#AT ALL?

[eponymousfics]

Went to see the Vampire Dies in No Time Stage Play on Tuesday night! Will gush about it under the cut, but have some shitty pics of the poster here:

Basically: it was great!!

Since it’s more an episodic gag manga, I wasn’t sure how they were going to handle pacing and all that, but they did a good job of touching on a good variety of stories by combining them and making them flow surprisingly well.

The whole thing was only two hours with no intermission, but it didn’t feel too short or rushed. Then again I’m recovering from mild food poisoning that I accidentally gave myself last night (I was SO worried I wouldn’t be able to go but I’m mostly ok) so maybe it just felt like a good time to tap out for me lol

I thought they might just adapt in the order of the anime, but they touched on some stories/characters from the manga that haven’t been in the anime yet, which was great (main example I can think of rn is the Vampire That Makes Idiots Powerful)

The costumes were SO good, which I’m coming to just expect from Marv productions. It was surreal in the opening titles song when all the cast first assembled, because it was really like seeing the characters from the manga in real life. In terms of costumes, my favorites were probably Draluc and Ydan. Oh, and the blow up prop that was Hennadoubutsu/Weird Animal (think car sales lot tube man thing but not quite that tall and pink. When they first blew it up his head got stuck against the doorframe and they had to tug him in a bit. Not entirely sure if it was an organic gag or scripted but it was funny either way)

I didn’t see them on the poster so I wasn’t sure if they’d be included, but the vampire brothers (Yakyuken/Micro Bikini/Invisible Legs)(boy that’s some trio out of context huh)(they’re my favorite btw lol) were very much included. I was interested to see how they’d do the invisible legs (I was contemplating a cosplay if I could find, like, super reflective fabric or something) but they just made Tohru’s legs black and joked that they could totally see his lower half at some point.

There were a lot of good meta jokes actually! Which is in keeping with the manga for sure. There was also a lot of singing, and Draluc got the first song (called “Team Up Confirmed” after Fukuma tells Ronaldo to include Draluc in his book), which lead to a meta joke about how in the manga Draluc canonically is terrible at singing. His reply was basically“Yes but stage play me is excellent at it ;)”

I think my favorite song was from Ydan but my favorite part overall was probably the audience participation bit in the middle when Yakyuken is introduced (with all his brothers, as some vampires Mikazuki encounters when he comes to Shin-yoko for the first time). Basically most of the audience had multicolored John pen lights and they were all waving them and “playing Yakyuken.” (I didn’t get one bc the ticket and the transit fare was already over budget for me this month >_>) High energy and the music was super fun!

One of my favorite meta jokes was with the trio of grade schoolers; two of the actors were really short and almost looked like kids, but the third was obviously just a man and Draluc had a go at him over it lol (“Wait a minute, one of you is definitely an adult.” “What?! Why would you say that? What makes you say that?!” “Your looks.” “Name three things!” “Ok, I’ll name three things about your appearance: your body shape, face, and height.” Other kids: *start screaming to move the scene along*)

The actors were all great but Draluc’s was probably the standout, he was veryyyy good at the physical acting and got all of Draluc’s flounciness lol

Speaking of Draluc, they had LOTS of different props to represent him dying and it was hilarious seeing a new one almost every time 😂

Examples:

-kiddie pool of styrofoam packing peanuts dumped on his head while he falls to the ground

-grey textured fabric pulled from grade schooler’s backpack and draped over him

-hiding behind a cutout of a pile of sand stuck in from the side of the stage

-a kuroko (stage hand dressed all in black to move props etc, meant to be ‘invisible’) bringing out a cutout but lying it facedown on the stage with a bit sticking up for the actor to step on, raising the cutout when he dies

-kuroko waving streamers on sticks (idk what you’d call them, like feather dusters except not feathers and longer?) with similar grey textured fabric in front of him

-various cast members flapping flags made of that fabric in front of him and then him indignantly collecting the flags from them in the background while Ronaldo was in spotlight

And probably one or two more I can’t quite remember

Bubuo (my least favorite character in the manga but good here) had a short standup interlude where he talked to the audience directly, which worked bc the actor was very charming, and also Ta-Chan came out and roasted him. There was a good joke later where Maria almost killed him while hunting a bear because he was wearing a “shirt that looks like BBQ” (he was wearing the yellow BBO hoodie) and he sounded so betrayed when he went “It’s an O, not a Q!!”

The final act was the Tsujigiri Nagiri intro arc BUT if Draluc and John hadn’t destroyed his effigy. Basically, Nagiri attacks Kantarou as per canon but Ronaldo jumps in to stop him, so Nagiri starts targeting everyone he knows.

Then they all ambush him together but it doesn’t seem to do much (Nagiri lost one of his knives in this big group fight and it flew off the stage lol. Luckily I don’t think it hit anyone but it was just sitting there on the floor for the rest of the scene. He was very professional and just kept on with the fight scene with one empty fist), until Draluc has an idea.

Which is to call on the Vampire Makes Idiots Powerful, who’d been popping up here and there throughout.

So then the whole gang has to tell stories of times they were being dumb as per the manga chapter while fighting Nagiri, then Draus shows up to help, talking about his texting mishaps. And then Ydan shows up and does his thing, and Ronaldo finishes him with a “boobs smell good” punch (a statement that I as a boob haver still wonder about sometimes. I mean they don’t smell different to the rest of the body do they? 😂)

Anyway, lots of good stuff, absolutely worth the price and going with a stomachache lol

[mzminola]

Love Preboot Jason Todd being a narrative vehicle for the discussions of:

1. what vigilantism entails, the lines around different levels and kinds of violence, what’s the overlap between the Bats and the organized crime they’re up against, etc.

2. the ethics of having child sidekicks.

Like...with #1, the no-kill rule is vital and shouldn’t go away, but when writing normal humans fighting other normal humans, instead of metahumans punching robots or monsters, on a sliding scale of realism (yay different titles in same universe) asking “Should we deliberately kill?” leads to the question of “Should we be using violence that could kill?”

Robin 1993, aimed at a younger audience, asks “Should we be doing this at all?” when Tim causes the death of Young El; the other teen wouldn’t have died if Robin hadn’t chased him. It wasn’t a “fight that went wrong”, it was Tim giving chase and Young El fleeing into a structurally unsound building. The death causes Tim to re-examine if he’s doing the right thing as Robin.

Bruce Wayne/Batman is presented as hypercompetent most of the time, so his titles don’t lend as well to that kind of arc. Enter Jason Todd in Under the Red Hood, where Jason shoves questions about Batman’s ethical stances into Bruce and the readers’ face again and again and again.

A comic aimed at little kids with cartoon violence does not have to worry about the hero punching too hard and killing someone. Comics aimed at older teens and adult do. It can be an editorial decision that no, nobody is gonna die like that, but the characters need to be aware of the possibility (thank you Nightwing beating the Joker to death, for putting that on the table) and if the comics never have them wrestle with the possibility, never have them decide if it’s a risk worth taking, the character ethics feel disappointingly flat.

Jason works really well in this role of saying “Hey, your methods haven’t fixed shit, so why not change them. What’s the big difference between potentially fatal moves and deliberately fatal moves?” because Jason isn’t a random new character, he’s not a pre-existing villain just claiming to be working for good now, he’s Robin.

Jason is someone who was a hero, who did play by all of Batman’s rules, who did and still does desperately want to help people, and he saw how this plays out for the victims by being one.

Jason’s points can’t be dismissed out of hand. No one can say he doesn’t understand how difficult and complex the Bats’ work is, no one can say he doesn’t understand the stakes.

Which swings us around to #2, child sidekicks, because Jason’s death had two big factors which was one, he’s Batman’s sidekick so the Joker had it out for him specifically, and two, he was a child, which put him in a more vulnerable position than an adult sidekick would be in.

Jason was a fifteen year old kid failed by several parents and directly betrayed by another. A Gotham Rogue who Batman personally locked up multiple times and keeps escaping murdered him.

Jason’s death is on Bruce’s hands as much as it is on Gotham’s corruption.

If we take the interpretation* that Jason died again at the end of Under the Red Hood and went through further resurrections, that drives home the point that Bruce’s methods are lethally flawed.

Because Bruce fucking kills his son directly this time.

Jason sets up the confrontation, Jason arranges a no-win scenario where he insists that the only way to save Joker’s life is to end Jason’s (though he’d prefer his dad to kill his murderer for him) and Bruce tries what he thinks will get around it. Bruce throws a batarang at Jason’s gun hand, but the angle is wrong and it slices open Jason’s neck. He’s last seen curled up in a pool of his own blood right before being caught in the middle of an explosion.

This is the big ethical Bat dilemma written out in a very close, personal moment. If no one stops him, Jason is going to kill the Joker. There’s no back-up coming. Shit is way too personal for de-escalation to work. Bruce has spent years making violence into his primary tool. The only way he can stop a murder from happening in front of him is to physically hurt Jason.

So Bruce does. And because he’s a normal human with no powers, because years of training isn’t magic, it goes wrong and his son dies. He kills his son.

Jason has spent this arc insisting that Bruce’s methods don’t fucking WORK.

If Bruce had hit his hand, if like so many other Batman stories he Finds The Third Option, it would be a simple boring rebuttal of “Yes they do!”

Instead we get a batarang to the neck, and the question shifts from crossing specific lines of violence to “Is this worth it? Is the risk worth it?”

Because it was never a choice between “do nothing & someone dies” or “do something & everyone lives” it was always, always, a choice between “do nothing & someone dies” or “do something & risk killing someone yourself.”

Gotham’s justice system and city government is corrupt, there’s a fuckton of mafias, a growing number of costumed villains, and if everyone just keeps their heads down not only will things never get better, they’ll get worse.

The Bats do a lot of non-violent work; they do forensics, witness interviews, break into places for evidence, wiretapping, etc. They’re detectives. But they also, because this is a combination of noir and the caped superhero genre, do a lot of violence. They get into physical fights all the dang time.

Which means they’re taking the risk that Bruce did here all of the time.

They all have to ask themselves if that risk of someone dying by their hand is worth it to potentially stop other harm.

Jason driving the narrative to this question makes it as personally painful and impossible to ignore as it can get.

*Joker survived despite also being right on top of the bomb, but he also wasn’t bleeding out, so...

[jensensitive]

Misha/spn fans who understand that the concept of a straight man repeatedly making jokes about being bi over many years to an audience of depressed queers obsessed with a show rife with queer subtext and censorship that we're constantly being gaslit about is the least funny thing in the world-- you are my only friends

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

What is it about turning a light off that makes a room cooler? It has to be psychological, right?

[mellohiscave]

Someone just told me that they didn’t regret trading me to end a war and they’d do it again- that fucking hurt do I mean nothing? I don’t know anymore? The disk war fucked me up, and JUST as i started to get better from it I was traded again, and told that I was worthless- am I worth less? I don’t know anymore I just hurt

[mushroomwater]

"This brings into question the idea of 'forced diversity,' a term often used when there is representation of racial minority groups in films that do not entail plotlines directly related to race or racism. The idea of 'forced diversity' is a myth. To claim it to be real, one would have to believe that movies are inherently white, and therefore that the world is inherently white. Burton is one of these ignorant people that believes that his fantastical, dream-like cinematic experience could only feature white people. This mindset is simply narrow-minded and racist."

– Natasha Butler-Rahman, "Tim Burton’s claims about forced diversity are blatantly false"

[nick-close]

Not to be an attention whore but. Genuinely so curious about how this fandom views me. Am I lame yet. Am I out of touch with the youths? Am I cool? Do people recognize my username? Is there a specific post people know me for? It’s wild to think about

[sunnyfall-rc]

10,000 Subscribers

Shoot. Uh, thank you everyone.

I actually have something planned for this milestone but I clearly overestimated how long it would take to reach because I have it planned for the end of December. It will be a bit late but something is coming; I assure you.

[orbdotexe]

crying over Fynch hold on. Exile might get a new friend anyway

Hear me out. his lore cards.

And the thing is… you can't just be part monster.

-

You made me a monster, remember? You don't get to cry about it when I act like one.

-

But you? I gave you a part of me! I let you make me worse just so I could make you better! You were supposed to understand!

i. i think they could be friends? maybe? please? I think they could take some kind of solace in one another. maybe

[frangipani-wanderlust]

If you were pro-lockdown or pro-mandate (masks or vaccines), you need to be apologizing because you were wrong at the time and in the moment. Not for being proved wrong now. Because you were wrong then.

And because the things pro-lockdown/mandate people advocated were so wildly out-of-line, that apology must come before any amnesty is even discussed.

[bound-vivisection]

How would you guys feel if I released a full list of kinks? Like everything you could possibly want to know from my preferences to my hard limits?

[namedathlete]

I'm not a person who makes fun of someone for reading, no matter what it is, but I'm taking a lot of joy in seeing my sisters in their late 20s reading the 'shit' 'trash' 'juvenile' series they endlessly gave me crap for reading in my teens

[copper-dragon-in-disguise]

Hi! I do have more questions now that I've read your detailed reply and thank you so much for that!

You said TV characters and such have colors and textures as well—what about star wars? 👀 Disaster lineage in particular or anyone you wanna say! Also do countries have colors and textures too? Feelings?

(and because you were kind enough to let me know my color is blue :')) is it because of my icon? What kind of blue? 👀😂)

okay so! i shall admit that, though I do actually follow you, I am not in fact that much of a star wars fan (I like the original 3, the rest vary from enh to *disgusted screaming*. TCW is fine tho).

however! obi wan is sort of a warm brown. cody is orange, obviously. both anakin and darth vader are red, the same color as darth vader's lightsaber. ashoka is the same blue as the strips on her lekku.

with merlin characters: merlin is a really dark blue, sort of like the tumblr blue but a little darker if that makes sense. arthur is the camelot red color. morgana is plum. gwen is sort of a light pink or a light purple, mordred is almost the same color as merlin but also a bit lighter.

doctor who, as a whole series and all that is related to it, is tardis blue. The individual seasons are defined by their intros, doctors, and companions. That being said, Nine is a dark maroon. Ten is either blue or brown, depending on the episode & his suit, with the default being brown. Eleven is bright yellow. Twelve is also red, but its a very different shade than Nine. I haven't seen enough (or any, besides gifs) of Thirteen to tell exactly what color she is, but I think its a buttery yellow. Martha is red-violet, and Donna is dark red (but is an entirely different color from Nine and Twelve). Rose is a really light sandy yellow. The Master is some sort of darkish blue, and Missy is dark lavender (an entirely different color from purple. maybe. sort of).

countries are weird; historical things, like ancient rome; ancient egypt, stuff like that, all have colors (at least the ones I know anything about). Modern day places don't really have color, with a couple exceptions. Greenland is green, for what I sincerely hope are obvious reasons. Canada is the same color as their side of niagara falls, and I wish I had a more specific description for that but I do not. Ireland is a sort of very dark, pretty green. Wales is a dragon (i know thats not actually a color, but I don't know how else to describe it).

Ancient Egypt is sandy yellow or teal, depending on which era (the old kingdom is sandy yellow, the middle & new kingdoms are teal); Ancient Rome is maroon. Ancient Greece is a light blue and white marble swirl type thing. A few of the emperors of Ancient Rome have specific colors (Nero is a wine colored purple and Augustus/Octavian/Octavius is sometimes orange and sometimes blood red, depending on how stupid he's being. Constantine is a mildly darker blood red. Diocletian is a medium gray) (You likely do not know who any of those people are except maybe Nero, that's fine, I wasn't really expecting anyone to, they were all Roman emperors.) Julius Ceaser (who was not technically an emperor!) is ivy green. Cleopatra is plum, the same color as morgana. Leonardo da Vinchi is yellow, the same color as sunflowers. Assorted other historical figures have colors, as do some, but not all, eras of history.

For instance: the Renaissance is red. In the middle east the middle ages are light blue, but in europe they're gray. The Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, is not black, its a greenish-yellowish.

I have many more color associations but for the sake of this being like. short ish (something this already is not). i shall not list them.

Your color is a light sort of sky blue, mostly due to your icon, but also because of your user (light as the sun? sky blue? get it? no? yeah, thats fair), and with some quick googling is Pantone 2985 C:

[xx-hail2theking-xx]

...

will all due acknowledgement, that you have every right and reason to feel that way...

it kind of sounds like the same thing I keep hearing angels say about demons. and, I don't think that's true.

you do know they're not comparable, right?

[bokkerijder]

pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc

against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"

[mayhemchicken-artblog]

in the hour or so it took me to draw this op turned reblogs off

EDIT: reblogs are STAYING OFF. op was right and correct and i have never regretted making a post as much as this one. if you want to reblog my art you can reblog something else from my blog. or commission me, lord knows i deserve financial compensation for the nightmare this post has put me through