#I saw a SINGLE fan design for him and became obsessed at the idea of what he might look like

[artheresy]

Me if Blade's eventual companion quest is about the High Cloud Quintet and his time on the Luofu as Yingxing: Yay! Love ❤️☺️💕💞🥰🥺❤️🥰☺️

Me if Blade's eventual character quest manages to include literally anything about his time on the Zhuming: RAAAHABAHHAHA 😍😍😍🤩🤩💔💞❤️💕❤️💔❤️❤️💞❤️💕❤️💔❤️💞❤️❤️😭❤️💔💕💕🔥🔥🔥❤️🔥❤️💕❤️🔥❤️🥰❤️❤️🥰❤️🔥❤️💕😭😭🔥😭😭💔🥲🥺🥰😭💕😭🥺🥺😭🔥😭❤️💕🥲🥺😭

[kareofbears]

persona 5 strikers thoughts and feelings

This is going to be a long post. Like, the type of post you’d only really have time to read when you’re trying to sleep but you’re not ready to be unconscious yet so you’re just looking for something to do to spend your time with minimal effort. 

So in 2018, a masterpiece was born into the world: Into the Spider-verse was released and it was amazing—it’s honestly the best spiderman movie we have without a doubt, and it’ll be very far into the future before Spider-verse is beaten as the best spiderman movie. Them’s the facts. Then in 2019, Spider-man: Far From Home was dropped. It’s a great movie! Great characters, great continuation of who these characters are and works fantastic as a continuation of a story. It’s really hard trying to take the torch of a previous movie (or in Marvel’s case, juggling twenty something movies) and come up with a new movie that both works on its own, as well as being the next step in this series of films. Thus, with that idea in mind, I think it’s kind of unfair to judge into the spiderverse and far from home, because these are two movies with two completely different objectives in mind. 

Okay, so this is still a persona 5 strikers post, I promise, but the idea is the same: Persona 5 could basically do whatever it wanted—new story, new characters, new everything, and it’s just plain old awesome. However, Persona 5 strikers did not have that sort of freedom. It was bound to the original game, and it had its own rules and stuff it had to keep intact, characters they had to work with, and on top of that, it had to justify its existence as a sequel (lets pretend money doesnt exist lmfao). 

SO, the big question is: did it do that? Did it justify its existence? 

And my answer: holy fuck did it ever do that

I came into this game knowing the extreme bare minimum. I knew there was someone named Sophia, and i knew there was roadtrip, and i knew there were Personas. That’s my knowledge of it before i played it on the Switch.  I should also clarify like, early on, that i was not expecting anything from this game. At all. I was the world’s biggest cynic of this game—if you scroll down my p5s tag far enough, youll just see me complaining about a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I was fully expecting to have this be a Waifu show, and any male character that isn’t Akira to just be shoved aside like some kind of nerd in a high school hallway, and i have never been more pleased to be wrong. In fact, i actually owe it an apology, because of how fucking rude i was for no reason!!! Because this game deserves everything to be honest. 

Persona 5 strikers is, frankly, insane. Insane in the sense that it got to pull shit off that just would never have existed in the original game, because the original game is scared. It had to be as impressive as possible and garner as much attention as possible. Strikers does not have that problem—every single person who bought that game does not need to be convinced that persona 5 is a good game. They already played it. That means Atlus can just fuck around and have a good time, and man did they have a good time. There’s still scenes that still shock me if i think about it too hard, because i’m used to atlus having to follow this sort of rule set when it comes to persona 5 (or any of the main games im assuming, but i havent played them.) And on top of that, there’s still shit that’s Atlus Trademarked Branded in a good way. The style of story of story telling, and revealing the mystery that is so integral to what p5 is, is still there. 

So, to make this even a little bit comprehensible, i will make a list! 

First of all, What is this game?

In short, this game is an OVA of an anime. It’s bonus side content that has one thing in mind: to showcase these lovable characters more by putting them in fun situations. That’s it, and it is just phenomenal. That was the main point of, i’d say, like forty hours of the game. It’s just fun times with fun characters. 

But to get deeper of what i think is happening, or what they were thinking during the development, is that this is a second opportunity. Persona 5 (as we all know) had a lot of problems, and we were not quiet about those problems. We yelled it all out, made posts, made complaints on every social media platform ever. And Atlus heard all of them, and Strikers is a way to mitigate those mistakes. Aside from being a fun OVA, Strikers also works to be a deeper exploration of these characters—more specifically, the characters that did not receive much in the original game. Creating this sequel is having the ability to redo what they felt (or to be more specific, we felt) in the original game while adding new ones. I will get to that in a second.  

The format of the game 

Absolutely brilliant to throw them on a road trip. P5V already forced us to experience Shibuya for 200+ hours, and im so glad that they didn’t do that again. Going from town to town, making us experience these new places alongside our favorite characters is so good, and it just makes sense. It’s fun, it’s lighthearted, and it’s actually shockingly good. But one thing i do want to talk about early on is the way the story unfolds and the villains that they use, and what they do with it because it’s very interesting. 

So as we explore japan and stuff, we encounter jails, and with those jails comes an antagonist. This antagonist works to be a parallel to one of our characters. That character will find it in their hearts to feel bad for the antagonist, because the antagonist could have been them had the original game not happen. At first I thought all of the thieves were gonna get an antagonist, and i was really hyped for the ryuji one. And then came to hour forty of the game where i realized “yeah that’s not gonna happen. There’s just not enough time.” And i was right, and the game ended. But i am not salty at all, honestly, because the people who got a direct antagonist were: Ann, Yusuke, and Haru. (we wont count zen and sophie). 

Is there a trend??? Yes. these are all characters in the original game that have received the worst treatment by atlus. The three of them are basically cast aside the minute they finished their original arc, and its horrible! BUT that’s why this is the path that atlus chose for them—to give them more depth, and screentime, and a way to show their inner self. That isn’t to say that the ones who aren’t those three (makoto, futaba, mona, akira, ryuji) didn’t get anything. Futaba still has her thing at the end with ichinose, and she was very prevalent and animated during the rest of the game. Mona and Akira have to be a focal points, that’s just the nature of the game. The other two though, I will talk about in depth in a second.  

Makoto

Y’all i poke fun at shumako fans sometimes cause its kind of easy and fun, but i honestly love makoto. In my very first playthrough of p5 (my first ever jrpg game, first persona game, i had no idea what i was doing), i had only maxed out two characters: ryuji and makoto. And i know she had a lot of screentime and love in the original game which is great, but i truly felt like she was dissed in this game. Her only roles were

A driver

Someone to tell them “we don’t have a choice. Let’s keep going and see where this takes us.” (seriously, if you replay this game, you will see how much she does this)

Idk, i just wish she had more to do, especially compared to how much love they gave the other characters. 

But let’s talk about some of the new characters! 

Zenkichi

Damn you atlus. Damn you and your insistence at bringing in cop characters. I was fully on board with hating zenkichi, i was fucking ready for it. I was convinced that there was nothing they could do convince to like zenkichi. I was immune to their copaganda. 

And then i ended up loving him, which makes me sad a little bit. I didn’t realize how desperate i was to have an adult who has a persona. Someone who wants the world to change just as much as they do, while still having that aspect of them that makes them adult. Like??? As someone who is technically an adult, its a breath of fresh air. An adult. Who fights. For justice. Using a persona. And god i love akane so much, and her obsession with the thieves (that scene is probably in my top ten fave scenes of the game). Also what i loved about zenkichi is that he fucking hates the cops!! He hates the system of the cops!! And thats why i actually really started to love him!! Because i thought it was atlus saying that the systematic problem of the police cannot be solved by one person, and zenkichi threw away his badge. I actually cried at that part!! 

But then he became a cop again, and i was just :/ but as a character, i really love him to bits and would love to do a study on him, or at least use him as an outside pov. But! i absolutely love his persona, since im a les miserables fan hehe

Sophia 

she’s probably my favorite new aspect of the game. I was ready to not like her—again, i just suck like that, lmfao—and when i saw her, i was scared that she was just another waifu. I mean, she was very cute after all. But then as the game went on, i thought she was a little too cute. And even further into the game, i finally slapped myself in the face and realized oh my god shes not a waifu. Shes a sister. 

That blew my mind, im ngl to you. A female character that isn’t supposed to be romanced? By jove, what a miracle! 

And she…is an amazing character. Im sorry, i just love her so much. I love her so much that she  probably ranks as my fifth or sixth favorite character which is surprising even to me. Everything about her is delightful and invigorating. She’s funny??? Her comedic timing is amazing, and she has such chemistry with the rest of the team. She’s actually useful to the plot, and while her character design is a little too on the nose for me in terms of cuteness (i mean, good god she’s wearing oversized sweater to show how cute and tiny she is, and her hair has literal hearts in it), she is absolutely lovable. 

But what i actually really wanna gush about for a second is sophia at the last stage of the game. You get the idea, i dont really like to get excited over things, so at this point i figured that there was nothing this game could do to shock me. 

And then sophia had a persona awakening. 

Like. holy fuck did i yell. I didnt realize what was happening until the music had already kicked in. and its just so fucking smart!!! Sophia??? The ai?? With no heart?? gOT A PERSONA???? AWAKENING??? BECAUSE SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HEART IS AND THE PASSION THAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO GET A PERSONA??? I started crying honestly, because it was just so smart. And looking back on it now, its obvious!! Of course it would lead to this, it only made sense that the culmination of her character arc leads to her getting a persona, nothing else would have been as good. Also, her voice actor is just amazing?? When she was talking to ichinose at the end, i actually got incredibly emotional because of the line reads. Its just so spot on and it really captures the essence of sophia.

Muah. five stars Atlus. You got me. 

Ryuji <3!!!!

Oh man. Oh boy. Okay. so where do i start. 

Yall know i love him. Hes probably my favorite fictional male character of all time, and he is the one i was the absolute most cynical about in this game. I was expecting literally nothing. Nothing. Like. nothing. I thought he was just gonna keep being used as a joke, or a gag, and he’s gonna be super horny all the time for the other girls and it was gonna make me mad and there was gonna be some insane homophobic/queerphobic jokes in every other scene and i know i was being unfair, but i cant help it. 

And then i played the first two hours of the game, and i cried the entire time. Because ryuji has never been better than he is in this game. Its crazy. 

The ryuji in persona 5 strikers is who ryuji should have been/how he should have been treated this entire time. From the actual funny jokes (for example, the gold bar joke + his reaction to it in the beginning of the game), defending his female friends instead of being the one people need to defend from (natsume arc), and the fact that he was the one to be there with morgana and akira in the very beginning of the game. Its such a small thing that they didnt even need to do, but it was such an integral part of the original game for me, that i just was convinced that nothing like this was going to happen. But then it happened. Its just small stuff like that that could have been overlooked but it wasn’t because this game? Persona 5 strikers? Fucking loves ryuji. 

The actual respect they gave this boy is insane and i wasn't ready for it. Like, they gave the shujin trio lunch, they gave the little charm of the katana when they were in natsume’s jail, and, in my opinion this is the second-best thing that they could have given ryuji is sophia. Ryuji and sophia are the pinnacle of a brother & sister bonding relationship in the game that isn’t akira & futaba. And its really prevalent too?? Small stuff from the beginning of the game (pulling her out of a jail, calling her shorty), but then you have the iconic “shut the fuck up” scene, and that scene was so well characterized and written and voice acted, that somehow him saying “fuck” was the least exciting part of that scene to me. Ryuji is an older brother to her, like its undoubtable, and its only further cemented at the end of the game where Ryuji helps out ichinose because he knows how much sophia cares about her. This game. Love ryuji. And i love. This game. 

You know what else i love? Akiryu. 

Guys. i was fully prepared to starve in terms of akiryu. But theres just. So much of it. I wont get too deep into it, because i think this aspect of the game for me still needs marinate a little bit. Like, what was that last shot when EMMA died and Ryuji walked to approach Akira so they could relish in their victory together?? And the smile from both of them??? What the fuck. That was amazing. Also Joker being saved by Ryuji when he was about to fall from the cliff to save sophia??? WHAT. The LEADER AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN? WHAT. anyway. If theres anything i want to keep for myself in my own brain, its the akiryu aspect of this game, so i wont talk too much about that part of things (instead, itll probably manifest in fic lmfaooo). 

Sure, there’s tidbits of stuff i dont like that they gave ryuji: sexualizing ann in that one cut scene and making him touch the jails even though it hurts, and i recognize those and frown at them, but for the most part, i am blown away with how they treated him.

Basically, Ryuji has never been better. From the opening of the game with him being the first text message and the one to sling his arm around akira, to the very last cut scene where it was ryuji wordlessly leaving because he’s so confident that they would never be separated for long, this game adores Ryuji and i am so so happy to say that.

The Royal aspect of things

Yeah, i had to talk about this, but itll be a short thing i just wanted to point out. Because the last part of this game...is persona 5 royal. Which is curious. Like taking reality and giving that power to someone else so you dont have to experience suffering anymore? And even like, the final section just looked a lot like the top half of maruki’s palace?? And whats even crazier is that we had a boss fight with sophia, just like how we had a boss fight with sumire? Royal and Strikers have like, the same thesis statement. It’s kind of uncanny.It’s interesting, it’s like atlus came up with these two ideas, and then just decided they liked both of them so much that they just did it twice. I don’t mind though—actually, in terms of how the last Palace/Jails go, i probably like them both about equally. 

Though i did love the final battle in this one more than i did in royal. Splitting into teams?? Thats cool as fuck, and really innovative and i didnt see it coming. It also kicked my ass. A lot. 

Now for the last stretch: the small stuff!

The music — bomb as fuck. In my heart, Daredevil is ranked the same as Rivers. Axe to grind is also amazing, but Daredevil owns me

Akechi — i really debated whether or not to talk about him, but i figured a bullet point should be enough. Im really shocked that he wasnt in this at all. Like not even a name drop. If this is an OVA, and the point of the game is to please the fans, and akechi is arguably the fan favorite character, i was really ready for something. But there was nothing, except for the pancake hallway if that even counts as a reference. Thats it. Thats all i wanted to say about him.

The humour — FUCKING HILARIOUS im convinced that in my fifty hour playtime, five of that is dedicated to me laughing and unable to continue the game 

Akira — so much personality! His lines of dialogue are crazy sometimes (like. Whats up with him saying Ryuji has ‘nice abs’ when they were in bath? Im crazy and even i dont know what the fuck that could mean) 

Battle system — oh my god i almost forgot to talk about this. I love it! I kind of miss the turn based aspect just because i found it very comforting for some reason, but this hack and slash style of gameplay is so invigorating because i do feel like it justifies shit like the baton pass and huge attacks.  This battle system fully encompases how the Phantom Thieves are supposed to fight, you know what i mean?

Anyway, thats my thoughts on strikers. Loved it. Amazing. 9.3/10, wouldve been higher but Konoe’s Jail almost bored me to death. Also im a monster and i didnt do any requests that isn’t a fun one, teehee. As if i play persona 5 for the persona aspect of things.

[big-oof-bi-goof]

So there’s this meme going around with TMA fans, the whole “hello Jon” thing, but it kind of disappoints me. We, as a fandom, are capable of more. We can do better than this. We just need to Hello Jon. Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.

I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.

Now, shall we turn the page and try again?

Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, The Archivist.

Statement begins.

I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious.

Why does a man seek to destroy the world?

It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.

It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, Jon, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice.

I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.

I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.

Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott, and the rest – to discuss and hypothesize on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner, I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.

But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of our patrons.

I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.

At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be an inevitable transformation was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment soon became a race.

Beyond that, I was getting older, and mortality began to weigh more heavily on my mind. How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror?

I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank, leading him to design it as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, such that my own modifications to the design of the Panopticon went… unremarked.

It. Took. Years, for the dread of the prisoners to fully suffuse the place, and I was an old man before I made my first attempt at the Watcher’s Crown, sat in the center of that colossal eye, the great ring of cells encircling me like a coronet.

It was… flawed, of course, as all Smirke’s rituals were, and none of the inmates survived as the power I attempted to harness shook the building almost to pieces, and the murky swamp upon which the prison was built consumed it.

But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to.

It was a dizzying power, and one I discovered I maintained even as I found vessels to extend my life. Of course, I had to make sure the location was kept under my control while I worked on revising my plans, and so I moved the organization I had founded to assist in my research down to London, and the Institute as you know it was born.

I’ll not bore you with details of my bodies and failures through those intervening years. Suffice to say I kept busy, both planning my own next attempt, and doing my best to stymie those others who tried versions of their own.

Surely my interpretation of the Watcher’s Crown had been incomplete; there had been some element of the ritual I had overlooked.

It was not until I met Gertrude Robinson that things began to really come into focus.

You see, the role of Archivist has been part of the Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers; most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.

But Gertrude was unlike any other Archivist. She simply did not care about compiling experiences or collecting the fears of others. She was driven to stop those who served the Powers.

More than once I thought she must secretly be of the Hunt – but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times.

I once asked her what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me the Desolation had killed her cat.

I don’t know if she was joking, and, to be honest, I could never bring myself to look into her mind and find out for sure.

In any case, Gertrude’s ruthless efficiency in derailing and collapsing rituals threw into stark relief a question that had been bothering me for almost a hundred and fifty years: In the whole span of humanity, why had nobody ever succeeded?

Perhaps there were a long line of Gertrude Robinsons throughout history, but I found that hard to credit. Could it be, then, that there was something in the very concept of the rituals that meant they couldn’t succeed?

She was clearly having similar thoughts in that last year, all of which culminated with the People’s Church.

When I saw that she was making no preparations whatsoever to stop it, I realized she was putting into practice a theory, and one she couldn’t afford to be wrong. She was going to wait, and see if the unopposed ritual succeeded, or if it collapsed under its own strain as mine had all hose years ago.

Knowing Gertrude, I’m sure she had a backup plan if she had miscalculated – but she had not. The ritual failed. And all at once, I realized what had to be done.

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down.

To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.

Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.

The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once. All fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge. All under the Eye’s auspices, of course. We mustn’t forget our roots.

And there was only one being that could possibly serve as a lynchpin for this new ritual: The Archivist. A position that had so recently become vacant, thanks to Gertrude’s ill-timed retirement plans.

Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.

It might, perhaps, be better named: The Archive.

Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.

You are a living chronicle of terror.

Perhaps, then, if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and each in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom.

Do you see where I’m going, Jon?

It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.

I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but My God, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.

Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push, learn how you worked – So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and, while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be.

I reasoned if you couldn’t survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen. So, when Jane Prentiss attacked, I watched eagerly, one hand on the gas release from the start.

You acquitted yourself well enough, so I decided to see how far you would get, though I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones.

The discovery that one of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated the Institute in the aftermath was certainly a pleasant bonus. Even if that sliver of paranoia, that vague wrongness you couldn’t quite place wouldn’t count as a mark, it was only a matter of time before it confronted you in a far more direct and affecting matter.

Admittedly, given the advent of the Unknowing, I needn’t have bothered. But what’s the old saying about hindsight?

More important to me was Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion. If it had taken an interest, then I very much wanted it to cross your path.

So I found one of its current victims and convinced her to make a statement.

Poor Helen. I actually had to put her in a taxi myself, she was getting so lost in those narrow London side streets.

It worked, though.

Between the stabbing and at least two desperate flights into its doors – you’re marked very deeply by the Spiral.

Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast.

I… justified it to myself saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway, if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.

Still. I’d requested Detective Tonner be assigned to the case when they found Gertrude’s body in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.

Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you.

Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.

Honestly, I had – nothing to do with Melanie and her Slaughter adventure, but when I saw the situation, I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right there, a ready target.

I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

The Unknowing was a distraction, but not an unwelcome one. For this to work, you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things.

And it did serve another purpose, of course. It inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate. If I tried too early, you’d just die. Too late, and you might be powerful enough to see the attempt coming, and maybe even understand why.

As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colors.

By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you Knowing something you shouldn’t.

I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal.

All that remained, then, were the Dark, the Flesh, the Buried, and the Lonely.

I was a little put out when that idiot Jared Hopworth misinterpreted my letters and attacked the Institute too soon, before you were even out of the hospital, but then – Ho, you should have see my face when you voluntarily went to him.

I couldn’t see what happened in there, of course, but given how you came out, I’m very sure it counts as a mark.

I suspected the coffin might turn up again, and once it did, it was simply a matter of getting any, uh… restraining factors you might have had flying off on a wild goose chase, and waiting.

Honestly, Detective Tonner has been proving invaluable through this process. I’d been racking my brains for months about what I could use to lure you in.

And, of course, I knew the Dark Sun was just sitting there waiting. So when it came time, I just whipped up another apocalypse and sent you on your merry way.

Then all that remained was the Lonely.

Poor Peter. He really should have left well enough alone. Or just done what I’d asked in the first place.

Ah well. He knew what I was attempting, and was very unwilling to cooperate until I made him a little wager about Martin.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that, in addition to setting you up for the final mark, he was giving you all the tools you needed to escape from it.

How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that.

And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. I have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane, but past here lies only impatience.

You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you, and the time of our victory is here.

Don’t worry, Jon. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made.

Now. Repeat after me.

You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.

Come to us in your wholeness.

Come to us in your perfection.

Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and leads and dies!

Come to us.

I – OPEN – THE DOOR!

[the-panwitch]

Heylo! I saw that you were asking for requests, and I have one if you want to write it! What if the reader is always drawing on the boards after school, and students don’t know who does it, and one day Peter catches her drawing? Idk, I kinda liked the idea! I love your writing hun!!🥰💕❤️

Peter Parker and The Dry Erase Board Artist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: And here it is! Almost a whole month after I said I would have it done! I am so so so sorry for how long this took and also sorry for how shitty it also is. I hope you enjoy this trash fire that I just spent almost 4 hours on and finished at 1 am. Oh, I also made this gender neutral using they/them pronouns. 

Warnings: uh language, slight death threat?, stupid teachers, numbers, fluff ig, idrk 

Word Count: 2279

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: There’s a new mystery in Midtown, and it’s the creator of the dry erase board drawings. Peter is desperate to find out who it is even if it means losing sleep and missing assignments. What will it take to find out who this secret artist is?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter knew all about mysteries. He used to stay up too late reading those mystery novels by flashlight when he should have been sleeping. He grew up loving them. The amount of times May would walk into the living room to see him once again binge watching Scooby Doo was uncountable. Even now, he prided himself on being one of the biggest mysteries in New York: Spider-Man. He had to hold back a grin whenever he heard people discuss who the masked hero could possibly be. The craziest one so far was that Spider-Man was actually an alien being used by the government. He wasn’t sure who came up with that one, but props to them for their creativity.

He just absolutely loved mysteries of all shapes and sizes, and now, he had a new one to solve: the drawings. He called it Operation Dry Erase Board, and yes, the name did need improvement. Both MJ and Ned made sure to tell him that every single time he brought it up. Ned had suggested The Search for the Hidden Artist, which MJ just said sounded even worse. 

It had started a couple weeks ago. He had walked into his first period calculus class to see everyone whispering and taking pictures of the board. His first reaction was panic － his teacher was prone to surprise pop quizzes － but it soon turned to awe as he stared at the array of color across the board. It was a beautifully detailed portrait of the sea. He gazed upon the scene of manta rays and fish and even the silhouette of a shark. There was coral and shells of every color, and the lines and swirls of blue captivated him.There was no signature. Nobody knew who had done it. 

At first, Peter just tried to brush it off. There was somebody in the school who was skilled with dry erase board markers and was very artistically gifted. Not the biggest deal, but good for them. It became a bigger deal when the next day a gorgeous rendition of Starry Night was covering the board of the biology classroom. Once again, no signature. That’s when Peter started to become invested. 

He questioned MJ first. She was one of the only artists he knew, but she just scoffed. “I’m good, but dry erase markers are shit for me to work with.” 

He started paying more attention in art class, looking for anyone with a similar style. Nothing. Everyone was your typical high school artist who was just there for the credits, meaning people like him. Don’t ask about how designing the first spidey suit went.

 The drawings just kept coming. He soon saw space, dinosaurs, a jungle, The Mona Lisa, even each of the Avengers all spread across the dry erase boards. Each one of these was so beautiful and so alluring that it made his eyes sting and shouts of protest to erupt from the students when the teachers had to erase them. Even if they didn’t erase them, they were gone the next day. Whether it was the Hidden Artist or the janitor, Peter didn’t know. It was just another part in the mystery.

A lot of the drawings weren’t done in any classrooms that Peter had, meaning he would have to take field trips during his lunch period to go and find them. Most of the time he already knew where he was going. There was now a whole Instagram page dedicated to the art. It was run by Daphne, who was in both Yearbook and the Art Club. He had asked her if it was her, but she had just giggled and said she was a fan. Honestly, Peter was too. 

He would stare at the art for as long as he could each time he saw it, and he stared at the pictures he took of them even longer. He was consumed by the art, by his love for it. He needed to find out who the artist was, but unfortunately for him it would have to wait. He was so preoccupied with being Spider-Man and now also being a shitty detective that he was falling behind on both his work and his sleep. He had now fallen asleep a total of five times over the course of a week and a half, and he was close to failing both AP Government and Spanish, simply because he wasn’t catching up on his workload. 

Now, he was passed out in AP Lang, the one class that everyone knew not to fall asleep in. He couldn’t help it. He was running on a total of 4 hours for the week, and it was a Thursday. Not even his spidey sense could have prepared him for the crash of a ruler against a metal trash can right next to his ear. After nearly falling out of his chair and almost decking his teacher, Peter was given two weeks’ worth of detentions. 

“Hopefully that’ll teach young Mr. Parker here to pay attention instead of dozing off in the middle of class. Maybe he’ll catch up on his missing assignments, too. Speaking of, would you like to tell the class which rhetorical devices you’ll be utilizing in your essay, Mr. Parker?” All Peter could do is stare back at his teacher, horror written over his face. 

————————

It was 3:30 on a Wednesday, and Peter was losing his mind. Each of his detentions were an hour and a half long, lasting from 3:15 to 4:45. He had managed to catch himself up on his work and raise his grades a bit, but that didn’t change his predicament. He couldn’t go home or skip detention, meaning he was stuck at school for another hour and fifteen minutes. When he asked if he could do something, he was told he could go help the janitor. With a sigh, he got up and went in search of the janitor’s closet. 

During the time spanning over his punishment, he had nearly forgotten about his obsession with the Hidden Artist. Of course he still saw and heard about the drawings and he would still stare when he saw them, but now with the need to focus on his assignments being drilled into his brain every day on top of trying to stop bad guys each night, he was forced to move on. He didn’t want to. God, if he had the chance he’d stare at those drawings for hours on end, but he didn’t have that chance. It fucking sucked. 

After a couple minutes of searching, he finally found the closet. He grabbed a broom and looked around, and to his left, there was a classroom with the door slightly open. With a heavy sigh, he walked towards the room and pushed the door open, only to stop dead. There, across the room, was a brand new drawing, and it was a drawing of him. Not him him, of course, but a drawing of Spider-Man. It was a drawing of an event he recognized from yesterday when he had walked a lost kid back to their parents. The drawing showed him crouched down in front of the kid who was crying, and he had his hand out as an offer for the child to take it. 

Upon closer inspection, the drawing seemed incomplete. There were too many white spaces which wasn’t the artist's style. As he stepped closer to it, he heard the door creak and a gasp behind him. He spun around, nearly falling over in the process, and looked up wildly. His eyebrows furrowed when he saw Y/n L/n, a student in his grade. They stared back at him with wide eyes. 

“Did...did you do this?” Peter asked slowly. Y/n hesitantly nodded. 

“If you tell anyone about this, Parker, you’re dead.” 

He was slightly taken aback by this. Not the death threat, necessarily, he got those all the time, but it was a bit of a surprise coming from Y/n.

“I won’t. I promise,” he said softly. 

Y/n nodded slightly before striding towards the board and taking out a marker, beginning to fill in all of the white spaces Peter had noticed earlier. 

After a moment, Peter asked, “How do you do it?”

Y/n turned towards him, black marker clutched in their hand. “What?”

“The drawings. They’re so beautiful...I didn’t even know you could draw like that.”

“Everyone has their secrets, Parker. I’m sure you have yours.” 

Peter almost laughed at that, because yeah, he did, and Y/n was drawing it across the Physics dry erase board. But he didn’t laugh. He just smiled a little and kept watching, forgetting all about the broom that was now leaning against a desk.

“So...Spider-Man huh?” 

Y/n sighed and turned to him. “Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be sweeping or something?” 

Peter shrugged. “Or something. Look, this is probably gonna sound super weird, but I’ve been trying to figure out who you were for weeks. Your art is super amazing and cool and I just wanted to know so badly who was talented enough to pull it off. And now I know.”

“Are you disappointed?” It wasn’t a question out of fear, but more out of curiosity. Y/n sat themselves on a desk and waited for the answer. 

“I don’t think so,” Peter said. “This was just unexpected, I guess. I didn’t even consider you for a suspect.” Y/n chuckled at this. 

“Nobody suspects me. That’s the fun part of all of this, actually. Did you know people actually thought that it was Ms. Rosemary for a while?”

“The crazy teacher’s aid?”

“Yup. The theory, I think, was that she was so crazy that art became like her therapy or escape or whatever. I mean, it can be like therapy, but I think Rosemary needs a little more than some doodles in order to help her.”

“These aren’t just ‘some doodles,’ Y/n. They’re-”

“Beautiful. Yeah, you’ve said.” They shrugged. “It’s just scribbles on a board, Parker. Scribbles that, for whatever reason, make our brains happy.”

Peter didn’t really have a response to that, so instead he just watched as Y/n went back to work. 

————————

That was how he would spend his detentions. He would offer to go help the janitor, and then he would run around the school trying to find Y/n. Eventually, on the days where the drawings took less time to create, Y/n started to try to teach him how to draw. Basic things at first, like flowers or trying to break things down into their simpler shapes. He could barely do either of those things, but he enjoyed trying anyways. On other days, Peter would just sit and watch in silence as they drew. It was mesmerizing, and only he got to witness it. 

It became their thing. Even after detentions ended, Peter would stay after school for an hour or so just to go hang out with Y/n. They would have snacks and play music and have a good time. Peter learned that Y/n stayed after school since their parents were never home until the late evenings, so they stayed back just for the hell of it. He also learned that they were good friends with the janitor and that his name was Roger. He was the reason that they were even able to stay for as long as they did. It was pretty cool. 

It was a Friday, and Peter was spinning around in the teacher’s chair while Y/n drew a forest scene. Peter watched them for a while, a small smile on his face. They were also so concentrated when they worked, their eyes narrowing and jaw tightening as they drew the different lines and curves that made up the masterpiece. Unbeknownst to Y/n, Peter had a surprise for them. 

“Hey, N/n?” Peter asked. All he got was a hum in response. He rolled his eyes. “Come here.”

Y/n sighed and got off of the stool that they had been sitting on. “What do you want, Pete?” they asked as they strolled over, leaning over the desk when they got close enough. In response, Peter held up a small, wrapped up bundle. Y/n’s eyebrows furrowed as they picked it up. 

“What-”

“Shhhh!” Peter said with a soft giggle. “Just open it.”

Y/n narrowed their eyes at him before slowly tearing the paper away. They smiled softly as they stared at the multipack of dry erase markers, enough colors to make practically any drawing that happened to cross their mind. 

“Why?”

“A simple thank you would have sufficed. It’s an appreciation gift for all of your art. I figured by now you’ve probably killed most of the markers in the school, so I got you some new ones.”

Y/n chuckled a little and looked at him. “Thank you.”

“Of course. You deserve it.”

“I literally just make colored lines one a board.”

“And I appreciate those colored lines! They give me serotonin as do you.”

“I give you serotonin?”

“Yes.”

Y/n blinked in surprise. “Alright then...you also give me serotonin.”

“Really? Awesome.”

They both laughed for a moment, Y/n glancing back down at the markers as Peter continued to look at them.  

“Hey, Pete?” Y/n asked as they looked back up at him. “What?”

“Would you...would you like to continue to provide me with serotonin and go out with me?”

Peter’s eyes widened in surprise, but soon it was his smile that was widening instead. 

“Absolutely.”

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Tagging:  @tommysparker @bebbeb @stixnstripesworld @orowit @dreamerinthesun @ididntseeurbag @bruhelpimgay @yikes-n-bikes @becausewhatiam-iswhatimnot @thespydersargon @in-a-lot-of-fandoms-tbh @th0ttie4tommy

[iamrealbuilder]

Bill Buchalter interview

Bill Buchalter was a level designer for Sunstorm Interactive. He’s worked on 3 official add-on of Build Engine games: Cryptic Passage for Blood, Suckin’ Grits On Route 66 for Redneck Rampage, Caribbean Life for Duke Nukem 3D. Interview, November 2020: Corentin: Can you introduce yourself?

Bill Buchalter: My name is Bill Buchalter. I’m an avid gamer of all kinds – video games, board games, and especially tabletop RPGs. I’m currently a freelance writer for AAW Games (Adventure A Week Games) writing mini adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I live outside Indianapolis, IN with my wife Jane, our three kids, and our dog Roxi. When I’m not gaming, I also enjoy music, playing guitar, hiking, and camping.

C: With Sunstorm Interactive, you're credited for level design on Cryptic Passage, Caribbean Life and Route 66. How did you start working with Sunstorm and what do you remember from that time?

BB: In the mid 90’s, maybe around 1995 or 96, I was very into playing Duke Nukem 3D. Like most PC gamers at the time, I had played Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, and Duke Nukem just blew me away. Back in those days, when we played online, we would use a 3rd party program called KALI. You dialed up on your modem, logged onto the internet, and then used KALI as a portal to chat with other gamers and find someone to play with. The KALI software would then allow you to network together over the internet and play PVP matches. It was crude, and the lag could be horrible, but we didn’t know any better at the time and we loved it!

I remember I was in a B. Dalton bookstore in the mall one day (another relic of the 90’s that is long gone!) when I found a book called the “Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook”. I was intrigued, and as I flipped through the pages it talked about a program on the Duke Nukem CD called Build, which allowed you to create your own levels. I had no idea Build existed, let alone how to use it. I bought the book and spent the next couple weeks diving into learning how to use Build. I was hooked!

Making my own maps quickly became an obsession. I would share them with my friends on KALI and I quickly earned a reputation for making user maps. I remember there was a map building competition, but I don’t recall who sponsored it. A guy named Robert Travis won the competition. When I saw his maps, I was blown away! His designs were so much more advanced than mine. He was using tricks I had never thought of to get lighting effects and set moods. I had to reach out to him to pick his brain.

Robert responded and we began talking and quickly figured out that we both lived in Indianapolis. He was working for Sunstorm at the time and invited me to come to their office to discuss level design. I met him there one evening, and he showed me some of the stuff he was working on. We ended up playing Duke all night on Sunstorm’s network with some of the other guys in the office. I was in heaven!

Robert introduced me to Anthony Campiti, the lead producer on Sunstorm’s next project – Cryptic Passage, an add-on for a Build engine game called Blood. They invited me to design some levels for the game and I jumped at the chance. Robert assigned me to design an opera house level and immediately I got pictures in my head of the theater scenes from Interview with a Vampire. I went home and worked furiously on designing the level. I was still rough, but with Robert’s help I tweaked things here and there and slowly learned his techniques. In the end I was really pleased with the level I’d designed. Robert and Anthony were happy too and asked me to design a second map specifically for deathmatch.

The next project Sunstorm was working on was Suckin’ Grits on Route 66, an add-on for another Build engine game called Redneck Rampage. Robert again asked if I’d like to be a part of that team and assigned me to build a truck stop level. Using a lot of the things I’d learned on Cryptic Passage, and the campy feel of the Redneck Rampage game, I had a lot of fun designing that level.

The last project I worked on for Sunstorm was Duke Nukem Caribbean Vacation. By this time Duke’s popularity was beginning to wane, and Quake was taking over. Robert was already starting to experiment and learn how to use the Quake engine. I was a new dad at the time (my first daughter had just been born) so unfortunately, I didn’t have the spare time to devote to learning a new engine. I barely had the time to design my level for Duke Caribbean, but I did manage to finish the casino level for that project. I do recall that Robert ended up going through in the end and changing a lot of the aspects of my level to fit the theme they had in mind. I remember being a bit disappointed and not really feeling like the level was “mine” because of so many of the changes. It was the last project I worked on for Sunstorm.

I kept in touch with Robert and Anthony for a while after that. They were branching out, working on other projects, and even trying to develop their own FPS game that I don’t think ever really got off the ground. Sunstorm was having the most success with their Deer Hunter line of games that at the time were selling well in Wal-Mart. Sadly, I eventually just lost touch with those guys.

I’m sure this is WAY more information than you were wanting (I’m a writer… I can’t help but go off the deep end!) but you dusted off some fond, old memories for me, so I apologize for walking so far down memory lane!

C: I see that you're still making maps, different kind of maps! This makes me wonder if maybe you were involved with W!Zone (a pack of maps for Warcraft 2 released by Sunstorm). Can you tell us a bit about that if possible?

BB: I didn’t have any hand in the W!Zone project for Sunstorm, but I loved the Warcraft series. As was common for many video gamers like me, who had roots in fantasy games like D&D, I played a lot of Warcraft and eventually got sucked into the world of MMOs with Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft! If only I had back the time I sunk into those games!

These days I’m exclusively writing and designing for Dungeons and Dragons. I started about ten years ago writing for D&D Organized Play in a campaign called Living Forgotten Realms. I co-authored two adventures for that with my good friend, Michael Pearman, and authored a third adventure on my own. As you know from tracking me down via AAW Games, I’ve now authored six adventures for them, five of which are already published and one that is still in the works but should be released soon.

When I do manage to find time for video games, Diablo III is my game of choice these days. I’m looking forward to Season 22 starting here shortly, and like many others, I’m really hoping for something great with Diablo IV. I’ve been a huge fan of the series since the beginning, and even wrote an entire campaign for D&D 5E that translated the story of Diablo III into Dungeons and Dragons for the players in my home game! Thanks again for the opportunity to share some of this history. It was fun putting it all down and reliving those days!

C: There are two signatures in the Truck Stop level for Route 66. Do you remember anything about that ? There also several levels with no known credit : Fun Park, House of ill Repute, Mystery Dino Cave, Bigfoot Convention.

The signature on the truck stop is Route 66 was a joke! I was the only designer on that one. I just signed it "Billy Joe Jim Bob Buchalter" as a joke for bad redneck name. I wasn't the kind of guy that had to sign my maps the EXACT same way every time. :)

Other than the truck stop, I don't recall designing any other maps for Route 66. I pretty sure none of those you listed below were mine, but I don't recall whose they were.

Finally, here are some final comments Bill made after reading through some forum posts:

Wow, I am really quite humbled that you guys looked so deeply into my work! The fact that you could recognize my build style is pretty cool - I didn't even know I had a style! LOL. The truth be told, the reason you probably had so much trouble telling my levels from Robert's is because he was a big influence on me. I learned a lot from him and incorporated a lot of that into the stuff I built.

Its funny how reading through that thread you linked brought back memories... I remember now that my biggest disappointment from Duke Caribbean was that my only level in the game ended up being a secret level - that some people wouldn't even find it or ever play it. I was actually pretty excited about that level. I was the one that suggested a casino because my folks had retired to Vegas, so I'd been in a lot of the casinos there and had some great ideas for the map. I'd forgotten all about the restaurant I worked into it, and the big fish tanks.

There seems to be some debate about Robert. From what I remember, he was a really good guy. Maybe a bit tough to work for, but only because he really strived for our designs to be the best they could be, and he demanded that of both himself and the other designers. As I said before, I learned early on to accept criticism and critique and not take it personally. It was just Robert doing his job. I'll be the first to admit that I designed better levels thanks to the stuff I learned from Robert.

Someone on the message board made a very astute comment, basically to the effect that "Bill had to have other work out there. Sunstorm wouldn't hire an unproven guy off the street." But truth be told, that's exactly what they did! I hadn't done a single thing before working there. But I think a few things played in my favor. First, I lived in Indy, just 15 minutes from their office, so it was easy for me to go in and work directly with Robert. Second, while I didn't have anything officially published, I did have a disk full of the maps I'd designed on my own, and Robert thought I showed promise. I would design at home a lot, then go into the office a couple times a week and sit with Robert while he critiqued my work and offered advice on how to improve it.

I'll be honest - I'm blown away at the number of people STILL playing these old maps we made so many years ago. I watched a couple YouTube videos of a guy playing and reviewing Duke Caribbean and Blood Cryptic Passage. His high praise of both Full House and the Opera House really made my day. It's nice to know that people enjoyed my work.

_____________________________

Thanks a lot to Bill Buchalter for taking the time to answer these questions! Thanks also for sharing... “Big City” !

A Duke Nukem 3D map he created back in the day before joining with Sunstorm Interactive which was never released before! Screenshot:

Map download:

https://msdn.duke4.net/bigcity.zip

______

External link: Duke4 forum blog megathread: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11471-blog-interviews-of-build-engine-video-games-developers/page__pid__353013#entry353013 The forum posts Bill read, mentionned above, can be found here: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9418-duke-caribbean-multiplayer-levels/

[redantsunderneath]

On Analysis - Introduction (the “why” part)

“He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

Maybe some broader personal context would help understating why in god’s name I write shit about how Age of Ultron is a remake of Eraserhead and Marvel crossovers are inherently about self hating creatives going to war with editorial. Like everyone else, I love a well told story but want to be surprised - seeing Star Wars is still the single biggest event in my life in supercharging my interest in narrative art.  But from early on, I had this left brain/right brain conflict going on. I was super interested in details and loved anything that required getting all the pieces to understand (that one episode of Speed Racer where they explain all the buttons I only saw once but I must have excitedly told everyone in the schoolyard about it 2 or 3 times) and I’ve always been down for the even the shittiest world-building that makes you dig for details (maybe this why Star Wars’ gesturing at a larger canvas lit my fuse so hard and how my introduction to Marvel comics became the second stage rocket booster 3 years later - see my retropseudonostalgia post). This also is probably common, especially here.

But it’s the right brain impulse became an overriding unconscious attractor. I saw The Man with the X-Ray eyes very young and had some serious nightmares, but mostly remember actually wanting to recapture that dread.  This became a pattern.  Anything that unsettled me or made me feel weird, my brain interpreted as a good experience. 1977 was a real flashpoint for me: Star Wars, sure, and 8 is the right age for Thanatos to start haunting you, but I also got super fucking sucked in to the Prisoner and imprinted on BBC’s Dracula (especially the baby eating scene where I remembered the brides actually eating the baby on camera until the clip showed up on YouTube and, turns out, it was just a cut to a flame effect and the baby eating was all in my and Q anon’s head). The thing that unites these later two is a the feeling of Unheimliche, or something - a sort of out of body experience due to transgressive touching of something in the reptile brain, recognizable but hard to formulate in language.  

Again, not saying this is an unusual experience, but I sought after this diencephalonic impact aggressively and spent years chasing this particular dragon before I figured out what I was doing. Rank and file horror didn’t cut it because I wanted not only to feel it but to understand what it was telling me and doing to me, to wrestle with it, so needed to something resonant to be there. Kubrick’s one neat trick was having an entirely rational approach to relentlessly assembling this kind of ineffable experience… depth of meaning by design.  I think Christopher Nolan is only popular because we have so few architect directors today so we’ll take a B- stab at it (though the thematic waters he sails on are a bit shallow). This is what I was doing receptively, wanting to cognitively reverse engineer the texts that moved me and autopsy my reaction .  There were elements the things that got to me had in common - there was an existential abjection that felt like a kind of rapture, a transgressive daring in showing me something I shouldn’t see, a experience of Mark Fisher’s version of the weird and/or the eerie, but most of all a feeling that there was a story underneath there being told in an abstract language that I innately understood but my conscious mind couldn’t quite get to.

On the other side of my brain, I was sparring with narrative structure and was captivated by the way periodical narrative produced this fuzziness and that trashy or disreputable forms were better at doing some really complex things. After a late 70s of consuming everything I could, like sitcoms no-one remembers, 1930s and 40s franchise B movies, Godzilla, ABC hourlongs (it was the time that Fantasy Island and the Bionic Woman strode the airwaves), etc - just absolute garbage - Comics hit me in 1980 and hijacked my brain for half a decade.  This mostly satisfied that architectural impulse, though, and the need for the uncanny reasserted itself as a shifting obsession to pop/rock music, “hard” books, and catholic moviegoing (and I guess some of that right brain stuff is intrinsically libidinous and the pubertal timing seems right).  

My childhood book consumption till 77 was all atlases, history, and encyclopedias.  77 to 83 it was SF/Fantasy.  The one work of fiction I strongly remember as a small child was There’s a Monster at the End of this Book which is a work of absolute intersubjective terror that implicates the crap out you - I never bought the ending and saw it as a necessary contrivance to make it OK for kids but I repeatedly endangered Grover anyway, enjoying the transporting dread, and learned meta in Kindergarten as a bonus! But in 1984 (during the Sarajevo Olympics, that’s etched in my brain) I read Moby Dick, which was my first formative struggle with understanding subliminal story.  I was already in love with symbolism and conversant with nuts and bolts MFA program bullshit, as any ironically pretentious HS student would be, but reading that and writing about it and other “tough” books (especially the next year in Junior English where I learned to write, full stop) taught me I could think about this stuff and hold these abstractions in my head long enough to see what was happening under the waterline.

Movies really dominated the late 80s, though, and I became obsessed with everything from the Godfather to Die Hard, but I was only just peaking under the hood, until the left brain brought me back to TV and and thinking about narrative structure.  Twin peaks (and Wild at Heart) made me a real Lynch fan and I sensed what I sought was in that direction, but it wasn’t until I watched the whole show and movie in one weekend in 1997 that I had my conversion experience. Moby Dick opened the door a bit, but that weekend kicked it in.  My first real resource for understanding (other than HS English, a couple of hits of acid, and dorm room bull sessions with sort of smart people) was alt.tv.twin-peaks where there were many amateur scholars trying to understand the red room and above the convenience store scenes, complete with ascii maps.  

The final inciting event was Inland Empire.  The thing about David Lynch that is so perfect for my hobbyhorses is that he works within a scene entirely intuitively, connecting to really primordial stuff, and puts everything together by “painting” with feelings instead of paint, never thinking about it, just knowing when it’s right. But he usually works with a writer and editor who helps shape everything into something at least fitfully comprehensible for someone wanting to follow the surface story. You get the general idea and can meditate on the areas that are clearly not “real” in some sense and require either aesthetic surrender or a lot of thought and one hell of an interpretive toolkit - you can see the frame even if you don’t understand every bit of the picture.  Inland Empire, which he made with no other behind the camera people, is pretty much all the mind-blowing bits with very little skeleton, an abstract painting with no frame. This forces you, if you want to understand in any way beyond just enjoying the moments viscerally, to effort like hell.  The project of this for me, the reason I started this Tumblr, was using the internet for procuring and learning to use interpretive tools and, in so doing, writing my way to constructing an understanding of this one movie.  As a result, my approach to all narrative art was changed.  I figure it is time to unpack this into a framework and try to recall the specific things that helped me get here.

[dennou-translations]

Violet Evergarden the Movie: Special Interview

Public commemoration for the Violet Evergarden movie! Featuring the series producer, Hatta Shinichirou.

Raw || Index

――Firstly, could you tell us the circumstances from when it was decided that the original novel by Akatsuki Kana-san was going to be animated into a TV series?

The original was the first winning work of the Kyoto Animation Grand Prize, as its story, which depicted the importance of delivering feelings through letters, pierced through the hearts of the judges, who are living in the current digital era, so its victory was decided unanimously. From that point on, comments such as, “I want to transform this deep work into animation” arose amongst the staff members of Kyoto Animation/Animation Do, and this led us to the TV series.

――Was the production of “Violet Evergarden the Movie” decided from time you started making the TV Series?

I was not expecting it when we began the series’ production, but the TV series portrayed the figure of Violet Evergarden living her life, and we believed that depicting the future from then on would be the conclusion point of this work, so taking the TV series into account, we decided to portray it in detail through a theatrical version.

――So you commenced the movie adaptation when the TV series’ broadcast ended.

This topic came up for a little bit when we were making the TV series. In episode 10, there was a story where fifty letters ghostwritten by Violet are uninterruptedly delivered to a girl named Ann for fifty years. While making this episode, we staff members were talking amongst ourselves things such as, “How was Violet doing during the time those letters were being delivered?” and, “What happened to her in the end?”. They linked up in a natural manner with the concept of this movie, which depicts “her future”.

――With what kind of balance did “Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto-Memories Doll”, which was released back in 9/6/2019, progress towards the movie?

The production of the Gaiden and the movie happened at the same time. Director Fujita Haruka was the one in charge of the Gaiden as her directorial debut, so the work also included this challenge for her. The Gaiden is but a sidestory, so the idea was to follow it and make a conclusion in the movie, which depicts Violet’s future even further.

――The movie is an original story in film format, right?

That is right. The narrative of the TV series differs from the novel in the first place, so it is a matter of course that the movie will be an original one. But the author, Akatsuki Kana-san, shared with us conditions for the scenario and settings, thus the movie also properly reflects the essence of what is most cherished in the novel. I hope that the people who enjoyed the original work will enjoy her future again with a different flavor to it.

――Yoshida Reiko-san has been writing the script since the TV series; what do you deem as the charm of her screenplay?

I guess it is the fact that she wrote sensibly about Violet Evergarden as a young woman. On top of having Violet stand at the center, she also granted her the function of narrator, and I think she was able to very finely portray the process where Violet could do nothing at first but then developed through the meetings she had with all kinds of people and through accomplishing the jobs assigned to her by them. I have the impression that she operated in tandem with director Ishidate.

――So she saw the same world as director Ishidate.

Right. The drama’s course of action was the same for both of them, and the outlook configurer, Suzuki Takaaki-san, created the foundation for the worldview that the two had pictured, so the image of a work where they were cooperating with each other became even more solid.

――What are the highlights of the movie’s story?

If I had to say it, there are several parts of the TV series where Violet is the point of view, thus it became a composition where she pieces together the feelings of the many people she met through her ghostwriting job. On the other hand, we are matching the focus of this movie with Violet’s way of life itself, so I believe this will be a big highlight.

――It also has the charm of a “story that tells about love”.

Agreed. To begin with, having been raised as a “weapon” since she was little, Violet had no idea what emotions were and did not understand the “I love you” that Gilbert had conveyed to her, so she was looking for what they were. In the TV series, we have portrayed her until she comes to understand the meaning of “I love you” a little through her many encounters, but in the movie, this “I love you” has become the very base of the developments. How does Violet personally feel about “I love you”? We would like everyone to watch over it.

――Then it seems we will be able to see her growth and evolution in it too.

You are right. If it were the former Violet, there was the fact that she also did not understand her own emotions, so I believe she was pushing her way forward according to the course of events, but now she has become able to properly dig up people’s feelings and take action after thinking about them. This is a growth greater than any other for her, but since she became capable of understanding her own feelings, Violet’s “I love you” has turned into something madder and more dramatic.

――What are the distinctive characteristics of director Ishidate Taichi and the appeal of his work?

He is a director full of obsessions and skills, from the making of the art to the layouts, up to the action of the animation. Moreover, he strongly loves the young woman named Violet Evergarden as if she were his own daughter, so I guess the fact that he had the resolve to handle and depict her life steadily is appealing of him as a director.

――These strong feelings can also be felt from the script. The climax where the complicated thoughts of Violet and the people that she meets will surge and intertwine seems like it is going to be terrific, both drama and animation-wise, so I am looking forward to it.

Director Ishidate’s passion is incredible. From the cityscapes to the landscapes, from the actions to the ways of presenting Violet, every single cut is drawn dynamic and carefully. Not even the smallest detail is compromised, and he carries his obsessions to extremes until the last minute.

This work was developed with the intention of being delivered to people all over the world since the start. The director’s posture during the production transmits his desire to make the series even better, and the staff is also frantically getting to grips with it, so we are working on it as one.

――Following the Gaiden, instead of the TV series’ screen proportion of 16:9, the movie be of a theatre-appropriate size of 2.31:1, which broadens the sides, so are there any obsessions with that as well?

The one who first suggested it to be made with this screen size was director Fujita, who had discussed with director Ishidate about what the adequate animation making would be for watching “Violet Evergarden” in the theaters. Because of this, the sky, sea and mountains are drawn larger and more dynamically. The necessary composition and essence of the paper we use is also related to its size, so along with the Gaiden, it turned out as a challenging work in our production struggles.

――I also believe there are many fans looking forward to the abilities of the character designer and general animation director, Takase Akiko-san.

Takase-san is also someone who has the story and vision inside herself quite clear, such as, “I want Violet to be this kind of woman” and, “I want Gilbert to be this kind of man”, which become the characters’ peculiarities and strong points. I think this plays a big part on the reason why the individuals she draws are so charismatic.

――The nearly-completed movie is about to become a masterpiece over two hours long, and this is also a result of director Ishidate and the staff unleashing their obsessions, isn’t it?

We must handle and depict the life of the young woman named Violet Evergarden in a steady way. The director’s sense of responsibility also shows in that he says we simply needed this much if we were supposed to make a proper “Violet Evergarden Movie”.

――I believe there are also people who will be discovering the world of “Violet Evergarden” through this movie, but can they expect it to be a work that they will also be able to enjoy?

It has turned into something that people can enjoy quite a lot even if they watch only the movie. Aside from the usual work of the young woman named Violet Evergarden and her sentiments from such occasions, the people involved with her and her feelings are portrayed carefully, as they had always been until now, so the easiness to watch this work and dive into it have not changed from the time of the TV series. Should anyone become interested in her way of life after watching the movie, if they go over the TV series and then watch the movie once again, there will be further depth to the story, so I think it would be even more fun.

――Lastly, please leave a message for the fans who are looking forward to the Violet Evergarden Movie all over the world.

“Violet Evergarden the Movie” will be the finale of this work, which started with the TV series. The staff is making it while putting their utmost thoughts into it, and it has gone through to a point where director Ishidate and the screenplay writer, Yoshida Reiko-san, decided that they cannot write any further. I would be happy if people could warmly watch over the lifetime of the young woman named Violet together. I strongly wish that we will be able to share our feelings with the fans who watched this series, and that our thoughts will connect with the future. Thank you very much.

[ohcoolnice]

Late

It’s a full story, I swear it’s just...I can’t figure out a title so we’re gonna just title each chapter. Also, each chapter’s title may seem like it connects to an insignificant detail, but it has deeper meaning. I’m known for my especially angsty works. MWAHAHAHAHA. 

SUMMARY: 

Marinette seriously just cannot afford mistakes, so, naturally, there are so, so, so many. First, four of their models call in sick, thanks to the lovely flu going around, meaning they don’t have anyone to model for most of their women’s pieces. Then, Adrien’s bright idea to have Marinette model her own pieces gets approved by Gabriel, and, obviously, it all backfires spectacularly-on him.***This is set in the future, The character’s are 19 and 20-ish. it’s all messed up tho bc i can’t figure out timelines so whatever. 

(THIS  CHAPTER IS A BIT BAcKSTORY, But also plot yay :) 

-----

Marinette could not afford to have anything go wrong today.

The new Gabriel HERO™ Collection was going to launch in two days, and with the delay she’d experienced last week with the fit models, she’d only gotten Gabriel’s approval on the final designs three days ago, stayed up all night to do the flats and came in the next day, sleep deprived and sure she’d have a heart attack with the amount of caffeine she’d consumed.

The department had been a great help. Ellie had agreed to touch up some small errors Marinette had made will working on the flats at four in the morning, enlisting Jonah, who was a wizard with Illustrator, to help her.

Samantha was great with construction, she knew every single stitch, and Marinette was sure she’d invented at least twenty of her own. She could work fast without making any errors, all the while making the rounds and helping anyone and everyone.

Marinette oversaw everything. Technically, on paper, she was an Intern. But she had been working with Gabriel for three years now, and not even out of Fashion School yet. At seventeen she’d begun interning, still surprised she’d got it, though she suspected guiltily that Adrien Agreste may have had some influence over the matter once he’d congratulated her when she’d never told him in the first place. They barely even spoke. Every so often she had nights where she felt so bad, maybe taking some other more talented girl’s spot only because she had gone to school with the designer’s son, that she would cry and sob until she passed out from exhaustion. It didn’t help she heard it often.

She learned to ignore comments and overtime the public perception of her grew more positive as people began to see her designs once Gabriel became her Mentor and put her in charge of design for several collections. She knew people knew her name as she often accompanied Gabriel to shows, taking notes on the pieces but also making notes on every work that came from Gabriel’s mouth, but she didn’t want to be too known. Even in fashion school, most of her classmates, obsessed with knowing everything about the fashion world, didn’t know who she was, just that she interned with Gabriel, perhaps. Marinette liked it that way. She wasn’t a big fan of too much attention. She preferred if she could wait until she graduated to make a name for herself.

Gabriel had admitted, in an awkward moment once two years ago, that he wasn’t overly sure as to why he decided to become a mentor to the baker’s daughter, but he remarked on the similarities he saw in his younger self and her.

She didn’t really believe him. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him smile, not once, even when she knew he was kind of proud of the work she was doing. Over the years she’d come to notice it wasn’t hard to read his expressions- okay, it was hard, just not impossible- once you’d spent enough time studying him. And Marinette took note of everything he did. Alya often wondered aloud how the designer wasn’t creeped out by her.

Marinette didn’t know how she could possibly be like Gabriel. He showed no emotion on most occasion, but she was the complete opposite. Another reason why the media often wondered what it was he saw in a seventeen-year-old intern. He knew her designing and construction skills from the competition she’d won three years prior, but that was really all he’d seen up until her portfolio, which she’d snuck onto one night before the leaving on what was supposed to be the last day of her internship. The eight days after that where she’d heard nothing had been the most depressing days of her life. Then she’d gotten a call from Nathalie, Gabriel’s assistant, asking her to come in, and she almost passed out. She’d cried so hard after that Alya had thought Marinette’s parents had died. Sometimes she wondered how Alya came up with the conclusions she did.

Everything afterwards hadn’t been smooth sailing, but it was all incredible. Every stressful task was worth it. She was being paid as an intern, since there weren’t technically any positions available at the time. There since had been some, but she didn’t dare ask for a raise. She liked being able to do everything without being confined to the title of “designer” or “dressmaker” or whatnot. She liked doing all of it. The customer service, the finances in accounting (she was terrible at it, but overly grateful), and obviously out of everything, the hands-on fashion was her favorite, but she was getting to experience working in every single aspect of one of the most successful Fashion Companies in the entire world, under the tutelage of Gabriel Agreste himself. She really didn’t think she deserved to be that lucky.

Of course, there were times where she’d broken down at two in the morning, struggling to finish an assignment while balancing school as well. Gabriel had the sort of connections where she was able to miss classes and take them at home thanks to a recording of the class, and while she utilized it, she didn’t really prefer it. She liked being in the class and learning hands on, in an environment electrified by the excitement of young adults itching to get out there and create art. She also knew she did tend to do the work for Gabriel before her studies, and it often resulted in stress and a rush the complete assignments and projects.

If she’d ever felt stress before, it was nothing in relation to the stress of the last two years. And even that was nothing in comparison to the stress of being late to a photo shoot that needed to be perfect because the entire goddamn collection would be public in two days and if she wasn’t ready, no amount of fondness Gabriel had come to feel for the girl would be able to save her job. This was a HUGE deal.

Her car pulled into her spot and she grabbed her things and breakfast for the crew. Next to her, Alya, who had taken the day off to help her best friend, took the trays and boxes from her hand and pushed her towards the entrance. “You’re already late girl, get out of here!”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She pressed her hands together, blessing her friend for being so helpful, before rushing inside, hands full with the last pieces she’d finished last night before, thankfully, getting a good night’s sleep. She was glad the people from Vogue wouldn’t have to see her when she looked as if she’d been attacked by a bear and hit by a train. She didn’t want to wear makeup and risk the chance of feeling anything uncomfortable enough to distract her from her work.

She struggled with the door, grateful when she saw a glimpse of Adrien walking past inside from behind the garment bags covering her view. She knocked on the glass and the door opened a few seconds later.

“Thank ymph.” Her voice muffled behind the garment bags were met with a chuckle from Adrien as she felt the weight in her arms lessen a bit.

“Let me help you, Marinette, you look like you’ve got your hands full.” She gave him a blank look.

“That wasn’t even good. I don’t even know if that can be counted as a pun.” They were almost at the dressing station now, people rushed about, voices mixing as people rushed to prepare the stations and models. Chloe Bourgeois was the only superhero who had shared her identity, so, unfortunately, she would be modeling for the Queen Bee themed women’s pieces. Thankfully that was not until later.

“It can so be counted as a pun. But I’ll spare you because you’re so busy today. I’ll just have to write down my puns and attack you with them later.” She laughed softly, shaking her head as she gently let the bags rest on a table, hanging them up one by one as she took them out of the bags. Adrien’s eyes widened. “Oh wow. These are incredible Marinette. This is- wow.” He looked at her, his eyes sparking with…admiration? She wasn’t sure, but either way she didn’t understand his reaction. She was proud of her work, yes, but she hadn’t expected Adrien of all people to be so impressed by them.

“Thank you.” She replied, ducking her head to hide her blush. No, she had work to do. Focus, Marinette.

“So y-” She shushed him, placing a finger to his lips as he widened his eyes, face warming as he stared, cross-eyed at the finger on his lips.

“Nope, no talking. Let’s go, Hair and Makeup Chat Noir.” His face paled and he stammered and she raised a brow. “Adrien! Your father wants you as Chat Noir, so please don’t make me tell him you can’t do it and we have to find someone else because we really don’t have the time and I really don’t want to have that conversation with him.” He seemed to relax ever so slightly, the color returning to his face. Odd.

“Yeah, sorry, sure. I’ll go be Pat- I mean Chat!” He huffed in frustration and dragged a hand over his face tiredly, emerging with a weak smile that, despite getting over her crush ages ago, still sent her stomach into a frenzy. She pushed down the feeling and giggled. “Sorry, I’m tired.”

“We all are don’t worry. You’re just lucky it doesn’t show because this only can be done today. Now go before I kill you because I am very busy.” She scolded him and pushed him off as he tried to speak, hitting him with the papers in her hand. He laughed and stumbled out, turning to watch her walk back to her station, lost in her work, with a smile on his face.

As he turned to make his way to Hair and Makeup, he narrowly dogged Alya and she ran her way to Marinette, calling, “Hey, Blondie!” as she ran past.

“Who am I to you, Rapunzel?” He called back, eyes following her and landing back on Marinette, smiling with relief as her best friend arrived with food for the crew and Marinette’s purse. 

She’d really seemed to come into her own skin these last few years. For at least three years it was so hard for them to hang out. She was so awkward and stumbled over her words around him. Slowly it began to change and improve, and he found himself spending more time with her and his own mood began to improve as he did. He’d spent lots of time with her before, wearing the mask. He would steal her food and they would talk, laugh, play video games, board games. He loved watching her design and sketch. It was peaceful for him, hanging out with her as Chat Noir. It never was as Adrien. It bore down on him, kept him awake at night, not that he realized that until things changed, and he found himself able to hang out with her both in and out of costume. He realized how awful it was when he wasn’t sure if Marinette hated him or not. She was so different with him in his different personalities that he’d worried about it constantly, without even knowing it. It was all so confusing.

Looking at Marinette now, he felt a smile tug at his lips and a flutter in his heart.

She really was special. He couldn’t ask for a better friend.

[starlight-matrix]

Nabari no Ou 15th Anniversary!

@nabaridays wrote up some prompts to celebrate the 15th anniversary of NnO and as it’s my favorite manga series of all time, I had to join the fun!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of the prompts’ existence until we were about four or five days in, so instead of starting in the middle of the prompt list, I wrote all mine up in a Google Doc and decided to do a big masterpost in the day of the anniversary. And here it is! Beware for a lot of reading, this shit’s at 4.1k words.

- Catherine Lynne / catielynnelove.tumblr.com Fan of NnO since 2012 -

DAY 01 (Jun. 3rd) - Favorites

My favorite character has always been Miharu, though I do struggle to choose between him and Yoite. I have always been fascinated by his apathetic nature, the way he uses is as a shield while loving the people in his life so incredibly fiercely. He appears neutral and uncaring, but the moment you look beneath the surface, you recognize that he would give his life for those he loves in a heartbeat - and has shown this on multiple occasions.

I also love his development over the series. His apathetic facade slowly falls out of use after he meets Yoite, and he learns that feeling your emotions is important, that letting the people you love know when you’re happy or sad or pissed the fuck off is important.

In the first few chapters we as readers honestly can’t tell a whole heck of a lot from what we’re shown of Miharu. He’s plain, uninteresting, even to us (unless you’re the kind of person who automatically reads between the lines, but let’s face it, not a lot of people are). But by the end of the series, he’s such a vibrant and expressive character that I marvel at Kamatani’s ability to drastically a character’s personality in a way that feels so gradual and natural.

Another reason Miharu is my favorite character is because I tend to see parts of myself in him, as many people do with the characters they like most. I can understand and relate to his apathy in the beginning of the story. His memory of his parents deaths is so deeply traumatic and that the very fibre of his being (objectively, Shinra) locked the memory, and most of his childhood, away for years to come. Because at that time in his life, the pain of it all would’ve broken him.

(E/N: I now remember that Asahi actually erased Miharu’s memories of that event, but I think a good chunk of this will still make sense, and I’m lazy, so I’m not gonna edit it out. Enjoy.)

Emotions, especially ones he didn’t understand - or couldn’t understand, like his feelings toward his childhood that didn’t quite make sense because of his augmented memories - were simply so overwhelming that Miharu pretty much just went “lol don’t wanna deal with those so yEET now they’re gone” and locked them up in a box to be dealt with at a much, much later date. That speaks to me, as a person who has struggled with depression, and the fact that he finds a way to recover from this is very reassuring.

Overall, Miharu is a very complex and realistic character that undergoes more vivid character development than I’ve seen in almost any western media. I love him very much.

DAY 02 (Jun. 4th) - What got you into Nabari no Ou?

This is actually quite a funny story, so buckle up for a wild ride y’all!

When I was 12 years old (God, this sounds like the setup for an angsty villain backstory), my family had a housemate who liked anime. One day I came to beg for him to let me use his video game console to play Little Big Planet and he happened to be watching the second half of the anime - I distinctly remember the second Alya Academy episode being the first one I ever saw. It was my first anime experience outside of a Studio Ghibli film, and to this day remains close to my heart, even though the anime adaptation itself really… just… well, it sucked.

After I finished watching it with him, I went and found the first half of the series on Netflix (back when Netflix did the whole send-a-DVD-to-your-house thing) and watched the whole thing from episode one. And then very quickly became obsessed. I probably watched the anime four times in two months. I had every single one of the English VAs names memorized. I was dedicated.

Eventually I looked up the manga online, and HOO BOI, this is the point where my Nabari no Ou origin story becomes ridiculously hilarious (and stupid).

When I read the manga, I was disturbed by the idea of Kouichi being a villain-type character, as he had been one of my favorites when I watched the anime. And, at the time I was first reading the manga, the apparent “ending” from my perspective was the scene where Kouichi takes the newly-made hijutsu scroll from a bleeding, dying Thobari.

Looking back, I figure the website I was reading it on just didn’t have all the chapters, or perhaps I had happened to start reading while the manga was on hiatus, but at that age I didn’t know of or understand either of those concepts and accepted that sad scene as the end of the manga.

And as such, I wrote the manga off as terrible and ignored it for years.

Flash forward to about 2014, two or three years after writing the manga off as a Fat Mistake, I finally decided to give it another shot. And BY GOD did I cry reading it a second time. Whether it was the two years of maturity, my experiences during those two years, or simply the fact that I read the whole thing that time - I was sobbing in my desk chair over NnO.

It was the most beautiful story I’d ever read. Even now, after five more years of reading beautiful manga, Nabari no Ou remains my absolute favorite, and likely always will.

DAY 03 - What are your favorite scenes?

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Alya Academy arc, even back when all I’d shunned the manga and all I had to go off of was the inaccurate anime adaptation, simply because of how well the character relationships are shown during those sequences (this is one thing the anime did really well in my opinion, actually - Shijima’s verbal reflection on how humans connect to each other and how important those connections are is stunning). Not to mention the displays of how the characters care for one another regardless of what side of the war they’re technically on.

I’ve always loved Subaru as a character, too. I find her motivations to be very realistic and really quite understandable, and I love the little easter eggs in later chapters that imply the Kouga ninja are helping Miharu’s side of the fight even though they’re not visibly involved. The scores from the Alya Academy arc are especially chilling and memorable as well.

Another of my favorites are the chapters following Miharu and Yoite’s escape from the Kairoshuu and their travels afterward. They feel mundane and peaceful, yet blanketed with this layer of grief, like we’re all aware that at any moment their calm could be destroyed and lost forever.  

The scenes about Yoite’s gender were very special to me as a teen still learning about the LGBT spectrum and how different people could be, and the scene of Yoite bandaging Miharu’s aching feet? My heart literally swells every single time I think about it! It was so sweet and loving, my fragile fangirl heart does flips when I read over it.

DAY 04 (Jun. 6th) - Photos & Fashion

I like to think that Miharu keeps every photograph he’s taken and has them stored safely away in a box or chest or drawer. In my experience, people who have lost loved ones tend to treasure photographs, more than someone who hasn’t experienced loss might. A lot of times a photo is all someone has of someone they loved outside of a memory, and contrary to popular belief, if you don’t look at someone - physically or in a photo - for a long time, you do forget how they look.

Miharu has lost many people: his parents, Yoite, Kouichi and Shijima, even Shinra, in a way - so I imagine this observation would be doubly true of him. Especially if he has Yukimi as an example to go by - pretty sure that guy has kept every photograph he’s ever taken in his life!

(As far as fashion goes, I honestly think everyone’s fashion in NnO is horrendous, so...)

DAY 05 (Jun. 7th) - Favorite character design in the series?

Gosh, it’s hard to choose, I love so many of them! Gau is fascinating to me because I figure his hair must be difficult to draw, with all those little curls and cowlicks. Shijima’s too, with the way it frames her face and leaves just a tiny little opening for her eyes to peer out at you through.

But, as with most of these character-specific prompts, my answer will have to be Miharu. The idea that Asahi reshaped his face to look more like her own when she used Shinra to save him is very interesting, and the fact that Kamatani manages to draw Miharu in a way that both clearly shows their resemblance to one another and establishes Miharu as his own character with his own unique features and gestures and ways of carrying himself is incredible.

Miharu’s stance are also very telling to me as a reader: he often stands loosely, almost lazily, as if he really couldn’t care less about where he is and what they’re doing, which rings true for a good chunk of the story. It matches well with his (mostly) fake apathy and kind of makes him seem bland and boring as a character. But as the story progresses, he becomes more open, shows affection more easily. He’s quicker to stand up for his beliefs and the people he loves. All of this shows in the way he carries himself throughout later chapters.

DAY 06 (Jun. 8th) - Favorite location in the series?

The Shimizu estate, without a doubt.

The secluded area, the forest in every direction, the house itself - it’s all so beautiful to me. Ot gives me the feeling of rural Japan and more traditional Japanese living. Even after the house has burned away and all that’s left is a field full of Spider Lilies, there’s a kind of sober beauty lying over the place, made even more intense when Shirogamon stands watch over it.

DAY 07 (Jun. 9th) - Positive Influences

The thing that I preach about the most when I talk about NnO to others is the fact that the series has no absolutes. There is no true right or wrong, no clear villains nothing that actually puts our heroes above anyone else. Which, in a way, means that are really are no heroes in the story at all, which is a very rare and interesting way to tell a story.

The entire series deal with a greyscale in morality. There’s no bad vs. good or moral vs. immoral, just your own goals and people whose goals don’t match yours. Opinions and ambitions differ vastly even between people on the same side of the fight - Thobari and Raimei want to seal the Shinrabanshou, Kouichi wants to use it to defeat his immortality, Miharu even changes side on a few occasions - yet they all work together together to achieve their own very different ends.

Even those who can be coded as villain on the surface have something motivating them to do what they do, and more often than not, those motivations are understandable to the reader and actually have you sympathizing with the character. Hattori wanted to rid the world of the need for war. Subaru wanted to save the person she loved most in the world. Yamase wanted to win his family back (I think? It’s been a while).

Even Katarou and Kannuki, two characters who have practically nothing to redeem them, at least have motivations that are pretty damn realistic. Kannuki wanted to capitalize on Kouga’s Forbidden Art and use it to grow Alya Academy’s profit and power through the surface world. A Lot of people are like this in real life, and while you may not sympathize with him over it, it is a motivation that is true of our own world as well as the one in this story.

An Katarou, as far as I understand, is obsessed with Shinra herself, rather than the hijutsu and the power it holds. He manipulated hundreds of people and hundreds of situations to suit his own needs, then literally got himself killed - just to see her one last time. And… yeah, I don’t think anyone really sympathized with him, but hey, I can see what pushed him to do what he did.

To me, Katarou is symbolic of someone with an addiction - their mind is so clouded by a need for some specific thing that all other human aspects of that person just fall away, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get what they want.

I also appreciate how the characters handle their differences throughout the story. Their honesty with each other, the way they support each other even when they’re all heading in opposite direction. The Alya Academy arc (I really love this arc okay) especially shows this, in how the ninja from Banten and Kairoshuu - two very opposing factions - fight together against the Kouga without hesitation, despite the fact that in most other situations, they’d be fighting each other.

It’s a wonderful thing to promote: that even though people might have different opinions or goals, it doesn’t mean they have to hate each other.

DAY 08 (Jun. 10th) - Favorite Extra?

I am IN LOVE with the little between-chapter 4koma pieces, especially the ones from the Alya Academy arc (God, I’ve talked so much about this arc). Subaru fantasizing about Miharu being her little brother and making her birthday cake? Adorable. Miharu and Yoite getting stuck behind a bookshelf and terrifying an opponent by asking for help out? Hilarious.

I love that Kamatani put those in, both as a peek into happier aspects of the world he created, and as a way to add a bit of sun in between the much darker, much sadder chapters.

DAY 09 (Jun. 11th) - Headcanons

I’m not much of a headcanon person, to be honest, and especially not with this series. It feels off to me, to try and add to something that’s already so perfect. However, I do agree with a couple of headcanons I’ve seen - particularly the ones theorizing that Yukimi is aro-ace. It makes a lot of sense to me in how his character is portrayed when nearly every other character in the series has a romantic match, and as an ace person myself, more representation is always welcome.

DAY 10 (Jun. 12th) - Alternate Universe

I once started (and quickly abandoned out of shame) a very cringey, very out-of-character fanfic, in which the Nabari world didn’t exist and all the characters meet through natural means in the surface world. Other than that, however, I’ve not put much thought into Nabari no Ou AUs.

But something I would LOVE to see is a crossover between NnO and Shimanami Tasogare, as the two stores canonically take place in the same location - NnO being in Banten, a fictional town  based on the real town of Onomichi, and Shimanami Tasogare being confirmed to take place in plain old Onomichi itself. It’s been a while since I’ve read Shimanami Tasogare, but I remember the leader/owner of the little house the cast gathers in as giving me a distinctly Nabari-world vibe, and I think it would be interesting to see the NnO characters react to a community like the one presented in Shimanami Tasogare.

(And also perhaps have some romantic relationships and sexualities proven canon. Perhaps.)

DAY 11 (Jun. 13th) - Favorite song from the OST?

It’s a firm tie between the opening theme and the second ending theme. I have every song in the OST memorized after years of hearing them day in and day out, but those two themes always give me this tingling nostalgic feeling, like rereading a book from your childhood or finding a toy as an adult that you’d thought was lost forever. The animation and symbolism in those themes are also very telling of the series and the character’s connections to each other (a bit obviously, at times), and the lyrics are special to me in a way I can’t describe. They’re precious to me, and  to me experience of NnO as a whole, considering I started with the anime first (a bad idea).

DAY 12 (Jun. 14th) - Are there any songs that make you think of NnO?

“Neopolitan Dreams” by Lisa Mitchell ( X ) ( X )

I once watched a cute Raimei/Kouichi AMV set to this song listened to the lyrics, I understood how the author had put them together. I very much feel like the lyrics echo Raimei’s thoughts on how Kouichi starts to act in later chapters, becoming more and more distant until he almost appears to be an antagonist rather than one of the perceived heroes. The song also makes me think of Raimei’s stubbornness and pride, her unwillingness to accept option besides her own conclusions until she’s had the full story and nothing less.

I can never get their faces out of my head while listening to this song, which I guess means the song reminds me more of Raimei and Kouichi than NnO in general, but it still counts, right?

DAY 13 (Jun. 15th) - Food

I’ve never really thought too hard on it, but now that I am, it’s actually very interesting to note how different characters use food - the Rokujo Okonomiyaki shop, in particular - to their advantage.

Thobari uses his (implied, before the start of the overall plot) regular visits to try and get Miharu to believe him about the Shinrabanshou and the Nabari world. Thobari uses the close proximity to explain his motives to Miharu, who physically cannot leave the situation, lest the food burn to a damn crisp (and I figure Naoko wouldn’t be pleased if that happened every time Thobari came in). He also very clearly uses this to keep tabs on Miharu when outside of a school setting where Miharu has no choice to be in Thobari’s sight, and later, as a way to either catch up on what’s going on in the Nabari world or - as in several cases - simply demand answers from Miharu.

Raimei uses the shop as a way to get closer to Miharu. She charms her way into getting free food (and sometimes, free lodging as well) and I assume her thinking is probably something on the lines of “Free Food + Spend Time With Miharu = Information on Where Raikou Might Be.” Of course, this likely isn’t her motive in later chapters, because, well, character development.

Food is also an important bonding thing for Yoite and Yukimi. In a lot of the scenes where we see Yoite and Yukimi in their home, they’re eating together, and I always took it as a display of their familial relationship - cooking dinner for Yoite the way a dutiful older sibling would for their younger sibling - thoughI doubt either of them would admit they’re like brothers. The significance of lemonade should also be noted for this topic - I could go on for ages about it.

(But I won’t unless people ask me to, because this piece is long enough already!)

I don’t have much memory of this scene being as big a deal in the manga as it was in the anime - but I also haven’t seen either in a while, so I could be wrong - but the birthday cake scene from the latter half of the anime left an impact on me even back when I’d only seen the anime, and it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the prompt was “food.” Gau’s pride in the cake he made and his determination to get any kind of praise out of Yoite is very touching, especially when you take into account that Yoite literally saved Gau’s life, and that Gau knows this, as well.

The Kairoshuu - particularly Yukimi, Raikou, Gau, and Kazuho - are all shown bonding on more than one occasion at Kazuho and her husband’s sushi shop, and there is significance to those occasions in the rather heavy conversations they have during those visits. And there’s also the time Miharu cooked okonomiyaki for all the main Kairoshuu member after he’d first joined their clan - similar to how a recently hired employee would bring cookies for their new boss.

Food has a lot of significance in Nabari no Ou, no matter where you look.

DAY 14 (Jun. 16th) - Favorite village, and thoughts on the Forbidden Arts?

As far as morals and motivations go, I would have to choose Banten, as their (or at least Thobari’s) main opinion is that the Shinrabanshou shouldn’t be used because it throws off the balance of the universe. I definitely understand this opinion, because a lot of things can go wrong if the wrong kind of person is making wishes to Shinra and having them granted.

Although, I think that if anyone were to use the ability in a way that leaves the balance of the world intact, it would be Miharu, and this is even shown in the series itself. He doesn’t have the kind of greed or anger that would taint a person’s motivations when making their wishes, he just wants to do what is best for others- especially Yoite. Yoite is important to him, and therefore Yoite’s wish is also important to Miharu. And, as we see in later chapters, Miharu puts granting Yoite’s wish above even his own happiness. I feel I would make a similar decision were I in his shoes.

(For aesthetic, though, I’d choose Fuuma. Their village is hidden and surrounded by forest and in that lovely traditional Japanese style, and their uniforms are great. If Saraba were Chief I’d join.)

DAY 15 (Jun. 17th) - Favorite minor/supporting character

Gau! Definitely Gau! Gosh I love him so much. He’s optimistic and tries his best to look for the best in situations and in people, and his smile is so freaking sunshiney, I bet he lights up rooms with it. He’s awkward and quirky and I can relate so hard. But he’s also strong? He stands up to other ninja even though he really doesn’t have the physical ability to defend himself or others. He puts his life in danger to tell Raimei the truth about her family immediately after swearing silence to Raikou, his boss, who could 100% kill him if he found out Gau had broken his promise. And I bet you Gau would’ve told Raikou about him telling Raimei as soon as he’d gone home, if the bullshit at the Shimizu property hadn’t gone down the way it did.

And speaking of that scene- he throws himself in front of Raikou’s katana to save the life of a girl he hadn’t known for more than a day, who had threatened to kill him, who was seeking to kill the person he treasured most in the world. Who does that?! Gau apparently. He literally gives his life for just the possibility that Raikou and Raimei can make up and be happy siblings again. He gives his life so that the person he loves can maybe reconcile with someone else they loved.

He makes a conscious effort to include Yoite in conversations in which he would otherwise be largely ignored, and while I doubt Yoite would care either way, it’s the thought that counts, right? And, at least in the anime (it’s been a while since I read the manga) he puts his life on the line to help Yoite and Miharu even though, as I said before, he can’t really defend himself all that well.

Basically, I’m in love with Gau and want him to be happy. Sweet baby!

DAY 16 (Jun. 18th) - Free Day

I don’t really have anything else to say but I’m posting all of these today (I was late for the original posting by like four days so I figured I’d write them all out and post them together) so I’ll count this as my day 16 entry! Thank you so much if you’ve read this far, I know it was probably daunting to look at this long as fucking post but I’m glad you took the time to read my personal reflection on NnO! This manga means a lot to me and it’s nice to discover other people who love it as much as I do (I’ve literally met two people in my entire life who’ve read it without me suggesting it).

Keep the love going y’all, I hope to see you again! And feel free to hit me up if you’d like to talk about NnO, I’d love to connect with other fans! Seeya owo

[recentanimenews]

The 6 Pokémon Trainers the Anime Forgot

Since 1997, over 1,000 episodes of Pokémon the Series have followed Ash Ketchum's journey across multiple regions, where he's met and battled many of the unique personalities that populate the beloved video game series. Not every character is created equal though, and while some have become pop culture icons like Brock and Misty, others have to feel grateful for even a single episode, and others have yet to appear at all!

  However, it doesn't look like the anime is gonna be stopping any time soon, and in all likelihood will probably continue as long as new games are being made. So, with speculation swirling about the new season's return trips to Kanto and beyond, here's who we're hoping will finally get the spotlight they deserve.

    Janine

Of the 59 Gym Leaders introduced before Sword and Shield (and if we count Gary as an adaptation of Blue,) each one has made an appearance of some degree in the anime… except Janine.

  With Koga promoted to the Elite Four in the Game Boy sequels Gold and Silver, Fuschia City found a new Gym Leader in his daughter, Janine. The young girl only appeared briefly in the Kanto post-game and inexperience made her weaker than her colleagues, so it’s understandable that such a small role was forgotten. Even the English localisation team did, being mistakenly renamed in FireRed and LeafGreen as “Charine”!

  The Nintendo DS’ HeartGold and SoulSilver made up for the lack of attention by exploring the adoration she has for her father: she won’t shut up about him, delivers his lunches to the other side of Kanto, and even argues with Falkner over who has the best dad! Basically, she’s absolutely precious.

  When Ash returned to Kanto in Battle Frontier, I thought Janine was finally going to appear - there was even an episode about a young woman running a ninja school! But no, instead it was lead by the anime-original Angela, because reasons, I guess? With her recently being featured in the Pokémon Trading Card Game and the newly released Pokémon Masters though, perhaps a return to Kanto could finally give Janine the appearance she deserves?

Grimsley

  While Gym Leaders are almost always guaranteed a spot in the anime, the same can't be said about a region's most powerful trainers: the Elite Four. Only 3 regions have had their full line-ups appear, and others like Unova have only had 1 - which is a shame, given that Black and White have one of the coolest and most complex line-ups.

  Given the series' complicated history with gambling (like The Gamer Corner), it's surprising how important it is to Grimsley's design and backstory. The son of a disgraced noble family, he fell victim to a gambling addiction, before emerging as the dapperly dressed Dark-type master of Unova's Elite Four!

  The world clearly hasn't been kind to young Grimsley, however. When we saw him again in Sun and Moon, he had bags in his eyes as he listfully lingered on the shore. In the Ultra variants, he reflects on the despair he felt after putting everything on the line and losing, referring to himself as a former Elite Four member. The circumstances about his fall from grace and who replaced him remain mysteries, but even though they're separate continuities, perhaps an anime appearance could clear them up? His brief cameo in the animated trailer for the Pokémon Masters mobile game gave us a taste of what he may look like in the anime, so hopefully we'll see Grimsley again in one way or another - if not the series, maybe Black 3/White 3? (Come on, Game Freak!).

  Darach

    One of my favorite stories in the Pokémon World is that of Caitlin, the quick-tempered overseer of Sinnoh's Battle Castle, who after mastering her runaway psychic powers, earned a place in Unova's Elite Four. While she briefly appeared in the anime however, her backstory and an important part of it didn't.

  With Caitlin being unable to battle without her uncontrollable powers running rampant, her personal valet Darach assumed the mantle of Frontier Brain and fended off challengers himself. A refined gentleman and fierce battler alike, Darach is a class act all-round. And after Caitlin left to train in Unova, little has been said about her dashing butler, other than that he makes occasional trips to clean her villa. Should Caitlin return to the anime, hopefully she'll have Darach in tow, because they seem to make an awesome team. 

  Silver

  If you were to ask old-school Pokémon fans who their favorite rival is, a good chunk would point to Silver. While Blue was cocky, Silver's a straight up jerk - I mean, we first meet him after he stole a starter Pokémon from Professor Elm! He has good reason to be a grump though: his dad's only the missing leader of Team Rocket, Giovanni! Rather than join the family business however, Silver would prefer to tear it down.

  With Team Rocket's boss having a constant looming presence in the anime, you'd think his son would be a shoe-in, right? Wrong. While he appeared in the Pokémon Generations web short and had a cameo in side-story The Legend of Thunder, Pokémon's second most famous rival has yet to appear in the main anime continuity. It's a real shame too, as his presence could be a catalyst for a Team Rocket-focused story arc that brings Giovanni back to the forefront, and his more serious personality would be a great contrast to Jessie, James and Meowth's more jovial dynamic.

  It's possible that Silver was the inspiration behind the Diamond & Pearl series' rival Paul, as he has a similar obsession with strength, an abrasive personality, and even similar hair! Their character arcs also had similar endings, with the two starting to show signs of actually respecting their Pokémon partners. While Paul is easily the anime's best rival to date though, seeing the real deal would be great.

Wally

  If there's anyone who could have benefitted from the gradual character development that a series allows, it would've been Wally. A timid and frail kid, Ruby and Sapphire's other rival is determined to not let his shortcomings get in the way of becoming a great Pokémon trainer. Seeing his confidence grow in tandem with his abilities was the most rewarding part of his games' story, and the final battle in Victory Road was a perfect climax to that tale.

  What made Wally's absence from the anime even more disappointing was that while May had the recurring presence of Drew on the contest circuit, Ash didn't even have a rival for most of his Hoenn adventure. The anime-only characters Morrison and Tyson were hastily introduced right before the Ever Grande Conference, leaving Hoenn's event with none of the build-up a Pokémon League should have.

  The most important reason for a Wally appearance now though, is easily so a remix of his amazing Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire battle theme can be in the soundtrack. Name me a better battle theme, I'll wait. Although a good contender may be...

Zinnia

    Sworn by a generations old duty to awaken the legendary Rayquaza and destroy a meteor, the fate of the world is on Zinnia's shoulders. After briefly appearing throughout Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, she became the focal point of their post-game "Delta Episode" - perhaps the best addition to the series' lore yet!

  Zinnia is a complex and fascinating character. Despite her goal of saving the world, she was prepared to put it in danger by awakening Groudon or Kyogre to lure out the emerald dragon. She can be quite playful (and dare I say flirty) at times, but she also has a pained presence. Her burden hangs heavy over her, as does the pain of losing her dear friend, and Whismur's namesake, Aster.

  She could have made a great focal point for a Delta Episode-inspired storyline, and Iris' Village of Dragons could have easily been retconned to be the Draconid Tribe. With the X&Y anime already focusing on Zygarde, we weren't lacking in cool ways to feature her. 

  The events of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire's endgame established the existence of a multiverse, with the GameBoy Advance originals existing in a reality where the lack of Mega Evolution makes it vulnerable to the meteorite. With the recent movies I Choose You and The Power of Us existing in their own continuity, perhaps a Hoenn-focused follow-up could see Zinnia having to save both of Ash Ketchum's realities?

  What Pokémon characters would you like to see in the new anime, and what do you hope to see from the new anime? Let us know in the comments!

  Josh A. Stevens is a freelance PR with anime industry experience, and a writer at Anime UK News. You can follow him on Twitter @Joshawott.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

    By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[enigmatic-elegance]

Late Night Thoughts

Was not able to sleep. Went on a late night nostalgia trip, looking over old screens from back when I did HL2 RP. Old forum posts, old memories, things pretty much forgotten by most, save for those of us who were there. It’s going to be a long and disjointed post, going gods know where. It helps me a lot to reflect time to time, and to think things over. Putting it here on this blog is a means to put it to writing. I’d not be hurt if no one read it. As I said, it’s largely going to be just thought. Anyways.

I came from Half Life 2 RP. Which is hilarious because the reputation it has to those who know it. And lord is that reputation deserved. The majority of HL2 RP servers, using a script called ‘Dark RP’, was a nightmare. A total mess. I mean.. I remember joining a few servers as a kid and being a mixture of lost and really afraid.

Voice chat was active on these servers, you see. So people didn’t type much if at all. It was just..people on mic screaming and memeing and making racist remarks. I didn’t get it. Turns out, yep, that is 90% of the shit that HL2 RP is. Well.. I didn’t give up immediately.

I found a server at random. It was called taconbanana. Great name, right? I remember joining and seeing a billboard high on a rooftop on the map that advertised their forum. I was a kid, I didn’t really care one way or another. In my first 10 minutes on the server I built a stack of spawned crates (in garry’s mod, the platform we used to RP on, you can spawn props in the world). I used those crates to climb up over a wall in the city center, was stopped by an admin, and given a 5 minute ban.

Could have been the end of that. I didn’t really understand though, but.. what I saw on that server was pretty cool. and no voice chat either, people were just typing to each other. So.. I went to the forum during that ban, signed up for an account, and read all the rules.

That was back in.. oh gosh..04? I remember I was like 12 or 13 when it all happened. I went back into the server, made my first character in roleplay ever. Ryan McGovern. What.. a shitty.. name. BUT, he was pretty much.. me. No real special characteristics in the RP verse just..a dude. And I went with him into the city and walked around. I watched folks RP. I opened a little store. I sold milk and paper and TP. The Combine, the ‘police’ of the HL2 world, came into my store and put me against a wall as they raided my shop.

I was in love.

The world was gripping, always being a fan of HL2 personally. The RP was serious, well done, and totally immersive. Everyone was in character, and it drew me in.

I was absolutely hooked.

In my time in TnB, I grew. I grew as a writer. I grew as a person. I grew as an RPer. That whole server was my advent, into roleplay, into the thing I love.

I met on that server some amazing people. Most of whom I have lost touch with after I left TnB years back. A few I still have contact with, and we chat time to time. Those whom I don’t have contact with.. I hope they are well. Some great people. David H., Operator, Zo, Dave Brown, Lord, Garfy, GregG, Anubis, Spartan, I could go on.. these are the folks that shaped me.

I eventually became a CmD. Commander. I still remember the full designation by heart. CCA.C18-BASTION.CmD.43636

Katie ‘Kit’ Sommers was the woman’s name. My character, designation 43636. With her.. I took up post as a Commander. My first leadership role in any RP sphere. Or..anywhere, really. In the year I did that.. I might well say it’s one of the best years of my life. The stories we created were vast, sweeping, beautiful.

We were so engrossed in our RP that we had a whole list of military and police codes we memorized. We addressed each other by designation, issued weekly training. Some would call it TOO obsessive. Maybe.. but to me it was involved. You felt alive in this world, at many points it was more real to me then my own life outside it.

In that game, I also encountered the beautiful romance between Kit and Lucas. It is, to this day, one of the best romances I’ve ever been a part of. It was beautiful.. and the day that Kit died, I wept like a child. But she died in a way that was -perfect- for her. Gun in hand, comrades at her sides, warmth in her heart. Kit perished with humanity in her, despite the extensive brainwashing that made her the machine she had become. She had humanity.

This image was a posed screen representing one of their last RPs as a couple, before her death. I think they both knew her time had come, even before us players did. I still feel myself choke when I think back on it. I will always love them, and always love and miss Kit as a character.

Could never bring her back though. She was only for one world, one storyline. She died beside her brothers in arms, and that is exactly where she deserves to rest.

Heh.. her office in the nexus. Took about an hour to build it every time the server had a wipe. Context..this room at it’s base is just an empty stone room. Every single prop, the catwalk, the railings, the chairs and bed and the room on the left side (that you can’t see well).. built it all. She had one cool office.

So when did it stop? I never really..officially quit. I can’t explain it really one day I just logged in less. And less.. and less. Soon, I was removed from Commander for inactivity. I stopped logging in..and never returned.

Why? I don’t.. know. I really don’t. I was happy, I had a great crew, I loved the world and RP. I just stopped.. and watched it go away. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved it? Maybe I was depressed, didn’t understand it yet? Maybe I just felt it was time to roll on. But I did.

Wandered for a while.

Found WoW.. a few times. I’d join, RP for a bit, then leave for a few months. In that time.. damn.. some of the worst points in my life. My world had taken a bad turn, and I had no escape.

But I found WoW. I like it here. I still like it here. And I don’t want to just walk away from it like I did with TnB, and HL2.

I don’t want to just.. move on.

Sometimes, I need to look at myself. See where I am, and what I am doing, and how I act. Everything.

I like what I see right now.. but I know I can improve.

I find myself getting annoyed by little things that don’t matter. Things I should let go of. I could work on being more tolerant of other’s ideas, even if they are not things I’d personally do. I could strive to be more open, more friendly, more trusting. Even with all I have striven for, there is always more.

I want there to be more. I want to improve. I want to always look back on myself and see a better man now then I once was.

With TnB.. I was a teen. A child. I didn’t get it. I didn’t know.. I didn’t know how to lead, how to guide, how to uplift, how to coexist. But I know more now. I’m not perfect but I know more. And in that knowledge.. I have tried to be..something? To the people of this server and to my guild.

I don’t know what that ‘something’ is.

But as I was looking through those old screens.. thinking of the old RPs I did.. the old memories I made. I think I realized what I was doing.

I was remembering the positive people who changed my life. Made me who I am. Showed me RP, and gifted me this outlet. Who gave me memories worth remembering, worth laughing about, worth tearing up over.

And I hope I can do that for others too.

I hope I can be worth it. Worth the effort, worth the trust, worth the investment. I hope people will look back on the stories we write in 10, 15, 20 years.. and I hope they smile and laugh and cry.. I hope they feel the same sad swell in their chest as I do right now looking back on my old RPs too.

I know it’s cliche to say.. but life really is too short to live it with anger, regret, or agitation. I want to fill those places with memories worth remembering. Stories worth telling, like this story was worth telling to me.

When I started CC, I had no clue what the fuck I was doing. Still not convinced I do. But I know I still have not been the best I can be for all of them. And I can be more. I can do more. I can provide more. I want to.

I’m not going to walk away from this. I want to live these memories.. a little longer.

[thechocoboos]

Headcannons: Chocobros on Animal Crossing

(I can’t believe this is the subject of my first writing piece on here fml)

***the bros share a town

Prompto

Boi’s been playing it since the original on the gamecube, it always made him feel less lonely (#relatable)

Now he just plays it to chill

Not as big of a fan for New Leaf as he was with previous games, but still plays it cause it’s the only one the bros like

His favorite aspect is interacting with the villagers. He attends every single birthday in town, sends more letters and presents than you and I ever did, and oh jeez god help the other bros when his favorite villager leaves

Gets way too attached to villagers and takes what they say to heart. The Grumpy villagers on the gamecube version once made him cry

L O V E S the dogs, you bet your bottom bell this boi bought every single dog amiibo card

The soul reason he plays New Leaf? Isabelle.

Lowkey has PTSD from Tom Nook; this boi here never fully paid off his loans

Struggles with making money ingame, can’t afford half the furniture he wants

“428,000 BELLS FOR A BASEMENT?!”

Hands the game to Noctis when he needs money (Noct is king of the bell bringers)

Is scared of Resetti (once made Prom cry)

Bones moved out without telling Prom. He cried for 3 weeks.

Admittedly likes dressing his character up in goofy costumes, his favorites are the hero outfits

Not so great at decorating or designing the town but he tries

Prefers leaving his towns more natural with loads of trees and flowers spread out randomly (pfft not with Ignis around tho)

Sends presents and cute lil letters to the bros

Saves literally every single letter he gets

This boy LIVES for the holidays, he makes notes about what the villagers want from Jingle, what they’re scared of for Halloween, and he collects things way in advance for Thanksgiving

Noctis

Saw Prom playing it one night, got curious and stole it for a few days

“Hey Noct, have you seen my 3DS?”

“No, maybe it fell in the Regalia?” Noct you asshole

At first, he didn’t see the appeal, but once he found out about fishing, the boy became obsessed

Got sick of playing as Prom’s character, so he made his own

Doesn’t care much for decorating his house, but that’s where he displays his fish. Only upgrades it to hold more fish.

What little furniture he has is mismatched and thrown down in the most random ways

“Hey Noct, what’s up with the flower chair facing the wall?”

“I dunno.”

Noctis single handedly supplies the museum fish, but nothing else

He somehow paid off all his loans and became a bellionaire in a week (Prom thinks he used the duplication glitch (he did) but can’t prove it) 

Basic clothing except one thing; he wears the crown nonstop

Usually ignores any requests the villagers give him, unless it involves fishing

Actually, he usually ignores the villagers, too

Sometimes sends Prom items that he really wants in letters

“Dear Blondie, Here From Noctis”

Whenever Prom wants money, Noctis takes over as Prom’s character and badaboom badabing Poor Prom is a Rich Prom

Ignores letters for the most part and deletes them; except the ones from mom and dad, he saves every single one (they make him smile and feel warm and fuzzy and sometimes sad)

Whenever he misses his parents he likes to look at the letters from his character’s ingame parents

Lowkey likes to dick around on the other bro’s files; once fucked up Ignis’ house so bad the man was practically a frozen brick to Noct for a week

“Hey Specs, what’s for dinner?”

“There might have been memory cake, but it appears my kitchen has disappeared.” the bros had to make their own ramen that night

Ignis

No one expected him to like it so much

Or at least, the bros think he likes it?

Tutted at how bad Prom was with being mayor, and ended up playing “merely to correct the town’s issues”

Next thing ya know, he’s playing as Mayor Prompto more often than Prom, boi basically stole Prom’s character (Prom made a new one)

At first he was just fixing up the town: weeding, changing the flag, adding public works projects…

Then he became obsessed. He made paths, gardens, clothing, umbrellas… This man donated every single missing bug, painting, sculpture, and fossil to the museum

He continually said “I’m merely returning the town to decency”

Yeah no

Boi upgraded his house, furnished it and turned it into a legit house with a kitchen, living room, couple of bedrooms, a flippin’ bathroom, he even turned the basement into a rumpus room

Needless to say, he got the highest HHA score out of all the bros

You know those really nice, aesthetically pleasing AC towns you see on tumblr? Yeah, his is one of them. That’s right, it’s his town now. Even Noct’s crown can’t deny who really cares for the place

Sneakily moves out villagers and brings in the food related ones (Prom cries every time)

Outside of decorating and mayor-ing and creating cool af clothes, the man doesn’t do too much

He only ever really talked to the animals to get PWPs and change his nickname to Ignis

His overarching goal is to get every single achievement badge (help the poor bb)

Gladiolus

??????

???????

He has no idea what he’s doing

His thumbs are a bit too big to rest comfortably on the buttons, so he always presses the wrong ones and picks up Ignis’ flowers and paths (Ignis is never happy)

His character clumsily runs around town, destroying Ignis’ flowers and wearing down the grass

Never really pays attention to much in game, is just confused most of the time

Didn’t even pay the down payment until Prom said something

“Haven’t you paid Nook yet?”

“Done what to who?”

Once he finally gets the hang of things, he furnishes his house and turns it into a massive gym

Is lowkey a dick to most of the villagers, he always hits them with nets and tells them the most negative things he can (which isn’t much considering it’s animal crossing)

Whenever Iris is around, he likes to let her play on his file; she always fills his house with lovely furniture and teddy bears then dresses his character up as a girl, just to bug him

Sometimes he keeps it like that

Honestly he plays the game the least, he never sees the overarching point of it but says it’s sometimes relaxing (yea pal that’s the point)

Makes his character look as tough and badass as possible

Sometimes, when the other bros pull a prank or a being lil shits, he plays their characters and changes their outfits into the dumbest things ever or moves things around in their houses (he also steals Noct’s fish and puts them in storage)

[aion-rsa]

Is Wario the Ultimate Nintendo Fanboy?

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WarioWare: Get It Together! not only revives one of Nintendo’s most enjoyable pick-up-and-play experiences but reminds us that Wario has managed to become far more popular over the years than Nintendo seemingly ever intended. We don’t want to remind you of SNL episode where Elon Musk dressed as Wario, but here we are. 

Indeed, it’s doubtful Wario was ever supposed to be little more than Mario’s “Star Trek-esque” evil doppelganger. I mean…just look at the guy. His trademark symbol is essentially an upside-down “M” and the origins of his name roughly translate to “bad Mario.” He initially appears to be little more than the most obvious villain you could think of. 

Yet, a deeper dive into Wario’s strange history reveals that he might be more than that. Actually, there’s a popular fan theory that suggests Wario is not only secretly an obsessive Mario fan but that he might just be a sly piece of commentary on the entire fanboy concept. 

Wario’s Mysterious Origin Story Suggests He and Mario Were Old Friends

Wario was created to play the villain in the 1992 Game Boy classic, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. As mentioned above, he was pretty much seen as “bad Mario” or “anti-Mario” at that stage, with some reports suggesting that he was viewed internally as the Bluto to Mario’s Popeye. Indeed, it’s easy to see a lot of Bluto in Wario’s physical design and generally unappealing characteristics. 

Interestingly, though, the motivation to make Wario the “anti-Mario” may be based on more than a simple visual way to convey his villainous nature. In fact, it’s been said that the creation of Wario was partially inspired by the Mario Land 2 team’s initial hesitancy to develop a game based solely on another team’s characters and worlds. The creation of Wario gave them their own character to work with.

Interestingly, the spirit of that idea is echoed somewhat in an old Club Nintendo magazine comic which suggested that Wario is essentially a clone of Mario that was accidentally created by Dr. Light of Mega Man fame. It’s an amusing theory, but since Nintendo has never referenced it again, we’ll just ignore it for now.

Officially, Nintendo used supplementary materials to suggest that Wario and Mario were once childhood friends who became bitter rivals. That idea has been disputed by some in the past (as well as contradicted slightly by subsequent Wario stories), but it again leaves you with the basic idea that Nintendo saw Wario as a familiar rival to Mario who represents different (even opposite) characteristics. 

It was a simple enough idea that would soon become complicated by Wario’s “growth” as a character and how fans and developers chose to interpret what they saw when they looked at him.

Wario’s Mario Obsession Is One of The Character’s Most Consistent Traits

For the moment, let’s put aside a debate over whether Wario is best described as a rival or a fan and simply focus on the one Wario characteristic that unites both ideas: Wario’s obsession with Mario. 

The first time we ever see Wario in a game, he has essentially hijacked Mario’s castle, established residence there, and redecorated the whole thing to better reflect his own image. While that certainly seems like classic villain behavior, there’s still the question of why Wario would go to such lengths. After all, he didn’t seem to be in it for the money (that would come later), a princess, the kingdom, or even simply the castle itself. So…why bother?

This is where the supplementary material would lead you to believe that Wario did all of this out of his bitterness towards Mario. That theory is seemingly supported by a Nintendo Power comic called “Mario vs. Wario” in which it is “revealed” that Wario is angry at Mario for mistreating him as a youth (Wario believes he was bullied by Mario) and does indeed want to get revenge on him in any way he can.

It’s a simple enough explanation that still doesn’t quite answer every question fans had about Wario. For instance, if Wario hates Mario so much, why does he dress like him and mimic so many of his actions and goals? If this is all about hate and revenge, why does he seem to almost want to replace Mario like he’s Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female?

Well, the simplest explanation revolves around the idea that, in some way, Wario is indeed obsessed with Mario and has seemingly devoted quite a bit of his life to getting Mario’s attention however he can. Call it jealousy, revenge, or whatever you’d like, but it can all be traced back to some kind of obsession.

What about the fanboy theory, though? Well, it turns out there is certainly no shortage of evidence to support that idea. In fact, a deeper dive into that possibility may reveal some potentially uncomfortable truths about the Wario character…

Read more

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Wario’s Bitterness, Obsession, and Bad Hygiene Make Him A Tragically Appropriate Fanboy Caricature

The idea that Wario is an obsessed Mario fanboy is most often traced back to a reinterpretation of the character’s first appearance. What if Wario didn’t put Mario through everything he went through in Super Mario Land 2 simply out of revenge but rather because his obsession with Mario turned him into a Mario fanboy? What if he grew up thinking Mario was the coolest kid in the world and then watched Mario become Mushroom Kingdom’s biggest celebrity?

That would certainly explain Wario’s looks, desire to mimic Mario’s actions/motivations, and even the idea that his first big move was to invade Mario’s home. Wario even keeps a few of the Mario statues spread throughout that castle, which is kind of an odd thing to do if he simply hated the guy.

For the moment, allow yourself to buy into the idea that Wario did morph into a Mario fanboy at some point. If you reexamine elements of the character’s evolution through that lens, then you also may start to see some of the ways Wario isn’t just a hardcore Mario fan but the ways he strangely represents fanboys in general.

For instance, Wario apparently has notoriously awful hygiene, which is certainly a characteristic commonly associated with the worst of the worst fanboys. He’s also brutish, arrogant, often portrayed as being quite stupid, and even constantly obsessed with money in the way that some fanboys are whenever they use a company/product’s fiscal success to justify their love of the thing itself. 

Wario has also consistently been portrayed as being quite vain which strangely contributes to the idea that he is actually selfish and ultimately projects his obsession with himself through superficial relationships and surface-level fascinations with others. Let’s also not forget that Wario has followed Mario’s career nearly every step of the way (Wario has been a Mario spin-off fixture for years now) and even eventually found a “brother” for himself in Waluigi: another potentially obsessive fan who may have contributed to Wario’s obsession by giving him a community that bolstered the validity of his viewpoints.

You could even see the WarioWare games as evidence that Wario is a bit of a parody of the fanboy concept. After all, the game is based on Wario creating cheap and simple games that sometimes mimic Nintendo’s own titles, and you know what Nintendo’s attitude towards fan games has been like throughout the years. 

However, the most compelling piece of evidence to support the fanboy theory may be the idea that Wario was created partially out of spite of the entire Super Mario concept. What if Super Mario Land 2 developer Nintendo R&D1 were especially resentful towards being asked to make an entry into someone else’s franchise and, on some level, created Wario as a sign of their bitterness towards being asked to lose themselves in someone else’s creation?

It’s an interesting idea that offers something fun to chew on, but it doesn’t necessarily hold up under close scrutiny. In fact, the idea that Wario is a Mario fanboy sells the character’s evolution and modern purpose a bit short. 

Wario Has Been Adopted By the Internet and Reshaped Into An Antihero

While the Wario is a Mario fanboy argument can’t completely be dismissed, it is easy enough to weaken some of the theory’s pillars. 

First off, Wario’s Mario-themed attire was seemingly explained in Yoshi’s Island DS (Wario’s first chronological appearance in the Super Mario timeline). There, we see Baby Wario in his trademark attire (complete with a “W” hat). That seems to suggest that’s just how everyone in the region Mario, Wario, and Luigi grew up in happened to dress. That’s a bit odd, but I’m willing to accept it as a canonical explanation. 

As for Wario’s desire to take over Mario’s castle…well, just about every aspect of that plan can indeed be attributed to the idea that Wario was just out for revenge and decided to go full Count of Monte Cristo by not only taking everything his rival had but aspiring to live a better life in the process. You’d probably be pretty sore too if the weird kid you grew up with suddenly lived the better version of your dream life. 

Wario’s greed could also help explain a lot of his Mario-esque characteristics. Why buy a castle when you could take one? Why come up with your own moves and characteristics when you could just copy something that works? We know from WarioWare that Wario isn’t above putting in the least work possible to maximize profits, so it makes sense that he would just fake it until he makes it. 

More importantly, the public perception of Wario has evolved over the years in a way that may not completely dismiss the fanboy origin theory but does suggest that the character has grown beyond those origins (if that ever was the intention in the first place). 

In fact, the team at Good-Feel (developers of Wario Land: Shake It!) previously said that they didn’t even see Wario as a villain. Instead, producer Takahiro Harada stated that, in his mind, Wario was “so uncool that he ends up being extremely cool.”

That statement really gets to the heart of who Wario is today. Maybe he was created as a kind of sigh and groan towards the very idea of being “forced” to make a Mario game, but Super Mario Land 2‘s developers eventually embraced Wario as their own platforming mascot and went on to make some truly great games starring him. 

Wario is kind of like the Stone Cold Steve Austin of Nintendo characters. Yes, he’s loud, gross, foul-mouthed, and unconventional, but in the buttoned-up and tame world of the Super Mario games, he feels like an only slightly rancid breath of fresh air. Wario is the consummate outsider who made a name for himself by being different (even when he was copying others), so it’s easy enough to understand why he’s been adopted by the internet as this kind of antihero whose worst qualities oddly make him that much more likable.

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Maybe Wario isn’t really an obsessed fanboy, but he has certainly become a rallying point for Nintendo fans who like to point out that they ultimately get to determine what they love and that they’ll probably always find a way to rebel against Nintendo’s occasional reliance on traditionalism as well as their clean, family-friendly image.

The post Is Wario the Ultimate Nintendo Fanboy? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sargenthouse]

Interview: Jaye Jayle on the web // Echoes and Dust

Interview: Jaye Jayle 

on the web: Facebook // Bandcamp

In a fantasy world it would be just making records and making songs in world of people who spend their night lives when the sun goes down, the kids go to sleep and they’re laying in their bed or sitting on their couch they don’t turn on the TV and scroll through netflix or look at their phone. They put on a record and take it in and breathe and feel something that you don’t feel in any other world besides that world.

Full interview by Michael Hayden via Echoes and Dust.

My first experience with Jaye Jayle was seeing them live opening for Oathbreaker. It seems like their blend of americana, kraut-rock grooves and Morricone-esque soundtracking would be an odd fit for a metal show, their presence and weightiness stole the show for me. I was so impressed by their performance that I became a bit obsessed with both their debut album House Cricks and Other Excuses to Get Out and their outstanding split release with Emma Ruth Rundle The Time Between Us. I didn’t know at the time (even though he looked familiar) that the main songwriter was Evan Patterson from the mighty Young Widows. As a fan of Young Widows this just intrigued m even more. How does a person go from the thunder and fury of Young Widows to the dark, moody and tension filled music of Jaye Jayle? When the opportunity to interview Evan about their upcoming album No Trail and Other Unholy Paths (available June 29th via Sargent House) I jumped at the chance to hear more about this intriguingly unique project.

We planned on talking after their set opening for Russian Circles at the Empty Bottle here in Chicago. Evan immediately strikes you as a warm and engaged person, he gives everyone who approaches him his undivided attention. It seemed like no matter where we went to begin the interview he was being approached by old friends, acquaintances or newly made fans and he always took the time to share some words with them. I was really impressed by his kindness towards strangers and his patience when confronted with some of Chicago’s more exuberant drunks. The conversation that followed was a real pleasure to have and I’m even more of a fan of the band now that I’ve spent some time hearing about it’s genesis and evolution.

(((o))): How did Jaye Jayle get born out of Young Widows?

Evan Patterson: The initial thought of the project or the idea of writing songs outside of Young Widows was just to not think about anything in capacity of it being performed. It was just kind of writing songs casually. I was actually in Santa Fe, NM visiting a past partner. She had a parlour guitar that was all fucked up, the bridge was already pulling away and the only thing I could do was kind of play on the last five frets to get it to stay in tune. I decided I was just going to write a song or what I felt was a song. It was always just a couple of minutes or a couple of parts. Not a deliberate idea of anything, just kind of a stream of consciousness thing.

(((o))): Previously did you write with a more compositional approach?

Evan: A little bit, once the band becomes involved in a project or any kind of composition or songwriting to me it makes to consider that they are there. There’s Jaye Jayle songs that I work that have no base of anyone playing with me and when we get together and play them they just come out how they are. One the band becomes involved it’s adding the saturation or the color to the song.

(((o))): That kind of my addresses my follow up question. I know that you’re the main songwriter but do you bring raw ideas to the band and let them play to their strengths or do you dictate who does what?

Evan: It’s a bit of a compositional dictatorship in the songwriting process until we get to the pinnacle moment of a song or a piece. I say here’s all the ideas I have and here’s the drum beat and this is where I hear the bass to be and this is where I hear the vocal melody and once it all becomes musical, that’s where the freedom sets in. Then we can say “this section of song is open” but it takes a long time to get to that place but those guys are

(((o))): You have some great players.

Evan: Todd (Cook) is my favorite bass player to ever live on the face of the planet and Neal (Argabright) can play keyboards better than anyone else. Todd and Neal don’t want to be soloists, they want to be part of the composition rather than just doing the same thing or wondering when they get to take the lead. There’s no leads. It’s more of a score.

(((o))): It’s interesting to me that a lot the press around you guys bring up the kraut-rock kind of influences and I hear it a bit but when I think about bands like say Can often times the song is just a really long guitar solo. I hear it in more of say Michael Rother’s (Neu!) solo stuff where all of the instruments are placed well, or contributing to the whole piece.

Evan: When I listen to Can I don’t really listen to the guitar work as much as I do the forward motion of the songs rather than it just being parts. When a Can song starts you kind of know it’s not going to leave. You always know when you hear the beginning of a Can song if that’s going to be the Can song you want to listen to or if you don’t want to listen and that’s usually in the rhythm section.

(((o))): So the new album is produced by Dean Hurley(David Lynch’s sound collaborator). I love Twin Peaks and the sound design has always been a big part of that, especially in the most recent season. How did working with him come about?

Evan: That sound design is all Dean. I actually had no idea about any of his collaborations with David Lynch until I heard Lynch’s album ‘The Big Dream’ and I’m such a fan of that record. Something about the way it incorporated modern music and that Twin Peaks sound, everything about that. I associated with so much of what’s going on with that record, maybe at times not melodically or vocally what was going on but the production of it completely surrounded me. So I saw that Dean Hurley worked on, produced and co-wrote the record so I just wrote him an email.

(((o))): Nice, that simple huh?

Evan: Yeah, he said “send me some songs” and then he said he loved the kind of strange blues-dirge thing we were doing.

(((o))): One thing I love about you guys is the music does kind of the same thing as Twin Peaks, it creates an environment that you kind of live within during the duration of the music. When I found out Dean Hurley produced it I thought that made perfect sense for what you do.

Evan: Yeah, me too.

(((o))): You recorded it at Earth Analog (Matt Talbot of Hum’s studio) right?

Evan: Yeah in Tolono, Il which is also kind of a Twin Peaks oddball kind of place. It’s an old industrial wasteland that’s a crossroads for trains. Where we were there were trains going by every ten minutes at such a high speed that they would shake the building.

(((o))): Did you have to stop working when the trains went by?

Evan: There’d be times where we’d work around it and there’d be times that we’d just play. There’s train horns all over the recording, mostly in a way that wouldn’t even know and you’d probably just think it’s a synthesizer.

(((o))): In the press release for the album it mentions that it’s designed to be completely non linear, where you can start it at any point. I think that’s an interesting departure from both people who think that the single is everything and the kind of people who write big concepts that are meant to be listened to in a very specific way.

Evan: It’s difficult to listen to a full album. The attention span of a modern human being is so small, I feel like we have the attention span of an ant. It’s just how it is when we have accessibility to everything and everything. With that each side of a record needs to live on it’s own because the is the attention span of human beings. I love records and I collect a ton of record and so many records that I have it’s difficult to get up and flip the side, you know? Being a collector and investing myself in artists from all times, anything that was created on vinyl really, there’s a thing about listening to one side of a record and having it feel complete. Rather than the ending of the first side leaving you hanging, I just wanted to feel like it doesn’t leave you hanging.

(((o))): Not a lot of people take people’s attention span into consideration, haha.

Evan: It’s just a fact.

(((o))): You’re active in a lot of projects, the most active being Jaye Jayle and Young Widows, do you sit down and with intention to write for either or do you just write and decide where it lives later?

Evan: Young Widows is very inactive right now, we’re rehearsing and doing Old Wounds but we didn’t play at all for about 14 months. But it kind of refers back to your first question with writing music and spontaneity of creativity. Jaye Jayle and the songs we write are just what I’m writing right now. Young Widows songs a lot of time were just from showing up and playing and seeing what happens. Composition always kind of came later after we’d been playing for a while. With Jaye Jayle pieces they’re just something I work on every single day for hours and hours, whether it’s playing one chord for three weeks trying to find the melody or dynamic or rhythm within that note or chord or whatever it might be. I absolutely love Jaye Jayle, it brings me more joy than anything I’ve ever done in my entire life. It’s the most euphoric and hypnotic and therapeutic music that I’ve ever created and I feel lucky to have the band because they’re all on the same page.

(((o))): With Jaye Jayle there’s a kind of tension where it feels like it’s about to explode but it never does whereas Young Widows feels like everything is exploding all the time.

Evan: Absolutely

(((o))): Is that conscious decision? Kind of intentionally moving away from that more explosive outlet and stripping it back?

Evan: It’s definitely unconscious and unintentional. It’s more exciting for me to be contained and in control. I was extremely nervous tonight in a way of being in control. It’s so much easier to go full on, just playing loud and having it turn into this chaotic thing. Staying in the environment we have created is exciting because it’s difficult. The instincts of being a musician is at times playing more and everyone having their times of stepping out of the composition. Honestly I feel what’s going on with this music is the tip of the iceberg of what’s going to happen and there’s going to be even more tension and control going forward.

(((o))): You played a lot of new material tonight and one thing that really struck me is the restraint your auxiliary player (Corey Smith) shows, he’ll just rest and wait. Finding musicians like that is pretty rare. That adds to overall feeling that at any moment one of these guys is just going to bust out into a solo or lead line but they never do, is that kind of a theme?

Evan: I don’t know if it’s a theme so much as it is an idea of composition rather than individuals. At times even the singing and the lyrical subject matter and the control of even singing, I don’t even want that to shine. I always think about film and film scores. I just rewatched Badlands and that film influenced me highly. Watching that again and every time the music comes in it doesn’t take you out of the film it kind of puts you more in it. It gives you a narrative and a voice and almost earthly place. I know everyone in the band understands that feeling, we’ve all been playing music for a long time and we’ve never been it in trying to live a world of dominant showing off. We just all want to create an environment.

(((o))): It works really well, even tonight where you played mostly new songs that I had never heard it didn’t really matter because the environment is consistent and holds your attention. Which brings me to the last question. Is it hard to switch from this controlled environment back to the Young Widows sound for you upcoming tour?

[shawnximagine-blog]

Always

A/N: Hello there! Sorry if I’m not active anymore. School has been busy and I’m still adjusting with my University life. But here’s a imagine for all of you (not requested!). I will  start writing the remaining requests and I promise to post it as soon as i finish it. And also, I will update Kid In love series soon! This is not edited so sorry if there are a lot of typos or any errors. Also REQUESTS ARE OPEN!!!

It’s been 3 years since I last saw him. Funny thing is that we’ve never been together, but I feel like I just had my break-up with my first boyfriend. I love him but I guess being honest with him is a bad idea. Today, for the first time again I’ll be seeing him at Ian’s birthday party. A few months ago he started liking my Instagram photos which is shocking to me. We follow each other but he never liked even a single photo that I posted. But these last few months he’s been liking my Instagram photos. But I don’t want to assume anything, we all change. Maybe he just really like my photography I don’t want to assume anything more.

‘What should I wear?’ I asked my best friend, Maine.

‘Uh, I don’t know!’ Maine comments while she’s busy scrolling up and down on her phone.

‘What ya lookin’ at?’ I asked.

‘Fan comments.’ She said. She’s still focuse on her phone.

‘What?’ I asked and slightly laughing. ‘You have fans? Since when?’ I jokingly asked her.

‘Stop it. Shawn’s been liking your Instagram photos and he’s fans are going crazy about you two! Ya know, people thought you guys were dating.’ She said. ‘Wait, did you guys really dated?’ She asked.

‘Nah. We never dated. I guess confessing to him my feelings is not a good idea!’ I said and I continued looking for a nice dress to wear at Ian’s birthday.

‘But when he started avoiding you, you look like you just broke up with him.’ She said.

‘I guess I was just really into him that time.’ I said.

‘What about now?’ She asked and I paused for a minute. I don’t know what to say, I still do have feelings for Shawn but everything’s clear to me now that he doesn’t have feelings for me.

‘Not anymore. I don’t want to push myself to someone who doesn’t love or like me.’ I said. ‘You know what, let’s just go to Pull and Bear. I want a new top to pair with this one!’ I said as I raised my denim skirt.

‘You’re the queen of changing the topics!’ She jokingly said and I winked at her.

We drove to Pull and Bear blasting some Dua Lipa since we’re so obsessed with her. It’s crazy to think that tomorrow I’ll be reuniting with Shawn and seeing Shawn’s fans comments on my Instagram photos makes me nervous without any reasons. I’ve been seeing comments like, ‘OHMYGOSH Y/N IS ALIVE.’ ‘WAIT ARE THEY BACK TOGETHER?’ ‘OHMYGOSH Y/N AND SHAWN JSANHUIHEUWHEU’ ‘MY Y/N AND SHAWN HEART IS SO ALIVE U GUYSNABDBHIBDHW’ everytime I post a photo and Shawn likes.

Maine and I walked inside Pull and Bear and the first person we saw was Aaliyah with Karen. I got so nervous because its been 3 years since I last saw them. I don’t know if I should go out or what but I’m already here and what’s the point of running out if I’m reuniting with Shawn tomorrow. Aaliyah and I met gazed and I smiled and that’s when she realize it was really me. She run into me and Karen followed.

‘OH GOSH Y/N!’ Aaliyah said excitedly and hugged me so tight. I miss this girl. She’s all grown up now, I’m sure Shawn is getting crazy of how big Aaliyah now is and I’m sure he’s a crazy brother when it comes to Aaliyah’s suitors.

‘I miss you!’ I said and hugged Aaliyah back. When Aaliyah and I pulled away I hugged Karen and she hugged me back.

‘How have you been?’ Karen asked. ‘We missed you, it’s been like what? 3 years?’ She said and smiled at me.

‘I’m fine. How are you? Aaliyah, oh gosh you’re all grown up now!’ I said as I look at Aaliyah who’s smiling so widely and Karen who’s also smiling so widely.

‘He missed you.’ Karen said. I stopped for a moment. But I just smiled at her, because right now to be honest I don’t know what to feel.

‘I missed him too.’ I said.

‘I hope you and Shawn will be okay. You guys will make a cute couple, you know?’ Karen said seriously. That’s when Maine popped in thankfully.

‘Oh, hey Liyah. Hi Karen!’ Maine said with her joyful voice.

‘Hi, Maine. I missed you!’ Aaliyah said and hugged Maine.

‘Me too! We should do our usual girls night soon ya know!’ Maine suggested.

‘OH GOSH, YES!’ Aaliyah said excitedly.

‘That’s sound so much fun, am I invited as well?’ Karen asked and we all laughed. ‘Hey, I’m a millennial as well.’ Karen added.

‘Of course, you’re very welcome!’ said. ‘Oh, we gotta get going we still have some errands to do!’ I said. Before we left we hugged each other tight and we exchange numbers to stay in touch with each other. It was amazing to see them again. Aaliyah became the little sister I never had and Karen became my second mother.

Xxx

This is the day, the day that I will see Shawn. I was pretty nervous but I keep on telling myself that I’m going there because it’s Ian’s birthday. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m there to celebrate my friend’s birthday and enjoy with my friends and aquintances. I put some light make up and wore the pinkish kind of floral crop top that I bought at Pull and Bear and paired with my denim skirt and my favorite white shoes. Maine and I went straight to Ian’s place and when we arrived the first person I saw was him. I feel like everything and everyone stopped at that moment. But thankfully Geoff was there to greet us.

‘How are you kid?’ Geoff asked.

‘Great, how are you oldie?’ I asked.

‘You’ll get there, Y/N!’ Geoff joked and told us where Ian is.

I saw Ian with Matt, Meg, Leah, Rayah, Lyall, and the person I want to avoice, Shawn. But I still walk into their place with Maine beside me.

‘OH GOSH! Look who finally showed up and give time to her friends!’ Ian joked. He hugged me as I greeted him happy birthday.

‘Shut up, Ian!’ I said jokingly.

Maine hugged everyone and I did as well. But when Shawn was standing there I don’t know if I should hug him but I did hug him.

‘Hi.’ He said as I pulled away with our hug.

‘Hello.’ I said.

Everyone felt what I felt. Awkward. That’s why Lyall decided to break the awkwardness with telling a corny joke. I went at the not crowded part since I’m not the life of a prty kind of girl. I just want to sit there and look at the people, enjoy the music, enjoy the laugh that I hear, enjoy every moment.

‘Hi again’ Shawn just popped in.

‘Hello again.’ I said.

‘You look gorgeous tonight.’ He said and looking straight into my eyes but I looked away immediately.

‘Thank you. So are you.’ I said. ‘Congratulations on tour!’ I said.

‘Thank you.’ He said. ‘What about you? You continued interior designing?’ he asked.

‘I did!’ I said. ‘Can you believe it? I followed my instincts and not my parents?’ I said and laughed. Back then Shawn would always tell me how I always tend to my parents, to him, to Maine, and to other people. That’s one of the reasons that he told me why me and him would not work out.

He just smiled and looked at me again. I feel like I’m going to melt with how he looked at me but I pretent like I don’t care.

‘I’m proud of you.’ He said. And that’s when I looked at him.

‘Thank you.’ I said and smiled.

‘I have always been so proud of you, Y/N. Maybe back then I was just so scared to lose you.’ He said with his eyes full of sincerity. But I tend not to say anything but just listen to what he wanted to say. ‘I have always been in love with you. Even before you knew you’re in love with me. But I was just so scared because I care about you too much that I don’t want to lose you.’ He said.

My world stops with everything that he’s confessing right now.

‘And I thought back then that if we remained friends things will be more better, that it will work out. I remember when you told me that you love me, my heart was so happy but my mind kept on telling me not to, because I can’t give you everything. All those things that I told you that day was a lie. I love you before, I love you now and I will love you in the future.’

‘Shawn-‘ I said but he interrupted me.

‘It’s okay, Y/N. I understand I hurt you and what I did was an asshole move and I know that-‘ I cut him off with a kiss that I’ve been wanting to do since earlier.

It was the sweetest kiss. Both of us don’t want to pull away. We don’t care what these people would say, but tonight, it was magical. It was like a dream. But I’m glad it wasn’t a dream, I’m glad that this is my reality now.

[theconservativebrief]

Chip Wilson, the founder and former CEO of the yoga apparel brand Lululemon, has written a tell-all book about his life and the business he built — and it is one wild read.

Little Black Stretchy Pants, which comes out on November 27, is being marketed as “the unauthorized story of Lululemon” — fitting given that the infamously controversial Wilson stepped down as CEO in 2013, and hasn’t been on the company’s board since 2015. (Lululemon has also distanced itself from its rogue founder; Wilson’s name isn’t even on its “our story” page. Vox reached out to Lululemon for comment on the book and will update if we get a response.)

Wilson’s Lululemon kick-started the athleisure market boom. Its $100 “Wunder Under” spandex leggings became ubiquitous in the fitness world, and the company convinced wealthy women they needed its luxury gear for working out. In the 20 years since its inception, Lululemon has developed a cult following; women and men alike swear by its products, to the point where there are underground markets dedicated to buying used Lululemon goods.

Under Wilson’s stewardship, the company has also been dogged by controversy and media blunders, and developed a reputation for being insular, pretentious, and eerie at times, due to the company’s obsession with developing employees under the self-help movement Landmark Forum.

Chip Wilson’s “unauthorized” book, Little Black Stretchy Pants.

I have covered Lululemon for almost five years, writing about the company’s products, fan groups, marketing efforts, and workplace culture. I read Wilson’s book in part to learn if the media’s depiction of him as being “socially inept,” unfiltered, and arrogant was unfair.

I found little to convince me he has been mischaracterized. This is, after all, a man who said in a videotaped interview that Lululemon pants weren’t made to be worn by all women; scolded a reporter for being late and invoked the phrase “Jewish Standard Time”; and checked out a woman’s butt while being interviewed by another reporter. (His book’s front cover, it’s worth noting, is an illustration of a woman’s butt, in Lululemon leggings.)

In the book, he’s similarly tactless, and it’s often cringeworthy to read; there are whole sections devoted to taking down specific Lululemon executives he disagreed with, and he claims to have singlehandedly invented the concepts of stretchy pants, minimalist marketing, and reusable shopping bags. He also refuses to take any responsibility for calamities he caused along the way, and instead paints himself as a victim of clueless CEOs, salacious media reporters, and disloyal board members.

Here are a few major takeaways about the world of Lululemon from Wilson’s account.

Wilson sold his former snowboarding apparel business Westbeach Snowboard in 1997 and was living in Vancouver when he took his first yoga class. He’d been having back issues due to participating in triathlons, and he took a class at a local gym. Wilson noticed the instructor was wearing clothes from a dance apparel company, which was thin and sheer.

He says that made him think about starting a yoga apparel company and “believed that if I could solve the transparency problem, address camel-toe, and thicken the fabric to mask any imperfections, I could create a perfect athletic garment for women.” At the time, brands like Adidas and Nike were using the “shrink it and pink it” philosophy to turn men’s athletic clothing into gear that could be sold to women. His idea was to create clothing designed specifically to emphasize women’s figures.

Wilson goes on:

Accentuating what made people feel confident — wider shoulders, smaller waists, slimmer hips — meant Guests would feel and look good in our clothing. I realized that the shape of our logo provided a perfect contour to enhance the natural shape of a woman’s body… There was a huge debate about where to set the seam lines on pants. Women told me they preferred side seams because when they looked in the mirror, side seams slimmed their hips. I wanted to move the side seams to the back to frame the bum and make the bum appear smaller. I persisted because I believed that eventually, men would tell women the pants looked great without really understanding why.

In executing the design of Lululemon stores, Wilson also writes that “the lighting would be perfect, and each room had to have a three-way mirror so a woman could be self-critical of her back side.”

Throughout the book, Wilson oscillates on whom Lululemon was created for. Initially, he talks about the opportunity to dress people who practice yoga regularly but also mocks that world, calling Yoga Journal a “mediocre publication wallowing in the depths of the granola world.” He also says Lululemon was propelled by “wealthy women” who could “‘buy’ time in their lives and were consequently often in great shape and very healthy.”

What he does make clear, though is that the brand was meant for a very specific type of customer: a demographic he calls “Super Girls.” This shopping segment were the daughters of “Power Women,” a group Wilson defines as a “female market segment in the 1970s and 1980s” who were divorced — which he claims was a result of the rise of birth control.

Men “had no idea how to relate to this newly independent woman” who “suddenly had significant control over conception,” and “thus came the era of divorce.” These daughters, he claimed, had single dads who got them involved in sports, and wanted to be like the male characters they saw in Saturday morning cartoons, “wearing capes and stretch fabric outfits.”

This demographic, Wilson writes, was “the best of the best.” For a 22-year-old college graduate, he believes “utopia was to be a fit, 32-year-old with an amazing career and spectacular health. She was traveling for business and pleasure, owned her own condo, and had a cat. She was fashionable and could afford quality.”

There’s long been a rumor that Wilson invented the name Lululemon because he thought it would be funny to listen to Japanese people pronounce it, and this comes up in the book.

Wilson writes how he came up with 20 names and logo possibilities, with one of them being Athletically Hip (the stylized A of the Lululemon logo comes from this original business name). He then recalls how he sold the name of a skateboard brand, Homeless Skateboards, to Japanese buyers for a large amount of money because, he believed, “Homeless” was a desirable brand name: “it seemed the Japanese liked the name Homeless because it had the letter L in it, and the Japanese language doesn’t have that sound. Brand names with Ls in them sounded even more authentically North American/Western to Japanese consumers, especially the 22-year-olds.”

He goes on to write how he “played with alliterative names with Ls in them, la la la, jotting down variations in my notebook” until he came up with Lululemon. Wilson doesn’t explicitly say he created this name as a way to exploit Japanese shoppers or make them stumble, but elsewhere in the book, he makes fun of Japanese tourists for traveling to Canada and buying Roots clothes. Lululemon’s first ad was a photo of three girls wearing glasses and a Roots sweatshirt, with the tagline, “Trendy Clothing for Rich Japanese Tourists,” which Wilson said was message for his “Super Girls,” that they’d “understand the nuances and subconsciously want to be a part of the Lululemon ‘tribe.’”

One thing Wilson makes clear in his book is that Lululemon is not meant for soda drinkers. In the original set of brand values that were printed in stores and on Lululemon’s ubiquitous red shopping bags — the company “manifesto,” which he admits comprised “random statements about how I lived my life” — he initially stated that “Coke, Pepsi, and other pops will be known as the cigarettes of the future. Colas are NOT a substitute for water. Colas are just another cheap drug made to look great by advertising.”

Wilson writes that “Coke and Pepsi threatened to drown Lululemon in lawsuits,” but agreed to cut the line from the manifesto only after a Lululemon employee pointed out that the line made the company look dated, since soda wasn’t aligned with health anyway (though he writes that he “wanted our Super Girl market to know the Lululemon brand was not for soda drinkers”).

He goes on to say that in 2012, he was upset to find soda cans popping up in the office, because being anti-soda “was fundamental to our health culture.”

Wilson also refuses to refer to Lululemon as an “athleisure” brand because he is personally not a fan of the term, as he believes it connotes “a non-athletic, smoking, Diet Coke-drinking woman in a New Jersey shopping mall wearing an unflattering pink velour jumpsuit.”

As a workplace, Wilson writes, Lululemon “screened for people who wanted families.” He writes how the company wanted to thrive off of family values, but he also doesn’t see a problem with forcing his narrow idea of relationships and family.

He writes how “we wanted our people to meet the perfect mate, we wanted people to have children, and we wanted the family nucleus to be an energy generator.”

In his original manifesto, Wilson also included this line: “Just like you did not know what an orgasm was before you had one, nature does not let you know how great children are until you have them. Children are the orgasm of life.”

Wilson goes on to write about how Lululemon initially hired a type of employee he calls “Balance Girls,” who were “type-A Wall Street personalities,” but the company had to get rid of them because “they had been working 14-hour days in finance, were not dating, and could see no prospects for marriage or children.”

Throughout the book, Wilson’s account of how he developed the business illustrates some autocratic tendencies, with specific rules for how employees should approach goal-setting and lifestyle. The most striking example is his 6/13 rule, which was an exact formula of how and when store associates, or “Educators,” as they are called, could talk to customers.

The rule was that “if a Guest was looking at a product for six seconds, an Educator had a thirteen-second window to educate them about the item. Barring any follow up questions, the Educator would then leave them alone until they looked at another item for around six seconds.” Wilson writes that this method would work because “our Educators [would] impress customers with their sheer knowledge of and enthusiasm for the item.” While it might sound like a shopping nightmare for some, it also might explain how Lululemon’s sales per square foot were in line with Apple and Tiffany & Co.

Inside a Lululemon class at a store in London on March 28, 2014. Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

In his account of the Bloomberg interview in which he said Lululemon pants weren’t right for women whose thighs rub together, Wilson says the publication edited his words and presented them out of context. (For the record, Bloomberg did not isolate that portion of the interview, and Wilson did say that “it’s really about the rubbing of the thighs.”)

He also insists that Luon, the proprietary fabric used for Lululemon leggings, which many people complain pills after many wears, didn’t pill because of poor quality but because women were squeezing into sizes that were too small for them.

Wilson takes no responsibility for offending women; instead, he insists the media is rooted in sensational reporting. He points to another time in 2007 when the New York Times challenged him on a clothing line called VitaSea, which he claimed was made with “seaweed-based technology … that would make the shirts anti-stink, as well as moisturizing for the skin of the person wearing it.”

The Times published test results that showed the clothing had no seaweed in its particles. Wilson calls this “mean-spirited” in the book but does not offer an explanation for the results; instead, he pivots to claim the story was probably planted by an investor who wanted to short the Lululemon stock, and that the reporter probably received “a backroom payoff.”

In one especially bizarre chapter, Wilson basically defends Nike, which in 2001 was accused of using child labor. He says he “felt bad for Nike,” and sides with the company over the reports.

“In North America, I noticed there were some kids not made for school, who dropped out with nowhere to go,” Wilson writes. In Asia, if a kid was not “school material, he or she learned a trade and contributed to their family. It was work or starve. I liked the alternative.”

Wilson boasts that to respond to the Nike story, he decided to make the whole thing into a joke. He appeared in an ad in Yoga Journal with a few Lululemon employees, “dressed in diapers and baby outfits at sewing machines in one of our factories.”

In the book, Wilson writes that “if we were ever accused of child labour, I would just agree.” He then goes on to joke that “my own children have worked in the business from the age of five with no pay; working young is excellent training for life” — a tone-deaf take on child labor, especially coming from a white, Western billionaire.

Elsewhere in the book, Wilson mentions that “stores created tongue-in-cheek windows with a controversial political or social point of view.” When the brand opened its first store in Vancouver, he took out an ad in the paper promising free clothes to anyone who showed up to the store naked — and plenty did. Wilson describes this type of publicity as “worth millions and so much more fun than a standard press release.”

In Wilson’s account of how Lululemon went on to sell yoga apparel outside of women’s leggings, he tries to paint a picture of resourcefulness. When searching for the best type of material that would later become Lululemon’s $68 yoga mats, he admits he scrounged in the trash of a supplier to find the address for a source of materials in Asia.

In another anecdote, Wilson writes how he saw bits of fabric being discarded inside factories and he was trying to think of ways to use them: “One of the seamstresses used to take the ends of the pants she cut off and wear it as a headband because her hair got in her eyes while sewing. We thought, ‘what a great idea! Let’s take these pant ends and sell them!’”

Headbands, Wilson goes on, ended up becoming one of the brand’s best-selling items, thanks to “young girls who used them to differentiate themselves amidst a sea of school uniform.”

Original Source -> Lululemon’s ex-CEO wrote an “unauthorized” history of the brand. Here’s what we learned.

via The Conservative Brief