#I’m pretty sure this is like the third post based on adventure comics 3 that I’ve done but I will never get over it. never

[clambuoyance]

[DC] 🎵How I find myself without you that I’ll never know, I let myself go🎵

[dropkickspindle]

[Image ID 1: A round cardboard tube covered in yellow Bulgarian postal office tape, resting on a bundled up blanket that’s red on one side and tan on the other. /End ID]

[Image ID 2: A dressed distaff: that is, a round length of wood about three feet long, with dark teal wool wrapped around it and tied on with string. The distaff is leaning against a dark colored bookshelf containing comics and stuffed animals. /End ID]

[Image ID 3: The same distaff, naked this time, propped up against the same bookshelf. This time you can see the top of it, since it’s not covered in wool. It’s topped by an acorn-shaped bump that tapers down into an almost bell-like shape about a third of the way down, after which the wood rounds into a long, blunt cone. /End ID]

[Image ID 4: A close up of the top end of the distaff against a background of the bookshelf, showing off the curves and rounds of wood that make it up. /End ID]

So I taught myself to hand spin on a drop spindle about three years ago now, but I only this past year started using distaffs. While the spindle, made of a whorl and a shaft, twists easily-snapped fibers into a stronger thread or yarn, and so is pretty necessary for making long sections of string (you can spin yarn just using your palm, twisting it on your thigh, but that can turn into a tangled mess pretty quickly if you don’t wrap the extra length around a stick), the distaff is more optional. A distaff, at it simplest, is a stick of your choice of size. You bind your fiber to the distaff, and the distaff functions as a third hand, keeping the fiber out of the way and from snarling up, while your actual hands do the spinning itself.

The thing about distaffs is that they were more or less ubiquitous in hand spinning for millennia. If you’re responsible for turning every possible scrap of fiber into something that keeps you clothed and warm, then anything making your job easier was quickly adapted. Women were so associated with spinning, and spinning so associated with the use of a distaff, that you’ll still sometimes hear people describe the maternal side of a family as the “distaff” side. With the invention of the spinning jenny and the decline of hand spinning as a practiced craft, the distaff began to slowly disappear. A lot of modern hand spinners don’t bother using a distaff at all, which is probably why it was so hard for me to find one. Not a ton of new ones are being made, and those that are tend to be on the smaller side. I have a small one, about eight inches long, that I’ve been using for awhile, but I really, really wanted to try out one of the big boys.

A hip distaff or belt distaff was a couple feet in length, which allows you to tie on more fiber (useful when you were spending a lot of your time spinning). Then you would either rest the distaff on your hip or slip it through your belt to hold it. I really, really wanted one, but had little luck locating one, because again, the demand is not really there.

And then, gloriously, after checking etsy for roughly the millionth time, I found a store based in Bulgaria that was selling antique distaffs, along with a lot of other old stuff. Honestly I suspect the stock comes from going around to farms and asking people if they’ve got any old junk in their barns to sell, because they have some fantastic farming implements, fiber arts stuff, antiques of all sorts. I will reblog this post with the name of the store after I’ve been able to clean them out of handwoven wool cloth. And textile tools. And maybe a sickle or two for the garden. Oooh, and that amazing tiny butter churn with the little tiny dasher. Anyway...

So I finally got my distaff. I’m not sure how old she is, but she was definitely in use for a long, long time, and then disused for perhaps even longer. I love her. I honestly still haven’t quite figured out how best to use her, teaching yourself to spin is an adventure like that, but this is the purchase that made me happiest in a long, long time. I had to oil up the wood before actually using her to spin and I swear the wood was happy to be taken care of again, to be prepared to be used. Probably just wistful thinking, but then again, if Japanese lore about tsukumogami is right, and objects do grow a soul through long enough use... well, it feels less impossible than maybe it should.

[pozolegirl]

I'm sure you've probably gotten this before, but do you have any webcomic recs?

Sorry it took so long to reply!!! I’ll make a list for you!

Disclaimer now though, this blog is totally SFW but some of the webcomics I read have language or slightly more nsfw elements to them. 

1. I Love Yoo

So fantastic, a good drama with a hilarious and amazing main character. I really love this one. It’s got angst and drama and romance, all really well made!

2. Boyfriend of the Dead

HILARIOUS, I love the idea for it, and I’m excited to see where it goes. I really enjoy this zombie story. (I usually can’t handle them haha) (Also, the art style is simple enough that any ‘gore’ in it, isn’t hard core and pretty safe for anyone)

3. Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell

Another comedy that is really funny. Not a ton of episodes so far, but really great.

4. Hooky 

I’m not done reading through this one yet! I was originally drawn by the cute and beautiful art, and I thought it was just going to be a cute happy go lucky comic, but DANG it’s getting more and more intense and it’s a cool mix of fairy tales and witchy folk lore. I really enjoy it.

5. True Beauty

This one is hilarious. I know it’ll get more serious as it goes on, but honestly, the use of memes and expressions are amazing. It’s about a girl who is a slave to makeup basically, and I have a feeling she’s going to become more comfortable with herself as it goes on. :)

6. The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn

Absolutely incredible, very spooky but still heart warming and interesting. The art work is phenomenal, and the stories are amazing. I highly recommend this one.

7. Cat Loaf Adventures

To be perfectly honest, I can only handle this one in small doses because I... am not a fan of pun humor. But the art is super super cute and it’s a very sweet comic that is fun.

8. Lore Olympus

Absolutely gorgeous art, a very interesting retelling of Hades and Persephone, that is semi modern based and IDK just very very artsy. I adore it with all my heart. It does deal with sensitive subjects though, beware.

9. Tales of the Unusual

Alright, I actually read so many horror comics, I love them so much. This one is probably my favorite that I’ve found besides Junji Ito’s work. The short horror stories in this comic are more psychological based, and it really comes across as Twilight Zone-y to me. I really enjoy it, and I’m not finished reading it all the way through. (The story with the old man seeing his dead wife’s memories made me straight up sob for like an hour while reading it, LOL) (Most of the stories are creepy though)

10. Siren’s Lament

I’ve been following this one for years, it’s always been beautiful and exciting. If you like mermaid stories, COME READ THIS.

11. Miss Abbott and the Doctor

THIS COMIC IS LIKE CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL, IT IS THE SWEETEST MOST LOVELIEST LITTLE ROMANCE YOU’LL EVER READ, EVERYONE IS SO CHARMING AND THE MAIN CHARACTERS MAKE ME SO HAPPY, AND THE ART STYLE IS SO CUTE, PLEASE READ THIS COMIC.

12. My Boo

Despite the less encouraging title, (it’s a pun) this comic is such a beautiful, thoughtful, and sweet story about a girl who falls in love with a ghost. It is completed, and it’s so wonderful.

13. Bastard

An absolute masterpiece, one of my all time favorite comics, and AUUUGH IT’S JUST REALLY GOOD. Super sketchy though, please be wary. This comic is about a boy who’s father is a serial killer. He has to protect the girl he has a crush on from becoming the next victim. Lots of gore, a very intense thriller, I’ve read it twice now it’s amazing. (And completed!!!)

14. Third Shift Society

I found this one awhile ago, and it’s really cute! I mean, it’s kind of horror, it’s about ghost hunters and stuff, but I love the main two characters. One of them has a jackolantern for a head. :)

15. STAGTOWN

Another fantastic horror comic. It’s only gone through one arc of story and the new one is starting (and looks even more horrifying than the last one) and I’m SO READY. It’s very creepy and very good.

16. Edith

This one is currently being edited and will be posted as a featured comic sometime soon, so it’s kind of on hiatus? But I’m really excited for it, I love it so much. It looks like an exciting romance, and I relate to the main character on an almost uncomfortable level sometimes. >_>” It does deal with more adult themes, FYI. I love the art style so much, it’s so cute.

17. Unlucky as Lucky Does

This one is hilarious. It’s a comedy and the art is done by such a talented artist, who mixes simple random styles with gorgeous detailed work, it always makes me laugh. I love the main group of characters and I hope I get to read their adventures for a long time.

18. Dazer and Eleanor

I found this beautiful (SO BEAUTIFUL AND DETAILED) comic awhile ago, it’s a sweet little slow burn romance, and since then I’ve become friends with the author! She inks everything traditionally, and it’s mesmerizing to see how detailed all of her panels are. She works really hard, and it pays off, definitely check it out!

Alright now time for some webcomics that are not on webtoons.

1. Mias and Elle

I’ve followed this artist for A VERY long time, and her art is just gorgeous. I love this little comic so much, and I hope I get to read it for a long time! Definitely has some adult themes in it, nothing too crazy yet, but eeehhhhh I feel like it might get there, haha.

2. Countdown to Countdown

WOW this art is absolutely incredible and I the story is engaging and exciting so far. I’m really excited to see where it goes. Please check it out, just LOOK AT THE ART, IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL. It inspires me so much. The artist is on tumblr too, @velinxi , you may have seen some of their beautiful fanart before.

3. Anacrine Complex

A gorgeous comic by @lightlybow, I’ve followed it for years now. (You’re amazing Sae) The panels are always so beautifully built, the art is exciting and beautiful to look at, and the story is very interesting! I love it!

So I know there are some I missed, and there are a ton of comics I didn’t add to this list, but here’s a little compilation for now! :)

[duhad]

Three Pillars of Writing: A Terrible Essay by Duhad

Since I ended up spending way too long writing this in response to a largely unrelated post about fan fiction, I’m going to post this overly long soap box rant about writing on its own in the vain hope the 3 or 4 people who follow me will read this if its not hidden under 3 feet of other peoples text.  -

I had a conversation with my friend Kit the other day, where I was trying to sort of argue/define an idea I had about stories fundamentally working on three central pillars. 1. Plot - The story of whats going on. The adventure/mystery/horror/romance/etc as an active and progressing narrative. 2. Characters - The central characters and their internal and interpersonal lives. 3. Setting - A mix of both world building and general attention to setting details, ranging from things as grand scoop as the history and cultures of fantasy and sci-fi worlds to as small and personal as the club scene in a big city or the neighborhood of a small town or the student body and facility of a school.

For comedies you can knock out one of these three to replace it with comedy without losing much, so long as the humor works.

In my original argument I more or less was saying that a story needs at least 2 of these to work in order to function, with one weak link not really unbalancing things, but two going out causing a collapse. But reading this I think I am coming to a more nuanced conclusion, that their are people for whom one or more of these are of much higher importance and who can over look flaws in the other one or two. That essentially each reader/viewer/player is, weather consciously or not looking for one or more of these things and the better or worse its handled, the more or less they like it. But since most people don’t really grasp this notion, they look for broader, more tangible things to explain WHY they enjoyed something or not. So for instance I have heard allot of people dismiss the works of Stephen King because he’s too long winded, to caught up on details and the daily lives of his characters and tends to meander, losing allot of steam in the middle of his books as the terrifying threats take a back seat to ‘pointless’ things like characters falling in love, falling out of love, dealing with substance abuse or stress or school or work or fascinations with silly hobbies. For people who are their for the plot, he’s a bore who needs an editor to cut out about 70% of any given new book. Especially when allot of his books end, not with a thrilling climax, but a chapter or two after that point, with the remaining characters moving forward with their lives. Yet his books sell like hotcakes because for people who pick up the books and fall in love with the characters and the worlds they live in. They get to just indulge in their stories for hundreds of pages before suddenly getting a thrill as these people they have spent the last ten to twenty hours with are suddenly thrust into terrible danger, with the fate of the lived in settings they inhabit, from whole world to tiny little communities, dangling in the balance! For another example “Rendezvous With Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke is a book I am sure about 90% of people here would HATE! Its slow, its uneventful, the characters are all consummate professionals who don’t have any drama with one another or really spent much time getting to know one another. The two most exciting things that happen are when someone we met one chapter ago almost gets seriously hurt while trying to fly a sort of winged bike and then does not and later when the Hermian colony fires a nuke at the Rama ship, but then it gets defused relatively easily with no lives lost. But I LOVE IT because it presents an utterly fascinating look at an empty alien spaceship that is unlike anything on Earth. Its strange and beautiful and endlessly fascinating to explore! And the people exploring it themselves are fascinating, not because their particularly deep characters, but because they represent a human culture that is at once recognizable and yet unlike our own. Its a setting first and for most book in other worlds. The Lord of the Rings is setting first, plot second and characters a pretty distant third, at least in the books. Fan fiction tends to be characters first, focusing on the lives and personalities of characters and their interactions with one another before anything else, though obviously their are lots of exceptions. Finally Sherlock Homes stories tend to be plot first, with the central mystery and how it gets solved being the center piece, with the characterization of Homes, Watson and a few of the central figures getting just enough attention to make us care about them and basically everything else being kept pretty out of focus unless necessary for the plot. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might go into the history of the Mormon Church in “A Study In Scarlet”, but mostly its just their to explain the motivations of Jefferson Hope and he only gets fleshed out to explain why he murdered Drebber and Stangerson, as soon as that’s done he basically just go’s to jail quietly and is never mentioned again. But that’s fine because its a story your reading for the plot, not the setting or the characters, so once the murder is resolved theres no need to keep and flesh out the characters and setting details unless their going to come up again. Which they will not. Hell Moriarty, Homes’s nemesis and biggest recurring enemy shows up in only two stories directly, the second of which he dies in and is only mentioned in a couple others as being basically just a guy who other criminals work for sometimes.

Now obviously these are only broad outlines of major elements that stories tend to work with in less tangible ways and their not the ONLY things readers/viewers/players respond to. Someone who loves plot focused stories might hate Sherlock Homes stories because they don’t like mysteries or prefer more modern characters. Someone who just wants a good character driven story might hate Bloom Into You because they don’t like the leads or just dislike anime as a medium. And someone who likes rich worlds might still hate Dune because its so dark and bloody and fatalistic. That’s fine. But I think knowing what key aspect/s of a way a story is told and where its focus is can tell you just as much about why you do or do not enjoy certain pieces of fiction as more tangible elements like it being a romantic comedy or a sci-fi horror.

-

And as an addendum for writers, I think knowing what you really love about stories can help you get thru allot of tricky spots. I love setting and character elements of stories, but have allot less patience for plot and so when writing I will breeze thru world building sections, people discussing culture or politics or the way things work in their sci-fi/fantasy/just plain weird setting and breezy banter dialogue. But then when it comes to moving the story forward its like, “Ahhhhhh... They uh... Do the thing and then... Uh... Hm... Time for a brake. I’ll get back to finishing this thing in a month or two.”

Before being able to crystallize by thoughts on this I would often get into trouble by setting out to write plot heavy epics, full of twists and turns and major events I knew would happen at X point in the future, but then never got anywhere in them because I found writing the quick and action heavy scenes that would get me to those big moments where just miserable and felt stilted as hell! Even now I write with my best friend and whenever she talks about these really cool ideas for things that will happen in the futures of the stories I get all excited thinking about how fun writing about how the settings and characters will change and how they will all interact with one another and how many fun scenes I can write in that new environment... And then I remember I need to actually push the story forward to that point and I suddenly get really stressed out because plotting out how that will all happen and then executing on that plot is my least favorite part of writing.

But when I wrote things for my friend’s game where it was like, “Write a history and mythology for this setting.” Or “Write two characters interacting and talking with one another in these short scenes.” Or “Come up with a type of fantasy creature or a culture or a tribe or a cult and then write about how they interact with a group of strangers.” And it was so easy and so much fun that I ended up writing so much stuff I actually got told several times to either stop or slow down because he thought I was pushing myself to hard to come up with this novels worth of setting details and short character interactions. But the truth of the matter was, I was just exhilarated to have a chance to just toss out all of these ideas I didn’t then have to tie together into a tightly constructed over arching plot!

Later I was writing a story for a comic with my best friend and though we had all of these cool ideas, it was not really coming together right. Everything was so detailed, so focused on notes about the setting and expository dialogue and aiming toward setting up for future events that it just didn’t feel right at all. So I took a brake and wrote a RPG based on the setting and spent about 100 pages just carefully building the setting and history for the universe it was set in. Then, months later, I came back to the comic and, now focusing just on the scene at hand and keeping in mind the setting I had built, I rewrote the opening chapter in a way which was SO MUCH BETTER then the first draft! Because I was no longer writing for the plot, but for the characters and the world and THAT was my jam!

Finally fairly recently, while dealing with a bout of writers block, I just for fun wrote something for my aforementioned best friend which was literally just a character looking around their weird room, commenting on some of the dumb stuff she saw and then having a conversation with her best friend. That ended up leading to a 23+ page story I am still writing with her that I find is so fun and relaxing to write I just pick it up and work on it when I am feeling stressed or down and it gets me feeling allot better! And though she is working on some long term plotting stuff for it, the thing I love about it is that, when I am writing it, its basically purely just setting details and characters.

And that’s what I want you writers out their to take away from my TED Talk today! If you find yourself getting caught up over and over again when writing, look at where you keep getting stuck and ask yourself, “Is their a pattern here? Am I getting stuck at random or is it when I try to focus too much on the world or on whats coming next in the story or when I need to write dialogue or back story that I am just grinding to a halt and not knowing what to write next?”  Because I think you might well find that their is a pattern and once you know where your just breezing along and where your getting stuck, you can work to either spice up the parts you have trouble with with the things you enjoy or rework your story to focus on your strengths and down play your weakness. It might seem odd at first, but if Michael Crichton can shove long expository monologs about science into a book about a dino theme park going to hell or a Congo safari filled with intelligent apes murdering people and if Andrew Hussie can hold up his story about cosmically apocalyptic happenings to have a couple of dumb kids talk to one another about nonsense for a few thousand words, you can indulge yourself a little. Its alright, it doesn’t make you a bad creator, just one who will appeal more strongly to a particular audience.

-

Now that I have spent hours writing some dumb nonsense no one will ever read I will go to be- Oh wait its already morning, to get breakfast then work I guess.

As for the rest of you, go enjoy yourselves indulging in or creating whatever flavor of narrative you best enjoy!

@roxthefoxinsox @balile

[cosmosogler]

hi guys! i got home after 9. so i am six minutes late starting this post. 10:06 i mean.

anyway god dang it! i forgot my dream again. i think i was thinking about math and statistics though. numbers are super hard in dreams though because all the information changes and melts between instants.

i got up at a reasonable time- 7:40. still got out of the shower super late though. i’m not even sure what takes so long! maybe it’s because i brush my teeth and blow dry my hair and everything in that span of time so it’s not just “hopped in the shower at 7:50 and oH GOD IT’S 8:15.”

i tried to have a bigger breakfast than usual- i had a bagel and some bacon i put in the microwave. and a big glass of orange juice. i watched snoopy roll around in a patch of sunlight while i ate. 

then i biked to campus a little late. i was super thankful that the light on the busy road happened to turn green right as i approached. if you miss it it’s a 2-minute wait for the next cycle.

i used my lecture notes today when i started the lab period!!! people started working on their labs while i was talking though and i got a little discouraged. i’ll need to ask for feedback over email i think. maybe it’s still good to lecture so that the people who already know what’s going on can get started while the people who are still a little confused have some basis to start from.

some questions really get me turned around though. i feel kinda stupid when i have to check my notes on the lab to answer a question like “but are the forces REALLY always equal and opposite?” because i think i know an exception but really no i don’t. and then i have to explain why there are no exceptions and i try to draw on some experiences as an undergrad ta but i only remember half-sentences and bits of anecdotes and i have to try to string them together into a coherent explanation that is catered toward intro physics courses.

i’m always exhausted afterward. i really give it everything even though i’m not the best ta.

i got scolded by my supervisor for getting suzanne to help me fix one of the computers when i couldn’t find him. what had happened was, i saw him talking to suzanne out the door earlier since the lab is across from the office. when i needed to find him i checked his office first, didn’t find him, and asked suzanne if she knew where he went. when she said the other side of the building she also offered to take a look because she’d been having a couple computer problems too on monday. 

but a few problems i did fix myself fairly quickly. i don’t mind troubleshooting, but sometimes i have to stand there and process information and i get quiet and kind of stare into space and don’t move and then i feel dumb because i’m not actually thinking using any words. 

maybe those are less “processing” thoughts and more “racing circular” thoughts.

ehhh afterward i went to my lab office hour. one of my students with the computer issues was in there trying to finish. he didn’t though. 

during my office session i received an email from the grad advisor. he said every single first year grad student needed to be at a meeting right now. it was the end of my session anyway so i packed up and went over to the office to see if anyone else had caught the email. 

they were actually all discussing it with an older graduate student. jennica was scrolling through every email she’s received on the student account to try and find any previous information about the meeting. there was none. 

we talked about it for a few minutes before the older grad student went up to talk to him. jennica and harrison and i went to get some lunch and i picked a smoothie up for rebika.

actually that was funny. i asked her what kind she wanted and she said “i don’t know” so i said there were like a hundred and i would have to pick one at random so she better be okay with kale. she said whatever so jennica found an online random number generator.

anyway while we were out we got another email from the grad coordinator. this one was really passive aggressive and sent to the whole department about how no one showed up and the lady making the presentation had “come all the way across campus.”

i said “???” because this was well after the situation had been explained to him. i’m not sure why he was so mean about it when it was his mistake. we had literally never heard about this before and he told us to be there one minute before it started.

eventually suzanne found a reminder for it on her phone. we had to hack it to find out when she had actually set that reminder to give us an idea of where we might have heard about it. 

it was during our “graduate welcome” presentation back in the middle of august. it wasn’t written down anywhere. it had just been mentioned in passing and suzanne made a note of it in her phone because it sounded interesting. not because we knew it was required.

my classmates complained that we’d never gotten any reminders for it but i was more annoyed that we hadn’t received any written notification of the event in the first place.

after that we studied a lot. i talked about some problems, fudged some math on the blackboard, and scribbled some stuff down on the homework problems i’d printed.

harrison has started telling me to “stop talking” whenever i say something depressing. jennica picked up on it pretty fast too. 

during coffee/cookie time at 3:30 ish i was chatting with one of the upper classmen aboutttt star trek i think it was. i’ve never watched it but i know... enough to talk about it i guess. i ended up having a fun discussion with taylor about the boundary between sci fi and fantasy when he said star wars was the superior sci fi story.

i said it was based on how heavily it leaned thematically on hard science and logic to inform its worldbuilding. taylor said it depended on the setting.

anyway i was talking to the guy and i was maybe talking about how i’d burned myself on my tea and also spilled some on my shirt because i’d burned my face and flinched violently. i said “thank you for listening to my problems” and jennica was all “don’t get her started, oh god, unless you want to be depressed.” 

i laughed and said “hey did i ever tell you about the time i broke my ribs?” and that got, i guess, a surprised laugh out of him. jennica gave me a Look. “just kidding, my ribs were too soft to break then,” i said apologetically-but-not-really.

i really relate to that short homestuck comic about dave talking about how his bro would leave him in the ball pit when they went to the store. except the ball pit was a slab of concrete in a dark room.

ok! i said my last prayers for the physics midterm and then at about 5:30 jennica and i played five rounds of love letters, adventure time edition. we were going to 3 wins and it stayed pretty close. i admitted that it’s a lot more active with three players and four gets to be a little too much. she seemed to like it well enough at least.

then at 6:05-ish i dumped all my trail mix in my mouth and turbo biked over to the drc to take my Accommodated Test in their Testing Facility. i almost got hit by a car while i was in the crosswalk. i was crossing at the same time as another bike, but as soon as he was past and i was approaching the end of the road, a driver slammed on the gas and i had to actually for real hard brake. i stared at her as she passed, she made eye contact with me. i don’t know why she did that if she saw me.

guess i’ll just go screw myself.

anyway i got there about fifteen minutes before the test was gonna start. there was trouble with the check-in devices so i was glad i got there early. i had time to get settled and put my stuff away and brush my hair a little bit to get the helmet tangles out.

then i took the test for two and a half hours! i was allotted three, and my classmates had two, so i think i made good use of the extra time and didn’t panic too hard.

i’d felt super sleepy and lethargic all day. the test wasn’t much better. but... i recognized all the problems at least. and i knew how to start all of them. and i had enough time to finish to my satisfaction.

i’m not gonna say i did well on the test. but i did way better than if i hadn’t studied. which is kind of a given, but. i think i tried more study strategies this time and asked for more help and maybe that made a difference. can’t say. i had no particular feeling about it when i looked over my work. i noted where i knew what i was doing and where i’d forgotten something, and where i’d probably made a mistake but had no idea what to do instead, and i really have no idea how i did.

i think biking home right after that though did a lot toward helping me not die of lack of energy. i had to bike up the big hill because of where i was leaving campus. that was ok though, i got up in no time at all! in third gear, even!!!

then i got home, and took out the trash, and devoured an ice cream sandwich, and then made some dinner. and then i sat down at my desk for 20 minutes, did a little e&m homework, sent some emails, and started writing, and then here i am. 

five minutes left. i will try to talk about something good about me. 

i uh... i was gonna talk about something ta-related but i can’t think of anything right now that i actually like about my method haha.

i’ve made a lot of progress this last week toward finding a study strategy that works for me. i know i have to use more than one of the study style fields to really learn material. two is good, three is better, four is overwhelming. i know that i am learning material on the backburner even if i don’t consciously feel like i understand anything because i look at some problems and i’m like “oh! i know what that is!” 

still having trouble remembering relationships between equations. but i think that will get better the more time i spend looking stuff up over and over. like i really Get the yukawa potential and how that one equation basically provides a link between classical mechanics and e&m, and that’s so cool.

tomorrow i’ve got group therapy and it’s SPAGHETTI DAY. AGAIN!!!!!! but i also gotta start studying for that e&m test on friday. i need to figure out how to do that. maybe i will find and talk to adamya since he was helping suzanne the other day. 

ok. it is 10:45. i will stop writing now and meditate for a few minutes and then go to bed. i need to get up a few minutes early to pick up a package. i think it is either the rest of my stuff i’ve been trying to get my parents to send for the last month, or it’s the cat food that i’m glad i ordered when i did and not a day later.

later guys, i hope you are well. drink more water.

[jam2289]

Explorations in Business - Part 3 of ?

This is my third time trying to write this article in the last two weeks.

Here was my last attempt.

- - - - - - -

I always wanted to have an interesting life, and I do.

I have done the classics like mountain climbing, skydiving, alligator wrestling, whitewater rafting, running with bulls, scuba diving, ice luging, road tripping, etc. I officiated my second wedding this weekend, I just arranged to borrow the staffs, swords, and dueling pistols for one of my four speeches at the Harry Potter festival in Sparta, Michigan this summer, I'm writing notes for the comic book I'm working on, and the philosophy papers I'm working on, and the fictional tales I'm working on, and I'm editing horror stories for the "Horror Without Borders" anthology for the Russian publisher I'm working with. All of that just starts to hit on the interesting things I've done, but I have a bit of a problem.

Since I've focused so much on doing interesting things that almost all of the values I've fulfilled in life have been experiential values, and that's become a strong habit now. What my life is mostly missing is the productive side of the equation, the creative values. Obviously I've started to change that, that's what the writing is about and that's what starting the business is about. But, the transition is not smooth. Rewiring the brain is not easy or fast. In a general sense you could say I have developed the skill of consuming life, but not the skill of producing life.

remuneration, just and unjust society, catallactics and cratics

Two weeks ago I put the MeditateWithJeff.com website up. I posted it to a number of groups about pain and meditation. Only the pain groups make sense. I had a few people go to the site. I didn't accurately track it because I just used the cheapest version of Weebly. But, 11 people watched the video I had on the site. It was a Youtube link, so some might have come from there, but I set it up so that you would probably only get to the video through the website. But, only three people filled in any part of the survey section that I had set up. Out of that only one person filled in the contact information.

- - - - - - -

Normally when I start writing an article I just grind on it until it's done, I go through it once for editing, and I hit publish. I had to stop on this article because I had a chiropractic appointment, and when I got back the words just weren't coming out anymore.

To finish the idea that I started in that aborted article, I sent an email to Wendy saying that I would like to talk about what she thought of what I was doing with meditatewithjeff.com and how I could make it the most helpful for her. Let me look up the actual email because maybe my communication is just bad, but she never responded. Here's the email.

- - - - - - -

Hi, I appreciate you filling out the info on my site. If it's possible I would like to get on a video conference with you this week. The survey questions are great, but more can be learned when you're really talking to someone. Is there a time on Wednesday that would work?

Jeff Martin

- - - - - - -

Apparently I need to get better at writing those. One of the other people that responded to the survey questions said that they really wanted me to reach out to them so that we could talk, but they didn't give me any contact information.

I had planned to have at least one conversation before doing anything else. When that one conversation never happened I just didn't do anything else. It's kind of pathetic, a complete lack of initiative. It saddens me to observe this in myself. So, we will dive deep and fast into what's wrong with my psychology and how I might fix it, then I will jump into a bunch of business decisions that I need to work out.

Here's the problem, when I had my misadventure in Africa a few years ago it was a bit traumatic. It was definitely dramatic. I've been traumatized before and it took me years to learn how to fix that, but I did. Now that I have that knowledge it's not too hard to use it again. Trauma isn't really an issue for me anymore. The issue came after the event itself.

Over the next couple of years my ability to do anything was hammered into the ground. I lost my physical abilities to the point of not being able to walk across the street to get the mail without having to take multiple breaks to lean on cars and catch my breath. I lost my short term ability to the point where I could only repeat back three numbers at a time, the average is about 7 or 8, and with the collapes of my short term memory down went my IQ too. Losing long term memories was the scariest part. It's trippy to realize that you've forgotten things you used to know, because you're not sure what else you've forgotten and you have no way of founding out. It feels like your life is being erased. Without these abilities you can't really do anything in life. One failure can be recovered from, two failures can be ignored, three failures can be overcome, you can convince yourself to keep trying after four failures. Eventually though, eventually it wears you down.

Those couple of years wore me down. I'm not sure how many years they took off my lifespan, it was not insignificant. But the detrimental thing that happened is that it erased my idea of my future self. It was hard realizing that I was no longer how I defined myself. I used to think of myself as an intelligent adventurer. I could no longer call myself either of those things. That's bad. It's worse to realize that you don't really have any reason to make plans for the future. If you can't do anything and you're losing your memory then your future is short, there's just no reason to construct an idea of a future self.

When I think of myself in the future I think of nothing. I don't see myself in the future. I see the future as being without me. That's no longer the case at this point. My health is doing pretty well. I joined the high IQ society Mensa after having brain damage. I should have ideas about my future because I have a future, there's just been a lag in my mind building that future self again.

I noticed this problem sometime in the last two years, this not being able to think of myself in the future outside of the next couple of months. And that's a problem, because it's a problem that I haven't been able to address. I've been working on it. I've been writing out goals, ideas, and plans. I have a ton of plans for writing projects. I've developed a value chart based on an expansion I made to the work done by psychologist Viktor Frankl. I've used a technique adapted from psychologist Carl Jung to incorporate dissociated parts of my personality that have shown up in various dreams and such. These things have helped. They've changed my personality to some extent, but not enough.

Which brings me to what I need to do. This is what I think has the best chance of causing a significant personality change in a positive direction, but it's uncomfortable just thinking about it. That's often a good sign that you're on the right path. The psychologist Jordan Peterson talks about how the Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did it when he was in the gulags. You need to figure out every major mistake you've made in your life. You need to look at every major thing that has gone wrong, why and how it went wrong, what you could have done differently, and what you should have done.

The reason that we have memories is so that we can do better at living in the future. I do not see myself as doing better at living in the future. I want to. I think that it's logical that I could, but it feels inauthentic. So it's reasonable to think that I have ineffectively adjusted to my surroundings because I made the wrong choices about how to perceive and act in the world. If I could process those decisions and make better ones then it's reasonable to think that I would change my ability to live.

It only makes sense to do this in writing because writing is thought that you can refine. So, that is an uncomfortable process that I will soon start on my blog at JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com, JeffThinks.com, and/or Jeff.Irish. I am logically looking forward to it, emotionally I am not.

Now, back to the business. The FounderCo meeting in Holland went well today. It was focused on marketing. I am a step behind that, still trying to find the product-market fit. Or, more traditionally labeled as market research and product development. Or, more honestly labeled as trying to figure out what the heck I'm selling and who I'm selling it to.

My idea in one sentence is something like this: I help people with chronic pain use meditation to change their perception of that pain so that they can live and function better. Every time I say it, it comes out a little differently.

The mentor I sat down with today was also a Jeff. There are a lot of us. Jeff was throwing ideas at me off the cuff after I started him down the path of my idea and explained where I was in the process. Here's his basic perspective. What I need to do is get clear about my customer persona. Then I need to find out what makes my solution different and position my company in that way. I could kill my business right at the start with pricing so I should talk to a number of potential customers to try to feel that out. I should know more about my competitors. I need to work on getting strategic referral partners. I should develop some cheap lead products that will help people to trust me so that they will buy more expensive programs. I also need to find some credibility.

That's all pretty good stuff. Things I have to think about. Hard problems.

My discussion group was interesting. It's a valuable part of the meeting. Liz asked me what my gimmick was after I told her the basic idea of MeditateWithJeff.com. I was a bit confused by that and said that the closest thing to a gimmick that I have is my personal story. It took several minutes to tell, but it seemed to connect with people. In person I connect well, especially when telling stories. It's all of that practice in Toastmasters meetings. I think the story can be my credibility and eliminate the need for any kind of gimmick. I hope so because otherwise I don't have credibility and I don't like gimmicks.

For the last part of the meeting I talked with Hailey about literature. It was great. I have a lot of good conversations with a lot of interesting people, but that was the most engaging one for me in the last few weeks. It's funny because I came away from that discussion feeling enlivened, and knowing a few things of note about Hailey. But, she now knows quite a lot about me for such a short discussion. She has the skill of listening in spades. I didn't fully realize that until I was walking away. A great skill to have.

So, business decisions. Let's see what I can work out here. Here's another version of my one sentence that I wrote down: I help people in chronic pain learn to perceive that pain in a new and more manageable way.

That sounds pretty good. One issue is that this isn't completely true. It's a statement that might be true in the future if things go well. Eric Weinstein is the capital investment manager for billionaire Peter Thiel. He talks about what success takes. It's about crossing an adaptive valley. Imagine you're on a hill in one spot. You can't go any higher. But, you can see a mountain. Now, to get to that mountain you not only have to climb, you also have to go down this hill and across the valley. When you start you're not even sure you can do it. You say you can do it, and then we find out if you really can when you try. That's what that statement is, it's on the other side of the adaptive valley.

One thing I think I am making progress on is describing what the problem with chronic pain is and how that might change. It's been getting better verbally as I've talked with people about it. The basic idea is that the pain takes up all of your awareness. You can't focus on anything else, you can't think of anything else. It's like one of the warning lights coming on in your car. Maybe you need an oil change. But, instead of just having a light come on, there's a siren with flashing lights right in the middle of your car. You cover your ears, but now you've let go of the steering wheel. You have to grab on again. The lights are flashing in your eyes and you can't think with all of the sound. That's what intense chronic pain is like, it takes over your entire awareness.

We're not trying to turn off the warning light. Actually, we want the warning light on. Today at the business meeting Liz asked me if I have made myself impervious to other types of pain. I have not. And, I don't want to. I still want to be aware of the pain in my neck and head. The pain is there for a reason. It's important to be able to feel it to be aware of things getting better or worse. If I do something that throws my spine too far out of place I will start to get cognitive issues in just a few days in a small way. If I went a few weeks without a chiropractic adjustment in that situation I would start to have fairly severe memory issues again. I need to know if there's an issue, I need to be aware of the warning signal.

All I want to do is turn off the flashing lights and siren. I don't need those. I know there's an important problem and I'm doing my best to fix the situation. But I can't fully fix it. I will remain aware of it and monitor it, but I need to be able to function in life. I need to be able to do things. So I need to turn off those lights and siren, and that's what I do with my meditation technique.

A business consultant at the meeting asked me how often I meditate. I think my answer surprised him. I'm inconsistent. I meditate here and there. I've found that to manage the pain I probably need to meditate every few weeks. I think the longest I've gone without meditating was two months and still managed it fairly well. A lot of people meditate to stay calm and focused. I think that for that thing then daily practice is probably important, but it's completely different for chronic pain management. The need fluctuates based on what's happening in your life.

I think a key part of my customer persona is that they are committed. I think that this will often go with desperation in the case of chronic pain. That's unfortunate, but it's the reality. I've been there. And that's the point, to help them. I think this contradicts the idea of having cheap products and services. Then people can just "try it out." Well, that's not going to work. If you just play with this what's going to happen is that it's going to be uncomfortable and then you're going to quit. I'm fairly tough. I broke my collarbone in football practice when I was 13. I didn't even take a break. I kept practicing. I didn't go to the doctor. I didn't miss a practice. I didn't miss a game. I had issues holding my arm up. I couldn't get in my stance on that hand and had to rest it across my thigh. It was harder to hold onto the ball. It hurt like hell. I was stupid. But I played the whole second half of the season with that collarbone healing on its own. So, I think I can say that I'm fairly tough, but I almost quit using this meditation technique for the pain issues in my spine. It's not easy.

I think that's why I might go against almost everyone's advice and not do a cheap product. The people that I'll have have tried other things and they didn't work, they've been waiting for the pain to go away and it hasn't, they're desperate and committed, and willing to take a plunge and see what happens. Maybe I could have a video that essentially lays out how to do everything. Maybe I sell this for... I have no idea. Let's say 200 dollars? Then, if you want to really dive in you can join the group. The first month is 500 dollars and includes three private sessions. The normal monthly fee after that is 100 dollars a month and we do a weekly live call. I'm not sure that makes sense.

I think I need to engage local pain groups, but I kind of want to go to them with something. I need to reach out to people with lists, but I want to have something before I do that too. Maybe I could reach out to these people before I have anything and say what I'm trying to do. That might work. Maybe I could just write my story and reach out with that.

I will probably incorporate some mention of pain in a speech I give this month. Not a specific focus on this, but hitting on it somewhat. That will continue my development of articulating this subject.

I think that maybe I should just be trying to arrange calls with potential customers rather than any type of survey.

I should develop a FAQ section. I think that might help me to figure out what people will be confused or unsure about and address it. I got that idea from the meeting two weeks ago. There were a lot of people that do marketing and advertising for a living at that meeting. It was interesting to hear their ideas about how I should structure my products. There's a bit of consensus that I should sell something cheap, but I see problems on that path. Matt mentioned that he got some business advice before which was to do the opposite of what people say. I pointed out that the problem with that is that the advice isn't really consistent, so what should I do the opposite of if the opposite of one suggestion is just another suggestion from someone else. How do you decide who to be contradictory to? I joked that maybe I should do nothing because no one had proposed that so it would be the opposite of everyone. Unfortunately, that is closest to what I've done over the past two weeks.

Here's a similar problem. This is my list of favorite business books.

- - - - - - -

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way by Jim Lundy

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Sell or Be Sold by Grant Cardone

The Knack of Selling Yourself by James Mangan

Good Profit by Charles Koch

Magnetic Sponsoring by Mike Dillard

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure by John Allison

The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard

How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger

Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz

Principles by Ray Dalio

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban

My Life and the Principles for Success by Ross Perot

Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

How Power Selling Brought Me Success in Six Hours by Pierce Brooks

Straight Line Persuasion by Jordan Belfort

The Millionaire Fastlane by M J DeMarco

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Not Fade Away by Peter Barton

Dare to Succeed by Mark Burnett

Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

- - - - - - -

The problem is that there is a lot of contradictory advice in there. I remember Grant Cardone talking about how you could have success following his advice or the advice of Dave Ramsey, but not both.

I think that I might be thinking too low on the price. I feel weird with high price things because I've had little interaction with high price things, but it's useful because my margins would be high enough to be able to afford advertising, and then my fate would be in my own hands.

Let's try to think in some unusual ways. I often do that on accident anyway.

The three major objections that you usually have to address for most products are: not enough time, not enough money, won't work for me.

Can I answer any of these in odd ways?

"I don't have enough time."

"You're right. If it's not a priority in your life then you don't have the type of issue that I address."

"I don't have enough money."

(I feel for these people, I really do, because I have been in this situation my entire life.)

"You're right. If you can't find the money for this then it hasn't become a high enough priority for you."

(I don't feel good about that one. What if I had some sort of scholarship program? Maybe.)

"This won't work for me."

"You're right. The number one predictor of success is the number of times you're willing to try. It won't work for someone that won't try, and try again."

That's an interesting line of thought. I was having trouble thinking about who my customer persona should be, and when I was looking through "Positioning" they mentioned that you could figure out who shouldn't use your product. I immediately thought of people that are "just interested." The people that are just dabbling won't find success with my technique. Having a lot of those customers just means that I would have a high failure rate. So, what about just eliminating them?

I'm still having trouble figuring out what my product offer should really be. I started with the idea of a few personal sessions and then daily group calls. Now I'm thinking weekly calls that will be recorded and available because how many people are going to show up if I have these calls daily? I don't know, but I think it might be low. Maybe I should have a cheaper video on the front end.

What if I just did personal consultations at high prices and then worried about scaling and such later? I don't know.

I do think that I have a decent schedule worked out for a group call.

- - - - - - -

Welcome

Short version of my story

Why we do this, what works, what doesn't

How we do this

Awareness games

Meditation

Good session example

Non-satisfactory session example

Good session example

Questions

- - - - - - -

And I've found this marketing format that I like.

- - - - - - -

Who it's for

Problem

Why their current method won't solve their problem

How I discovered what works

How to get it

- - - - - - -

Some version of a combination of those things might work well for a webinar.

It's late. I'm tired. I have to teach in a few hours. I will have to think on this more tomorrow.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[papaculture]

Superheroes

I loved Wonder Woman. Sitting through Man of Steel and Batman V Superman was kind of like being made to endure a dark episode of Scooby Doo, where Shaggy’s implied drugs habit gets out of control and he reverses over Scooby in the Mystery Van. Or to put it another way, it was like going back to your favourite childhood comics and colouring them in with a black crayon.

I loved comics as a kid. I wish I still had my collection. Superman and Batman were early favourites, before I grew into the more complex dynamic of X-Men and ultimately moved on to 2000AD (I recently reread Nemesis the Warlock from the latter and heartily recommend it to anyone who likes Monty Python, Michael Moorcock, Douglas Adams and anti-hero demons with heads the same shape as their spacecraft).

I get the adolescent imperative to transform childhood pleasures into adult pursuits, which seems to inform much of the current vogue for superhero blockbusters. But there’s no question that the DC films (pretty much post-Batman Returns) have been missing the sense of wonder and imagination that made those three-colour strips so appealing to me as a kid. The basic premise that you could have a secret life — that you could be ordinary, even unpopular, but don a disguise and go off to have fantastical adventures of world-shaking importance was a source of great comfort to this kid.

Wonder

As you’d hope, Wonder Woman goes some way to restoring that sense of wonder. She is a hero whose greatest weapon (apart from her shield and lasso) is compassion. She understands that being a hero isn’t a chore, an affliction or a way to get revenge on the world, but a duty you perform because you care about your world, your society or humanity at large.

As a father of two young girls, I wish I could take them to see the new film. They’ve certainly enjoyed the Pop! figurines I brought back from the premiere. But, for all its heart, the film retains the grubby sheen of recent DC films and a focus on extended punch-ups that mean the intended market remains pubescents and above. There are also scenes of mass murder and warfare that might be confronting for younger children. Our four-year-old still hasn’t had to face up to the idea that humans kill other humans. (She’s very interested in death, particularly the deaths of rock stars such as Bowie, Eddie Cochran and half the Beatles, but I’ve so far had to put down Lennon’s death to an “accident”.) In our household, monsters either eat you or “zap” you.

So where does a superhero-loving dad go if he wants to share these stories with his offspring? There’s the recent The Lego Batman Movie, but I found that a bit too frenetic. I wanted simplicity. I thought back to my own childhood and the Christopher Reeve Superman films of the 70s and 80s. There’s an appealing innocence and brightness to them, but Christ they’re long. I’ll admit I struggled to get through the first and am yet to plough on.

Batman ‘66

For me, the Batman TV series (1966-68) was far more influential. Movies were a special treat, but television was daily fare. You could spend twenty-five minutes a day with Batman and Robin. Of course, I didn’t realise these stories weren’t straight-faced drama. Their outrageous antics felt very real to me. Returning to them now, it’s the humour that appeals.

I’m not sure what kids raised on the Nolan films will make of it, but to this adult the show’s self-aware comedy is a refreshing reminder of how much fun superheroes used to be. Batman 1966 knows exactly how silly it is and there lies its appeal. To a child, it looks like drama, because kids’ rules are different to those of us oldies. The nonsensical stories, the high stakes cliffhangers and balletic fight scenes are perfect springboards for children to dress up in a sheet and improvise their own escapades. For me, only the Burton Batmans have come close to embracing this show’s great sense of imagination and wonder.

We first watched Batman with Child One in an attempt to find some more proactive female role-models. I’d remembered Batgirl being in the show for the entire run, but she actually doesn’t appear until the third and final series. While there are undoubtedly outdated attitudes displayed by the characters around her (and the omnipresent narrator), Batgirl herself is pretty great. By day, she’s a brainy librarian (she’s shown to be at least as clever as Batman, if not more so) who seems to turn to crime-fighting for larks. She plays a pretty active role, usually investigating in parallel to Batman and Robin, and often riding to the rescue on her rather girly motorbike.

Unlike the dynamic duo, she doesn’t actually punch anyone, but isn’t above a few balletic kicks or thumping a henchman with a handy prop. The violence here is largely playful. Nobody ever gets hurt and the infamous pop-up slugs (KAPOW! etc) give the sense of the fight scenes being a game, rather than acts of anger. That said, we did have some discussion about why it was never okay to thump anyone.

Child One loves this show, although the occasional moments of peril for Batgirl have proved a little unsettling (she’s growing to enjoy feeling safely scared). A great place to start is with a 7 minute film included on the DVD and Blu-Ray set that works as an introduction to Batgirl. It was never broadcast, but is basically a pilot for a show based around her. Series Three follows on from there.

Batman: The TV Series is available on Blu-Ray, DVD, Netflix and is soon to be broadcast on SBS.

Age and stage: 3+

Gender stuff: The female characters are few and far between, but pretty appealing when they arrive. Three Catwomen, less glamorous women villains and, of course, Batgirl offer a few different roleplay options.

Drama: largely comic, with moments of tension outrageously signposted (and usually quickly resolved).

Outdated bits: The sexual politics is seriously off, whether it’s the narrator talking about “all manner of girls in Gotham City” being nurses, secretaries or librarians… or Barbara Gordon (AKA Batgirl) flirting uncomfortably with her own father.

Themes: adventure, heroism, responsibility, bravery and the importance of good grammar.

Danger Mouse and Bananaman

For younger children, there are two other superhero series we’ve enjoyed. The first is Danger Mouse. David Jason (also the voice of Toad of Toad Hall) voices the rodent superspy, who zaps around in a flying car with cowardly sidekick Penfold, foiling the plans of villainous Baron Greenback. The show has recently been remade with a new cast, at a more frenetic pace, but I was surprised how fast the early shows were. As with Batman, there are plenty of jokes (good, flat and deliberately awful) to entertain parents. In fact, it’s hard to think of a contemporaneous kiddie cartoon where the focus is so much on comedy. Compared to the staid Hanna-Barbera shows, Danger Mouse feels positively anarchic. Unlike Scooby Doo, which would generally end on an embarrassingly lame one-liner resulting in baffling laughter from its characters, this is a show genuinely packed with jokes. Every kind of joke. Danger Mouse owes as much to the knockabout humour of the Carry On films as it does to the surreal intelligence of Monty Python, with a good dose of Looney Tunes and The Goodies thrown in. There’s slapstick, wordplay, satire, pastiche, surrealism, wit and Edward Lear–esque nonsense.

Even more beloved for Child One is Bananaman. I had only vague memories of this show and watched it primarily out of loyalty to The Goodies (who voice all the characters). But it’s fantastically silly, has a suburban cosiness and is likely to encourage kids to eat more fruit. The villains are never particularly threatening, while the real hero is Bananaman’s less credulous raven sidekick. The joke ratio isn’t quite as high as with Danger Mouse, but it can work as a double gateway — opening the door not only to the world of superheroes, but that of The Goodies (which we are yet to share with the kids).

Danger Mouse and Bananaman are available on DVD. Bananaman is also available (officially) on YouTube.

Age and stage: 2+

Gender stuff: Non-existent. There is not a single recurring female character in Danger Mouse, while female roles in Bananaman are minimal (to put it politely). The recent DM reboot has gone some very slight way to addressing this.

Drama: slapstick, fantastical adventure. Some cliffhangers, but no real sense of peril.

Outdated bits: A distinct lack of diversity, with some racial stereotyping.

Themes: humour, adventure, decency, honour and the importance of fresh fruit.

[thewednesdayclubrecs]

Episode 1: “Origins”

The Giant Sized Wednesday Club! This first episode ran extra long, and included a lot of comics mentioned.

These are the titles mentioned by Taleisin, Amy, or Matt over the course of the first episode of the Wednesday Club. If people are interested in another post with further reading on the topics, creators, and characters mentioned this episode, I can create that as well, if there is demand for it.

Physical comics: You may have a comic book store near you! Comic Shop Locator Hater Free Wednesdays Your local library may have a selection of physical comics as well. Ask your local librarian (many of us are nerds in disguise!)

Digital comics: Comixology and Comixology Unlimited Each publisher may have comics online for sale, including Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and more. Again, your local library! Many are part of services such as Hoopla, where you can borrow and read digital comics.

On to the comics!

Matt's origins: Giant Size X-Men #1, 1975: Wikia; Comixology

Amy's origins: Asterix   Archie Comics X-Men Volume 2 (1990s): Note, I believe Amy says 36 and 37 here, but I believe the comics she’s talking about are #46 and #47, with the X-Babies on the run from Mojo’s hunters. Generation X #5 Wikia; Comixology Webcomics: Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant, Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics (he’s now writing Squirrel Girl, for one), (Note: There's a third whose name I didnt quite get here, David something? If someone caught that, let me know)

Taliesin's origins: (someone please, please illustrate Taliesin's weird mental images of the X-Men wow) V for Vendetta Wasteland (DC pre-Vertigo): Wikipedia; Comixology Vampirella Wikipedia; Comixology The Alice Cooper The Last Temptation, written by Neil Gaiman: based off this album; Comixology Sandman: Wikipedia; Comixology Jack Kirby’s Avengers

Fables: Wikipedia; Comixology

Rumiko Takahashi - Maison Ikkoku - Inuyasha   - Ranma 1/2 - Urusei Yatsura - Rumic World horror shorts (hungry ghost) Tragically, outside of the big three (Maison Ikkoku, Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2), these are harder to find digitally (legally) than they should be by all rights. Your library may have them from the manga boom back in the day though.

Strangers in Paradise: Wikipedia; Comixology

America Chavez’s solo title

Cheung’s Young Avengers run: Comixology The Gillen/McKelvie Team Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie have done a ton of comics together, including Young Avengers and others mentioned below.

She-hulk: Alternate-dimensional tourism from Dimension A (the A-Holes): Wikia; Comixology

Patsy Walker: Hellcat: Wikia; Comixology

The Boys: Wikipedia; Comixology (BTW some SERIOUS content/trigger warnings here. For real. I’m including this because they did.)

What comics changed you? Taleisin: The Invisibles: Wikipedia; Comixology Jack Kirby’s New Gods; Jimmy Olsen Adventures Sandman’s Death: High cost of Living: Wikipedia; Comixology Promethea Whatever Happened to the man of Tomorrow?: Wikipedia; Comixology (V for Vendetta again)

Amy: Fun Home: Wikipedia; Comixology (also a musical)

Chat: Legion from X-Men (and mental health stuff--more on this next week) Marvel Zombies: Wikipedia; Comixology (.....if this changed your life...)

Alias - Marvel Max (origin of Jessica Jones): Wikipedia; Comixology

Generation X (mentioned above): Comixology - According to Amy: "pretty good for, like, 20 issues, and then... a book I still dearly love for 50 more issues" - "like the New Mutants of the 90s"

Claremont's X-Men run: Wikipedia - As per the three of them: this run’s not timeless, they’re not exactly “recommending” it yet. They're going to curate some issues for us later on, bless them. Stayed tuned for those links.

LGBT+ in comics - North Star reveal of the 90s: Aplha Flight #106: Wikia; Comixology (We’ll talk more about this when we get to the specific episode)

Rocket Raccoon's origin on the Mignola run: I believe this is the run they’re talking about.

Show and Share: Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #68 "The Helmet of Hate": Comics Vine (Wasn’t able to find a digital issue of this...)

Anti-drug issue of Spider-man: The Amazing Spider-Man #96 (Comics Vine). Printed without the CCA stamp on the front.

Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth: Wikipedia; Comixology

Warlock #11 "The Strange Death of Adam Warlock": Comic Vine; Comixology

Generation-X (signed by Lobdell) #2 with Penance on the cover: Wikia; Comixology

The New Mutants #1: Wikia; Comixology - "the Generation X of the 80s" - characters were introduced in a standalone story/graphic novel: Wikia; Comixology

Uncanny X-Men #201 "Who Will Lead them?": Wikia; Comixology - battle for leadership between Storm and Cyclops

X-Men Jim Lee alternate covers #1 "A Legend Reborn": Wikia; Comixology; All four variant covers in one image

X-Men Vol. 2 #4 First appearance of omega red: Wikia; (Having trouble finding this on Comixology...)

Excalibur #71 with Dark Phoenix, Fatal Attractions finale with Nightcrawler foil: Wikia; Comixology - this and Maximum Carnage were Matt's first big collected works as a kid

Uncanny X-Men #139 "Welcome to the X-Men Kitty Pryde... Hope you survive the experience!": Wikia; Comixology - Uncanny X-Men #129, Introduction of Kitty Pryde: Wikia; Comixology

The Wicked and the Divine: Wikipedia; Image Comics - "none more goth"

If you like Saga: Wikipedia; Image Comics - Y the Last Man: Wikipedia; Vertigo Comics

- Runaways: Wikipedia; Comixology -- and then Brian K Vaughn traded series with Joss Whedon

Avengers Arena: Wikipedia; Wikia; Comixology - according to Taleisin, this book has more impact if you know the characters more, so maybe this is part of the advanced class in recommendations

New Teen Titans - Not sure which series is meant here?

DC Bombshells: Wikipedia; DC Comics

Tom King's Vision: Wikia; Comixology

Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan): Wikia; Comixology (vol 3); continued in vol 4

Iron Heart - Riri Williams (current Iron Man): Wikia; Comixology

Image Comics: Website; Wikipedia - Early Image is noooot so much Amy's jam The Walking Dead: Wikipedia; Comixology Savage Dragon: Wikipedia; Comixology Sam and Twitch: Wikipedia; Comixology

Faith: Valiant’s site; Comixology Star Wars: Rogue One (run-up was announced, but never happened... perhaps what was meant was the run up to The Force Awakens?) - “Star Wars comics got good”--They moved from Dark Horse to Marvel recently - Note: there are quite a few Star Wars series being published by Marvel at the moment. (In this contributor’s opinion, some are better than others...)

Not strictly comics: X-Men (’90s animated series): Wikipedia; IMDB; Sailor Moon (the 90s dub, aw yeah); Wikipedia Superman (1978): Wikipedia; IMDB Batman the Animated Series: Wikipedia; IMDB Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: Wikipedia; Powell’s Comics In Focus: Chris Claremont’s X-Men: Wikipedia; it appears that this is no longer available on Vimeo... The LARPosal On Youtube "cardio and pie" - which we should all apparently try a slice of cheddar cheese on? Battle Royale: Wikipedia; IMDB The Supergirl Show on CW: Wikipedia; IMDB The Tick: The 1994 series, and the 2001 series The Image Revolution (documentary about the birth of Image comics): IMDB, trailer; Streaming on Youtube, Amazon, and elsewhere. Pogs. Just. Pogs. God I remember Pogs. Where Taleisin's handle comes from: Executive Transvetite

Stores mentioned: Hi De Ho Comics (store) LA Golden Apple (store) LA Torpedo Comic (store) Las Vegas Box Lunch House of Secrets (store) Burbank, CA (where Amy works)

Next week Mental Health and Comics Legion: Wikipedia; IMDB; airing on FX; streaming on Hulu, Amazon

X-Men Legacy (2012) volume 2: Wikia; Comixology; Marvel

Moon Knight - Current run, written by Lemire: Comixology; Marvel - Warren Ellis: Comixology; Marvel - Bendis' LA run: Comixology; Marvel

Doom Patrol - specifically Crazy Jane - Grant Morrison's run (which Taliesin says is psychotropic, take that as you will): Wikipedia; Comixology - Just pointing out that Taliesin gave a content warning for this, so.

Note: mentions may or may not be recommendations. My personal recommendations sometimes differ, but that’s not the point of this post. And remember: it’s ok to not have read everything--or anything!

If I missed anything, please let me know! Episode #2 will be up.... soon?

[thewickedbohemian]

Friendly reminder that even if some elements of a fictional dystopia come true in our world, that doesn’t mean we’re literally headed for the future the dystopia depicts because how could something exist in the past as fiction and the future as reality at the same time (even if it was used as a guidebook, how could they exactly predict the way the dystopia was taken down since you’d think they would plan for something that specific)?

1. Juggalos marching on Washington does not mean we’re headed for a Homestuck future because A. iirc they’re on the wrong side for it to mirror that particular future and B. even if I remembered that part wrong, Homestuck’s gone a lot meta over the years but never meta to the level where characters in the comic could be reading the comic within the comic (even if the characters who were reading it weren’t reading about their own adventures) and to have it so that, in order to avoid that, the “main characters” of this “real life Homestuck” would be people who haven’t heard of the comic and still fit the “requirements” (13 years old (or however old the Alpha kids are), only child, one parental figure etc.), would require almost ridiculous levels of machinations to set everything up for that future and I doubt anyone who’d have the power to do that has the Homestuck knowledge to do that unless something is going on that’s a level of weird that would make Homestuck’s plot look like Dick And Jane.

2. We aren’t in the dark timeline of Back To The Future because A. Trump didn’t make any part of his fortune on sports bets, B. Biff wasn’t based on him but on one of the studio executives who Zemeckis didn’t like (iirc the name of the guy was Rick Tannen) and C. The movies couldn’t exist within any of the realities they take place in unless e.g. everyone has different names in each version and they’re some sort of universal constant but if that’s the case, A. someone in the movies would have mentioned how familiar what they had to do sounded and B. I think we should check if we’re in some sort of absurdist Simpsons-esque cartoon first because a movie series plot seems like a weird thing to have as a universal constant.

3. Speaking of Simpsons, The Simpsons did not predict this unless you think that either the family depicted on the show is real (and therefore everything that happened to them is a real thing in whichever Springfield is theirs) or some other woman named Lisa Marie Simpson will run for (and win) the presidency in 2020 and appoint a nerdy childhood friend of hers named Milhouse Van Houten as her Secretary Of The Treasury. I don’t know about other cases of “Simpsons predicted it” because I make an effort to not really watch the show but I felt this needed refuting both on its predictive power and the predictive power supposedly meaning that world is real in this particular instance.

4. No matter how many social media memes I see about it, we are not headed for the future depicted in The Hunger Games because A. comparing Trump to President Snow implies that the games have been going on for at least a generation (since he wasn’t the first president of Panem); B. For all I know, the statements that his election etc. is what led to the Hunger Games are just posts by supporters of his who want to keep us from rebelling to get him out of power by making us afraid that us trying to stop him is the rebellion that the Hunger Games are because of. C. Suzanne Collins would have to be either God/an avatar thereof (which blows Christianity all to hell), a precog (who for some reason hasn’t claimed the James Randi Foundation million-dollar prize) or a time traveler (and for some reason in our/their universe, time travel works so weirdly that her traveling back in time to publish the book didn’t change/potentially erase the future she came from and cause a paradox because it would do that even without anyone heeding its warnings) to explain the books’ simultaneous fictionality and reality; D. If a future regime (whether or not it’s his) decides they want to literally copy the dystopia depicted in The Hunger Games and that’s why it’s our future, they’d need to build in safeguards against the way the dystopia was taken down that aren’t completely obvious (e.g. illegalizing the name Katniss); E. That meme that seems to imply that the Hunger Games will start in 2018 overlooks the fact that in order for that to happen, everything including the institution of Panem/the district system and the rebellion would have to happen this year, and, unless that was the Trump administration’s goal, I don’t see that happening.

5. We do not live in the 1984 future because, A. Even if it could somehow exist as fiction in the past and reality in the future, it would be banned for being too subversive (and there would be no way that it would sell out like it’s done on Amazon because it wouldn’t be sold anywhere), B. The surveillance etc. isn’t as deep as people think it is and C. The parts of the future that are like 1984 were around long before Trump so he’s not to blame.

6. We do not live in Idiocracy not just because of the obvious things like not having a president who open carries assault weapons on his person at all times or a reality show called Ow! My Balls but because A. For reasons previously discussed in earlier points on this post, it is impossible for something to be a “documentary from the future” and still have that future have happened in reality, B. Just because we have a stupid president does not make him Camacho, and C. IQs are actually rising over time, look it up.

7. Not just the current storyline but any Magic: The Gathering storyline that has already been out can’t be an allegory for our current situation (though in the Magic The Gathering tag on my blog, there’s an interesting theory of mine as to how Earth could exist in that universe and still have that game exist) because A. The only villains in that universe who aren’t too smart to be compared to Trump are either that universe’s version of Elder Gods (who are actually somewhat too mindless to be compared to him) or weren’t villains of their own free will (which I doubt is the case with him unless the section of the conspiratard crowd that’s actually against him are right) and B. In order for the story to have been an allegorical prediction like a lot of people are saying, they would have had to know the election results beforehand and unless Wizards Of The Coast are actual wizards...

8. This is not Star Wars no matter who Trump is in that allegory because if he’s Vader, that means the only ones who can take him down are his long-lost twin children; a son who is living somewhere in the desert with distant relatives and loves to fly, and a daughter whose adoptive parents are either other politicians/royalty (of an opposite political alignment) or celebrities (because they are also kinda “royalty” of a sort) and if he’s Palpatine and we’re in the Revenge Of The Sith phase because Beyonce is pregnant with twins then I’m not sure which thing that “has to happen” (according to this metaphor) is more unlikely; either Jay-Z accepting a cabinet post or Kanye both being the father of the twins and the winner of the 2020 election, Beyonce dying in childbirth and her twins being given up for adoption (with one ending up among her fellow elite and one in some desert flyover state), or Trump (or whoever succeeds him) ruling until said twins are teens/young adults. 

9. This isn’t like Divergent for reasons that will be obvious if you’ve read the third book or seen the third movie but I refuse to mention them because I refuse to accept those particular plot twists as canon but also because the Trump administration isn’t smart enough to be Erudite or selfless enough to be Abnegation (the faction that actually made up most of the government in the Divergent universe)

10. This isn’t Brave New World not just because of the point I keep reiterating about sci-fi not being able to exactly exist as both fiction in the past and reality in the future in the same universe but because corporate-owned TV and lack of social mobility, while sucky, don’t equal biological castes and conditioning from “birth” and, while a lot of people are a bit too football-crazy for comfort, liking sports/games and/or pop culture shouldn’t be something worthy of shame and junk food/drugs, though bad for you in some respects, aren’t freaking soma!

11. This hopefully can’t be Harry Potter (or at least a similar universe) because that means that at best (if he’s the Umbridge in this metaphor with our country being Hogwarts) we have to set up some kind of shadow government that actually makes the decisions (as a DA parallel) while leaving him and his “Inquisitorial Squad” just a puppet government and at worst (if he’s the Voldemort in this metaphor) we have to track down all deaths he (whether directly or indirectly) caused and find out if there’s any scenarios where the parents were killed and a kid survives living with relatives (and if there’s multiple, choose the one that looks the most like a young him) and gradually guide that kid from a distance to achieve his destiny and make sure he gets into some exclusive private school where he ends up meeting his two best friends and saving the world from Trump pretty much every year before finally taking him down in seven years (after this hero kid has lost pretty much everyone he cares about who’s older than him and one or two people the same age).

12. This can’t be Game Of Thrones even though George RR Martin joked about having written 2016, and not just because it isn’t set in the past (although that would be cool yet sad if Game Of Thrones was our history and reality is just an endless chain of similar events occurring, say, once every couple centuries) but because we have far fewer than seven major political families competing for power and because he has been compared to so many characters from that series that if he were somehow all of them mashed up into one fulfilling multiple roles (which helps with the lack of families etc.), he would have killed himself by now (because he’s been compared to so many people that there’s a good chance one of them has killed another one of them) to fulfill the parallel

[adam16bit]

Super Mario Bros. 3

I just got through this one on the NES Classic, which afforded me something I could never do on the console version - actually play through every stage!   As a kid you couldn’t exactly hog the TV for the hours it would take to play through every world, which is why things like Warp Whistles were incredibly useful.  It’s obviously possible to beat this game in a couple of hours, but not unless you skip chunks of it or have beaten it before and generally know what you’re doing.

This was probably the best game the system had to offer in terms of variety and general vastness.  There was no save or password system, but you could pick up a variety of items to use later (as needed) and I believe more and better power-ups than on any subsequent Mario game.  

Marketing

They did a good job with this one - thanks to it coming out in Japan over a year before the USA, various import video game magazines probably made a fortune by picking up an import copy and posting screen shots.   (See: GamePro #1, a freebie at Toys R Us that I got with Blaster Master.)   Other publications advertising their product for free - or paying for the right to preview it - would be a remarkable feat for Nintendo, as there were countless unlicensed video game news magazines.  But they realized they could go much, much bigger.  They could manufacture a significantly larger phenomenon.

Nintendo got itself some fantastic product placement in The Wizard, a feature-length ad for video game stuff with a free mini Nintendo Power (”Pocket Power”) magazine with your ticket purchase.  How or why my parents agreed to take me to see this is still a mystery given how few times we saw movies in the theaters - the somewhat insufferable movie did a great job showing us something that many of us to this day still don’t realize.   The power of marketing to kids in the 1980s was utterly insane, and while many of us think back on kidvid like She-Ra, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and the like as good clean wholesome fun?  It was there to sell us stuff.  Even though The Wizard had elements of sports movies and road trip movies, it was basically a wish fulfillment fantasy - and that wish was for kids to see footage of a video game they couldn’t actually buy until next year.    Given how long a few months seems when you’re a kid, this sort of thing really stirred up the frenzy even more, making the game scarce upon release in the USA in 1990.

The TV ads were similarly kind of creepy with a cultish atmosphere of an endless stream of kids chanting Mario’s name, waiting for their icon to arrive once more.   But TV marketing didn’t stop there - there was also a rebranded Saturday morning TV show called “Super Mario Bros. 3″ that had musical numbers.  Some are the stuff of pop culture legend, like Wendy O. Koopa kidnapping Milli Vanilli to play her birthday party.  Others are more forgettable but more insidious - there’s a whole song and dance extolling the virtues of the Frog Suit power-up from the game.  Looking back on it, it’s diabolical, creepy, and insanely effective.

But wait - there’s more!  Nintendo Power magazine was famous for being a way to market to kids and charge them for the opt-in privilege.  One issue of the magazine was completely devoted to Super Mario  Bros. 3 - some may dismiss it as a strategy guide, but it was an ad.  Full-color illustrations showing all of the fun stuff in the game could be dismissed as spoilery, but that wasn’t a term people used in 1990.   You’d buy a game guide (like the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide) and use it sort of like how people used Leonard Maltin’s guide to the movies.  There was no Internet, so these magazines were showing people what to play, rent, or purchase - and boy howdy did they help get kids to ask mom and dad to drop fifty bones on software that they could finish in a couple of weeks.

For your very brief political moment, you might say “that’s fine” or “shouldn’t there be laws preventing this kind of marketing to kids?”  As someone in the toy business I’m both creeped out by it and a big part of it - my office is packed with toys and games dating back to my own childhood, and most of the new stuff I get is tied to marketing/programming/culture I experienced as a kid.   I don’t buy Avatar, I buy Star Wars.   There were indeed laws against carpet-bombing kids on TV with marketing, but comic books were largely fair game and Saturday morning TV changed from kid versions of adult shows and weird puppet entertainment to training wheels for the consumer vehicle of today.  Show of hands - who here watched one or more Marvel-based TV show as a child 20, 30, or even 40 years ago and is now a fan of the movie franchise?

We’re in a weird place.   I could go on a tear about how the cereal and magazine aisles in 1980s grocery stores served as my Internet but we’re on too big of a tangent here.  Point being - SMB3 was a huge success because Nintendo heavily invested in that success.   If you had any connection to their target demographic, they probably lobbed something at you and got your attention.   It helped that the game was indeed everything they promised.

Believe the Mario Hype?

The first batch of NES games had a bunch of original-ish ideas.  Super Mario  Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, and others would have one or more sequels on the 8-bit console, although all of them seemed to have an unwritten rule to “return to form” for their third entries.  They were bigger and better, sure - but Mario gave us a completely different sequel before reverting  back to a powered-up version of the original game.  Link’s adventure diverted him into a Metroidvania/RPG hybrid before returning to the not-quite-RPG top-down adventure game format most of us know and love.   Castlevania, too, introduced and removed RPG elements to return to the classic block stage format.

Mario’s levels were very similar to the first game, but larger.  On the whole you always moved left to right, there was no warping from the right to the left of the screen, but you could go up into the sky by flight or climbing a vine.  Auto-scrolling levels were introduced to mix up the dynamic.  A map screen allowed you limited control of how you advanced - some levels and challenges were wholly optional, and certain items like Jugem’s Cloud actually allowed you to skip over some of those challenges.   In the original Super Mario Bros., your options were to go to the right side of the screen and maybe select a Warp Zone.   By the third game, you could choose to assault a fortress, or hop in a Mushroom House to take a power-up, or blow a Warp Whistle when you so decided.

The world was covered in familiar, more modernized versions of faces you’ve seen before with only Bob-Omb returning from the second game.  Pretty much the entire cast of the first game came back with prettier sprites, and Mario also got a facelift - not as good as his look in the second game, but his controls were tighter and his pants were, for some reason, blacker.

Power-ups are what really made the game special.    A lot of gamers would say Super Mario World from the Super NES was an inferior game, and I’d almost agree.   In the 16-bit Mario, you could have fireballs or don a cape and fly.   Super Mario Bros. 3 let you get a raccoon tail, fireballs, a Hammer Bros. suit, a Frog Suit, a Tanooki Suit, and the P-Wing which granted infinite flight on a single stage without having to take a running start first.  You had options.

Clever enemies - some of which you only met once or twice - included a Goomba jumping around in a giant green shoe, reptiles who would  barf up a spiked ball and chuck it at your head, and spiny eggs that would sometimes refuse to hatch.  Even the sun itself bore an angry face and would chase you down through the desert!   Squids would send their children after you in the seas to bring you down!  What did you ever do to them?   Oh, right. Calamari.

A World of Difference

One of the things that set Mario games apart from the competition were its themed worlds - “Grass Land” and a desert don’t seem too thrilling, but they were fun.  The ice level in this game got clever with frozen bonus items - if you wanted coins, you had to hit them with a fire ball to thaw them out.  One world was filled with pipes and man-eating vegetation.   Another world - easily the best in the entire series - was Big Island, where you were normal size and most of the enemies were actual giants!  I wish they would bring more of that back in the 2D series, which has gone from evolving from game to game to  basically being the same thing since New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS.  Not bad - but the level of change between each of the Super Mario Bros. games released over 5 years is pretty staggering.

Because of these differences, the game really made you make decisions.  Do you skip ahead to world 8 to beat the game and watch the brief, credits-free ending again?  Or do you go hang out in World 4 again because World 4 was awesome?   Do you use those awesome power-ups you found in a Mushroom House now, or save them for later when you might actually need them?   It’s a heck of a lot more to consider than “run to the right, and try not to die.”

I found that the game held up very well to a replay - there were some weird glitches where sometimes an item would hit me and I didn’t die, and others where it didn’t hit me and I did die, but I assume this is emulation bug stuff or something I just lucked in to this time.   Levels were significantly shorter than I remembered, lacking the extensive obstacles and obliterating any replay value (per game, that is) as you’re locked out of a stage once you beat it.  Nintendo didn’t really start experimenting with forced replay of Mario stages to get all the exits and to find all the secrets until Super Mario World, and then in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine the game was more about replay, replay, replay.   The levels were bigger, there was more you could do, the games were prettier, but you also were treading the same ground repeatedly.  Super Mario Bros. 3 didn’t make you replay anything until  you got a “Game Over” screen.

Very few games had the marketing impact of Mario’s final NES adventure, but Acclaim and Sega did learn a lot from the hype Nintendo created with “Mortal Monday” for Mortal Kombat and “Sonic 2sday” for the second Sonic the Hedgehog title - and people showed up.   We saw a lot of this throughout the 1990s, with the first “midnight madness” event for an action figure launch in 1999 for The Phantom Menace, and the film would really kick off the ghastly trend of day- or week-long “line parties.”  Now people just reserve their seat online, but back then it wasn’t uncommon to see the cinema briefly transformed into an experience not unlike tailgating at a football game.

The game was a smash hit, which you know - the NES cartridge sold millions of copies.  It would go on to  be a pack-in game with the NES.  They upgraded it to 16-bit graphics and sound as part of Super Mario All-Stars.   The upgraded port would be sold separately - at full price - on the GameBoy Advance a decade later.  That’s a lot of money for old software, and Nintendo has trotted it out as a download for the Wii and Wii U for about five bones.  I don’t doubt it will also be on the switch.  Heck, Super Mario All-Stars also got a $20 Wii port.   The best value for this game is on the NES Classic Edition from late 2016, which I just played through, because each game averages $2 plus you get the game hardware.  I still am somewhat shocked how cheap (for Nintendo) the whole package was, as the Mario games alone are so fondly remembered I bet they could’ve got $60 for just those titles.  I still enjoy the games - the marketing worked, I watched the stupid cartoons too, and I’ve got a 20-inch Mario action figure waving to me from the other side of my office as I type this.  Is this a good thing?  Is it terrible?  You tell me.

[whentvsfly]

u should answer all 20 of the mob psycho ask meme things jsust DO it u peice of fuck....

Fuck you, I will.

1: What is a scene that really got to you?In the anime, probably either the flashback to when Mob went ???% when he was young (I love the Angst™), or when Mob nearly goes 100% murderous intent and then instead goes like, 1000% gratitude. In the manga, the entirety of the fuckin Mogami arc (the part with the cat like Holy Shit) nearly made me cry, and I barely cry at things anymore. So like. That.

2: Who’s your favorite character out of the cast?I….love so many……..They’re all so good. All the esper kids are Good, Reigen is a good man, the Body Improvement Club members….Tome and Mezato…..fuck, even Dimple. I can’t choose…

3: Who’s your favorite esper kid?Mob, Ritsu, Teru, and Shou are all my sons thank you very much. I can’t decide between them. Mob is a Good Boy™ who needs a fucking break holy shit. Ritsu is a little shitsu but he cares a lot about his bro and I cry and he’s good too. Teru is also a shitty boy and also he wants to do good and I cry for him (I’m his parent now cause idk wtf his actual parents are, ONE plz explain). And Shou is a good but destructive boy who deserves better. 

4: Who’s your favorite ship(s)?I….really like Ritsu and Shou, and was kinda indifferent to anything else, until @pundeserving​ (and fanfics) ((thanks u fuck)) showed me the beauty of Teruki and Mob. Also???? I kinda like Tome and Mezato?????? They could like find aliens and report it to the news and honestly they’d be a power couple.

5: What battle shook you most?Uhm. The one at the end of the World Domination arc. So many emotions…..

6: What friendship do you find the cutest?Literally any with Mob. He’s such a good boy.

7: What’s the most hilarious moment to you?gotTA PUMP SOME IRONsorry duDE TOUGH BREAKwoAH ITS HEAVY okletsgo(pff other than so many lines from the dub, uh, I’m not too sure. Right now I can only think of how funny the whole situation with that Shirt™ in the Divine Tree arc is, and like the school festival in which for like a panel Ritsu is forced to dress like a maid and Shou is there. NO WAIT. I KNOW. Justifiable Self Defense. We’re not too sure it’s justifiable, but he’s yelling it anyways. also: OOHHH. HE FUCKING APPEARED! There’s probably others. I can’t remember them rn. OH well, guess I better reread the manga…..).

8: Favorite and least favorite arc?hmmmmm….The angst pit inside of me wants to say my fave is the Mogami arc, because of how fucking sad it could be (or the way it can spawn fics about it like nobody’s business) but honestly I don’t really have any favorites or least favorites. They all have their pros and their cons, but they’re all really good. 

9: Which antagonist could you never forgive?Mogami. Hands down. 

10: Do you have any OC’s?Nope. But there is an oc I saw once on this hellsite which was a cat named Milk that Mob owns and I fully support that hah.

11: Did you watch the anime or read the manga first?Anime. Subbed. Then went for the manga, then to the dub hah.

12: Would you visit Spirits and Such Consultation Office (if you didn’t know any better)?Hm. I dunno. Probably would be too lazy to seek out help if I thought a spirit would be on me or smth, or haunting a place. Maybe if it was Real Bad.

13: Are there any specific MP 100 artists/writers you admire?Uhm. Idk, I tend to not actually look at who is the OP on an art post or who writes a fic. I’ll edit this if I find out some good ones (there’s one artist I’m thinking of on here and they do real good arts, they do comics based on fics (one was on this court thing where Mob was dead by Teruki’s hand b/c the choking thing, the other was on an au fic where Mob was kidnappeped and Reigen ended up rescuing him and they hadn’t met before that idk I have yet to read it myself) and there’s a fic on ao3 that I am always waiting for the next installment, even if it’s been 20 seconds since I read the last chapter. That story’s linked below, and you can see other authors I’ve linked too).

14: Are there any MP 100 fanfics you HAVE to rec?(this answer is So Long I am So Sorry I just have A Lot Of Love)Ohhhh boy. You’ve done it now. You’ve awakened the Beast™. Fanfics are my forte. I’ve gone through all of them on ao3. Don’t fuckin test me on this.Ok so first off, if you want all the stories I’ve gathered off of ao3 (My picking process: Ignoring all stories with incest or an adult x a kid (or ships I don’t particularly care for), is the fic well written with a good plot? then onto the list it goes. Or if its bad enough to be good. That too.) you can just ask me for the fics and I can either share the googledoc with you or send you the links in another way.Some of my favorites from the list, tho, are as follows (in order of which I read them):Color in a Monochrome Worldby Sifl is a really good introspective series on many different characters, set after the World Domination arc. Sifl also wrote a companion piece, Vertigo.Extracurricular Education is a series by entrenched about Shigeo and his growth as he works for Reigen. It’s real cute, they’re good bros, I love it. A few stories takes place after the Mogami arc and reference it.Turning Slowly by sorrow_key is a fic about how Shigeo knows what unrequited love feels like b/c of Tsubomi, so he can see through Teruki really easily. He feels like a liar pretending to not notice. (eventually becomes TeruMob), My notes say if you’re in the divine tree arc, then you’ll get any references made in the fic. Can’t remember what’s said, but it must reference something in that arc for me to have wrote that.One Step Forward, Two Steps Back by fireflysummers_ao3 is a fic in which Teru feels terrible after the Divine Tree arc (this was made before 97.uh. the chapter that came out this last Thursday, the 5th of Jan, so it may not be as accurate as it could be) and Shigeo just wants to be friends and help him out. After Divine Tree arc.Temporary Accommodations by Originia is an interesting fic where, through shenanigans, Shigeo’s body is kidnapped without his like, spirit thingy in it (using the strategy from the Mogami arc) and Reigen tries to rescue Shigeo (which Dimple is possessing in Mob’s absence). I fucking love Ritsu in this story holy shit.The Adventure of the Red Shoes by dyingplatypus. Ho. Ly. Fuck. If you only read one story, read this one. It’s funny, it’s quirky, it’s in character. It’s solving a paranormal case about haunted shoes, and Reigen being cursed. It feels like it could be an actual happening in the anime or something. Seriously. Read this one. It has a little reference to the World Domination arc cause Serizawa is in there but like. You could proooobably read it without reading the manga.He Just Likes Dogs by reiqenarataka nearly made me fucking cry in a dentists office. It’s about Reigen and dogs, what more could you want?Signed, Sealed, Delivered by entrenchedis a series centered around Teruki and his crush on Shigeo, even as Shigeo crushes on Tsubomi. He would rather never tell Mob and continue being friends, over risking their friendship by confessing.do make tomorrow a sunny day by dyingplatypus is a series based off an au I mention in the next question. The AU is one in which Shigeo is taken by Claw at a young age, and thus works for them currently. Ritsu grew up without a brother, only knowing he had a brother at some point who presumably died. Both Shou and Shigeo are a part of Claw and work for it, and things Shigeo took care of during the normal universe didnt happen. (LOL) is a growing and powerful cult, Teru still wants to fight people. There’s many different perspectives in the series and they all add up to a unique experience (I’m still real fuckin amused by what Teru thinks of Shigeo in the first chapter of his POV fic)tomorrow isn’t always another day by suitablyskippy is another good fic on par with The Adventure of the Red Shoes. It’s also quirky, funny, in character, and shows Shigeo and Reigen solving cases. Of a haunted copy machine. Which Mob is preeeetty sure they solved yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that….Three by Ravenesta is an outsider POV story from a teacher’s perspective, on Shigeo Kageyama and his mysterious third emergency contact, Reigen Arataka. It’s pretty cool, and shows some good shit. Return. Continue. by UncannyCookie. A series. Takes place after Mogami arc, Shigeo isn’t doing too well, hands feeling too itchy and wrong after he was driven to choking someone in that unreal world. It’s bad. He’s fine. Teru tries his best to help. The second story, though, Teru is acting weird and Shigeo wants to help him but he swears he’s fine. (also has some of my fave tags: “Teru is not a natural blond, that’s the real drama here”). This is the fic I find myself waiting for updates with bated breath. It’s so good and interesting. Love that shit.

15: Do you have a favorite AU?I don’t know of too many aus, but most are real good. I like the art I see of the ageswap thing, where Mob is the adult and Reigen is the kid, although I don’t tend to read the fics about it. Idk why. But there are other good aus too, like any where Mob ends up being raised by Reigen. There’s an interesting one on ao3 I saw where Mob was taken by claw at a young age and now kinda like…works for them? Idk. It’s good though. 

16: What would be your first or basic psychic skill (telekinesis, pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, ect)?Honestly telekinesis. I’d fuckin own that shit, being too lazy to get up and grab things myself. I’d probably be like, hah, my pop is on the table literally inches from my hand. If only I could just float it over to myself! And then it does and I’d be like Holy Shit. Also, using telekinesis on yourself (if it’s strong enough) allows you to basically fly? I’d train til it’s that level and then I would be the least athletic person in existence. 

17: Do you like milk?I really like strawberry milk. I only have normal milk if I dip a cookie in it. Sometimes chocolate is ok too. And I only really have whole milk cause it tastes the best.

18: What headcanons do you have for (character)?I mean u didn’t provide a character uhm. There’s so many. Me and @pundeserving​ have been talking and whenever I come up with some headcanon I tell her and she may or may not add it to her headcanon list. Usually she does. It’s very good and if you wanna hear some shit about a certian character feel free to ask abt them specifically.

19: Would you hone your basic psychic skill or try to learn different ones?Both? If possible? I’d like to get my telekineses to a point where I can move myself with little to no effort, but having basic version of other powers would also be nice (like psychokinesis to light a candle or warm up some cold soup or smth)

20: Would you try to use your psychic powers for personal gain or only if you had to?I mean, if it’s (like i mentioned above) heating up soup, that’s kinda personal gain hah no but seriously if it’d unfairly advantage me above other people (in a sport or something) or harm someone else, I wouldn’t do it. I’d use it for little things like retrieving something that’s out of reach or smth, or if worse comes to worse, to protect my friends or family,  if there are no other viable options. 

[patheticphallacy]

It was a busy bee month for me!

While I took a semi-break from blogging- which means I limited myself to only 1 or 2 posts a week, instead of my usual 3 or 4- I took that time to plan out future blog posts (June, specifically) and read a lot.

#PanelAThon happened, which was the absolute best time. I smashed my TBR, in my opinion. Comic-heavy read-a-thons seem to suit me best, so I know how to sort my TBR for future read-a-thons now!

I also started up a brand new Bookstagram which I’m very proud of, even if my sister is helping me with most of the pictures due to her better camera quality. It’s like a project for us both, really: I provide the books and the good cat content, and she helps me position the shots and take pretty pictures!

Towards the end of the month I went to a gig that my best friend’s boyfriend was doing with his band, which was a great time. I also moved my things out of my Uni house! Next year, I’m living in a flat by myself, which is very expensive but will hopefully be worth it.

In June, I’ll be predominantly reading LGBT+ books, which I talked about more in my Pride Month TBR post! I can’t guarantee I’ll finish everything, though, as my twentieth birthday is on the 18th June and I’ll be spending the last two weeks of the month basically with only friends and family for the entire time, which I’m really looking forward to.

Also, last off: all my posts this month are twenty themed. So it’s all lists of twenty things, catered around my birthday and also my general life. I really hope you’ll check the posts out as they come out, I spent a lot of time making the lists and formatting everything for maximum good content.

READING WRAP UP

      This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers– this was a very human look at the way teenagers would cope in the apocalypse, extremely dark and very upsetting, from the point of view of a suicidal girl. It did let me down in that I wasn’t fully immersed in the story, but it definitely picked up towards the end.

NENENE by Shizuko Totono– while I really wanted to love this, the massive age gap between the two characters really ruined it for me. It tries to make up for the age gap by saying the characters will wait till the main girl is 20, but that honestly makes me quite sick thinking that the only reason they haven’t done anything is because the rest of society are telling them it’s nasty, not because they have any understanding of the massive imbalance of power in that relationship.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin– I’ll be honest, I read this because of BTS’s Spring Day music video, but I’m glad I did. It’s a very dark look into a utopian-esque society that only thrives based on the suffering of a child. I really love the distant narrative voice in this piece. 

It Only Happens In the Movies by Holly Bourne– this is one of the most disappointing reads of all time for me. I did a long review of this on my Goodreads breaking down issues I had with the characters and the narrative that really ruined the whole experience. I know I don’t drop star ratings anymore, but this was a definite 1 star. 

      The Case For Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro– This had probably the weakest beginning in the series, with it not picking up until the 160 or so page mark as it relied a lot on info-dumping about Charlotte’s life and didn’t really have much happen. However, the last 150 made up for the weak start, and I really ended up enjoying this and I cannot wait for the final book!

The Unbreakable Code by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman– I really didn’t enjoy this and I am sad. I’m pretty sure it’s a ‘me’ thing, for the narrative, but I will say that there’s a lot of telling instead of showing, which really does lessen my enjoyment as we don’t see characters have any major realisations bar a few. 

By Night #7-#10 by John Allison– this series has flown by! There’s only two issues left now, and I’ll be very sad to see it go, but I definitely think it’s coming to its end.

Labyrinth Coronation #12 by Simon Spurrier– I AM DISTRAUGHT that this series has ended. So so upset. I’m not completely content with this conclusion because a character does something that seems very OOC for them, after their development throughout the series, but I don’t really know how I could have been 100% satisfied with a beloved series coming to a close. 

      Why Photographers Commit Suicide by Mary McCray– this is a poetry collection I’ve had for literal years, a lot based on space and Mars. I was disappointed with this one and didn’t really connect with it overall or gleam anything valuable from it, although there were a few decent poems in there.

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden– I love this! Very atmospheric and creepy middle grade horror about some kids, terrifying scarecrows, and a long history of mysterious deaths and disappearances. 

Nuclear Winter Volume 1 by Caroline Breault– Nuclear Winter is a fun story about a Montreal full of mutants that is in its ninth Winter after a power plant exploded. I love Flavie, the main character, and the art style is perfect for a slice-of-life adventure full of mutants, partying and bagels!

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell– God, I’m still scared of this book. It’s basically like the terror of the weeping angels, combined with commentary on female hysteria, and is one of the most Gothic settings I’ve ever read. It’s honestly a masterpiece.  

    Haikyuu!! Volumes 1-  by Haruichi Furudate– This is a GOD TIER sports manga, and probably my favourite, volleyball is just great. I absolutely adore these characters and their dynamics, the competitions, the illustrations– it’s all amazing. I have watched the first season of the anime, which means I was already familiar with most of these volumes, but I honestly do prefer the manga over the anime and highly recommend it.

The Walking Dead Volume 2 by Robert Kirkman– OK writing although it’s nothing special, but the art style change was very evident and I highly dislike it. Has a terrible case  of ‘tiny font’ that really ruins any reading experience for my short sighted ass, so I don’t know if I’ll carry on. I just don’t think I carry about the characters enough.

The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James– this completely blindsided me. It goes from a sci-fi romance to a sci-fi horror survival story, and I think it’s great. Definitely my favourite Lauren James, she truly is the queen of UKYA sci-fi stories. Apparently her next one is a soft-apocalypse novel, which, YES. 

The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson– really disliked this. I think I’ve grown out of the picture perfect beautiful YA characters. Clark never leaves the house and never exercises but apparently has perfect abs and the most chiselled of jaws. It’s just unrealistic, fellas! It doesn’t appeal to me at all. Also suffers from a case of ‘long-book-itis’ and is at least 200 pages of unneeded scenes too long, and is very predictable. 

    Lore Olympus by Rachel Smithe– this is a very pretty adaptation of the abduction of Persephone myth. The art gets better the further you get in, and I really do love the personalities of these Gods and other miscellaneous mythological creatures personified (EXCEPT FOR APOLLO APOLLO SUCKS). Content warning for rape and victim blaming, as well as a character being roofied (unrelated to the rape, though). 

Uzumaki by Junji Ito– very strong first two thirds, but a very dissatisfying conclusion. However it is suitably creepy and has stunning art, and Kirie and Shuichi have a great relationship that I loved seeing develop throughout the story. 

Welcome To Wanderland #1-3 by Jackie Ball– such a lovely series! It’s about fantasy realms and theme parks, magic and rebel princesses, and is very great. Unfortunately #4 won’t be out for a while as the illustrator had to leave for health reasons, but I’m hoping the new illustrator will be able to give this series a good end when it eventually comes out!

Go For It, Nakamura! by Syundei– a very cute manga about gay sixteen year old Nakamura and his pursuit of Hirose, a boy in his class. While this doesn’t end with a romance, it’s still a soft read seeing these characters become friends, and I can only hope another volume will one day be released.

    Coady and the Creepies by Liz Prince– not one of my favourites, but it was enjoyable to read. This follows triplets on the road with their punk rock band collecting pins from all the biggest punk venues in the country, and also has ghosts. Probably my favourite part was commentary on punk rock being inclusive and how so many dudebros have lost sight that the movement was built going against a a discriminatory regime, not upholding it!

I Want To Eat Your Pancreas by Yoru Sumino– this manga literally knocked me TF out for absolutely no reason at all other than wanting to purposefully break my heart. The last 100 pages made this one of my favourite manga of all time just for how slyly it managed to make me care about these characters.

When I Arrived At the Castle by Emily Carroll– an erotic, Gothic graphic novel from a literal master of her craft. I love everything Carroll puts out, although I don’t think this ranks above Through the Woods. It’s very unnerving and has wonderful art, although I’m still just a tad confused by it. 

Nuclear Winter Volume 2 by Caroline Berault– I’m not putting this with volume 1 just because I didn’t like this one as much. It moved way too quickly and I wasn’t as invested in the storyline. However, I do enjoy seeing older-younger sister dynamics, and Flavie and her younger sister Elsie really reminded me of how I am with my younger sister. 

  Teen Dog by Jake Lawrence– an incredible, quirky coming-of-age comic with anthropomorphic animals, best friends, chess, prom, and a dope pug called Thug Pug! I really loved this, it’s one of my new favourite all-time reads. 

Honey So Sweet Volume 1 by Amu Megura– this was OK; not my favourite shoujo manga, and I’m not a big fan of this kind of art style, but it was fun to read and I like the softness of the main boy!

Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu by Junji Ito– SO TRUE TO LIVING WITH CATS. Cannot express how much I could relate to this, I giggled so much. Ito and his wife do have a little bit at the back talking about Yon’s passing, however, so prepare yourself for that, I ended up crying.

Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 9 by Hiromu Arakawa– I don’t want to talk about it. I’m heartbroken this series is over. I loved this ending, but I’m heartbroken. I cried so many tears of joy, especially at the ending it gives Hohenheim. 

  Smooth Criminals Volume 1 by Kiwi Smith– another OK read! It wasn’t really stand out in comparison to a lot of the other comics I picked up this month, but it’s a quick read, and it has sapphic spies and hackers, if that’s your jam!

Turf Wars Volume 2 and 3 by Michael Dante DiMartino– Finally picked these two volumes up after procrastinating for months! It’s a really cheesy and much deserved conclusion to this graphic novel series, and I’m very much looking forward to the next series coming out. I’m keeping my hopes out for Wu to return, I miss him.

Bungo Stray Dogs Volume 1 by Kafka Asagiri– Very funny detective agency manga where all the characters are inspired by famous literary authors, each possessing powers that aids them investigations. It quickly gets into the main arc and villains. My main issue is that it has that creepy manga trope of having that sibling relationship that’s a bit too close, just for laughs, and it’s something I absolutely despise, so it kind of ruined how much I was loving it for an issue.

My Hero Academia Volume 16 by Kohei Horikoshi– it’s the start of the Overhaul arc, properly! Some decent character development in here, especially for Tamaki, Kirishima and Fatgum, who are the ultimate team, to be honest. 

The Avant-Guards #1 to #5 by Carly Usdin– Carly Usdin genuinely writes some of the best diverse comic series currently. I love this as a sports comic, although I wish there were more issues to develop the characters and their relationships gradually as it does come across as quite rushed at points!

No.6 Volume 1 and 2 by Atsuko Asano– I really love the anime, so I figured it was about time to read the manga! It’s really fast moving, with great characters and a wonderful breakdown of the Utopia/Dystopia dynamic, and I really enjoy it. Shion is genuinely one of the best characters in manga in my opinion.

Faithless #1 by Brian Azzarello– A very dark new series about a woman who experiments in magic and accidentally summons something very dark. It’s strange and unsettling, and I really loved this first issue!

Slam Volume 1 by Pamela Ribon– This wasn’t that great, to be honest. It’s told in a very third person voice that stopped me from ever connecting with the characters, and although I love the roller derby parts and enjoyed the art, it’s not really a standout comic.

And finally, I read the Save Me Webtoon! Pardon my French, but this was so fucking good, and it’s really reminding me why I love both friendship-focused stories and time loop narratives. I think the art is great and I love the story, but I would not recommend this if you’re unfamiliar with the BTS cinematic universe and basic theories. Not all theories- I only knew basics so I could form an opinion on timelines, conclusions, etc.- but just the basics on the time loop theory. I talk more about all this later on in this post, though!

And my June TBR Jar pick is…. HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL by Carrie Brownstein!

ESSAYS/ARTICLES

I read this article analysing BTS’s Spring Day, one of my favourite music videos of all time, and it really hit me hard. BTS in general have stunning music videos, so I highly recommend them for anyone who wants interesting visuals and/or a brand new narrative to invest themselves in with the BTS ‘cinematic’ universe.

TV SHOWS/MOVIES/VIDEOS

BTS’s Spring Day music video. Are any of you surprised?

THIS AMAZING CYPHER PT.3 ANIMATION. There are so many little easter eggs! Fans are amazing.

Another BTS video: their Go Go dance practice video is amazing. They all dress up as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Literally my whole month was spent watching BTS videos. Their whole cinematic universe with their music videos? INCREDIBLE. It starts with the uncut version of I Need U (content warnings for most of the videos discussing suicide, abuse and has a lot of violence), and I realised later on once I’d watched them that the Japanese versions of some of the songs are part of the series! You can find playlists and lists online to help you navigate which videos to watch first. I look at Spring Day as being the conclusion to the cinematic universe with Jin finally saving them all by helping them save themselves, as dramatic as it all sounds.

MUSIC I’VE ENJOYED

I basically spent all month listening to BTS. Particular favourites include Silver Spoon/Baepsae, Answer: Love Myself, Mikrokosmos, Cypher Pt.4, and GoGo!

Nightmare by Halsey is top notch, I got really into Halsey’s hopeless fountain kingdom again this month literally a day before Nightmare came out, so I recommend her! Obviously Boy With Luv is great too, I decided to get into BTS just because the Boy With Luv MV was so great and now look at me!

OTHER POSTS I’VE DONE 

Graphic Recommendations: #PANELATHON

TTT: Characters That Remind Me of Myself

TBR Alphabet Tag

MM: Playlist Book Tag #2

TTT: Books That Should Be TV Shows

Panelathon TBR

TTT: Favourite Books Released in the Last 10 Years

June 20th Announcement

May Wrap Up & June TBR Jar Pick It was a busy bee month for me! While I took a semi-break from blogging- which means I limited myself to only 1 or 2 posts a week, instead of my usual 3 or 4- I took that time to plan out 

[recentanimenews]

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Anime of 2016

After a bit of a delay, we're back with our third and final set of Staff Picks. David, Ink, Evan, and Jared rattle off their top three new anime titles of 2016 (that means retro releases are disqualified, though there were a lot of good ones this year). Taking a look at both the breadth of genres and the artistic ambition of these series and movies, it's easy to see that 2016 was a pretty fantastic year for anime. Here's to another one.

David Estrella

Kizumonogatari Parts One and Two

To no one’s surprise, Kizumonogatari Parts One and Two are the best anime of 2016. In all likelihood, Kizumonogatari Part Three will be the best anime of 2017, having missed the cut off by about six days. “Best Anime of 2017” is looking like a title defense without any promising contenders on the horizon, save for perhaps Makoto Shinkai’s runaway monster hit your name., staggering into the US a year after its heroic Japanese theatrical run like a favorite uncle that always arrives at the end of your birthday party. Will there be an anime that’s as impactful with the violence, as seductive with the visuals, and as hypnotically scripted as Kizumonogatari? Takeshi Koike’s Redline and its infamous “seven hand-drawn years” development cycle is perhaps the closest analogue to the experience of having to wait this long for a project that many assumed just wasn’t happening anymore. Well, Kizumonogatari did happen, I flew out to Japan to see it, to live and breathe it on opening day, and just that one hour runtime for the first part alone blew the doors out the theater. Everything after Kizumonogatari is an exercise in disappointment, an eternal trial for my commitment to the medium in this monochromatic post-Kizumonogatari world.

Ink

Picking three titles for AOTY (Anime of the Year) is nerve-racking when you consider the sheer number of series that debut (let alone continue) per season. For every title that deserves recognition for its animation, there’s another that’s got a great story, another that has great art, and another that’s of social value. And while it feels like any Sayo Yamamoto work should be included on principle alone, sometimes there’s just too few accommodating slots.

#3 Mob Psycho 100

I like stories that surprise, stories that upend or skew expected methods of execution or outcome. Most fans of Mob Psycho 100 will immediately cite the art and animation as its main draw, and that’s because there seems to be nothing else praiseworthy in the first two episodes. The story of an inept boss taking advantage of and credit for his employee’s true talents is a little too real to be funny and too overused to be engrossing, and the associated humor is as stale as the aforementioned concept. But what this series does to avoid that trench is turn the narrative away from that situation to focus on the main character’s inner turmoil, turn away again to focus on his relationship with his brother, and link everything together by heading down another avenue. The world expands organically and without contrivance. It’s a grand bit of storytelling, told with an unexpected tenderness spiced with laughter, under an umbrella of raw and powerful art and animation that’s portrayed some of the best action scenes this year.

#2 Keijo!!!!!!!!

It’s just about to wrap up for the season as I write this, so I’m probably a little biased, but this is the best damned anime comedy of 2016. Every single episode literally made me laugh out loud multiple times, and as a man who values the healing power of laughter, and given the ever-sinking shithole that is 2016, I can honestly say that this is a healing anime. On more than one occasion, I’ve elicited the concern of neighbors and housemate alike for my post-guffaw, out-of-breath wheezing/gasping. That’s because the show approaches a fictitious sport with earnest exuberance for the elaborate exaggerations within. That is to say Keijo!!!!!!!! takes itself seriously and reaps the benefit of humor through contrast. The show also manages to all but bench fanservice while being all about T&A, which is a rather incredible feat. That’s not to say this show is particularly empowering, but it knows how to make fun of and thereby negate its own offensiveness while being wildly entertaining with its absurdity. What I thought would surely be the worst of the season turned out to be one of the most enjoyable of the year.

#1: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Brilliant in its staging and how that relates to story, characters, and concept, this Showa-era anime centers around two comedic storytelling practitioners who grow up like brothers and fight like them too. This show wows with the subtlety of its own storytelling and the storytelling capabilities of its VAs as rakugo performers. The level of detail in the character and background art, the dedication of trained camera focus, and degree of imaginative storyboarding of this period piece are also commendable. Set outside of traditional classrooms and featuring a large range of ages, this is also a great anime with which to introduce anime to people who don’t normally watch anime. It’s drama, pure and simple, told in an engrossing and visually appealing manner. I’ve heard of rakugo before via an anime comedy but didn’t realize that focusing on that art form and (the fictional lives of) its performers could be this interesting! For an in-depth discussion, listen to Episode 001 of the Oldtaku no Radio podcast. The second season airs in the winter 2017 season, so catch up quick!

Best Anime Short:

#3 Ojisan and Marshmallow

#2 Yamishibai S3

#1 To Be Hero

Best Anime We Never Got:

Konnichiwa Onara Gorou

Biggest Disappointment:

Flip Flappers

Evan Minto

#3: Erased

Originally considered by many as a shoe-in for Anime of the Year, Erased stumbling a bit at the finish line was enough to condemn it as a failure in the eyes of some fans. The series builds up a tense, time-traveling murder mystery in its first 11 episodes that the finale doesn't quite deliver on, but the journey is so immaculately executed that it's hard to dock it too many points. There's so much to love in Erased that it's hard to sum it all up: evocative cinematography, authentic depictions of grade-school friendships, nail-biting cliffhangers.... But what really stands out is the unexpected ability of director Tomohiko Ito (Sword Art Online) and A-1 Pictures to replicate the escalating tension and complex relationships of American "prestige" TV series like Breaking Bad and Mr. Robot. By the end, Erased may not weave quite as intricate a web as it seemingly sets out to, but along the way, it reminds us that TV anime is still capable of breaking into the sort of mature adult storytelling that has often been the exclusive purview of live-action TV.

#2: Mob Psycho 100

Last year webcomic artist One burst onto the anime scene with the smash-hit animated version of One-Punch Man, but the anime was based on artist Yusuke Murata (Eyeshield 21)’s Shonen Jump version of the series (adapted from One’s original webcomic). The real test for One was his second anime adaptation, this time without the filter of Murata's art. Appropriately, Mob Psycho 100 leaves behind One-Punch Man's grandiose action tendencies in favor of surprisingly heartfelt teenage soul-seeking, all while One maintains his off-kilter sense of humor and penchant for the grotesque. On top of that, Studio BONES delivers what might be some of their best work yet, as their animators attempt to one-up their coworker, Shingo Natsume, who directed the animator showcase that is One-Punch Man. The psychic powers in Mob create a kaleidoscopic world in which reality bends and distorts at the whim of its characters, who are themselves animated with wildly exaggerated expressions despite One's remarkably simplistic designs. If One-Punch Man introduced One's shockingly unique style to an anime world plagued by sameness, Mob Psycho 100 has cemented his place among this decade's most essential new creators.

#1: Space Patrol Luluco

In a shocking twist, a series featuring Inferno Cop made my Anime Staff Picks list! Space Patrol Luluco is a shameless work of self-congratulation, combining characters and settings from Studio Trigger's entire catalog into a mashup which clearly draws inspiration, at least in part, from the Marvel comics that director Hiroyuki Imaishi & co. love so much. That this feat has so rarely been attempted in anime should come as no surprise to anyone who's been keeping up with Trigger; they've consistently pushed the envelope in anime, whether its lo-fi comedy like Inferno Cop or Disney-esque family-friendly animation like Little Witch Academia. Not only does Luluco feature Imaishi's trademark breakneck dialogue and manic animation, but it builds nicely into something with real heart to it — not unlike Kill la Kill (though KLK screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima sat this project out).  Peppering the core story, itself full of nonsense about space shoplifting and black holes, are cameos and references from every Trigger project so far, including Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia and even Ninja Slayer and Kiznaiver. But it's the unrelenting energy and clear creative passion that makes Luluco shine so brightly in a sea of phoned-in anime cash grabs. Long live Studio Trigger! 

Jared Nelson

#3: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable

David Production hasn't gotten anywhere near the credit they deserve for their work on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable. I never thought I'd be living in a time where people could grow accustomed to having anime adaptations of Hirohiko Araki’s legendary manga. In my opinion, Part 4 stands as the best JoJo anime yet made. While Part 3 had an epic, globetrotting scale and told of an ancient evil and the battle to end a family curse. With Part 4, Araki went in the opposite direction, exploring the lives of the residents in the town of Morioh. A lesser creator may have failed to exceed the iconic Part 3, but Araki not only delivered, he surpassed himself. Part 4's stories and characters show Araki at his most creative yet. The Stand users in this series have extraordinarily imaginative powers that lead to sometimes zany, sometimes dramatic stories that leaving you guessing what could happen next. The craziness rose to a whole new level and capturing Araki's genius was a monumental task, but the animation staff at David Production did a marvelous job of bringing the crazy, noisy, bizarre town of Morioh to life. It’s one thing to create a work of genius, it's entirely another to adapt the work of a genius and heighten its impact even further. Diamond is Unbreakable deserves a spot as one of the best anime of 2016.

#2: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Ink and I covered this show extensively in our (extremely long) debut episode of Oldtaku no Radio because it blew us both away for a whole host of reasons. From its debut episode, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu stood apart as a mature, artful tale worthy of celebration. In a time where nearly all anime seem to revolve around adolescent concerns it was so refreshing to see a (period!) drama aimed at adults and featuring adult characters. It introduced the Japanese art of Rakugo to a broader audience and its depiction of Rakugo storytelling could itself be a masterclass in storytelling. Not only did the Rakugo performances leave me spellbound in and of themselves, they also advanced the larger plot of the show and the character arcs of the performers all at the same time. I’ve never seen layered storytelling so skillfully interwoven throughout an anime. Rakugo also depicted nuanced, complex relationships between its principal characters, particularly Shin (Sukeroku) and Bon (Kikuhiko/Yakumo the 8th). Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu stands out as a compelling story of passion, drama, and tragedy. After seeing it, I was convinced it would be my Anime of the Year, and I can’t wait to see its second season. It looked like 2016 would pass without any other show even coming close to matching it…then Sayo Yamamoto said “hold my beer and watch this.” Well, probably not. But that’s sorta what happened.

#1: Yuri!!! on Ice

Yuri!!! on Ice took anime by storm this Fall and it’s my pick as Anime of the Year 2016. This show has all the hallmarks of a strong show: memorable characters, a great score, and excellent storytelling. How it uses all those qualities sets it above all the rest. Yuri’s personal growth over the course of the series results in a very satisfying character arc. You can’t help but cheer Yuri on as he breaks through the barriers of his own self-doubt to reach greater heights as a competitor, artist, and person. As the series progresses we learn more about each skater’s motivations while advancing the overall plot at that same time. It turns out figure skating is a perfect vehicle for this kind of layered storytelling!

Like Diamond is Unbreakable, Yuri on Ice has memorable characters. Like Showa Rakugo, Yuri on Ice portrays nuanced dramatic relationships between its three leading characters. But unlike the other two, Yuri on Ice combines all of these qualities into one show, a show that isn’t based on prior work, but an original work from Sayo Yamamoto and Mitsurou Kubo. But above all those reasons, this show is an important show because it prominently and proudly features a healthy, open homosexual relationship. Yuri and Victor’s relationship isn’t played up for laughs or just suggested, their relationship is the heart of the show. So many times in the past, we’ve seen LGBTQ characters in anime exist simply as a punchline or as degenerates. With Yuri on Ice, we finally have a mainstream hit that treats gay men with the respect they deserve. Yuri on Ice is the best show of 2016 for a host of reasons and I won’t be the first to say so. I’m just happy that I get to say it at all. It’s definitely a show born to make history.

That's it for our Staff Picks. What are some of your favorite anime of 2016?

Check out our picks for manga and video games too!

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Anime of 2016 originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on January 25, 2017 at 7:48 PM.

By: David Estrella