because been discovered as Carl Lucas back in the day with your call despite being innocent broke out of prisonand so still needs to service time however one of Luke’s barbershop friends is a file that proves his innocence so he’s getting out soon also diamondback is taking them but I doctor who did this experienceand Luke so he’ll probably have some modifications the next time we see them there is a little bummed out that Luke is in jailand that they can’t get a cup of coffee for a while but she keeps itself occupied by starting martial arts training with help from Colleen way that martial artist to statically buy land but doesn’t really know that the hand is evil a bunch of little stuff happens here now firstly that kid who Iron Man said a while back Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider which gives in special abilities like superstrength the ability to climb the wallsand having a dead uncle because he’s a genius kid he also designs web shooters that shoot superstrong webs also because he’s a good kid he realizes if you help people using his new powers he’s responsible for one bad stuff happens so he designs a pajama looking costume takes a living Spidermanand starts fighting little crimes in Queens now over with the Masters of the Mystic arts page 1and Margot find a group called the Dragon Raiders just FYI also falcon is still pretty impressed by thatand I guys a while back I think she could be a valuable asset to the team so he finds a way to contact with them through Luis about potentially joining the avengers Scots like well I cannot stay with my daughter right now but if you really need me yes give me a call we had about the shield team in a while but they’re still doing stuff around these husband Andrew turned into an inhuman call mile he did that is now a giant monster whose sole purpose really is to hunt other humans with humans popping up around the world now shields main mission objective is protecting in humansand training them is made harder because the government treats a group called the ATC you which is designed to track down superpowered people like humansand take them then basically they’re designed to replace yield now that shield has had to go underground in the ATC you is this guy called Malik once again is a big secret Hydra guy said he thought we were done with Hydra you were sorely mistaken the reason this ATC you exists is so Hydra can get a hold of all these in humansand use them you guessed it to make a super soldier army is not getting that seriously 99 of Hydra’s plans so shield in the ATC are fighting for to try to get Simmons off at alien planet which eventually doesand what is still working on rebuilding Hydra I guess Marilyn Stucker’s weightless cool son Werner to join him in a nutshell the main thing is shield us to start up a team of humans the inhuman hunting monster is out there going after them thing of lash is like a less strong or cool version of the book he changes in this monster at different times Olson is asking pretty close to one of the higher ups at the ATC you who isn’t actually evil but then worksheets are in the throat cycles is like I just have to crush discussed just Hydra also wants to get to the matter because they want to bring Benjamin back because they think will be a big secret weapon for them so word fits in Colson end up on an alien planetand cousins like mandatory wordand he crushes Ward’s chest with his robot handand then goes back to think that’s the end of Ward but then the superpowerful clinical human eye possesses corpseand then makes its way back to earth I was now leading Hydra through Ward’s bodyand he’s observing people for strengthand you know typical evil villain stuff so that any rent is still in and now going to basket CCI festand that’s what the iron fist does ever he starts missing homeand gets bored because he’s kind of a spoiled brat so just ramp runs away when the pass is open his eyes to go back to New York to take packs company because that’s I think it works because he’s also kind of a thundering dumbass doesn’t work focuses old friends join Ward Meacham if it were just go with it think is a crazy homeless person understandably wards think that that Harold is still kind of running the company while being controlled by the hand which he started to get kinda sick of becomes friends with Colleen at the dojo he also meets Claire Temple bananas put in a mental hospital he breaks out there with the power of the iron fist stocking 30 with Colleenand Bruce’s friends that it actually is an is coming back with the help of Jerry Hogarth he kinda sucks a business though because he’s been living among city in another dimension for the past decade ends of meeting Harold whose IK we should work together can sometimes take a controlling me so you can go kill themand I like gathers the main purpose in life I had to hand them gal the hand is still selling heroinand Denny’s unhappy about that science of beating herand agreeing to a series of challenges the loser has to pack upand get out of the city anyways but Manga breaks the promise but she’s got ancient society superpowers so there’s not much you can do about it Danny keeps consistently sucking a ring’s company so he’s married now by the board along with the Meacham’s words also super pissed at is that Harold is he took all of his money so he tells Harold bio comes back thanks to the hand Danny Colleenand Claire go to Chinaand take them gal realizes that Ward killed him so he frames them for drug possessionand so Ward gets locked up in the asylum Harold of its joy to be his new number two Danny also made potato Colleen so teacher was also secretly when the 5 m of the handand find out about thisand is in the fan now this guy called divers who isn’t that Dallas is days old friend from and he shows up to help Dannyand Colleen Joyce into saying that the hand probably his neck in the end after helping Dallas is like take the path to come on is open right nowand you’re supposed regarding it what the hell manand I was like well you know is boringand decides to team up with Haroldand joy to take on handand the Kudo but the kudos now working with wordand long story short is defeated but runs away Dallas is not a Danny but they work it out kind of data gets frame for drug stuffand goes in the runand Harold is the bag on the endand tries to take over the company Danny Lord in the big final battle team up kill Haroldand burn his corpse so he will come back to life now Ward is running the companyand Dallas teams of joyand maybe not out to kill Danny down the lineand then sends a team led by lecture to come on which again has no iron fist protecting it they kill a bunch of the monks there it’s pretty brutal the entrance is then close for safety so no one knows when it’ll open up again because back to check out the passand find the city is goneand some abilityand he realizes he probably should state to protect it also Luke Cage sends Claire letter from prison because there still thing overand cover Taj at this point Casillas is starting to get kinda pissed with Angel on it if you like his training isn’t getting him what he wants to start having some friction with most the Masters there also finds out that the angel on his drawing power from the dark dimension which he thinks is pretty have a critical because he must use the dark dimension to see his dead family againand to gain immortality but the angeland told him no because a bunch of people that the ancient one is withholding informationand they should bring tomato from the dark dimension to earth to golf it in eternity forms to rise up against the ancient one they break into the libraryand cover tiesand steal some pages from the ageless book about the dark dimension one tries to stop them but they get away in the end one point Rogers well the shielding goes to Mexicoand meets the human called yo yo who has superspeed who eventually joins the ranksand eventually becomes next girlfriend also Bobby Hunter leave the team because they were so staff spent off but that didn’t happen somewhere venturesand Sue Shield has an inhuman team but highest the inhuman Hydra God takes control of Daisy’s mind because he can do thatand turns against the team just as a vision of the future where one of them diesand other important detail there’s this group called the watchdogs which is basically inhuman racist who are going around killing humans as they plan by the way is to make every human in the worldand in human goes against Dr Ratcliff a scientist who he thinks can help them re create the original Cree experiment that native humans in the first place he realizes he needs actual Cree blood to do it so he sends a signal to the Creed to get some to come downand they do in a fight ensues they’re both taken out but also rendered useless however some Cree blood from daisies used from when she was saved without original Cree corpse long story doesn’t really matter experience go half rate asand it turns peopleand these gross disfigured mindless things meanwhile Scott laying after successfully cross job is still training is at man with Hankand hope that at some point here he upgrade to suitand test out new tech that allows him to become giant he tries it onceand passes out but hey it works Peter is continuing to Spiderman around the city at one point stopping a car crashand getting caught on camera the footage is uploaded to YouTubeand catches the eye of Tony Stark who keeps it in his watch later until he really needs it he’s got bigger stuff to think about right now is right around this point people are starting to take more notice of how much damage the superheroes have actually caused in their superheroand the guy who’s all over this is unsurprisingly general Ross from the days he needs of the presidentand his appointed Secretary of Stateand start talking about how they can keep the stuff moreand check the start of on the ideas for the Segovia cords basically a way of regulating superheroes with more oversight by forcing them to register with the government while this is happening Frank Castle continues his killing spree of people who were involved in this family’s murder going from truck murder to sniper murder to the bathroom murder is getting what he thinks is all them in a decides to move all of his life is the whole point the punisher was to avenge his family so that’s done now or so he thinks also after lectures not has stopping daredevil for a few months now because he’s just too sad things are not bad though foggy Nelson get some helpand I got in the barbershopand clears the cages nameand Lucas at a prison loop is up with Claireand they get that coffee they’d wanted Jessica Jones comes across lecture during one of her cases is still doing whatever the hand once rememberand objective Dragon bones under New York immortality the only problem is those Dragon bones are essential foundations for the city so the removal of them is causing serious earthquakesand could eventually to the whole city collapsing is also hiring a bunch of Harlem kids to help them kill and or clean up the mess is left behind by their enemies cages about this news like I got to protect the people of Harlemand Danny Randy is about this is like I gotta take a hand saw this lease to them crossing pathsand having a bit of a fight every day become friends because of their mutual friend Claire through fortuitous circumstances Jessica’s tracking guy connected to the handand that Murdoch ends up being her lawyerand also gets interested in the case so all four of them end up at the hands buildingand start fighting their ninjas electro sent into daredevil surprise but doesn’t remember him remind you of anyone but they all managed to get out of thereand go hide out in a Chinese restaurant where the become more acquainted state gets kidnapped by the hand but gets out of there by cutting off his own hand get itand goes to talk to the team Alexandraand had followed to see Alexandraand the hand is a whole knee iron fist alive because his iron fist is the key to open the gate to the sweet sweet Dragon bones if I happens electro starts remember who she isand that offenders get their hands on one of the hands main leaders also have their superhero team name is the defenders this guy is not of much help thoughand so stick to set off is not happy about this because they’re running out of there immortality juice the defender starting though because they’re like if the hand need you Danny we should probably had your wayand then he does what he does bestand is a whiny baby so they’ll punch him for a whileand then time however stickand typical stick fashion thinks that he might in the world so I’m getting kill him but lecture shows upand kill stickand tasty on fist to the hand she also kills Alexandra as she wants to be in charge I guess Jessica Jones find out more about that whole get it will found a while back with hands digging for Dragon bones after Lilith over the police that offenders minus Danny fight the hand plus the got Colleen to help Danny accidentally opens the gates of the Dragon bones because of course he doesand other defenders are fighting to hand in a lecture while also trying to block building so the hand can destroy New York the kudos guild Misty Knight loses an armand the offenders whenand get out of there butback to talk to Bucky I mean Electra yesterday heard the building collapses on the master kissingand that he saved by some nuns think look that they savedand that doesn’t actually die thank God it’s time to introduce another very important character very late in the game a Stephen strange is an amazing surgeon but he’s also super arrogantand kind of addict’s ex girlfriend also works with him called Rachel McAdams one day he’s drivingand textingand he crashes his car crushing his amazing surgeon hands in his life because he can’t be an awesome surgeon anymoreand he somehow even more awful to sex than usual really his life is just falling apart he starts to find ways to heal himself however ridiculous eventually he comes across Jonathan born the guy who trained with the ancient oneand was cured so strange has two Taj is there more to one of the masters takes into the ancient one because of all the crazy ultra dimensions there are at least the trip used ones he’s like help me learnand she’s like no your grossand sad in a terrible person but he pleadsand stays her door so she reluctantly changes her mind so strange that’s learning how to control the Mystic artsand other dimensionsand make hologram shieldsand whatnot with the help of Moto the ancient oneand the bookkeeper Wong who he befriends is about the different symptomsand how they protect worldand trains for several months along the way he also stumbles upon the times done sitting in a handy necklace the INI tomato figures out how to been time with it more unwanted like you don’t do that you could get stuck in a time loop anyway at one point you stuck to Mount Everest restraining just while all this other stuff is happening remember Stephen strange is getting great a magic this whole time so U ventures all trained upand going on missions also still looking for Bucky the next hydrogen in Lagosand think it might finally be Bucky but as they get there they realize it’s actually Brock Romo crossbones who understoodand is planning on suicide lineup himselfand Capt. From the capital nation to be only the abandoned government found wanting to you is down for lack of probably racial stories are for slavery would like we enjoyed helping our countries pushed the right from overcorrection Levi Roberts reports be noticeable degree for nearly a century was to story one of America’s years and will grow as he never heard her needs needs degree beating my hair as See Other related products: God Made Scots A Wee Bit Better T-Shirt
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