#That little Ness panel I love the background for

[dynamic-dingo]

"You're finally ready to eat, Yoichi..."

This page was intimidating, and I ended up working on it across 10 days to finish. I'm happy with it, though. Glad I decided to do it, but the next coloring isn't gonna be a big page.

No text version

[taptrial2]

I don't know if you've explained it before (im a relatively new follower), but may I ask why you don't like agit?

okay, just for you im gonna reread it and bitch about everything that comes up that i hate. fair warning this ended up like 1000 words at LEAST. i have a lot of thoughts about agit.

EDIT: put it in google docs for a word count, its 2000 words. this is an essay

"uh yeah thats me youre probably wondering how i got into this situation.."

tucker as an influencer pisses me off so bad. tucker is a TECH geek. he likes tinkering with hardware and software. he is proud of those things. yes, he does hunger for money, but he doesn't go about it by trying to climb the social ladder, which is inherently what "influencing" is about. i don't think he'd want an audience, he's too busy coding mario 64 from scratch in his free time. he never shows serious interest in climbing the social ladder. why would he be a social media nut. i hate it.

on that note i strongly dislike the "modernization" in agit. the comic is supposed to take place very shortly after phantom planet, and suddenly everyone has iphones now. vlad's old beige whale computer is made fun of, is a punchline. a huge part of danny phantom for me that i genuinely love is the 2000s-ness of it all, the PDAs and mp3 players. it's a shame to see all that stuff go, especially when you're keeping the characters and timeline otherwise the same. it feels jarring.

i have a lot of problems with the timeline in agit, actually. we'll get there when we get there

AH yeah, the reality jumps or whatever. i keep forgetting about them because they're so nothing. so much of agit feels like padding and the cowboy cutaway + aztec cutaway feel just like that: cutaways. all the time jumps are filler and a waste of time. very little is accomplished narratively, and they eat up far too much page space. the little narrative value they do have could have been given in a quarter of the amount of pages they actually take up.

ALSO omg this is just a nitpick but sometimes pages and pages go by without proper backgrounds, just characters on solid color background fills. it makes the whole thing feel cheap and the characters feel like they're talking to each other in the void instead of a Place. once you take notice of it you can't unsee it. what backgrounds ARE present are painfully simplistic and feel claustrophobic, they feel like they have no depth or width and are trapped in the panels.

i liked vlad's appearance at first, and he does have some family guy funny moments but i hate how he's handled overall. we'll get to it

dan fusing with clockwork is pretty sick though. that's pretty cool i like that. it's neat

sam and tucker are already pretty nothing in the show, but they're even more nothing in agit, ESPECIALLY sam. they feel almost interchangeable. sam has had all of her rough edges sanded away. she needs to be Cool and Likeable so they just made her completely bland. there is no friction to be had between friends, they don't bicker, they just go YOOO at each other and have no other real chemistry. the whole time she's just cardboard.

CINEMASINS DING the first time danny puts the specter deflector on vlad in the show it does NOT depower him completely and he can push through it for an impressively long time, but in agit he's instantly de-ghosted. DING. im just biased because i hate this shit but still

OH MY GOD. OKAY. I JUST GOT TO A PART THAT PISSES ME OFF SO BAD OK SO sam asks vlad how many countries he could have fed to build his stupid secret football field lair (said affectionately) and he says "thirteen. i am who i am." I AM WHO I AM. THAT'S A SPECIAL TOOL THAT WILL HELP US LATER.

the cowboy cutaway lasts SEVERAL pages and adds NOTHING of value. NOTHING. its literally just "oops dropped the infimap ok picked it up now back to the important conversation we were having before". its so nothing. and it goes on. for ten pages.

i like that valerie is given something to do, but it's not much. at least she's more interesting than everyone else in the novel. it's kind of boring that she just... had her beliefs that all ghosts are evil reaffirmed... but i assume it's setup for the next graphic novel, which has me worried.

the characterization in agit overall is bland. danny is too nice, vlad is too self-aware, sam and tucker are nothing, and valerie is... badass? and i find dan being secretly a scared softie all along rather trite. i worry that the two-dimensional characterization will lead to a valerie that is villainized and stripped of her nuance. i worry about that very much.

i hate how much agit brings up vlad liking football. can we get a new joke please.

ok. let's address the "ghosts are emotions" thing. there IS something there that i can appreciate. when there is no physical body that remains, what is there to go off of but consciousness, the "soul"? what happens when your mind becomes warped over years of existence, your consciousness decaying more and more over time until you're nothing but a blob of ectoplasm that could dissolve into the ether any minute? it's interesting.

however, a glitch in time decrees the entire ghost zone to be a realm of emotion, and for ghosts to be made of emotions, and that every ghost has a Primary Emotion that they are made up of. which is stupid. and i hate it.

nobody, no matter how melted their mind is for some reason or another, is the embodiment of one specific thing, and the simplification of the human soul to just one feeling or purpose is a disservice to the complexity of what it means to be a human being. it's odious to me, a betrayal of everything people are made of, our multitudes. i have been boiled down to someone "angry" far too many times to be able to appreciate someone's entire state of being as existing for only one particular thing.

also, they cherrypick the ghosts for the explanation of the emotions thing. what emotion is the box ghost. greed is not an emotion. liking boxes is not an emotion. the box ghost, god love him, is not just one thing; even a ghost like him contains multitudes, multiple desires.

the idea of a singular purpose also makes me sincerely worried for the people reading this novel and trying to embody it. as a teenager, trying to embody characters i idolized in cartoons only took a toll on my mental health and made it more difficult to navigate relationships. i understand not everyone is a sponge in this way, but as someone who was raised by tv instead of people, i cannot overemphasize the importance of fiction in an adolescent's life. it helps construct their worldview. especially for someone who is isolated from the outside world and has to construct their reality from the media they consume, like i had to as a child.

danny fenton is a 14 year old boy. he is a child. we have many pieces of fiction exploring how playing hero as a teenage boy and shouldering the emotional burdens of other people over your own is fundamentally damaging to your ability to navigate life in a healthy way (adventure time is an example of this that does it really well, steven universe is an example of this that i hate for unrelated reasons). i, as a 14 year old myself at some point, felt my responsibility was to other people above myself. that is treated as heroic in the narrative. it is not heroic. it is damaging.

danny was allowed to be of many minds in the show. he desired a lot of different things, fought for a lot of different reasons. to give this child the sole responsibility of healing two worlds and treating it as sweet, as something to be celebrated, instead of something horrifying that no child should ever have to shoulder... is odd.

speaking of, i have watched danny phantom all the way through not too long ago. i have a fresh pair of eyes not tainted by 20-odd years of fandom fermentation. the danny i know in the show is sweet and heroic, yes. but he's selfish and immature, he picks fights and throws the first punch, insults people to their face unprovoked, and is generally a little shit. and he's a misogynist, lest we forget.

i truly believe our danny would not want to shoulder this responsibility. he does not have the emotional maturity to do so. he refuses fights when he can, but does demonstrably find it thrilling to fight when it does come to blows. he's a person, he contains reasonable contradictions to have, especially when youre 14.

danny has very little sympathy for ghosts. he doesn't much care about their emotional wellbeing or their interests. he has very black and white thinking - he is the hero, they are the villains, he beats the bad guys. to have him suddenly say "yes, i not only have the capacity to help these people, but it is my duty to help them" is absolute gibberish. that's not danny.

not to mention that most of these ghosts are ADULTS who have been dead for decades. for him to take on the responsibility of helping ghosts, he is shouldering the trauma of death and some subjects he simply does not have the worldly experience to understand, let alone help with. that's fucking ridiculous.

i also feel like "i'm gonna heal the rift between worlds" would lead to a star vs the forces of evil series finale situation that causes WAY more problems and raises WAY more questions than it solves. the ghost zone and the human world are complimentary forces, the spiritual and the physical, and i find it much more interesting when they ARE seperate and were never as one in the first place. it gives more room for lore expansion, more room for stories. in my opinion.

let's talk about vlad. i HATE how vlad is handled in agit.

this is, again, supposed to take place right after phantom planet. i know the fandom hates talking about phantom planet, but let's fucking talk about phantom planet. it's canon. we cannot ignore it. it is part of the show.

in phantom planet, vlad conspires to nearly destroy the world to get what he wants. he squeezes the world's politicians for billions of dollars and wants to be considered the hero on top of it all, the one who saves the day. he is selfish and uncaring.

so you expect me, the audience, to accept that very soon after phantom planet, vlad is self aware enough to realize that he is the source of his own misery.

BULL.

SHIT.

vlad is not emotionally mature enough to have this revelation. in canon, it took him a decade of hiding in a cave without his ghost powers and with everyone he cared about long dead for him to realize he had done anything wrong. even then, he did not have the energy to do anything, to mobilize himself. all he could do was hunker down and wallow.

thusly, vlad realizing he has pushed everyone away himself after one fight with a time god makes no sense. it does not align with anything we have seen of him, pre-s3 flanderization or post. he still has other people he can blame, other things he can try. he still has plenty of walls and he can still deflect. this is not a situation in which someone's years and years of arrested development and denial can be crumbled.

i feel many think this is an earned moment because of the real life time that has passed between the end of the show and now, but in the chronological timeline, it is abrupt, inconsistent, and puzzling.

vlad dedicating himself to making amends with everyone he's hurt after one fight is stupid and i hate it. it was not earned. it's fanservice. it's pandering.

i also find the odd backpedaling on dan himself odd. his depiction in tue is very much one embracing his lack of humanity and caring. to add in that he actually does miss his family and his whole deal in that episode was just a mask feels disingenuous to me. it feels very "forgiving white diamond"-y to me, and for context, i fucking hate how steven universe handled the diamonds on every conceivable level, so it bringing to mind steven universe makes me want to turn my skin inside out

"oooo im secretly so lonely actuallyyy" this is so boring. this is so boring.

also, vlad abruptly deciding hes nice now is definitely a plot device to get dan a temporary body for some goddamn reason. him disintegrating because of something something quantum time mechanics is also arbitrary.

also its so funny that at the end they were like "turns out ghosts are feelings and stuff! anyway time to kick the notoriously harmless box ghost's ass" like come on man. fuck you.

anyway i hate the steven universe-ification of danny phantom that agit presents and i reject it thoroughly. thank you for coming to the hater conference

[steveroger]

Colouring rainbow gifs

The lovely @buckiecap​ and @djarsdin​​ requested a tutorial of some gifs from this TFATWS rainbow set.

My colouring process is kinda chaotic and it always depends on the gif itself. These three gifs will highlight the similarities and differences in how I colour my rainbow gifs.

You’ll need some understanding of basic gif making and adjustments. I use Photoshop 2021 but I imagine these processes will still work in other versions.

Some basic tips:

When doing rainbow sets, once I've got my base gif ready, I always make a hue/saturation layer on saturation +100 so I can see what colours I'm working with. I just keep it hidden so i can check how my colours are doing throughout the editing process.

Also something to stick at the back of your mind: you want your final gif to be as “monochromatic” as possible - make sure your final palette will be only black + shades of whatever colour you're targeting. This is not only to make the gif as colour-focussed as possible, but it also helps with saving your gif under 10mb. That saturation +100 layer I always keep hidden at the bottom of my gif so I can keep an eye on what colours are present.

It’s also helpful to understand how RGB and CMYK colours work and what to add/subtract when you want to bring out a certain colour. A good example of this is with Colour Balance:

You’ll notice the colours on the left are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (CMYK), while the other side is Red, Green and Blue (RBG). So if you want more cyan in your image, you’d push the bar towards cyan, but then you’re compromising the reds. In Selective Colour adjustments, the panel is reversed.

This knowledge is absolutely necessary when you’re doing any adjustment, so keep this in the back of your mind as I work through the tutorial.

Green gif - Eli's door

So I start with my hue/saturation on saturation +100 to check what I’m working with here. This gif of Isaiah's grandson opening the door has green, yellow and red as the dominant colours, and I can see a bit of cyan on the right. I’ll keep that hue/saturation layer hidden as a reference.

Normally when I make gifs I start with a curve or levels layer to get any unwanted hues or create a more visible scene. But in this gif, I'm pretty happy with the colours, so I'm just using a simple curves adjustment, because I want to have whatever is behind the door as the ‘background’ and the door frame is the ‘foreground’, so only a slight adjustment is needed here.

Since the colours are already prominent, I'm going to make the green more visible and vibrant. I do this by using selective colour in the green colour to make the green stand out. When thinking of CMYK adjustments, you might think that Magenta -100 would work, as that normally pushes the greens, but I find that this makes things grainy and patchy looking, as you can see here:

Instead, I’m enhancing cyans and yellows, and only pushing the magenta back just a little bit towards green. I’m not sure why green specifically does this, but it’s useful to know this when you’re colouring.

With the yellows, I want to push those more as well, since the amount of yellow usually influences the green-ness of the gif.. I'm also going to max yellow too since that will also make the green pop, but I also have to be careful not to distort the skin colour too much. I also want to balance the skin tone with a little redness so he doesn’t look like he has jaundice (skin tone will be explored later in the gif process)

I've added another selective colour layer on top of that, only adjusting the greens just to make it pop a little more. Don’t be afraid to use more than one selective layer, this can really bring out vibrant colours if you use it right.

Just to get some more depth, I add a colour balance layer, again just subtly pushing the cyan and yellow up and not playing with the green too much. Then my usual last layers are with a vibrance and brightness/contrast - I’m usually quite generous with contrast so I can bring out the different shades and it makes things a little more vibrant too.

This next step is really important when colouring people with dark skin - you want to lower the redness from their skin so they don't look unnaturally orange, as you can see here:

There is a fantastic tutorial here about colouring dark skin tones and avoiding the orange-washed look, and I recommend all gif makers to take note! It's difficult especially when doing rainbow gifs, and it takes some practice. I do this with a hue/saturation layer, and specifically targeting red and yellow and reducing saturation. I might need to play with selective colour or colour balance to get it right. Luckily Eli doesn’t move around too much, so I can use a mask to adjust only his face. 

And that’s the end product! now just ignore me as I re-upload the green gif in my set so you don’t see such a horrible jaudiced skin tone sldkfjsldkf

Yellow gif - Karli vs Sam

I'm gonna be completely honest here - this gif was very tricky to do. I actually have about three different versions of it. At first I thought "this is the yellow gif so I'm only going to have yellow tones", and did selective colour to get rid of any traces of green AND red, because I didn't want any orange at all. It ended up looking quite dull:

I mean.. yeah it’s yellow........... but it’s kinda boring. So I deleted all adjustments and watched the raw gif, and noted the orange light contrasting with the pale light. The raw gif itself already had some beautiful lighting - why get rid of it? It depends on what you want, but I like my rainbow gifs to have a different colour there to contrast with the main colour. 

Starting off with a hue/saturation layer with saturation 100+, I can see there are clearly yellows and reds and a bit of green on the ceiling. 

I thought the contrast of the orange and pale lighting was too good to mess up so I started with that. My first layers are vibrance and brightness/contrast to exaggerate the silhouettes and bring out the colours that are already there. 

I added a channel mixer layer to narrow down the colours. I wanted to fill the white bits with yellow, and with channel mixer I’m able to manipulate colours into something else while still looking natural and blended. I won’t be doing too much colour manipulating here so the settings are very minimal. I don’t know how to explain it but it just takes a little fiddling to figure out what works for your gif. You’ll notice the white reflections on the ceiling are now a solid yellow colour:

Next is a colour balance layer. I'm basically trying to bring out the yellow out. This is really just trial and error. I added a bit of magenta to bring the depth of the orange colours in the darker shades:

Now for selective colour. I'm often adjusting all of these while hiding/showing the hue/saturation layer I have kept at the bottom. This time, I’m aiming to subtract the reds and bring it down to a warm orange, and I do that by bringing it towards cyan/away from red, and away from magenta/towards green. 

Then I max out the yellows so it becomes the most dominant colour. I've also manipulated the green to make sure it is excluded from the gif - again, checking with the hue/saturation layer at the bottom, while keeping my eye on the ceiling and other places where I’ve noticed green lurking about. I don’t want any unwanted shades ending up in the final colour table.

Finally, I finish with yet another vibrance and brightness/contrast layer, just because I like things bright and vibrant!

And there it is! The orange is still there and adds a contrast, but you can tell that the main colour is the yellow. This gif seems very straightforward but I assure you, it took me quite a while to get this one right. This gif was a joy to work on because Sam was so very extra in this fight sequence lolll

Pink gif - suspicious mechanical grenade? idk

While this gif may look simple, it actually took a couple of tries before I got the colouring right. You'll notice when the ball activates, there is a bright green light that highlights the gas released and it reflects on the chair legs and carpet.

At first I tried this with the above mentioned selective colour method - which I thought turned out okay but it didn't sit with me right. Notice the reflection of the blue light on the carpet - it definitely isn't blue and more like a green-orangey kinda colour, and it doesn't look natural at all.

So I re-started from the beginning and had a look at what I’m working with, starting with hue/saturation at saturation +100. I can see that the original gif has red and green as the dominant colours, with yellow bits blending the two on the carpet. That’s what I was having issues with the selective colour - so I’ll be doing it differently. 

Enter: channel mixer. I’m gonna be honest............. I have ZERO idea how the channel mixer really works! It’s all a matter of trial and error, but I’ll try and explain my process step by step. 

I normally start in the blue channel (again - no idea why, it just works for me). I start with the reds, and I know if I go over 0, it will push the reds towards cyan, which will get it more purple-y:

Ooooh looking good!!! then I want to push the greens towards magenta, so that needs to go over 0 as well:

Woohoo! It’s already starting to look good. The green light and the way it blends into the red/pinks have all been completely changed into the cyan hues, so there’s a perfect reflection you can see on the carpet! Yay! I had a fiddle with the green and red channels but nothing too drastic. Here are the settings:

Even with just the single adjustment, I was already pretty happy with it and only did a few touch ups: I added a selective colour layer to bring out a more pinky-purpley colour, then a levels layer to brighten things up. It might seem very backwards to add a brightening tool at the end, but I didn’t want to mess up the original colour shades because I liked having the dark shadows lit up by the ball’s light.

And that’s it! Only three adjustment layers, but it took some time to play with the different adjustments and what worked best. Channel mixer can be really intimidating but it works like a charm when you manage to figure it out.

the end!

Finally I have to give credit to some amazing content creators and their brilliant colouring tutorials that have made such a huge impact in the way I edit. Some brilliant guides include:

this colouring tutorial by @favreaus​​ 

this colouring tutorial by @inejz-ghafa​​ 

this colouring tutorial by @meliorn​​

​I hope this tutorial has been helpful! I’ve tried to explain myself as best I can, but let me know if you’d like any clarification or have any questions. I’m still learning how to do things, and honestly most times it’s just randomly clicking things until something works out! 

[afriendlyblackhottie]

Risk

Summary: Chris couldn’t believe he was finally meeting you and you were even more more perfect than what he’d seen in your music videos.

Pairings: Chris Evans x Black!Pop Star!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Smut, Daddy Kink, Face Riding, Oral (female receiving), Girl on Top, Missionary, brief doggy style

(A/N: this has been sitting in my WIPs for a minute so it’s kind of a relief to finally put it out. Anyway, like, comment, or reblog.)

Tagged: @titty-teetee, @harrysthiccthighss, @iam-laiya, @mariahthelioness29, @night-of-the-living-shred, @liquorlaughslove, @blackmissfrizzle, @whiskey-cokenfanfic, @olyvoyl, @zaddychris

There was no way Chris could have possibly focused on the interviewer’s questions when you were so close. Your tight shirt showed off your tits so well it was distracting. As you laughed, they jiggled and he couldn’t help the half smile that came on his face as he couldn’t help himself, but to take a glance.

What was fucked up was that this was for a charity. You were a pop star that was very involved in investing in programs to protect the arts. He coming from a family of theatre nerds was of course interested in the same thing. The two of you got paired up for an interview. Only meeting for the first time today as there’d been a fundraiser event. Though Chris had been obsessing over you since he’d found out your name.

The first thing that struck him about you was how goddamn gorgeous you were in person. All of the pictures of you online didn’t even do you justice. He’d went through all your albums surprising himself with how much he actually liked them. You sounded like an angel yet your lyrics could be downright filthy sometimes. When he’d watched your most recent music video, he found himself growing hard seeing you in that tiny outfit and shaking your ass.

He’d seen your music videos. Watched a few live performances. Maybe clicked on a few interviews because he needed to know how your voice sounded. None of it prepared him for reality.

Those eyes and your lips. Fuck he could kiss the fuck out of your lips. You looked like you’d just walked straight out of his fantasies.

Nothing prepared him for how your ass looked in those jeans. His hand twitched as he managed to fight off the urge to just grab it. Then there were those perfect tits. Perfectly swelled under your t-shirt. Being distracting.

His eyes raked up and down your body another time. This time you’d laughed at something he had said. He wasn’t prepared for how giggly you were. How bubbly you were.

It honestly felt like he’d known you for years with how comfortable he found himself. Like you two were old friends catching up instead of strangers. As he made a shitty attempt to respond to something the interviewer had said your head turned as you listened. “Well, the arts have always been important to me,” his voice low and raspy like he’d just woken up. “My family was insanely involved in theatre when I was growing up and I jumped around from piano to tap dancing. I even did ballet for a little.”

You raised an eyebrow, a smile spreading on your face when he’d said that. “Really?” You perked up. “I did ballet.”

Of course, he knew that already because he’d taken a look at your Wikipedia page. “Really? How long?”

“I did it for,” you drew out the last word as you thought, “ten years, I think.”

He nodded almost losing himself as he looked into your eyes. “Wow that’s a long time. You must have loved it.”

“I did.” You smiled. “It was such an important part of my life growing up. All the friends I made. The things I learned and discipline. It’s also why I’m so flexible.” You giggled looking over at him again with this look in your eyes.

Were you flirting with him?

He quirked an eyebrow also grinning. His eyes darting from your eyes to your lips then back. How were you so goddamn pretty?

The interview moved forward with you sending signals that you were definitely flirting with him. You giggled at everything he said. Had played with your hair making you crane your neck to the side. The way your tits were fucking jiggling anytime he said anything mildly amusing. How you’d positioned yourself so they were perked up towards him.

Once everything had wrapped up, the both of you had been whisked away by your respective teams. He got one last good view of you walking away before being told to move onto the next thing.

It took two hours before your paths would cross again. This time at the panel the two of you were part of. You were once again seated beside each other. You were once again giggling at everything he said, while fixing your hair craning your neck to the side, and perking your tits in his direction. His hand twitched again as he fought the urge to grab your hand when you touched his bicep playfully to add onto something he’d just said.

This time when this had come to an end he’d manage to avoid being whisked away by his team. Getting off of stage fast enough to where they didn’t even see him. You lingered behind sort of blending in with the crowd as you managed to slip away.

The two of you bumped into each other smiles immediately spreading over your faces. “Hey.” The two of you said at the same time.

You bit your lip as the corners of your mouth were turned up. He let out a sigh before swallowing. “And here I thought I’d found the perfect hiding spot,” he said. 

“Actually, I’ve been eyeing this spot since we got here so I think I found it.” You joked back.

“Mmm, I don’t know. Maybe we should wrestle over it.”

You shook your head with a pout. “Sorry I can’t do that. I’m a lover not a fighter. “

He chuckled. Fuck you were cute. “Could I be a lover and a fighter?”

“Ohhh I don’t know. I feel like that’s cheating.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes you have to play dirty to win.”

That fucking giggle. Those goddamn jiggling tits. That goddamn hair. That fucking neck. And you perking your tits out. Except this time, you gave him a pretty generous glimpse down your shirt.

“You busy after this?” He asked.

You shook your head. “Does catching up on Netflix count?”

He laughed. “Yes, but well I was thinking of going out for dinner after this thing,” he said, trying to suppress whatever urge he was constantly getting to touch you. “And, I didn’t want to look like a dick and eat alone.”

At this point we got the point of how you were trying to convey your flirty ness with him. “And?”

“And,” he started, “I was wondering if you’d wanna join me.”

You nodded. “Where we going?”

He shrugged. “Wherever you want, Honey.”

“Don’t tell me that. I can be expensive,” you seemed to purr. Everything about you was making him feel like he was fifteen again and waking up from a wet dream.

He nodded eyes drifting down to your lips. “You’d be worth every penny. Gimme your number so I can find you after?”

You nodded. “It’s a date.”

“Yeah,” his mouth twitched as you walked away from him. He eyed you up and down as your backside was to him. Damn your ass looked good in those jeans.

—

It’d been a pretty long day, but finally it was over. Like promised through text, you and Chris managed to get away from your teams in order to be whisked away in a town car to a bar he said was great.

The two of you talked on your way over. This time you were a little more subdued. Your voice was lower, sensual. It made him feel like someone had hugged his heart and dick at the same time.

He was sitting so close as he’d managed to get the most private booth in the place so the two of you could talk. He was so damn close to you and you hadn’t moved the whole time his arm was around you. In fact, you seemed even closer than before.

He wanted to kiss you so damn bad. “You gotta man?” He asked, before taking a sip of his beer.

“Nope.” You popped the ‘p’ in the word.“You gotta girlfriend?”

“Nah,” he sighed. “Been single for a minute.”

You nodded. “Oh damn. You poor thing.” You rested your hand on his thigh.

“Yeah? How long you been single?” He asked grabbing your hand and playing with your fingers. That twitch in his hand had finally won. Your skin was just as soft as it looked like it’d be.

You shrugged. “For like a year,” you answered. Liking the feel of his rougher hand against yours. “I get so busy I don’t even think about it.”

“Yeah, same.” He somehow managed to scoot you closer to him. “Then sometimes you meet a cute stranger and then maybe you end up taking them home to smoke.”

You chuckled. “How do you know I smoke?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone in this town smoke?”

You nodded shrugging your shoulders. “True.” You smiled. “Fine.”

 After calling another town car and him paying the tab you were on his way to his place. Chris was still finding ways to touch you. Not that you were complaining that you were sitting so close.

Now the joint was resting between his lip as the television played in the background. Chris let out a big puff of smoke.

You were still sitting way to close. As he grabbed your hand again. Running his thumb across your knuckles. You were telling him a story about this photo shoot you had a few weeks ago that just so happened to be with you in lingerie. Then in turn he told you about a photo shoot he had to do for a free weeks ago where he just so happened to be shirtless the whole time.

Then you started talking about your favorite movies. To him telling you stories about all the shit that went down behind the scenes. Which led to you telling him stories about being on tour. Then you talked about music and he felt someone tug at his heart strings with the way your face lit up when talking about your favorite musicians.

He had to kiss you.

With the joint in between his fingers he leaned down to finally brush his lips against yours. “God, you’re fucking beautiful,” his voice once again at that low tone, raspy like he’d just woken up.

“You think so?” You looked up at him so innocently, peering up at him through those lashes.

He took another hit of the joint before leaned back down to your mouth. He blew the smoke into your mouth before kissing you again.

You started to make out deep. Stroking his cheek with your thumb. His tongue slid against yours as he pulled you onto his lap. You moaned into his mouth suddenly feeling all airy. If Chris wasn’t holding onto you, you may have drifted away.

He leaned to the side so he could put out the joint. When both of his hands were free, he put them under your ass so he could get handfuls of each cheek in each hand. Then making it jiggle.

You broke away from him so you could finally pull that top over your head. “Fuck,” he hissed seeing the tops of your breasts. You quickly reconnected your lips. One of his hands grabbed at you through your lacy white bra.

You let out a whimper that was like music to his ears. His mouth trailed down to your neck hoping to kiss you in a spot where you’d be forced to make that noise again. You shivered as his lips left hot opened mouth kisses on your skin.

Then it was time for Chris to pull his own shirt over his head, exposing his muscular physique. You put your hands on his shoulders as you kissed him more. He reached behind you to undo your bra. Your nipples all sensitive as they were exposed to the night air. Your body felt all fuzzy as you giggled when he smacked your ass.

His hands reached up to play with them. Fuck it was better than any thought he’d had about them since you’d met. Rubbing your nipples with his thumbs and making you moan.

You got off of him so you could undo your jeans. Except before you could even pull them off, he made you lay on the couch as he slid them off of you. He kissed along your stomach at first. Then he proceeded to take off your jeans and panties at the same time.

When you were finally completely exposed to him, he kissed you again. Then his mouth started practically worshipping your breasts. He licked your nipples with the tip of his tongue. He came to suck it wanting to hear that goddamn whimper again and then reeling at the other little noises you were making. “Fuck,” you moaned. He gave your other boob similar treatment before kissing a trail down to your lower half.

He could have died and gone to heaven after seeing that pretty pussy. He flicked his tongue over your clit loving the taste of your arousal. He’d pushed your thighs up so he could properly feast on you. Fuck you were so wet for him.

He wrapped his arms around your thighs so he could get as deep as possible. You were moaning so much for him. The noises you were making were fucking pornographic.

“Fuck I’m gonna cum,” you whined.

He stopped to kiss up your body so he could kiss your lips again. You could taste yourself on his lips. His fingers stayed on your pussy as he kissed you again. You gasped against him, throwing your head back.

His moved to your tits again. His tongue was craving to suck on them again as he finger fucked you. As you exploded around his fingers he decided to rub your clit to draw it out.

“Daddy!” You screamed.

“What’d you just call me, Baby?” He asked still rubbing your clit as you clung to him.

“I- I,” you stuttered, but it was hard to talk when he was doing that to you. “Ugh, Daddy!”

“That’s a good girl,” he kissed you again.

 He finally carried you off to his bedroom with your legs wrapped around his waist. He’d taken you apart so easily. Like he’d done this to you so many times before. Instead he’d just been thinking about it so much he didn’t want to fuck it up.

He sat down with you still wrapped around him. His jeans were still on, but you could feel him through his jeans and fuck. He felt so huge against you as he moved you right over it.

His fingers reached between you two so he could rub your clit again. Chris wasn’t your usual type, but you couldn’t deny that he was fine as fuck. Or that he was dangerously charming.

When he’d finally taken off his jeans and underwear, he sat you back in his lap so you were straddling him. He was holding you tight against him so even when you tried to sink down onto him because fuck you wanted to so bad, he wouldn’t let you. Like he needed you to know who was in control.

“Ride my face,” he said, slapping your ass.

You giggled. “Really?”

“Yeah you taste fucking delicious.”

You looked down at him as you could see his eyes peeking out. From underneath you. He really was eating you up like you’d be his last meal.

He felt like he was in heaven with his head between your legs. Like you were sweeter than any candy he could ever eat. Better than jelly beans. “Oh my god,” you breathed out a moan.

You moved your hips trying to ride his tongue, but it was almost too much. His beard was burning your thighs only adding to how good it felt. You grabbed at his hair while he smacked your ass again, palming it in his large hand.

He felt like he could taste your orgasm. The way you leaked out into his mouth. He didn’t even care that you were making such a big mess on his face. “Daddy, yes!” You gasped. You put your hands on the headboard to brace yourself because as your stomach started to tighten you could tell this one was going to be much more powerful. “I’mgonnacum,” you rattled off.

He chuckled into you pushing his fingers into you again making it so you had to ride his hand, too. How the fuck was this man able to get you like this and you hadn’t even taken his dick yet. Fuck you needed to take it.

He didn’t even let up when it happened. It was like he wanted more of you. He was drinking you up. Wanting to have you at his mercy. Like this was the last chance he’d get to feel your pussy on his tongue and he needed to take advantage.

It took two more orgasms for him to finally let you up. You fell down onto the bed completely spent. He didn’t even care as he kissed you hungrily. Quickly pushed you onto your back, wrapping his arms around your thighs and didn’t even give you time to realize what was happening before he slammed into you.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to feel you around his dick. And fuck did it feel perfect. You were so tight. So wet. So damn sexy with the way your mouth formed into an O because how was he moving his hips like that.

It should have been illegal for him to fuck you like this. For him to leave your pussy craving more from him. How the hell were you supposed to come back from this.

He fucked into your spot like he already knew where it was. Like the two of you had done this so many times before. All you could do was take it. All you wanted to do was take it and take it and never stop taking it.

You were everything he’d thought you’d be since he’d saw that first fucking music video. Your sparkly acrylic nails scratched his back. “Fuck me, Chris.”

He slapped your ass. “You call me Daddy,” he growled into your ear.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you buried your face into his neck. He should have not been able to fuck you this well. You bit your lip, as he put his forehead against yours.

The burn from the way he split you open was so good. This couldn’t have been the last time the two of you did this. Not when he was this deep inside of you.

The first time you came around him he pulled out of you so he could lay beside you. Then because he didn’t give a fuck about how it was too much or whatever you kept saying he made you sink down on his dick.

Your pussy creamed down his length. You kept telling yourself that you couldn’t take it even though you were riding his dick like such a good girl. The bed was shaking so hard you were scared you might break something.

This was about to be a long night.

—

Chris couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this fucked out. It was like when he thought he had enough you’d pounce on him and when you thought you’d had enough he’d do the same to you. Until finally the two of you passed out with his arms wrapped around you and you buried into his chest.

He kissed your forehead, nuzzling your face with his nose. He felt content for the first time in a long time with you there. Like you were meant to be there in his arms. You’d barely gone to bed at four in the morning so it was no wonder you were still asleep at ten a.m.

When he realized the time, he groaned because he was so late. He reached for his phone seeing the tons of missed called. “Baby?” He shook you gently.

“Mmm,” you hummed as you finally peeked up at him. “Fuck, what time is it?”

“Ten thirty,” he answered.

“Fuck,” you groaned, but didn’t even attempt to move. “My managers gonna kill me.”

He grinned because you looked so cute half asleep. “Same.” He pecked your lips. “Good morning, though.”

“Good morning,” you replied saying fuck it in your head as you stayed where you were. You were too comfortable to move. 

“We should do this again sometime,” he said, tracing patterns into your skin.

“I’d like that,” you replied.

“You busy tomorrow?”

“I have some stuff to do in the morning, but I’m free after nine.”

“Perfect. How about a late dinner?”

You smiled. “Like a date?”

He chuckled. “Of course.” His phone went off right when he was about to kiss you and he groaned because as much as he’d prefer spending time with you, he did have obligations to get to. “Hello?”

“Chris!” His managers voice boomed. “Where the hell have you been! Have you seen Twitter today?”

“No, I just woke up,” he said with a frown on his face. You looked up at him noticing the change in his tone.

“Well, you’re trending. They posted the interview online and fans are going insane.”

“What?” He said. “Hold on let me look.”

It wasn’t just him trending on Twitter. So were you. Together. He shook you so you could look before clicking on the thread.

Damn Chris was looking at her like she was a whole meal.

And at that moment Chris Jamal Evans was ready to risk it all

He over here just eye fucking her

There were a lot. Plus, all the memes people had posted. He hadn’t realized he made it that obvious. You started giggling not being able to stop yourself as he scrolled. “Wait is that her? Is she there?” The faint voice of his manager came through the phone.

“I gotta call you back,” he said before hanging up. “I am so sorry.”

You were still laughing as you grabbed your own phone so you could read through more. “It’s okay. Just glad I didn’t make it obvious that I was doing the same.”

“I knew it!” He laughed before tickling your side.

You tried to push his hand away and all that lead to was a wrestling match where he pinned you down. “Daddy!” You squealed which again music to his ears.

You struggled against him until you finally broke your hand away so you could reach forward to grab at his dick that seemed to awaken immediately under your touch. “That’s cheating!” He protested with a laugh.

“All’s fair in love and war.”

“You better not start something you can’t finish.”

You smirked. “Oh, I can finish it.”

“You know, I can afford to take the day off,” he noted realizing he was not letting you out of this bed anytime soon.

“Me, too.”

He leaned forward capturing your lips with his. Not even caring about morning breath. Just needing to feel you. As he turned you over so he could fuck you from behind he realized that it was true. He was ready to risk it all for you.

And it was pretty funny to watch you laugh at all the memes afterwards.

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy - Kikuta deserved better - 273-276

As I catch up on things, I’m gonna hit the highlights that really stuck with me.  Ogata is able to escape from Vasily using the tactics he observed from the showdown in Barato with Hijikata cutting through random row houses.  He’s seriously gotten into Vasily’s head as he hesitated to snipe aggressively after killing the wrong guy with Ogata’s cloak.

The only worthwhile thing from this continued and seriously a no longer interesting plot point, is getting to see Ogata wiggle under a fence like a cat.

So, I approve of this at least.  My own cat scores this as an 8/10 in cat wiggling.  Minus 2 points for not enough emotion from Ogata’s face.

Thankfully, Asirpa was able to escape with Sofia after Tsukishima gunned down Ariko.  It seemed to me that Koito froze/hesitated during that situation.  Tsukishima had no problem brutally shooting Ariko at point blank while Koito literally just hung back and watched. 

Asirpa is in a state of extreme shock. She just interrogated by Tsurumi to give up the code, watched Ariko be shot and now sees Boutarou’s corpse in the bottle-mobile.  Our girl needs years of therapy - she’s reaching the same level as our male cast members at this rate.

At least she breaks down in tears as Sugimoto tries to console her.  The artwork for this part of the page is excellent, it really does capture the melting of her mind and how she’s realizing how deadly the gold is.

It ties directly back to her argument with Kikuta before all this shit went down.  I’m always giving Sugimoto crap for being a moron, but it seems that he did make the right action by reaching out to allow her to hug his arm.  There is that soft look as he gazes down at her and just lets her be emotional.  It is clear that his presence is a comfort to her as she takes her time before returning to a more lucid mental state.  This is shown by how she opens her eyes and looks up before declaring that they need to meet up with Hijikata since she’s figured out how to crack the code.

Meanwhile, Kikuta rushed Ariko to a clinic to save his life.  Being the father figure/older brother he is, he tells him that it isn’t his time to die; he never made that makiri yet! And to my relief, Ariko wakes up!  Noda didn’t go for the lazy writing of killing of the minor Ainu character, something I was afraid of.

If his father saved him, it means his makiri was where he was shot in the chest under his uniform.  There is a lovely transition about a makiri in a fictional museum that was made by him, implying that he returned home and did make the makiri and likely resolved some of his identity issues, though it was still likely a tough life for him.  Ariko apologies for not being able to work as a spy for Central and really it isn’t like he’d be able to do so anyways.  But he did verbally point out he’s now politically on the side of someone like Asirpa to fight for their culture and right to exist in spite of colonial powers. The middle panel of Kikuta bidding him farewell just gives me the feels.  It is so clear that Kikuta knows he’s toast.  He saw Tsukishima shoot Ariko and Tsukishima likely watched him as he tried to save the man.

The fact that he said a casual line about going to an onsen.  Ugh, death flag for sure right there.  It seems Ariko knows that as he looks forlorn.  Kikuta is that sort of suave man who is going to look cool even though he’s doomed; he’s that awesome.

The action returns to Tsurumi at the church having solved the code.  With Tsukishima gone off to try to kill Ariko, Koito has remained behind.  All of a sudden Koito reverts to his extreme Satsuma accent when addressing Tsurumi in the absence of Tsukishima.  I think he didn’t even realize it at first, just like how after they escaped the fight with Boutarou, Koito spoke normally to Tsurumi without realizing it.

It is clear it took him a moment to realize he was speaking ‘Koito’ as Tsurumi is unable to respond to him and he then panics.  Koito is more than willing to chase after Tsukishima and support him, but Tsurumi instead recalls him.

At first he consoles himself that everything is okay. 

He is trying very hard to convince himself that everything that they witnessed through the keyhole was all an act to get the key!  Yes, it isn’t that Tsurumi doesn’t have some sort of awesome goal and this isn’t about how the death of his wife and daughter left him unhinged!

But the other random members of the 27th then comment on how strongly Nikaido reeks of beer . . . and Koito then thinks about how he and Tsukishima were hiding in the room at the church when Tsurumi ‘checked’ that he was alone.  And then it hits him - they were also played as a part of the ‘Tsurumi theatre’.  Unlike Tsukishima who has whole-heartily given himself over to Tsurumi, it is clear that Koito can’t.

That monologue sounded too good to be true.  He weakly says Tsukishima’s name into the rain as he then thinks ‘No . . .’  The rain is really fitting in this scene, I think it really is a stand in for Koito’s own disappointment and tears in this entire crazy quest for the gold.  Is he worried about his ‘older’ brother figure?  Himself?  Both of them?

He continues to try to rationalize the performance that Tsurumi gave them - even if Tsurumi lied to them, it wasn’t all a lie.  Oh Koito.  I want to give you a hug and pull you away as your little bon-bon-ness has won me over.  Most of that speech wasn’t for Koito, it was for Tsukishima.  Speaking about helping Japan is what Koito would like to hear but we can tell he doubts that as well.  Hence, his waffling.

But then he realizes that as Tsukishima has given so much - all of Tsurumi’s words, even if they were ‘sweet lies’ as he he referred to them on Karafuto, it was just perfect for Tsukishima.  However, Koito has broken the spell that Tsurumi held over him.  The final page of the chapter of Koito looking at the illuminated Tsurumi and shutting the door on him.  It is the exact opposite of when Tsurumi rescued Koito from the kidnappers when in his youth. I now find myself wondering how this relates to the tiger curse.  It is clear that the curse for Tsukishima will not end well.  After he shot Ariko, his eyes regained their sparkle!  Not good, not good at all!  However, have I misinterpreted it for Koito that by becoming disillusioned with Tsurumi he will be cursed to be miserable through him gaining independence from his hero worship of Tsurumi?  The idea that ignorance is bliss, and now Koito is well in the know.  The fact that when he and Tsukishima were sort of on the same page was when he could speak to Tsurumi but now that he’s on a different path from Tsukishima he’s tripped up again.

Chapter 274 finally allows Asirpa to determine the fake skins after what she witnessed with Boutarou in the brewery and thinking about Ainu garments that she figured out that Edogai likely went above and beyond with his fakes.  Thanks money counterfeiting guy from the fake Ainu village for the inspiration.  It is a lot of pages that tie together other plot points nicely but really doesn’t do anything for me as a reader personally.

The most important point is that as Sugimoto falls asleep while Asirpa and Hijikata work with the skins is that we get another flashback - one that links him to Kikuta!

and even more importantly - Hanazawa Yuusaku!  Chapter 275 starts out with an homage to the classic movie ‘Singing in the Rain’.  As soon as I saw Sugimoto spinning on a lamp post, it was obvious.  Yes, small town boy in the big city - causing trouble.  He gets in some sort of brawl with random guys from the army and is ‘rescued’ by Kikuta, who immediately realizes that he’s hungry and decides to treat him to some lunch.

It shows that Sugimoto has a short fuse and is an impulsive youngster.  Really, he is lucky that he didn’t do more stupid shit to get him in trouble.  We can also clearly see that Kikuta is a member of the 1st Division, the Tokyo based one that Sugimoto eventually enlists with.

Kikuta decides that he wants Sugimoto to impersonate Hanazawa Yuusaku and to go on a marriage interview for him.  This is because Hanazawa Hiro, the now identified wife of Hanazawa, is pulling the strings in the background to prevent Yuusaku from becoming a flag bearer.

This then makes us wonder why these two parents have such contrasting expectations for their only son.  It makes me think back to my theory that Yuusaku was a pretty poor solider and lacked any skill or potential.  Long ago, Tsurumi told Nikaido that Ogata is the ‘true heir’ of Hanazawa inheriting his military and [some] leadership skills as he stood on the watch tower in Barato ordering the random gangsters how to fight effectively.  Yuusaku is a disappointment for Hanazawa - he can only save face by having his son become such a symbolic part of the army.

I laughed at the next page where Kikuta confirms that Hiro is colluding with the young heiress to steal Yuusaku’s virginity and thus preventing him from becoming a flag bearer.  I love the posture of the terrified Yuusaku!

However, Hiro’s plan has been found out by Hanazawa and he consulted with the leader of the 1st Division to assist him with resolving this unpatriotic and embarrassing issue.  Recall that Ogata was born as a result of Hanazawa being posted to Tokyo - this implies that he likely became good friends with the leader of the 1st Division during this time.

To prevent anyone from identifying Sugimoto, he’s the perfect substitute for Yuusaku and changes into Kikuta’s uniform.  He’s one of those guys who just has that look.  Sugimoto immediately thinks that since he’s been treated well by Kikuta, joining the military might be a good way to find security - in food.  However, we get a link of the cap to Kikuta and what appears to be his dying younger brother.

Kikuta looks so sad, like there is something unfortunate with Sugimoto’s statement of food.  We don’t get to see his expression, indicating he’s likely hiding his emotions from Sugimoto and instead tells Sugimoto he’s going to have to train him in food etiquette.

He’s presented with some Western cuisine, something that may blow his cover and something that Kikuta didn’t expect as he watches from a tree outside.  But again, due to his extreme luck, he’s able to use nervousness as an excuse and it gives him time to state his family his super traditional so they wouldn’t have eaten food like this.  When he’s removed the cap, Kaneko Kaeko is smitten with his handsome face. He can use his excuse as a way to have an out for not knowing how to eat that tasty ebi fry (why to I hear ‘ebi fry’ in Nyanko-sensei’s voice?).

As she explains the fancy places she’s dined at, Sugimoto thinks about how he was living off of cat food.  Cue another reason why he just hates on Ogata, since he was stealing food from Ogata’s people! 

The rest of the dinner goes well, and Kikuta checks in with him.  Meanwhile, our wealthy heiress is completely smitten with him!

As Sugimoto mulls over the idea of a somewhat arranged marriage as a negative he spills the beans about Toraji and Umeko.  And Kikuta isn’t having any of his bullshit.  I love how Kikuta points out how selfish and downright stupid Sugimoto is being in all of this.  Kikuta gives Sugimoto good advice - which he’s clearly still never followed.

He makes it clear that he’s got to give up on that hometown and move on.  Which will be completely ignored as Toraji will end up in the 1st Division with Sugimoto in the trenches.  I’m now wondering how Toraji and Sugimoto reconnected.  Hrrrmmmmm?  Is this something that Sugimoto encouraged and that’s why he has all of these unresolved emotions about Toraji’s death in the war?

The chapter reveals to us that Tsukishima’s love ended up marrying the cousin of Kaeko, making Tsukishima’s acceptance of her ‘death’ even more heartbreaking as he thought that Tsurumi had lied to him about her fate.  [weeps bitterly]. 

As Kikuta and Sugimoto discuss what appears to be Yuusaku’s lack of a free will, he’s told not to meddle in others concerns.  What does Sugimoto do? The man just can’t keep to himself and he goes and finds Yuusaku to confront him.  He wants to know if Yuusaku wants to be a flag bearer even though it is a death sentence.  How does that conversation go? Just how we’d expect with all of the information we know about Yuusaku.

I love how he’s like it isn’t to meet my father’s expectations!  It is because understand my father’s convictions and fight for my country.  Okay, you keep telling yourself that Yuusaku, but it still sounds like you are doing this for your father, you know tomay-to, tomah-to.  Sugimoto mulls over what Yuusaku would choose if given the choice.  I just sigh as we know enough about Yuusaku’s backstory that the man only does what his father says - with great conviction. All of our Ogata flashbacks have made this so clear, Yuusaku is a doomed man from the moment he entered the army.  Maybe even a doomed man from his birth even.  Perhaps, he’s acutely aware of this, but based on how freakkin’ awkward he’s with Ogata and his older brother actions, I continue to think he’s not the brightest bulb in the pack and can only be used as a patriotic pawn.

Yuusaku then becomes suspicious of Sugimoto’s line of inquiry and realizes that he’s got Kikuta’s cap.

Not sure how to respond, he runs away and we learn that Kikuta’s younger brother died of illness during the first Sino-Japanese war.   That same war that killed Koito’s older brother and that Tsurumi and Tsukishima fought in as well. With the statement of illness, I know what most likely killed Kikuta’s younger brother - malnutrition - specifically beri beri.  As the Japanese military rapidly modernized using European models, they ran into an issue with many soldiers and sailors dying of some sort of mysterious illness and it wasn’t something that impacted the Westerners at all.  Most of this has to do with the ability to eat white rice which was much more processed.  It made it more expensive, but was nutritionally bad for men who came from lower incomes or poverty.  Remember how stoked Asirpa was when she ate white rice all the way back at the herring fishery?  If anyone has read “House of Five Leaves” by Natsume Ono, you’d know the protagonist is a poor ronin and he falls ill due to beri beri.  The solution was to return to the countryside/hometown to eat a more diverse diet.  For a more detailed explanation of how bad this was for the Japanese military check out the video by Linfamy on youtube here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzIBpFDRr5g

The video even highlights the fierce (and counterproductive) competition between the Army and Navy which has already been well defined through Koito’s backstory. The chapter ends with Sugimoto dropping the cap and the polite man who picks it up for him is Tsurumi with Ogata, Usami and Tsukishima in Tokyo. The plot thickens . . . somehow Sugimoto got mixed up in the business of the 27th and apparently Tokyo isn’t a vast city that you can get lost in and everyone knows everyone.  Like how I was on flight to Saskatoon and the man next to me started up a conversation how he was from Burlington and went to Guelph and my friend who I was going to visit was also from Burlington and went to Guelph it is a small world kinda moment and in agriculture.  I digress though.  Things are starting to pull back together but I’m still not 100% on with this plot direction/story arc.

[smylealong]

The Long Ballad - thoughts

Just finished The Long Ballad and I have to say, I enjoyed it. Primarily because I went in with 0 expectations. After the brutal and fascinating journey that was Nirvana in Fire, I wanted something that did not require much thought and was enjoyable. And The Long Ballad delivered. I primarily went in for Liu Haikuan, knowing that he is a bit role, and I wasn't disappointed. I will discuss the details of the show below and because there are some spoilers, I will keep it under "keep reading"

PLOT: After the brutal death of her family, Li Changge (Dilraba Dilmurat) goes on a self-imposed exile. The story is about her journey. She goes from an angry, revenge-seeking princess to a woman who comes to see the bigger picture and finds inner peace and true love. This is also the story of Ashile Sun (Wu Lei), the battle-hardened war veteran who slowly comes to realize the futility of war and understand where true happiness lies. This is the journey of Leyan (Zhao Lusi), the soft, sheltered, shy princess who finds her own form of courage and strength. We also witness Hao Du (Liu Yuning), the cold-blooded, by-the-books soldier who falls head-over-heels in love with Leyan. There is also Wei Shu Yu (Alen Fang) who goes from being a useless waste of space to brotherzoning himself. (He does it all on his own. No one places him there.)

The series is adapted from the manhua "Chang Ge Xing" (长歌行) written by Xia Da (夏达). The manhua, apparently, got embroiled in some legal issues with its publishing company and is hence left incomplete. The team of Long Ballad got the writers, Chang Jiang and Pei Yu Fei on board and the duo did a commendable job in making changes in the characters and the story to deliver a complete package to the audiences.

The plot, while complex and layered, is also very sanitized. They touch upon fairly dark topics such as fratricide, human trafficking, slavery, biological warfare, and rape, but the topics are treated with kid-gloves. The rape, for example, is never shown. Only implied. This is a very important detail to remember while watching the show. Do not go in expecting a "Nirvana in Fire" or even "The Rebel Princess", you will be disappointed. Go in expecting a Young Adult story, and you will be rewarded.

CHARACTERS AND PERFORMANCES:

Li Changge: The protagonist of the story, Li Changge, starts as a boisterous, confident, but naive Princess. This is primarily her story, told mainly through her point of view. She goes from town to town, actively taking part in the governing of the cities/states. Fighting in wars, strategizing, making mistakes and learning from them. Finding both love and inner peace in the process. As you may have gleaned, the character is a bit of a Mary Sue, in the sense that she is almost perennially outsmarting everyone around her and people are constantly complimenting her on her smarts. That said, Changge does end up making a huge mistake and there are some serious consequences to her mistake, which decreases her Mary Sue-ness. The fact that not every man is falling for her like some other Mary Sues we know, coughA'Wucough, is also a HUGE positive. Dilraba Dilmurat does a commendable job as Li Changge and I don't really have anything negative to say about her performance.

Ashile Sun: He is the Tegin (General) of the Eagle Division of the Ashile Tribe and the foster son of the Great Khan of the Tribe. He is a fierce warrior and a quiet man whose perfectly ordered world is turned upside down upon meeting Li Changge. He is the hero of the story and is a character I enjoyed. Given his age, people did have some concern about Wu Lei portraying such a "masculine" character, but Wu Lei rose to the occasion spectacularly. I could discard Fei Liu (not an easy task, because damnit, I could still see the little murder puppy in some angles because the face is still the same, yet different), and see Ashile Sun instead, so full points to Wu Lei.

Li Leyan: Leyan starts as the soft and delicate princess who cannot stand up for herself. Her story is so beautifully shown. The way she comes to understand her country, her people, and learn true compassion is so beautifully shown that it really melted my heart. I loved the bits where she came in and Zhao Lusi embodied the character perfectly. Her love story was arguably the best thing in the story.

Hao Du: Meet the guy that stole the show. The stoic, cold-blooded, brutal warrior who is absolutely smitten with Li Leyan, the princess he is supposed to guard. Hao Du is a man of few words and Liu Yuning portrays the complex emotions with his expressions. He conveyed the cold and unfeeling mask, the pure love, the devotion, the heartbreak, and the complete surrender to Li Leyan - he showed it all. It was just... FABULOUS.

Wei Shu Yu: Meet the Ma Zitan of this story. Only, unlike Zitan who is both terrible and useless, Wei Shu Yu is just terribly useless. Alan Fang was reasonably good in portraying this nothing character. There is nothing else to say about him.

Ashile She Er: I have to talk about this character. He starts off as the rival to Ashile Sun, the petty guy who is there to make the hero look good. But slowly, we learn that deep inside, he is just a hurt and confused child who is looking for one person who would love and trust him for who he is. Not for his name, not for his title (Young Khan, ie, crown prince), or the power he wields. His relationship with Ashile Sun is the most complicated one of the story and he gets a beautiful character arc. Kudousi Jiang Ainiwaer portrayed the progression of the character convincingly.

The rest of the cast is adequate.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

OST: The OST is beautiful and is definitely worth a listen. My favorite track is the one sung by Liu Yuning. Man, the guy can sing!

Costumes: The costumes are not the best I have seen (NIF and JOL have spoiled me in that department), but they were not bad either. The fur on Ashile Sun's war costume, especially the one around his neck, made me want to itch my own neck, lol.

Cinematography: The long shots are done well, but the camera does switch angles a bit too often sometimes, which was rather distracting.

Graphics: Since the story is taken from a manhua, there are some scenes, especially the war scenes, that are shown in manhua panels. While this works, mostly, there are scenes where they become a tad comical. There are moments in the series where the graphics are in the background and a character is yelling some dialogue. NONE of those scenes worked. They were cringeworthy. Question to the writers: What do you have against boys aged eight to fourteen? Why did you do this to them?

OVERALL

Overall, I enjoyed the series. Was it the best I have ever seen? No. Definitely not. But this was not the worst either. The series is complete and does not leave any thread hanging or plot point unaddressed. The acting is adequate and I don't have any complains in that department. Yes, it was rather simplistic in its solutions and Changge does get some things done way too easily. The sanitizing of the more serious aspects can be off putting to the viewers expecting a dark, gritty tale. Go in with the expectation of watching a YA story, and you will be treated to an enjoyable one.

Final rating: 7 out of 10.

[heli0s-writes]

Good Enough

Summary: From this ask:  i read your deadcrush miniseries and ig i got caught in the feels and love the way you write 💛 i was wondering if you could write something bucky x y/n where she’s younger but they’re in a stable relationship and she becomes pregnant? like she‘s happy and excited but bucky is kinda worried bc of his genes, past, etc.

A/N: So sorry this took like five months! 2.5k words. Fluff with a little cussing involved.

Bag of Tricks One-Shots Masterlist

“How do you feel about the color orange?”

It’s a Friday night in the tower, almost bedtime when you embark of a journey of questions, carefully placed breadcrumbs for Bucky.

“I feel… fine?”

“Light orange or dark orange?”

“What’s dark orange look like? A dirty penny?”

“Light orange it is.” You scrunch your nose at the thought of painting a room the shade he’s imagining.

“What for?”

You shrug.

When you both brush your teeth, you take glance at him in the mirror, eyes trailing from his brow to his chin, attentive to the way his nose slopes and his jaw cuts. Jesus, you’d be lucky if--

Bucky mutters from behind a mouthful of toothpaste suds, “What is it?”

After four years it makes sense that he would be able to figure out when you’re keeping thoughts to yourself. He’s in your head, Bucky Barnes. Even when he’s not there, you’re thinking of him. Every second of the day, really. It’s Bucky breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and all other hours, too. It makes you a little bewildered with joy that you can feel so much for a single person.

Even before he kissed you at the end of that horrid mission--- when you nearly drowned in some lake in Scotland. He had plunged into the murky depths, arm gushing blood, yanked you up onto shore and performed CPR. Your ribs nearly broke and Sam was by his side, head in his hands. Get up, get up, get up, goddamn it!

With a final two-handed press into your chest where the slightest bit of crunching could be heard, you spat. Two mouthfuls of foggy blue-green right into his face.

FUCK!

Sam sighed in relief, leaning back with his hands on his waist because if you hadn’t woken up, he thought, Bucky would have burned down the entire country.

I think--- another sputter as you attempted to catch your breath—the fucking Loch Ness monster--- fuck. I think I saw that shit.

Blinking the prickling from your eyes, you struggled to see clearly from the swelling of your lids. Your sternum felt bruised, and in front of you, Bucky looked about ready to burst into tears.

You got a little—haha—my spit—on your face.

He snarled and you reeled back in response. He snarled and shoved you back into the mud and kissed you until you coughed again into his mouth, a final splash dowsing a blazing moment.

Sam looked away with a grin and spoke into his earpiece, updating the rest of the team of your status. She’s up. Well—sort of. Barnes is kind of all over her.

Even before that moment, your head had been swimming with all thoughts of him along with desperate attempts to drive them away—make them small and unseen so you don’t trail behind him like a lovesick idiot.

He was the damn Winter Soldier. He was a legend and you were just a loud-mouthed kid, only twenty.

You had been rough around the edges, needing a lot of preparation and training before you could run any missions. There was a lot of difficulty at first, especially when it came to Steve. You were always too clumsy, too brash, not enough pirouettes and cartwheels. Whatever.

So, after days of doing nothing but getting scolded and running simulations alone with FRIDAY, Steve dragged Bucky into the weight room where you were throwing a seventy-pound medicine ball around like it was a can of soup.

Punch her. Steve had commanded with a smirk, a little irritated that earlier in the day you kicked his legs out underneath his shield. Punch her with your arm.

You almost shit yourself. And Bucky looked like he could have, too. It took a lot of yelling from Steve, yelling back from Bucky, and incomprehensible yelling from you before Bucky was so overwhelmed with the noise that he just did it.

That powerful arm pulled back, whirred, launched itself forward and you had bat it away like a ping pong ball, feet grounded assertively. Wide blue eyes pierced you, made your heart leap into your mouth, and when he did it again you were so struck by him it hit square in your chest.

Steve clapped his hands together. Great. Meet your new training buddy. You two rough each other up—Buck, you get her right because she’s inconsistent and I’ve got her signed up for a patrol three weeks out.

As Steve promised, three weeks later, you were crammed into a tiny car next to Bucky. The second his shoulder rubbed against yours, you found yourself thinking that you were either going to have his baby, or you were going to die alone.

It was a joke, to start, but you really had it bad, finding yourself more anxious and fearful, and covering it up with smart quips and comments in hopes of throwing him off.

Barnes, you get The Avengers Ass Award from me, Cap be damned.

Absurd bantering during jogs together when he would stop to pull his hair back and you were struggling to keep up. Your spine tingled when a strand of hair fell forward and hung over his face. Bucky are you from Tennessee ‘cause you’re the only ten-I-see.

He would laugh and wink, call you baby, and egg you on because kids are inexplicable, and Peter Parker’s twitter feed had opened his eyes to all sorts of compliments used in the modern age between friends.

Yeah, you would grin, totally, friends. Me and you, totally, definitely, friends.

Eight months later, Scotland turned the whole thing sideways.

Yeah. We all knew. Y’all are stupid-cute. Sam had snickered. In your ear through the comm link were cheers and whooping. Bucky turned red like the cut on his arm.

-

“What about green? How do you feel about green?”

“You’re doin’ the thing again.” His comment borders on annoyed as he gives you a sideways glance, throwing his toothbrush back in the cup with a tinny clink.

“What thing?”

“Pretending you’re deaf.”

“Okay...” You smirk, “but what about green? You like green?”

He scoffs, moves so that he’s behind you and swings both arms around to lock over your middle. His chin rests on your shoulder, the scruff of his beard rubbing against your cheek. Once again, you’re reminded of just how much you adore him. Your tummy flutters with nerves as his eyes find yours in the glass, big and curious.

“What’s goin on with you? Tell me what you’re thinking.”

-

Tell me what you’re thinking.

The fallout of Scotland lingered awkwardly after the plane ride when he rushed back to his room taking long strides and not giving you another glance. He didn’t even have the courage to look at you—only facing the side wall, tucked himself behind the button panel.

Two weeks passed before you cornered him in his own room and spoke those words that would eventually become an integral part of your relationship.

Tell me what you’re thinking, Bucky. If it was a mistake, tell me. If it wasn’t, tell me. You’ve been avoiding me and look—Barnes, I want your goddamn babies, but c’mon. You gotta throw me a bone, I’m shit at reading signs.

There was a strange look in his eye, an overcast sweep staring at his hands clenched together tightly, and for the first time in a long time he didn’t laugh at your jokes. The plates whirred to his left, the knuckles turned bone white on his right. You opened your mouth silently. Three breaths passed before you pushed him up against the wall, using all your strength to peel his hands away.

Then, a kiss. The softest of kisses you could give another human being. Because he was made of memories and regret—pieced back together in the form of Bucky Barnes as fragile as a glass menagerie. You didn’t have to ask him what he was thinking again—it was all over his face: He wasn’t good enough. He was a broken thing. You deserved better. Someone your age, maybe someone who could give you a different life.

So, as you had always done, you bat it away and grabbed him by the face. The second kiss had bruised you both. Sam didn’t let either of you live down matching cut lips for a month.

-

“What’s your favorite animal?” You ask quietly, ignoring Bucky’s question as you snuggle up next to him in bed.

“Darlin’… I’m tired. Either tell me what it is, or lemme go to sleep.”

You pout and ram your forehead into his arm childishly, “Just tell me!” Usually he thinks it’s cute when you act like this, but tonight he’s had enough of it. He calls your name in a low tone, the same kind of voice Steve uses when you’ve been too nonchalant with mission orders.

In the dark, you grip onto his hand and press your cheek against his arm, commanding your throbbing heart to still just for a moment. “Do you remember when we went to Clint’s place last year?”

“For Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah. And he—he had some of Laura’s family over?”

“And that wretched green bean casserole?”

You laugh a little, swallow thickly, “Remember after dessert when I asked to hold the baby?”

Bucky pauses, digs around in his brain for the moment, “Yeah—you said it was ugly and…”

The lamp on the end-table floods the room orange as Bucky sits up and peers down at you still attached to his elbow. There is recognition in his eyes and suddenly he looks his age—pallid, gaunt, and so deeply afraid. You can only manage a tiny lopsided tug of your lips.

“Are you?” He asks, voice shaking.

You wring your hands nervously, shut your eyes, and hope that when they open Bucky’s expression would change from pained to elated.

“Shit, baby. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“Okay, guess you’re not taking it well.” Your face burns with embarrassment before the heat falls into your stomach like stones. It should have been a moment of bliss—when the man you love would scoop you up into his arms and spin you around while confetti flakes sprinkles from the sky. Then, fireworks, shot by Iron Man would spell Baby Barnes! in the background.

Instead, Bucky looks like he might die on the spot.

He can’t help but feel so worthless, because he hardly feels like he deserves you most days, much less face the thought of bringing an entire person into the world. A child. An innocent. And him—unworthy of goodness.

He chokes, “Baby, I—the, fuck. I can’t give this kid—” He sputters and groans, throws his head back against the wall and you think you might hear the plaster cracking behind his skull. Your face twists into a look of irritation.

“You better not say what I think you’re going to say.”

He looks up, shocked, then quickly ashamed.

-

I can’t give you the life that you deserve. You’re… you’ve got better options than me. You deserve to be with someone your age.

Four months after the near-drowning and the most perfect, sweetest, kiss. Four months after telling you he would love you, Bucky pulled away in the middle of the night and shut himself out of his own future. You had laughed, and then cried, and then let him have his way. Okay. Yeah, if you really think so.

The next week, Tony threw a party for the new SHIELD recruits and you had gotten extremely drunk off eight mouthfuls of whiskey. Across the room was one very expensive Japanese vase, standing five feet tall and gaping at the ceiling.

The recruit next to you watched in awe as you tossed all empty shot-glasses clear over the heads of seventy people and they crashed into the chasm of the urn, hand up dramatically as if you were making a 3-pointer. Steph Curry with the shot, boy!

Tony sent Bucky a contemptuous look and mouthed fix this the same time the young man’s arm snaked around your waist. Then, you clasped your hand over his with a wolfish grin and waltzed with him out of the room.

Bucky stormed after, snatching you off the recruit who was happily kissing you against the wall. Bucky scowled, squared his shoulders and demanded to know what you were thinking.

With a wide and slow sweep of your outstretched hand, you bowed, teetering just a little.

Buck, you said I deserved better. Here it is. Its name is Henderson.

Bucky pointed at the agent, suddenly caught in the middle of a quarrel he never intended on seeing. The Winter Soldier, looking like he could level the floor, and you, just as strong, glaring back matching his ferocity. You think this … boy –a condescending scoff sent Henderson shrinking down-- could give you better?

He’s my age! Wasn’t that your suggestion? Hey! Henderson, you can give me ‘better’, right? Go grind on each other at a club like us kids do? Make-out in public and dry-hump in the car before fucking all night at your place? Or hey--- let’s fuck all night right here! Do you know—Henderson, do you know whose room is two doors away from mine?

Henderson had been smart enough to sneak away before he could see Bucky press you up against the wall and latch his mouth onto yours. Tears were streaming down your face, way before your tirade had finished. It poured and dripped and wet the front of both your shirts. Bucky Barnes, you’re full of--  

He didn’t let you finish. He held your face and wiped your tears. He kissed you again for the last first time, rekindling the fire he had been trying to extinguish.

It would burn, Bucky thought then, until you chose to leave him, because he wasn’t going to leave you again.

-

“Say it to me again.” You hiss, “Try me.”

“Baby…”

You crawl on top, grab his face with one hand and squeeze until his cheeks mush up and his mouth hangs open. “Don’t be so fucking self-deprecating! I don’t like it! You’re being mean to my Bucky and I’m gonna beat you up because I love him!”

“Un--- o—okay- hon, leggo—” the words escape him pinched together, but you are stubborn. You hold on longer, glare at him harder until he lets out a long-suffering sigh, relenting with a smile—still crushed by your thumb.

Happily, you give him a kiss on the cheek and let go. Bucky rubs his jaw where your fingerprints feel like they might bruise more than just his ego.

A tentative look at your belly, still smooth and firm. His hand finds the plane of it, fingers brushing the skin and over newly forming goosebumps. A surprising amount of excitement flutters in his own at the thought. It’d be good. A good baby. Made up of him and you, and the love you’ve fostered in him, too.

“Mmm, so… green?” You mutter, leaning down to kiss him once more. “How do you feel about green?”

Bucky laughs into your mouth. Defeated. Elated.

“Yeah. Green’s good, honey. Green’s good.”

-

perm tags: @whothehellisbucky @serpentbaby @badassbaker @alagalaska @cake-writes @crist1216 @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan @infinity-saga @jamesbarnesthighs @pinknerdpanda @xoxabs88xox @imsoft-barnes @momc95​ @typicalangel​ @wretchedgoddess​ @readeity​ @iwannasail @ya-lyublu-tebya @geeksareunique​ @wildefire​ @satanxklaus​ @jhangelface0523

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 30: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible III)

I bet the powers that be at the Mission: Impossible movie factory didn't lose any sleep over the stupid colon in the title that screws everything up. I mean, just look at that up there with the colon after my date, then the colon in the middle of the OG title, and then it's like, well, you can do whatever you want with punctuation but we're adding a subtitle after it now and you just have to deal with it. On posters and stuff it's just "Mission: Impossible" and then underneath those words they put "Ghost Protocol" so they don't have to deal with it. What a mess. I tell you it is a damn mess is what it is.

Anyway, we have arrived at the M:I movie that, more than any of the others, just really hit the spot for me when I saw it upon its original release. I saw it at the end of a frustrating and tiring work day and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. At some point in the middle I realized that I was enjoying it thoroughly without having to tolerate the kinds of flaws that were apparently part and parcel of this kind of movie. Maybe there were flaws that I just wasn't registering. We'll soon see.

Continuing the tradition of making very hip choices for the directing duties, here we have the live-action directorial debut of Brad Bird, who started off directing episodes of The Simpsons before moving on to no less than The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Dude had two Oscars on his mantle by the time he showed up for this. Press play already!

Um Sweet Christ those opening shots look gook in 4K like HOO boy

Whoa, neat opening where Sawyer from Lost is chased off the top of a building in Budapest but his jacket deploys an air mattress right as he almost-hits, but then he's shot by Lea Seydoux in an alley, rat-a-tat-tat with the action here, like what is up

Simon Pegg is back, and he's being tricksy with the tech in a prison! He's opening cell doors and the prisoners are surprised and delighted with that twist! He plays them a jazz standard on the intercom and Ethan Hunt suavely emerges from one of the cells. Fun silly things ensue involving Ethan's rebellious and confident independent strategy and a small riot that seems kind of like a bar fight.

He has made a pal in the joint and he's breaking him out. Some kind of cool tech creates a really sweet vortex-y hole in the floor and they are swooped up by their helpers, it's fun.

We're introduced to Paula Patton who is a new team member, and then the credits roll, and they are spirited in a way that recalls the first movie, also showing real scenes from later in the movie.

Flashback to the thing that was happening with Sawyer shows how that botched operation, something about a file and a courier, got Sawyer killed because lots of bad guys were all over the place there. AR contact lens technology figures prominently, and that is a good idea (plus we totally might have those soon, right?).

0:18:16 - Once again we begin the movie without the leading lady from the previous one, but we're starting to get an explanation here. Or just a tease of one I guess.

And quickly we get a sneaky-style self-destructing message that sets up that Ethan has to disguise himself as a specific Russian and sneak into the actual Kremlin. This movie 100% gets what a Mission: Impossible movie is supposed to be.

This time, they aren't using fancy masks or voice shifter things, just costumes and a fake mustache. They comment about that in the dialogue but don't explain why.

0:24:52 - Dialogue mixed SO QUIET here I have no idea what SP just said. It seems like you're supposed to have heard it.

But that is quickly forgotten when they use the coolest spy gadget of them all - a screen that is placed in a corridor that makes the guy at the other end of the corridor think it’s the corridor, but it's a screen and SP & Ethan are hiding behind it and it is super super neato I love it

Then just when it's cool that that is going well, it's suddenly cool how NOT well it's going because someone is spying on their spycraft! The thing they were going to heist isn't there, and someone deliberately makes their comms thing be heard by the bad guys!

And THEN we see something we really didn't think we'd see and it is kind of mind blowing - Ethan escapes from the Kremlin with a very smooth quick-change of his disguise that we see him do in all one shot… but then the Kremlin totally explodes and it explodes all over Ethan as he's running away! It looks amazing!

Right after that there is some fun with subtitles - Ethan is in the hospital all damaged and concussed and stuff, and the news is talking about the obvious big story, and the subtitles are in Russian. At first I was like, "hey is my home theater tech busted?" but no, the subtitles become gradually more in English as Ethan starts to come out of it. Then we see with subtitles that Ethan is reading lips about the police people that want to be bad guys to Ethan.

After Ethan escapes, we shift to a wholesome-looking Russian family we haven't seen before. The scene is a nice little piece of drama about how the dad sees the Kremlin news and wants to get the family out of there, and very quickly that goes south and thugs have them all at gunpoint, it's nicely done

Ethan is being extracted by two new characters played by accomplished, Oscar-nominated actors Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Renner… the conversation is dire and I don't want to type during it gahhh gah gah gah I am watching because holy shit this goes south too! TW informs Ethan that the DoD is going to frame him for blowing up the Kremlin and his only choice is to escape. He's telling him HOW to escape in a funny way, but they are attacked and it's visually very interesting and TW is headshot and they are in the water and it is such bad news for Ethan and his new colleague played by Mr. Renner, I probably typoed a lot during that because it was so hard to look away.

So Ethan is on the hook for the terrorist attack of the century and he's being chased by a little battalion of thugs who just shot that important spy boss, and he's in Russia. It is very not good for Ethan.

He's with JR and JR is playing a different character for him. He's a bookish analyst guy who feels very out of place in action-land.

We're learning about the main bad guy, Hendricks, who was the guy that screwed everything up in the Kremlin. He's a super-smart theoretical physicist or something who has big, well-thought-out ideas about destroying the world with nukes, and he took nuke codes from the Kremlin. So things are just really really hairy and it's effective storytelling is what I'm saying.

Also effective is that they met up with SP and PP on a neat secret train car thing that is well appointed with spy gear

And VERY VERY EFFECTIVE is what happens next, which is a series of establishing shots of Dubai which KILL ON MY TV. I am glad I have a 4K panel, kids. This begins what I recall as being an extended sequence of sweet-ass suspense. Ethan has to break into a server room by climbing the outside of the 130th floor of the Burj Khalifa using glove-gadget tech that will hopefully work. There is at least some actual Tom Cruise clinging to the side of that building. It's so cool looking. And to make matters worse, a dust storm approaches! Or should I say "to make matters even cooler looking". Yes I should. Please read that part.

Paula Patton's character seems underdeveloped so far, especially compared to her teammates Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.

Jeez you guys, if you like suspenseful action scenes about barely surviving climbing a skyscraper this movie is for you.

1:05:34 - In the middle of a tense conversation we see that they were using the maskmaker but it wasn't working. They just don't want us to have mask fun in this movie. They hate mask fun. Why does Brad Bird hate mask fun.

Oh then this scene which is neat - bad guys are meeting with LS… but Ethan and JR are taking their place, and PP is taking LS's place for the real bad guys one floor down. The movie explains it better than me, but it is pretty exciting, the two meetings happening at the same time with opposite trickery.

Hah, SP does a sweet fake-hand trick to get the diamonds from the bad guys so he can get them to Ethan and JN, and JN is doing the thing where he uses the contact lens tech… gosh why are you even reading this, just watch the movie. I really like the tricksy espionage.

It all falls apart because LS spots the contact lens in JR's eye. The plot is moving along in a way that, I'm once again noticing, would normally require more half-assed-ness. It's just a solid spy plot. Which probably makes these notes more boring. Poor you.

LS dies by getting kicked out of the open window of the Burj Khalifa with a brewing sandstorm in the background! Neat looking!

And then a thing where Ethan is in a thick dust cloud and he's tracking the important paper thing with his tracker device, and it starts moving quickly at him and we realize just as it's too late that it's in a car that's gonna run him over! Then that mechanic gets used in a car chase in a dust storm, which we don't see very often outside a Mad Max movie, and that climaxes in a really cool looking collision, followed by the reveal that one of the nuclear code bad guys was Hendricks in a supermask. So we DO like mask fun after all! Except why do we care that it was Hendricks?

A scene where JR is confronted for maybe being a double-crosser has a beautifully choreographed gun-get-grabbity-grab thing that was probably super fun for the actors.

1:27:05 - JR tells a story that at first we think is that family we saw briefly almost scramming, but no, he's talking about Ethan, and what seems to be a story about Ethan's wife (Julia from the last movie) getting killed in Croatia, and Ethan killing six Serbians for revenge, and that's why he was in prison in the beginning? It's still a little mysterious and kind of complicated. It doesn't quite fit with what we think we know.

Dubai imagery is pretty. I have been to Dubai. I am standing by for your marriage proposals now.

I didn't really follow how we got to this point, but Ethan went for a walk and met with some underworld Dubai person and made a deal the ended up with a huge cache of spy gear and a private plane to India. I went to India like right after Dubai. I have my own car and a job kind of so you might need to calm your hormones at this point.

A probing exchange with PP establishes that indeed Ethan's story is that he killed the men who killed his wife. Doesn't really seem legit, though. There's more to the story, clearly.

One of the tech things they play with on the plane is the most magic-seeming one. It is a suit that looks like tight chain-mail, and it floats over a cart, like a magic carpet that you wear.

We're introduced to Brij Nath, whose name I had to look up so I could tell you how it is spelled. He has an access code that they need, which seems like they just kind of simplified the situation, and he's one of those only-kinda-bad bad guys that's really just a pawn, for our heroes as well as for these storytellers.

The wearable magic carpet gadget is fun and funny! SP has to remote control JR wearing the floaty-suit and JR is trying not to freak out too badly, and maybe on purpose it recalls the scene from the first movie where Tom Cruise hovers parallel to the floor.

Hendricks is now in a secret room in the place where they all are, and he has a bad-guy briefcase computer and orders some subordinates to do something with a virus, and I don't actually understand what's really happening but am I to believe that Ethan et al are thwarting literal nuclear terrorism here in Mumbai? Right here at this pleasant party at the palace of an only kinda-bad bad guy?

1:48:30 - Ha, the climax of the wearable magic carpet thing involves JR barely surviving by doing an acrobatic stunt that seems oddly intuitive and satisfying. You'll just have to watch the movie to know what I mean.

The spy-tech car they have is rad.

They fail to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile! We see it come out of the sub and start missiling toward its destination which we have learned is California! Hendricks mutters things about how that should get the ball rolling making world powers hate each other and nuke each other and may there be peace on Earth, he also, yes, says that.

A chase on foot has Ethan and Hendricks suddenly brawling on an exotically elegant robotic parking ramp. Platforms move around mechanically and transfer unmanned cars to different areas, and it is against that video gamey backdrop that Ethan and Hendricks struggle to get that sinister suitcase which is all bouncing around that environment. Unexpectedly, Ethan's hope of grabbing it is thwarted by Hendricks suicide-jumping down several stories! We see it! He definitely does that! Ethan drives a car off a thing to follow him, plummeting down hood-first, and the airbag saves him! He gets the briefcase and barely saves the day in time!

Again a denouement making it very clear that everything is really shockingly okay and tidied up. Even the thing with Ethan revenge-killing Serbians and the thing with his wife is cleaned way up, but with an elegance and sweetness that elevates this movie above the others. She's not dead after all, just fake-dead for her protection. And they're only where they are in Seattle so he can glimpse her lovingly across a marina.

So! I feel strongly that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie! It is an extraordinarily deftly-constructed spy thriller! It's got all the funnest types of things that are in the other movies, and other fun spy thrillers, but with so much less garbage! They did a great job and they should be proud.

[aforrestofstuff]

What do you think the OPM characters' guilty pleasures would be? I feel like Tatsu loves soap operas and Atomic Samurai secretly loves a really popular boy band, like SMAP

Thanks for your request, anon! Sorry this took me so long to get to, you were buried in my inbox lol. But I hope this was worth the wait because oh boy this required all 3 of my brain cells.

Tornado of Terror: As you said, soap operas. She also loves candy apples in canon. But...she also is a HUGE fan of those really cheesy Cosmopolitan magazines that have all of the personality quizzes and the “which hot male celeb would date you” scenarios. She doesn’t fall for it one bit. In fact, she hate reads those fuckers in the same way that people pay to go see bad movies. It’s fun.

Silverfang: Yoga and following along to some cheesy-ass 80s workout videos. I’ve said he likes yoga in a previous headcanon, but he also likes to exercise along to some obnoxious 80s pop while some dude in a leotard instructs him on what to do from a TV screen. He wears sweatbands and legwarmers, too. The whole shebang. He only does it when he’s alone, though. Sometimes he’ll try to teach yoga to his disciples as a way to help them decompress after a long training session, but his workout tapes are his best-kept secret.

Atomic Samurai: I don’t know what a SMAP is, but he’s definitely got some questionable music choices going on considering he’s... well, the way that he is. I’d say he likes to listen to old country, like Marty Robbins and Glen Campbell. It’s really funny because you’ve got this intimidating man from Japan (or a fictional universe basically set in Japan) with a badass katana and shit but inside that empty head of his, there’s just a faint “out in the west Texas town of El Paso....”

Child Emperor: Picking at scabs. He’s often on his knees fixing shit in his lab, and he probably gets burned all the damn time from playing around with lasers so he’s undoubtedly always has a wound healing somewhere. Whenever he’s working on something, he’ll just absentmindedly pick at his scabs. It’s a bad habit and he knows it, but nothing beats the feeling of peeling off an entire patch of that shit. So satisfying.

Metal Knight: Buying books. He doesn’t even read them. He just buys bigass novels with smart-sounding names to fill up his library because he thinks it’ll make his dick grow another three inches or some shit. One of the few things he likes in this world (besides homicide) is the smell of a new book. If he’s feeling particularly pissy, he’ll go into his library and just ssssssnnnnnnnnnniififfffffffffff. He spends an outrageous amount of money on it. If he has anyone over (which is unlikely, but hypothetically speaking) and they mention his library by asking something like “have you read all of these?” It’ll be one of the few times in his life that he’ll feel shame.

King: Reading and writing fanfiction based on his favorite video game/anime series. Nobody knows he does this except his small following online, of course. And even more so, nobody online knows he’s an ultra-popular S-Class hero who’s friends with the most powerful man on earth. He’s actually a pretty decent writer, he just doesn’t take himself too seriously so the plotline to his stories tend to get a little haywire and overly self-indulgent. Let him have his fun. He just wants to be a Sailor Scout.

Zombieman: Singing. He actually used to be a good singer (he sounded like a discount Steve Perry back in the day), but constant smoking really fucked up his voice. He might as well have lungs the size of grapes because he can’t carry a note for more than 2 seconds without wheezing like an accordion with asthma. He’s never sang in front of anyone before because he thinks it’s silly thing that isn’t worth showing off. Play anything from The Eagles though, and he’ll have a hard time resisting.

Drive Knight: He likes to open up panels in his arms and legs to play with the wires (basically a robot’s version of nerve endings, I’m assuming) just so he can feel something. It’s kind of sad because he doesn’t experience pain or the cold or being tickled... (I know what y’all are thinking and you’d better STOP). So he sometimes takes it upon himself to dick around with his insides and dip his toe into what it feels like to be human, even if it’s just for a little bit. He’s super secretive about it (he’s just secretive about everything, really) because he doesn’t want anyone to know that he desires something outside of being a weapon of mass destruction justice.

Pig God: His whole schtick is basically indulging in a guilty pleasure — pigging out on delicious food with no regard whatsoever for one’s overall health. Other than that, however, he does like to collect body pillows. There, I said it. All he fucking does is eat and he’s too much of a big boi to be going out 24/7, so he’s gotta be on the internet/watching anime/playing video games/reading manga during all of that downtime between his stints of doing hero work. His bed is fucking ginormous to handle all of that big boy-ness and on it, he has his body pillow nest. He rests on a throne made for kings. A true icon.

Superalloy Darkshine: Also working out along to some cheesy 80s exercise videos. His hero outfit was inspired from what those ravishing instructors would wear on the television. Well, it was supposed to be a full leotard but it ripped every time he flexed just a tiny bit so the speedo is the only thing that’s left. He’s gotta hella rhythm and keeps up with the music using little to no effort. Although, he can’t go too hard because he’s also a big boi and he’ll literally shake the entire building if he gets too turnt up. Dance muscle boy, dance.

Watchdog Man: Eating too many dog treats lol. Sometimes while he’s stationed on his little podium thing, visitors will leave him little offerings like dog treats and other miscellaneous food items/toys. He never takes them or eats them in front of people, but he often brings everything home with him after a long day just to gobble that shit up. He’s gained a little weight since he started doing it but you can’t even notice it because his suit is hella bulky. Some of it is due in part to stress-eating because being a dog and dude at the same time is hectic, but it’s honest work.

Flashy Flash: Racing shit. Whenever he’s on his travels during, say, assassination missions or hero work, he gets hella bored really quickly. So, to help with this, he’ll often race birds or planes flying in the sky on his way to his destination to see who’s quicker (it’s always him). Sometimes he’ll even play catch with himself by throwing a pine cone or something and running to the place he guesses it’ll land before it even touches the ground. He just does a ton of weird speedster shit whenever he’s bored and he’ll deny it if anyone asks.

Genos: Purposefully putting a little bit too much oil on his joints after each upgrade so he’ll be as slick as a salamander. It’s a really funny feeling to be able to move your limbs with little to no resistance without having to worry about popping or breaking anything. It just makes him feel so agile despite being like, a hunk of actual metal. If he wasn’t so uptight, he would loosen the screws in his fingers to he can bend them almost all the way back (he’s actually thought about it a few times), but both Dr. Kuseno and his 3 remaining braincells attested to that. He just likes to tinker around with his body and see what weird shit he can do. It’s a bad habit because it’s led to a few things being broken on multiple occasions.

Metal Bat: Zenko’s shitty pop music. Whenever he drops her off at school or piano practice, he’ll immediately go home and blast that shit on full volume (because he’s practically deaf from always jumping out of falling buildings and continuously blasting music in his earbuds) while doing chores and the like. He’s one of those people that HAVE to have something going on in the background as they’re getting shit done. He’d rather be caught dead than listening to the OPM equivalent of Taylor Swift because he knows Zenko would never let him live it down.

Tanktop Master: Wearing suits around the house when he’s not even going anywhere. He’s got to wear his tanktop 24/7 whenever he’s in public to keep up The Image (which he has no problem with, he genuinely loves the tanktop ideology) but he also needs to feel fancy every once and a while. So, if he happens to have the time while in between appearances, he’ll prance around in a suit tailored just for him. Because he’s so fucking huge that he had to pay someone a large sum to custom make an outfit that actually fits. He is 7-motherfucking-feet tall. 7.

Puri-Puri Prisoner: Making Valentine’s Day cards all times of the year. Listen, it gets boring as hell in prison. Sometimes the guards will let all of the inmates have a little glitter and glue to keep themselves busy because no harm can come of a little arts and crafts, right? He likes to make cards on the daily just to let all of his lovers know how much he appreciates them. If they express even the slightest amount of disdain for his creations, he’ll spent the next week crying in the darkest corner of his cell block. He also likes origami. Origami is huge in prison because it’s hella time-consuming and guaranteed to calm a busy mind. His favorite things to make are little unicorns.

Amai Mask: Bath bombs. There have been several mishaps in which he’s used a poorly-made bath bomb and came out of the tub looking like Shrek but he’s grown and lot since then, okay? After a long day or a particularly stressful concert, he’ll sink into some hot water and drop a ball of lavender-scented goodness in there. It’s become a bit of an addiction because he’s got multiple cabinets dedicated solely to his collection, but at least he always smells divine.

Iaian: Shakespearean dramas. Kama got him hooked on theater shit and he’s since ripped through all of the most well-known plays. He thinks in iambic pentameter. It wasn’t always noticeable since he’s a quiet, well-reserved guy but his fellow disciples and Kami have recently noticed that he’s developed a bit of a dramatic flair. Even worse, he’s started calling himself a knight whenever he puts on his armor. Everyone prays it’s just a phase but seeing as how stubborn Iaian is, that seeks highly unlikely. Kami is dying inside because he can’t handle another drama nerd.

Okamaitachi: Soap operas, like Tatsumaki. Kama is the most dramatic out of all of the disciples so it’s only natural that she’d like the most dramatic genre of any show out there. She doesn’t exactly watch them religiously though. She’s the type of viewer to drop off the face of the earth for three seasons and come back without knowing what the fuck is going on (because the disciples have limited access to cable due to Kami’s dumbassery and ignorance to anything technology-related), but still cry during the finale anyway because oh no these people are so hot and one of them is deaaaaaad and the other one is that person’s long-lost sister....

Bushidrill: Taking alcohol from Atomic Samurai’s stash every so often. Bushidrill knows what the good shit is and he could buy it himself if he wanted to, but why would he when there’s a perfectly good alcoholic to steal from living right down the hall? He only takes in small doses because, believe it or not—he’s smart, but Kami isn’t gonna notice regardless of whether or not Bushi takes 1 or 5 bottles at a time because the old shit couldn’t spot a purple raccoon if it was 3 feet in front of him. There have been times where Bushi has opened bottles of Kami’s alcohol right in front of him just to play God and he always, without missing a beat, says “Oh, we have the same taste. How neat.”

Fubuki: I’ve said this before in a previous headcanon, but she has a mild obsession with Victorian aesthetic. She’s got a small collection of semi-authentic ballgowns that cost upwards of a-fuckton-of-money each, but anything’s worth it to be able to play dress-up with Lily. Fubuki’s favorite thing is making Lily feel beautiful because everyone has been an insecure teenager at one point and she knows how it feels to not be comfortable in one’s own skin. This isn’t exactly a guilty pleasure because she’s not guilty about it, but it’s almost gotten to a point where an intervention is needed. She’s got so many damn dresses and sooooo much fine china....

Saitama: Retail therapy, lol. Saitama is only good at budgeting because he has no choice given how fucking poor he is, but give this boy even a little bit of leeway and he’ll buy the ugliest clothes (to which he thinks look poppin’) and the best meats without even batting an eye. His entire manga collection is the product of him having little to no self control the moment he realizes he’s got a bit of money to spend on himself. This is also the only time he’ll experiment with cooking because now he can actually afford to fuck up, literally.

Mumen Rider: Sweets! I’ve said this in a previous hc but he has a major sweet tooth. You can substitute salt for sugar in any given recipe and he’ll see it as a major improvement because he just goes absolutely buckwild for anything sweet. His pancreas is suffering, but he believes nothing feels better than curling up under the covers on a rainy day with a heaping helping of milk chocolate. The only thing that makes him feel better after getting beat to shit is a kiss on the cheek and box of his favorite cookies (and some bananas, lol).

Sonic: Like Flash, he also likes racing things. But, in addition to that, his guilty pleasure is doing his own hair in elaborate hairstyles (when it was longer). He’s pretty much homeless so he’s got a lot of time to himself in between murders. This is when you can find him sitting in the woods somewhere braiding flowers into his hair and tying it off with a moss ribbon. He’d never admit he does this because he’s a big macho man and he’d probably cry.

Garou: Spicy chips. I’ve said this before in a previous hc, but he absolutely inhales his food without even tasting it half the time so it’s not even like he gets to enjoy the flavor that much. He just likes the burn because he’s a shithead. He also doesn’t fear death or a torn-up asshole, so he’ll eat an entire family-sized bag of the OPM-universe equivalent to Takis without even batting an eye. He’s been beat to shit so many times that the agony that comes with downing so much spice is lost on him. He doesn’t even need water. It’s insane. Someone stop this madman at once.

[askroahmmythril]

Reference List for amiibo Fighter Names (Set 3)

25) Mario : Gonzales - This is a reference to Paper Mario : The Thousand Year Door.  While at the Glitzpit, Mario ends up taking up the role of a prize fighter, going under the stage name “The Great Gonzales.”  Admittedly, I’ve never played TTYD, so this name idea came from Neo I believe.  The baby Yoshi and the champion belt shown in the card are both, from what I gather, actual references to that area of TTYD.  So, uh... not much context I can provide from personal experience!

26) Mega Man : Retro Rock - Given the music theming a lot of Mega Man classic has, going with a music theme to this card just made sense.  Plus given his name is Rock, it just works.  Originally I was going to call him ClassicRock, but alas, that was too long.  The names for amiibo figures are limited to 10 characters.  I used the light panels from the background of Top Man’s stage for the setting, and kind of themed the stage itself as the blue field Robot Masters tend to show up in during their intro poses.  And of course, we have a Sniper Joe on keyboard, and Met on drums.  Neo added extra details of course, such as the name of the Mega Man composer on the keyboard, and a GutsMan.EXE symbol on the drum kit.

27) Meta Knight : Dueloscuro - This one’s just a play on how Meta Knight often seems to be given a Spanish sounding accent.  Dueloscuro is a portmanteau of “duelo oscuro,” Spanish for “dark duel.”  “Tomad la espada!” meanwhile is “Get the sword!”  Basically it’s all a reference to Meta Knight’s frequent sword duels with Kirby, with a Spanish flair.

28) Mewtwo : MasterMind - Given Mewtwo is the most famous of all Psychic types most likely, I’d say he qualifies as a mastermind.  Plus how many of us really DIDN’T just chuck a Master Ball at him...?  Anyway, the various codes in the background refer to various Pokémon mechanics, such as catch rates, damage calculation, and IV calculation.  In Neo’s version, he also had the calculation for shiny chances, and made the binary in the background (mine was just random 0 and 1 gibberish) actually mean something, it translates to a speech Mewtwo gives in the first Pokémon movie, if memory serves.

29) Mii Gunner : Coverfire - When trying to figure out what to do with the Mii Gunner, it came to mind that since she was wearing orange (at least the Smash 4 one did, the Ultimate Mii Gunner wears yellow), I could make it an Advance Wars reference and have her as a soldier for Orange Star.  Neo added some slogans to make it look a bit more like a recruitment poster or such.  I think it worked out rather nicely.

30) Mii Swordfighter : RentAHero - So.... I may have played a little too much Find Mii.  Thus the reference to go for with Mii Swordfighter seemed pretty straightforward.  I had the idea to fill out the cast with the summonable party members, the rabbit, dog, and cat knights.  The play coins in the nameplate refer to the two play coins you had to pay to indeed basically rent a hero.

31) Mr. Game & Watch : PRIMETIME - Mr. Game & Watch is basically the start of Nintendo’s venture into video games.  Thus, the prime point of the timeline.  I went with a bit of a timeline structure here, showing his position between Nintendo’s start of making Hanafuda cards and before Donkey Kong first showed up.  His Judge sign being 1980 is the year he actually debuted.  As for the sun in the upper part of the image, that’s actually a reference to Neo himself, who previously went by “MrGandWatch.”  The “Weird Sun” as it’s been dubbed was sort of a logo of his of sorts.

32) Ness : Psi Cadet - This one’s a reference to Psychonauts.  Man, I love that game.  Ness being a psychic kid would fit right in at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp.  The area shown here is the Collective Unconscious, basically the “world hub select” area where you can quickly get into the other stages of the game through various doors.  The nameplate is styled after the certificates you get each time you earn a merit badge in the game.

33) Olimar : Zen Garden - Pretty much a centralized reference, given how frantic Pikmin life can be, I just wanted to give the captain and his friends a little down time, relaxing in their own private zen garden.  While technically Olimar does not use Rock Pikmin anywhere in his Smash moveset, it just felt weird to not include them with everyone else.

34) Pac-Man : NOMCO7650 - Also a self contained reference, this parodies Namco, the company responsible for Pac-Man.  Of course, he likes to eat things, so NOM.  Here he’s sampling the various pixel bonus fruits from his home game.  It was kind of fun, trying to draw them all with pixely bites taken out of them.  The 7650 comes from an important number Namco places in a lot of their games.  The Japanese pronunciation of this series of numbers, na-mu-ko-o, sounds like their company name.

35) Palutena : TheLightFM - Of all things, this came from a Mystery Science Theater line.  At least the name itself.  During “This Island Earth,” there’s a scene where someone enters an empty aircraft, and a gentle sounding voice says “Welcome.  Please be seated!”  Mike then says “You’re being kidnapped by The Light FM!”  Basically like it’s an easy listening radio station.  Given Palutena is a light goddess, and she basically uses her telepathy like radio contact to guide Pit through his adventures, for some reason this just worked to me.  Neo again added some fun easter eggs, like a Hades styled mug on the desk, along with one of the actual Smash 4 soundtrack CDs.

36) Peach : Lady Luck - I went with a bit of Mario Party referencing here, which then turned to casino style.  Basically Peach in some of the earlier Mario Party games, for one reason or another tended to be one of the most difficult AI opponents to deal with.  When items became a thing, reasons for this became all the more apparent as she would prioritize grabbing the Plunder Chest, an item that let her steal items from other players.  She was always a thing to deal with.  I’m not sure if it’s viable for the numbers on a real die to be positioned as they are here, but I wanted to show a 6 and a 4 since Mario Party debuted on the N64.  Due to the Luck theme, I went with an overall casino motif as I just really like that style.  Like, I actually collect playing cards, and if I had more access to them, I’d probably collect poker chips too.  Just always liked how they looked and felt.

[pyrokinesis]

So I lost the patience and watched Kizuna

! Major spoilers ahead !

Listen, I know I said I will wait until the Blu-Ray comes out, but I was impatient little bitch and I found a working Sample 3 link with English dub, so I said, fuck it! My brother joined me 20 minutes in, lol. Anyways, onto the movie.

I don't really know what to say, Digimon Last Evolution Kizuna was exactly what I expected from the movie of such name, a movie that promotes end of relationship between Digimons and their human partners.

I kinda didn't have my hope up, mostly because I rewatched Adventure & Adventure 02 last week and finally watched Tri, and the whole point of Digimon has always been, no matter what happens, Digimons and their humans will always stick and stay together, I think the quote goes "humans and Digimons forever" (?). I kinda was hyped up though, partly because of art style (it was much better than Tri, less dark and more symmetrical when it comes to faces and bodies, Tri was annoying at times with weird asymmetrical faces; also Yamato!!!! Yamato is so hot and pretty in Kizuna, wtf Toei leave this poor lesbian alone), partly because of Adventure 02 kids (my brother is so annoyed with me, but I'm a huge 02 fan, Wormmon is my baby and I can rewatch 02ep25 anytime, Stigmon's first appearance is fucking iconic).

Adventure 02 kids got much more screentime than I expected, especially Iori/Cody because he is sometimes really put aside. I love how they were staying in touch with Original Six/Eight through Yamato, and how Hikari and Takeru stayed part of their team (Tri lacked this so much, it was so weird to have Hikari and TK not knowing what happened to their friends when they were supposedly a new team/best friends). Also my baby Ken's hair (*le cries*), I miss his long hair. Both my brother and I expected Paildramon to appear near the end, but there were no DNA/Jogress evolutions besides Omegamon/Omnimon.

Yamato was so fucking hot it's unbelievable, he's become top Digi-destined to me, 2D character or not. He was so smart, so persistent, so consistent, so selfless, so cute, itty-bitty blind (those cute glasses that appeared on his face for a mili-moment during him being in uni classroom panel, all of my uwus gone), still has one of the best relationships with Gabumon (he plays harmonica for Gabumon, even after all these years, he keeps Gabumon by his side, and they both tried to find that bad-guy-turned-FBI-agent-guy sneakily, so so cute). Overall, Yamato is a emotionally much more main character than Taich is, probably because emotionally, Taichi was the main character of Tri.

Now onto our second main, Taichi. Honestly, technicall, both Yamato and Taichi are Kizuna's main guys, but emotionally, Yamato left much bigger impact. Taichi was the main character in the beginning, but as the story progressed, I could feel Yamato much better. Still, Taichi isn't left aside (like all other Original Eight kidz/people). He is a struggling university student who has no idea what to do with his life (my brother sorta compared him to me, LMAO). This is very consistent with Tri's Taichi, who is full of self dubts, abstract ideas of future, and melancholy when he thinks about his future self. Toei nicely showed it when they let us know Tai earns for his future by working part-time as a waiter (?) in an automat casino. He is kinda really down all the time when he starts realising he has to make huge choices about the future, even though he has no bloody idea or genuine thought what to do (also his porn stash, LMAO what was that Taichi, who even uses porn magazine after the age of 14).

Thinking back about it now, it's kinda underwhelming with how it actually, emotionally, focuses on the whole "Digimons have to leave their partners" philosophy. Like, it barely shows interactions between humans and Digimons (which Tri did at least, with I think all characters, so I would expect at least some focus on Yamato and Taichi). There were some interactions between Taichi and Agumon, and Yamato and Gabumon at the end, but it just felt uncomplete and unfullifying. Also whole concept is bullshit (did I mention it? Because if I didn't I will, because this whole thing really is). It all started with Tri, which felt like it was produced by random people who watched Adventure & 02 after fifteen years and decided to make their own spin on it, without actual respects for stories and characters Adventure & Adventure 02 were trying to make us feel and understand (though feelings of OOC-ness Tri had at the times were minimal in Kizuna, thank goodness for that).

Then, Kizuna continued it with the concept of "when Digi-destined grow up, their Digimon partners disappear because they are not on the same mental wavelengths anymore" which is the complete opposite of one of like three main Digimon philosophies, "Digimon and Digi-destined, together and forever"; like while I disliked 02 epilogue, it showed us that after all hardships, Digi-destined and their Digimons get their happy endings, together. Both my brother and I (we watched it together) groaned at the whole concept (along with predictive bullshit plot and plotholes).

While I understand the reason behind this (I read some spoilers on here afterwards, to broaden my post-Kizuna horizons), that humans/Digi-destined grow up, and Digimons kinda don't, it still makes me really dissatisfied. Tri showed us in flashes that, when given time spent with their and other humans, Digimons can grow and become mentally wise adults (cue to the cutest scene when Patamon closes his one eye because he understands the tension between Hikari and Takeru, as in, that they like each other and they might need some time "alone"), so Kizuna kinda fucked up all previous Adventure works by telling us everything is in vain, Digimons leave, their connection to humans they had will become meaningless and humans will have to move on. Bullshit plot(hole), but whatever.

The amount of screentime non-Taichi&Yamato characters can be underwhelming, especially if you don't read spoilers like I did. The movie starts with Takeru and Hikari as important as Yamato and Taichi, but as the movie progresses, they just fade in the background. Kinda happens to everyone else except Koushiro/Izzy, who kinda has a really leading role, considering how much screentime Taichi and Yamato have (I feel like wordcount apps will find Yamato&Taichi as my most used words in this rant review), and he is probably third most important role, until he undramatically disappears because of psycho main lady.

Now towards real ranting. I'll try to keep it short because I have no real emotions behind it and I feel some other rants might articulate it better. Anyways, the plot of the whole movie is so goddamn predictable. It starts so weirdly, with Taichi, Hikari and Takeru fighting Parrotmon (what the fuck was that even, btw???). Like, Parrotmon, again? It feels just very reused, and that feeling that doesn't leave even during the credits. Soundtrack—while nice, nostalgic, and very fitting—is also just reused Adventure 01 soundtrack, and it just brings kudos from my memory lane road nostalgia. Deja Vu is the feeling that sticks to your skin and bones, if you like me, watched Adventure 1-3 just before Kizuna, and understand how so many scenes are just reused wanna-be old seasons references.

From two older adults (I honestly thought there will be two goverment agents, again, and mentally groaned) sticking up into Digi-destineds' business like some omni-knows creature, same as agents from Tri, fucked up (female) main antagonist who pretends to be a good guy (lady?) for the sake of gathering intel and trust, who is a complete nutjob (full-time pyscho in Kizuna lady's case) because of the loss of her Digimon partner, to bullshit powered-up Digimon created from human coding (my brother pointed this one to me, and honestly, half of this movie is both Diaboromon movies rehashed/redone in 2020 shine), Omnimon fighting in some weird Digital World room powered-up creature (first Diaboromon movie straight up scene for scene), even that first scene with Parrotmon and this time completely unexplainable appearance of a Digimon in the real world, and Digi-destined having to fight it, and of course, bullshit new unexplained Digi-evolution with new (human???) mega forms of Agumon and Gabumon. All in all, it just feels very forced and all very already seen.

Now onto the less main, even less supporting characters. 02 teens are amazing, considering they have barely any lines and some little fighting moments. I love them, and I'm happy they got this, considering how they were blatantly forgotten in Tri, and how obviously nobody in the production of Tri even cared to hide that. Wormmon and Stigmon are my babies and I'm happy to see them have some screentime.

Original Six/Eight (excluding Taichi and Yamato) are kinda disappointing, though. I read some spoilers, so I knew Sora wouldn't appear much, but damn, even that was much compared to her actual screentime in Kizuna. She is almost as forgotten as 02 kids were in Tri. I get that she is shown to have moved on faster than other Original Eight kids, but still, they didn't even show her losing Piyomon (which did happen, and it was emotionally, overwhelming, in a fucked up sense when you realised Piyomon wasn't by her side). Jou, Mimi, Takeru, and Hikari were shown at the beginning of movie with so much potential screentime, but in the end they mostly were there for the dramatic cliffhangers (I didn't understand at the beginning what happened to Mimi and Jou, and I thought Hikari was murdered and that the FBI agent straight up shot Takeru), during that mini battle scene sometime in the Neverland, and of course, during the end credits. It was kinda really both overwhelming and underwhelming to see them during the credits when they could've had much more moments during the movie (I sorta had some hope because the movie is almost 2 hours long, and usually movies are like 20, 30 minutes long, but even during those one-episode-length movies there is more of main-supporting characters shown).

As mentioned, the ending is bullshit (my brother ended up crying and I had to put Adventure OST on to calm him down), Agumon and Gabumon dying is literally the most senseless thing ever since both Taichi and Yamato love their partners so much, and even among all the adulting and hassles in their lives, they try to make time for their Digimon partners (during their time in the restuarant, Yamato and Taichi literally talk how they don't have time for even their closest friends, hell Hikari even mentions Taichi should give their mother a visit, but Taichi still finds time for Agumon), so in the end both Taichi and Yamato were among the last people to lose their Digimons and I'm really disappointed in this concept, especially how they didn't show Gabumon and Agumon disappearing, Taichi and Yamato deserved explicit goodbyes.

Uh, I don't think I have anything much to add anymore. I read spoilers and some are pretty much novels from how much people put their thoughts in, this is just my ranting review, tbh. I dived into this hoping to get my heart mended from Tri (say what you want about Tri but it was too bad for six hour and half movies, especially general Adventure constistency-wise), but not with high expectations, having seen the trailer and having some spoilers read. All in all film wasn't too bad, but it wasn't too good, solid 6/10 rating from me, mostly for the animation and nostalgic soundtrack, but the whole plot was shit as fuck and the philoshophy behind it.

(Random, but I noticed straight people/shippers liked the movie better than gay people/shippers, is there any correlations between that)

ALL IN ALL, Digimon: Last Evolution Kizuna wasn't the best nor the worst Digimon movie/work, but it probably isn't something I will rewatch or recommend anytime soon (also wtf were those humanoid mega forms, like W T F).

[theorangedeath]

Some webcomic recs

Webcomics are as underrated as they are varied. I mostly read printed comics now, but there’s no way I’d have gotten there had I not found webcomics before - believe me, I tried, but this damn hobby is super inaccessible to a beginner, not to mention expensive. Webcomics are like fanfics in that regard - hell, some of them are fan comics - in that there’s something for everyone, all within your reach, but in order to find something you like you have to either 1. Get very, VERY lucky, 2. Be prepared to read a lot of bad stuff in order to get to the good stuff, or 3. Hear about them from people you trust. 

I was a 2 - i would read anything, back in the day - and while i’m not as unconditionally enthusiastic as i was, there are still some gems I wish got the same appreciation as some talents in the industry. I’ll spare you the rest of the article (dm me for comic rants though), let’s get to it! 

note: all the comics are numbered as “1″ because tumblr messed up the google docs formatting 

Comics i still follow as they update because either tumblr starts posting about them right away or they’re on tapas

Check Please! 

https://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/

I’m probably not the one introducing you to Check Please, as it’s one of the most popular webcomics out there, thank god. The parts of the fandom i’m familiar with are cool and wholesome, just like the work itself. It’s about a southern gay kid, Eric Bittle, who joins the hockey team in his college. It’s impossible not to love every single character there, the sports drama elements are great, and the format is like solidarity put into panels. The Samwell Men’s Hockey team’s motto is “we’ve got each other’s backs”, and there isn’t a single part of the comic that doesn’t 100% incorporate that. 

Heartstopper

https://tapas.io/series/Heartstopper

The 2000s so far have been a rough contest for the title of “sweetest ya romance” but guys, we found it, we can stop now. Nick and Charlie are in highschool, Charlie is gay and out (not by will), Nick plays rugby because apparently that’s what british jocks do. Can i make it any more obvious? It took me a while to fall in love with the artstyle but when i did i fell HARD - the creator is re-drawing some of the older chapters, though, so your experience might be different. The story’s captivating right away, and you want everyone there to be happy from pretty much page 1. The creator also writes ya prose, and some of her books are about other characters from the same school. I love all of them, but Radio Silence is my personal favorite. She also has two novellas about Nick and Charlie themselves, available as e-books. 

Charity Case 

https://tapas.io/series/Charity-Case

I rarely start new webcomics anymore, but boy, this one got me FAST. and that was even before I realized it’s a polyam love story, which i love but is surprisingly rare in webcomics - at least the ones i know. Julien, an irresponsible young musician, resorts to sharing an apartment with two roomates who are a couple. I fell for the unique, gorgeous artstyle first, and by the time i realized i’m also super invested in the story and characters, it’s already become one of my favorites. Plus, Julien’s hair looks so soft! 

The Property of Hate 

http://thepropertyofhate.com/TPoH/

THIS is what comics should be. There’s so much passion here, not just for the story but for the storytelling as well - and the two aren’t as separated as you might think. A young girl is recruited by a TV man to be a hero. The world they enter seems nonsensical and arbitrary at first, but as they travel she discovers its logic, stories and secrets. She will also, as her title suggests, need to save it. There’s so much i love about this comic that i don’t know where to start, so i’ll just say this: it’s absolutely inspiring, in every sense of the word. Also, read the creator’s duck comics, they’ll make you feel things. 

Webcomics i occasionally remember to catch up on, get blown away all over again by how good they are, vow to check them regularly for updates then forget. And repeat 

Wilde Life

https://wildelifecomic.com/

I think this is the first ever webcomic i read that had a plot? I got on the wagon at around chapter 1 or 2 and it’s hard to believe it but it only gets better with time, even though it already starts at 100%. Oscar moves to a new town and immediately makes friends with a ghost and a grumpy teen werewolf. It has both monster-of-the-week type problems and overarching plots, and reading it feels nostalgic and brand new at the same time. The fantasy world has this special feel to it, that makes me miss growing up in the american wilderness even though i, well, didn’t. Plus, the creator is cool as hell. I knit her a hat in high school in exchange for a commission. 

Sfeer Theory

https://sfeertheory.com/

This comic got me through a hard time and i’ll forever be grateful for that. Also, it’s really, really good. This is another case of a comic where you fall in love with the art right away and before long you find yourself caring very much about the characters and the story. You might also find yourself growing out your hair to style it like Luca’s. If you’re me it’ll be a lost cause, so, uh, keep that in mind. Luca works as a technician at the prestigious Uitspan university. A mysterious, powerful man is looking to change that. While the comic’s biggest strength is probably the gorgeous, fascinating worldbuilding - and Luca’s hair - the characters are also ridiculously easy to relate to, even if we don’t know anything about them. Even the most meaningless extras are somehow compelling thanks to the dynamic, rich art style. And did i mention the hair? If you like it, you won’t be disappointed by everything else Little Foolery makes. 

How To Be a Werewolf

http://www.howtobeawerewolf.com/

I almost didn’t read this one! My brain has decided i don’t like werewolves and i don’t know how to reverse that. But then i saw Elias’ body language and it was extremely fun and friendly, and so was the rest of the comic, and the rest is history. Malaya knows she’s a werewolf, but seeing as she doesn’t know any other werewolves, dealing with that is hard. That is until Elias discovers her and decides to help, along with the rest of his pack. It’s filled with family and solidarity feelings, some dark mysteries and themes, and the art is beautiful and expressive. 

Monsterkind 

http://monsterkind.enenkay.com/

Another case of read-everything-this-creator-makes-it’s-all-amazing! Wallace, a social worker, moves - or rather, is moved - to District C, which is mostly populated by monsters. His heart’s in the right place, and apparently so is his apartment, because his neighbors are cool as heck and agree, some of them reluctantly, to help him get his bearings. There’s a mystery to uncover, some monsters to help and a dashing tea octopus to woo - for Kip to woo, anyway - and it’s all a delight to read. Every single character brings their own lovable-ness to the table, and even with the darker parts, reading this comic kinda feels like being hugged. 

Comics that no longer update

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal - finished 

http://tjandamal.com/

Guys. guys! I’m pretty sure this is my all time favorite comic, web OR printed. I have the printed version, i still read it online occasionally, a lot of the songs mentioned in it are now saved on my spotify, i had it as my phone background for a good couple of years, the whole package. Amal comes out to his family and it ends with him having to drive to his sister’s graduation in Providence. There’s a guy in his kitchen who just so happens to need a lift there, and he’s willing to pay, and Amal’s too hungover to argue. What follows is the best roadtrip story ever. I’m seriously considering getting my license just to recreate that route. I just really love this story, okay? Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, the creator’s music taste is GOOD. 

Prague Race - to be continued in text 

https://www.praguerace.com/

The fantasy aesthetic to end all fantasy aesthetics. And the characters are good and interesting. And the world is well built and leaves you wanting more. AND there’s a cat. And it looks so good! Leona is irresponsible and spontaneous and gets her friends in some weird shit that leaves them trapped in a strange world, dealing with several curses, trying to survive and make sense of it all. I could spend a lifetime looking at the art and die happy. 

Shoot around - finished 

https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/shoot-around/list?title_no=399&page=1

A girl’s basketball team and its coach, Jeff, deal with a zombie apocalypse. They make the most of the post apocalyptic world. There’s drama, friendship, found family, love and hope - it’s basically everything a zombie apocalypse narrative should be. And i love how the creator plays with the colors from chapter to chapter! 

Rock and Riot - finished 

https://tapas.io/series/Rock-and-Riot 

It’s cute! It’s fun! It’s a 1950’s queer ensamble cast high school drama! It’s what Grease would’ve been like in a better timeline, except we still got it in this timeline. The artstyle fits perfectly with the story and characters, but if you want to see what’s the creator capable of now, read their newest comic, Project Nought. It’s a cool sci fi story and just like in Rock and Riot, it’s super easy to connect to every character there. 

Alright there’s a lot more but i somehow wrote 4 google docs pages of webcomic recs in one sitting (this is what i’m able to focus on? Really, brain?) and i think that’s enough for now. Like i said, please dm me if you want to talk about anything here, rec some of your own, listen to my rants or tell me i’m a nerd. Or all of the above. I might make a similar post with print comic, but right now i have some dogs to pet. Keep being cool! 

[mud-on-the-turntable-blog]

Nana Grizol - Love It Love It (2008, Folk Punk / Indie Rock)

Hi! Nice to meet you! We are Max and Michayla, and this is the first post of our music review blog, Mud on the Turntable. The way our reviews work is one of us will recommend the other an album, and we both write some interesting things about the album separately. Read both of them, or just one of us if you like one of our particular writing styles, or neither if you don’t like either. Our first album is one Max suggested, Love It Love It by Nana Grizol. Enjoy!

Max + Michayla! xox

Michayla’s Review

Circles ‘Round the Moon

Feels like walking into your great-aunt’s yellow-walled kitchen at the break of day in the height of August. There is a hand-painted ceramic fruit bowl sitting on the counter full of oranges and grapefruit and limes. Your aunt is making pancakes and the scent of morning air, fresh cut grass, lavender, and clean sheets wafts in through the open windows while the warm morning sunlight pools onto the floors and cabinets and walls.

Colours: #f7f499/rgb(247, 244, 153), #ff693f/rgb(255, 105, 63), #68b233/rgb(104, 178, 51)

Tambourine - N - Thyme

Feels like floating suspended in deep aqua water, glittering fractals of light and swirls of infinitesimally small bubbles dancing around your body, framing you, frozen in a soft scream, watching the surface and the murk around you, but at peace with yourself, so beautifully suspended in fluid water. The smell of mossy dirt and powdered sugar on the tip of your tongue, neon lights shimmering in the distance, far, far away.

Colours: #0d7d99/rgb(13, 125, 153), #e20fbc/rgb(226, 15, 188), #c7f736/rgb(199, 247, 54)

Less Than the Air

Limoncello coloured with patches of red seeping through the page, like sun hitting your eyelashes while walking down an old dusty path, a long, hot sidewalk home, and walking through the front door of your house. Old maple floors lead into your living room, cream walls, pockmarked, covered in part by white linen curtains. You put on a record and dance barefoot in the living room. It feels like light, and the way it blurs your vision when it hits you like a camera lens. Tastes like fairy bread and rosemary.

Colours: #fff0a5/rgb(255, 240, 165), #d60000/rgb(214, 0, 0), #ad7c2d/rgb(173, 124, 45)

Motion in the Ocean

A soft blush pink set against ivory countertops. You find yourself getting ready for a party you never intended on going to, shell jewelry, drops of gold falling from your fingers like tears, the sky is darkening to indigo outside your window. Counting minutes on your fingers only to find you’ve run out far more times than it takes to eat the peaches your mother brought you late at night. Waking up tired and wishing for the sun, the taste of cold water and soft kisses, a memory of a dream.

Colours: #f2cbcb/rgb(242, 203, 203), #fcf6e3/rgb(252, 246, 227), #16074f/rgb(22, 7, 79)

Voices Echo Down Thee Halls

Stopping at a tiny diner along the highway, the vinyl seats are a pale minty-olive, you lean against the wall, faded highway signs and ancient greeting flash before your eyes, technicolour in the key of static radio waves, lying on the pavement, the sun beats down as you roll into the gravel, the dirt. Asphalt and car fumes, toasted tomato sandwiches and too much salt, wooden car panelling and the wrong colour of carpet.

Colours: #5faf56/rgb(95, 175, 86), #d1a877/rgb(209, 168, 119), #ef410b/rgb(239, 65, 11)

Stop and Smell Thee Roses

Like picking daisies in the overrun backyard of your childhood best friend’s house, dirty white picket fence set against mud and grass and a rain-heavy sky. Your laughter feels like home in her hands and you remember the sound of so many of you, running out the screen door, all strawberry-red-stained fingers and polaroid photos and charcoal smouldering in the fire pit, notes scribbled in pencil on loose-leaf paper, store-bought bread sticky on your teeth. The moment retakes you and you fall to your knees and smile and the first drops of rain hit your face.

Colours: #d8c302/rgb(216, 195, 2), #9598a0/rgb(149, 152, 160), #ffffff/rgb(255, 255, 255)

Tiny Rainbows

The rain clearing up and leaving sparkling puddles in the cracks in the pavement around your school, a warm september, you dive in and the droplets fall everywhere except your eyes, a rubber raincoat and not a single lie. Like falling down and finding yourself,a loving embrace after a cold winter day, fresh fruit on your lips, and the smell of coming home.

Colours: #05000f/rgb(5, 0, 15), #d3287b/rgb(211, 40, 123), #ff9011/rgb(255, 144, 17)

Everything You Ever Hoped or Worked For

Watching the sunset burn bright and melt down on another’s face, running away and finding joy in the places you’ve been. Crickets humming along to the beat of your footsteps and lulling you to sleep, to dream of stars and new beginnings at 2 in the afternoon. It tastes like bubblegum and sunshine, spilling down your chin from the back of your glass, bottle green, a telescope to where you’ll be, soon.

Colours: #65b277/rgb(101, 178, 119), #ff4e02/rgb(255, 78, 2), #abad53/rgb(171, 173, 83)

Broken Cityscapes

Washed out denim, sleeping with your jacket and shoes on, preaching holy words in the back alley to the birds, scattering seeds, soft and teardrop shaped, a touch of arange, rosy edges. Windchimes in the distance as they flock on the telephone wires and the words fade out, your hands dry and cracked but worth the smiles of the living, light seeping through the cracks in the clouds on a morning of second chances. The taste of cold tea chokes the back of your throat, garden carrots and lake water up your nose.

Colours: #9398c4/rgb(147, 152, 196), #e08247/rgb(224, 130, 71), #d9d4dbrgb(217, 212, 219)

The Idea That Everything Could Ever Possibly Be Said

Deep saturated garden greens not properly captured behind a grainy sepia photograph. Making notes on old graph paper, left on the desk in the unfinished attic, the trees tapping on the windows as the daylight pours into the room and into you, the exposed wooden beams house secrets and grocery lists, your mother told you to take out the trash, but that was five years ago today. You find comfort in eating cereal for lunch and all those things you would do as a child, now grown, now finding the light.

Colours: #543722/rgb(84, 55, 34), #0b5111/rgb(11, 81, 17), #e0e2b3/rgb(224, 226, 179)

Untitled Hidden Track

Screeching to a halt on a grid road just to see the stars, pen in spilled everywhere after your pen broke, you run and hide, the smell of acetone and burnt toast follows. It feels like shoving everything you wn off a desk and into your backpack and running, tears or blood or sweat running down your cheeks.

Colours: #0a0047/rgb(10, 0, 71), #f4fc58/rgb(244, 252, 88), #ff2b2b/rgb(255, 43, 43)

Overview

Overall, this album feels like falling into a pool of sunshine, and filling your lungs with it. Every song feels like another wave washing over you, the endings of each track hit like breaking the surface of the water for a gasp of air before going under again. If you needed a pick me up, try this one shot injection of good vibes, sunlight, and punchy musical citrus.

Anywho, congrats if you made it through that entire review! If you’re curious about how the songs translate into colours through my synesthesia, go on and copy/paste the colour codes into Google’s handy “colour picker” (just google it and then chuck the bits with a # into the top line of the colour picker) and it should work. I think. . .

Cheers!

Michayla Siwak

Max’s Review

Very rarely do I feel like I am the target audience of an album. However, whether this is actually true or not, Nana Grizol’s Love It Love It is certainly one that matches how I currently feel at this stage in my life.

All throughout this record, there is a sense of nostalgia and bittersweetness that I just couldn’t shake while listening to it. This emotional impact is noticeable from the very first song, “Circles ‘Round the Moon”. It represents a type of fantasy that I, and probably many other 18-year-old music fans who are scared of, yet excited about the intimidatingly massive world they’ve been thrust into, have quite often. Yes, the track tells a story of young relationships and figuring all those out, but it also describes leaving the big city for some place of solitude and simplicity in nature. It’s a beautiful thing really.

Musically, this feeling of homemade simplicity is reflected in every track. Far and away my favourite musical aspect of this album is the horns that will often come in and add to the pretty intense emotional impact this album has. The little imperfections and human-ness that is added by these wind arrangements serves as another tool to emphasize the feelings I’ve been writing about so far. Beautiful swells of trumpets cause your stomach to do little flips of excitement and emotion in songs like “The Idea That Everything Could Ever Possibly Be Said”. They add so much to the crescendos and dynamic changes throughout the album and are an indispensable part of the project as a whole. The songs all feel organic, like they’re being played by a group of friends in the background while you’re at some house party, stoned out of your mind and feeling insecure about the stupid shit you say in front of individuals of your preferred sex.

“Motion in the Ocean”, a huge highlight on the album for me both lyrically and musically, resonates with me more than almost anything else on this record. Lines like “It seems that we are clams inside our shells / Side by side on rocks we feel the tide as the sea contracts and swells” emphasize the feeling of powerlessness an 18-year-old Canadian who just failed his first year of university in a city of 2.463 million people (as of 2016) can feel sometimes. Yes, perhaps many of these lyrics are a tad on-the-nose and almost approaching cliché, but that adds to the beauty of it. Does this really make the messages and emotions conveyed by Love It Love It any less powerful or have any less meaning? These emotions and themes feel so genuine it’s hard to hate them, as much as the cold, cynical, pretentious arsehole in me wants to. What can I say? I can’t help but like and relate to this dumb little album. It’s great.

Yeah, sure. There’s lots of folky indie rock out there that will give you these kind of feels. I’m sure there are thousands of bands like this that try to do the same things. I can’t call this album revolutionary, or even especially fresh and different. No, the power in this album lies in its consistency and lovability. It fits very comfortably in a genre and mood that’s been done to death, but the playful, casual arrangements, lovably self-deprecating yet optimistic lyrics, and complete relatability to this young, confused college student make it pretty damn special in my books. Listen to it with some friends in the forest and let the stresses of post-adolescent mediocrity float away from you for a bit. At the very least, you’ll feel a helluva lot less alone after giving this a spin.

Perhaps this was a very fitting album for our first review in the gargantuan community of music reviewers. It’s pretty hard to recommend a better album for a couple of kids just starting their journey into a brand-new world who have no fucking clue what we’re doing. Anyway, I hope you enjoy our reviews.

Love,

Max Gilmour

Bandcamp

[sweetiefayce]

Originally Posted To My Waterfall!

So let’s have a context-copy-paste from there! 

(Done pre-Wacom tablet upgrade.)

Copy and Paste for Context:

Originally, Batgirl as an identity wasn't meant to be a side-kick (that was a 1990's post-zero hour retcon! And a messy one at that!)

Batgirl was basically meant to stand on equal footing with Batman; she was an ally, not a copy. Inspired by but not working for nor under. That was pretty much established in her debut episode, in fact! She loved what he stood for, but had her own way; a much more empathetic, working-with-the-people approach!

That carries on to the current run today! So, wheras Bruce nowadays is happy to inspire fear and act as a semi-urban-legend, Barbara wants to be right on the street with the people--using a combo of criminal psychology with the most updated tech!

It's fascinating really!

--End Flashback

Ok, so, my last post? About accepting how I draw? Yeah; this is where I really started to take my own advice.

Or, more specifically, I started to have fun again in my work and actually work on the backgrounds! But although those doneed work, that wasn't the point of this little series;

See, when you design super-hero costumes, you have to take into consideration why they are the way they are.

So; the trunks on the outside? The bright colours and capes? Those are all influenced by the 1930's strongman acts! Early circus performers and gymnasts; the tight spandex was meant to really accentuate the body and show the daringnessbehind those feats!

That translated really, really well in the old Bronze Age Batgirl comics! ...But since, let's be honest, most artists have sort of 'forgotten' showing off the daring-ness of the pose and...well.

But that's why the Batgirl of Burnside design was so refreshing! It went 100% against the grain without sacrificing any of those early influences! In fact, it used it for the better; Babs Tarr and Brenden Fletcher utilised character design 101, aka, "What does this say about this character?"

So the wide eyes in the mask: designed so people might better meet her eye and empathise, gain her trust essentially,

The bold purple: a colour that carries connotations of independance as well as royalty!

But the design itself? All practical. The perfect marriage of old and new, essentially!

So I wanted to learn from that...so I decided to have a go at imagining what I'd do if I ever got the chance to design a Batgirl outfit.

Obviously, I'd keep Tarr's influence of practical-theatrical; but I think one of my favourite things about Batgirl is her love of her motorcycle. Hence; motorcycle-gear! I actually really loved getting creative with where I'd place the black contrast panels--supportive, but as a visual nod to the fact that, yeah, she has been paralysed and she has recovered mobility--which further translated to the contrast underside of the glove!

I think, also, using the stark blue for the cowl gave me a chance to play with really identifying that it's a helmeted piece...or, ok, that was the goal. I still need practice!

[stacksetfacts]

I got a hold of an ARC for this most excellent book at ALA Midwinter this January, and was excited to read it -- especially after sitting in on a panel hosted by @penguinteen’s new imprint Kokila, that focuses on presenting works by folks on the margins. 

And after finishing it this morning, I decided to do something I haven’t done before: write a review of it. I originally posted it at the link above, but here it is in its full text glory. 

I’m not sure where to start with this because there’s so much about Patron Saints of Nothing to love: do I mention how authentically-but-not-tropely teenager-like Jay, the protagonist, feels? Should I talk about how the book makes a real-world event, happening right now, become meaningful and accessible to readers across the ocean in ways that journalism can’t? What about the fact that every person in this story (it feels weird for me to call them characters at this point) gets an opportunity to live and tell a story that is as much their own as it is the story of millions of people? Selfishly, the queer in me wants to talk about the representation, but I think it might be best to start somewhere else.

Randy Ribay wrote a book that is a lot of things: loving, illuminating, excellent — but the word I keep circling back to is important. I think that’s why it’s hard to decide where to start – there’s no single thing about the book that makes it important; it’s the book in its entirety, and how all the different elements I mentioned above – and more – feed off of and into each other.

The story is about the aforementioned Jay (short for Jason) Reguero, a teenaged Filipino-American boy who lives in Michigan with his Filipino dad and his white mom. From the outset, you feel like you already know Jay: he’s the one brown kid who you know of from school but who you don’t really know. This is partly because you’ve noticed him for what makes him different, and without realizing it you decide you know something about him because of that; but it’s also partly because he’s mastered the skill of fitting in just enough to stay out of the general consciousness as a way to deal with the other-ness he feels, and to stay safe in his school.

Mind you, the secret that nearly every teenager learns, but only once they’re well past their teens, is that everyone in high school has that same sense of desperation in wanting not to be noticed, because different is dangerous. But Jay shows readers another part of that, that a lot of us miss if we aren’t visibly a minority ourselves: white readers get a taste of what it’s like to want to fit in, but to have something about you that is overtly and immutably different. Jay can wear the same clothes, speak the same language, aspire to the same image of adult success, but he’ll still, always, be (and be seen as) Filipino-American – for better or worse, depending on who you ask.

This kind of otherness is powerful and permeating, and the way Ribay tackles it in Nothing is kind but also unflinching. There’s an interaction early on between Jay and his best friend that highlights the pain of it – when his friend starts a conversation with the dreaded, “promise me you won’t get offended,” the conversation goes exactly where you expect it to. But it all has to be said, and said in a way that is as explicit as it can be, especially for a novel that’s written for young readers: there’s a problem with whiteness being the default, and there’s a problem with assuming that things that differ from the norm is bad, and while someone can be as well-meaning as the day is long, sometimes people are perfectly justified in their anger at what you thought was a compliment. But it also shows that people can forgive, even if that forgiveness doesn’t come in that moment, or that day, or even that week. This interaction, for all its cringeworthiness, is also genuine and human and important.

This exploration of otherness gets explored from the other side of Jay’s identity as well when he travels to the Philippines to investigate his cousin’s death (the central plot of the book). I want to acknowledge here that this particular plot point is probably the only aspect of the book that I was skeptical of before I started reading Nothing. There’s a tendency I’ve found in YA lit to give the protagonists “diet superpowers,” that is, to make them remarkable in ways that are just past what one could realistically expect from a character their age. And while I don’t think that’s a problem – if it inspires young people to be more than they can, good! – it also feels a little cheap. So when reading the synopsis for Nothing, I felt a little skeptical reading that a seventeen-year-old was going to the Philippines to investigate his cousin’s death.

Fortunately, I was reassured early into the novel (and then very very nervous for him given the task he was tackling) (oh no my sweet Jay what are you getting yourself into) to find out that Jay’s… well, he’s very much a realistic seventeen-year-old, with no preternatural sleuthing skills to speak of. His time in the Philippines plays out realistically, and Ribay is kind enough to the reader and to Jay to make sure that he is looked after by a cast of characters who are believably competent, which gives Jay the space he needs to grow up quickly but authentically, given the circumstances. Disbelief happily not suspended!

During his time in the Philippines, the reader is given a chance to understand how painful being the other can be, which is so in line with Ribay’s dedication of the book: for the hyphenated. Although it’s touched on during his time home, once Jay lands in Manila the reader gets to see him grapple with the cost that he’s paid to try and fit in back home. Perhaps the biggest: Jay doesn’t speak Tagalog, one of the two national languages of the Philippines, and an overt marker to nearly everyone he comes in contact with that something about his identity doesn’t fit. We see how this recognition of his otherness plays out in his interactions variously with a customs agent, his family, and the folks he meets along the way, and I couldn’t help but wince for and with him each time someone else pointed at it. I think this is something that folks from mixed backgrounds intrinsically get, but is less obvious to others, and should be a core take-away for readers:

For the folks who exist on the margins – folks who straddle nationalities, or color lines, or various other identities, there’s immense pressure from both sides to fit into one identity or the other.

For some folks, I think the result is that one never gets to feel fully anything, and that can feel incredibly lonely. I hope that readers of Nothing pick that message up, and realize that they can be kind, and understanding, and try to hold space for the whole complexity of a person.

That last bit – recognizing that people are not simple things where a single label, or even two, can substitute for the whole-ness of their beings – is probably the biggest take-away of this book for me, and Ribay gets it across beautifully. The entire book lets the reader follow Jay’s journey from not just understanding himself as more than just a young man who’s going off to college because that’s what expected of him, but to understanding that the same thing applies to everyone around him. Every character, it seems, is introduced simply (justifiably so – Jay’s the narrator), but over the course of the book you learn that they are so much more than the handful of identity markers they get in the start.

That’s how people are in real life, and perhaps that’s why I think Patron Saints of Nothing is, above all, important. It’s important for others in the margins to read and see themselves reflected in art and the media – it lets them know they aren’t alone, they are worth telling stories about, and that someone else cares enough about them to put forth the effort. It’s also important for everyone else, because it gives anyone who reads it permission to feel and see aspects of themselves reflected in people they might not otherwise click with. The world always needs more empathy, but especially nowadays, it seems like we could go for a double helping.

Patron Saints of Nothing, by Randy Ribay, is slated for release in June 2019 by Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Gold Key #25: Dwarf Planet

Happy New Year everyone! 

Next episode still isn’t coming until the seventh, but while I was re-organizing my excessive amount of books I came across something and thought, hey, this might make for a fun holiday treat. Besides, I felt bad leaving you guys on a cliffhanger for so long. 

So this...

[ID: A photograph of a copy of Star Trek The Key Collection: Volume 4, with a cover showing Kirk, Spock and McCoy against a background of stars, with Sulu and Scotty in insets.] 

...this is one of my Gold Key comic collections. 

The Gold Key comics were the first Star Trek comics ever made, running for sixty-one issues from 1969-1979. What I have here are volumes three and four of a five-book collection of the comics put out back in 2004-2006, which actually only goes up to #43—the last two books were planned but never published.

Myself, I first found volume four here at a used bookstore not too long after I had first gotten into Star Trek. (I found volume three at another store quite awhile later. I apologize for not starting at the beginning here, but this is what I have. There’s no continuity anyway so don’t worry about that.) I was very much not prepared for what I was about to find inside.

For the thing about these comics is that they are incredibly and hilariously bad. The plots themselves wouldn’t always be out of place for Trek, but the combo of dodgy art, weird dialogue, and overall off-ness that gives the sense that the writers were working off a Wikipedia article about Star Trek instead of ever actually having seen the show, all adds up to a final product that doesn’t resemble Star Trek so much as a weird fever-dream version of Star Trek from an alternate dimension.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look.

[Image Description: A comic splash page titled STAR TREK: DWARF PLANET Part 1 showing Scotty, wearing a blue and white polka-dot loincloth, throwing rocks at a slimy green thing while saying, “What kind o’way is this for a lad like me to be dyin’--trampled by a hairy-legged—MICROBE!” The narration box at the top of the page says “Come along with the crew of the starship Enterprise as they race to solve the mystery of a world in which all life is rapidly shrinking to—oblivion!”]

Our issue for today, Dwarf Planet, opens with a splash page of Scotty in a spotted loincloth throwing rocks at a microbe, which I think gives you a pretty good idea of what we’re in for here.

[ID: A dark green Enterprise shuttle, landing on an empty airfield with a green field in the distance. The narration box reads, “Captain’s Log, Star Date 19:24:8—Lt. Uhura, Chief Comm-officer, has detected intelligent radio signals from the little explored area of space, sector 199-D!” Inside the ship Kirk is saying, “You were right, Lt. Uhura! There is advanced life on this planet! Mr. Spock and I will investigate!” while Uhura says, “With the captain’s permission, I’d like to accompany you!”]

The story itself, however, begins with an Enterprise shuttle—newly painted green, apparently—landing on this planet to investigate some intelligent radio signals. I don’t know why Uhura waited until they actually got down to the planet surface before asking if she could come with.

Anyway, they find a fully-built city, but it’s completely deserted, no one around. The only living thing are some bushes that turn out, upon closer examination, to actually be miniature trees. Kirk thinks this is weird, which is a bit judgmental of him. Maybe people on this planet just like their bonsai.

The mystery deepens when they find another city within a mile of the first—also abandoned, and much smaller than the first one. And I don’t mean smaller in terms of zoning. I mean the buildings are about two or three feet tall. Uhura speculates that there may have been multiple intelligent species of different sizes living on the planet, but there’s no sign of any of them now.

Kirk then recommends they split up, gang. He heads off into the countryside, where he finds a tiny rocketship that he assumes is a toy belonging to a child. Except it promptly flies off and returns with a bunch more ships, which trap Kirk with a net. He helpfully narrates all this as it’s happening.

[ID: A page of four panels showing Kirk being surrounded by small rockets which are firing weighted ropes at him, slowly driving him to the ground. First panel: “They’ve opened fire! Shooting heavy stranded wire!” Second panel: “They’re forming a net over me! I’m being captured by a pack of toy rockets!” Third panel: “Can’t break these things! And they’re pulling me down! ARRRRGGGGH!” Fourth panel: “One of them is landing! If I could only get my hands on the child who’s controlling these fantastic toys!”]

Thanks Kirk.

It’s not until the rockets land and open that Kirk finally realizes they’re not toys being operated by a child, but real miniature rockets being flown by tiny people, who shoot Kirk in the face with some paralyzing gas before he can get a message out over the communicator. One of the tiny people—speaking through an unexplained device on his forehead—introduces himself as General Kwy. I have no idea how to pronounce that.

[ID: Two panels showing Kirk laying on the ground while a small bald man in a red tunic and black pants stands on his chest. In the first panel he is saying, “You would like to say ‘I come to planet Kujal in peace! Why do you treat me so?’ Because you are a giant! And where one has come, others will follow!” In the second panel he says, “My people will become slaves to yours! Household pets or worse—sideshow freaks! Not while I live, giant! Never!”]

General Kwy has some weirdly detailed predictions about what’s going to happen if his people are discovered by ‘giants’ and he’s not having it. So he brings out a couple cranes to load Kirk onto a board, Gulliver’s Travels style,  and has him wheeled off to a third, even smaller, city.

[ID: Kirk laying on a wooden wheeled board in front of a dais covered cloth, where a woman sits on a gold chair next to General Kwy. The general is saying, “Madame President, I’ve brought the giant prisoner mentioned in my report!” Kirk is thinking, “A woman leader! A more advanced world than many!”]

Kirk is brought in front of Madame President, which Kirk reminds us is So Advanced. Madame President is a little nicer than General Kwy and orders Kirk to be de-paralyzed, but then reveals that Spock and Uhura have been captured also. And stowed under the bunting on the dais. No, I don’t know why.

Madame President lays down some backstory: there was only ever one species of people on the planet, which was once human-sized. They “were a happy world until sudden explosions rocked [their] sun with fantastic intensity.” Don’t you hate it when that happens?

[ID: A panel with a narration box saying, “But, in time, these ceased and life resumed as before! Until, one day...” Below, someone in a gray robe is approaching a woman sitting at an oversized table, talking into a large rotary phone. The person in the robe is saying, “We are growing smaller with every passing day!” The woman is saying, “Yes! It’s true! Others report the same! But why?”]

Yes! It’s true! Others are reporting the same, right now, on my giant rotary phone.

The shrinking kept happening, causing the next generation to have to build an entirely new city, and the next generation to do the same. Eventually they figured out that because of the sun explosions “some new radio waves have caused all living cells to shrink.” Sure. Anyway, looks like now their civilization is doomed because eventually they’re going to shrink out of existence. Bummer.

Uhura points out that the Enterprise could very easily move them all to another planet, but Madame President gives the standard answer for why we can never just use the easy solution, which is “no we love our planet so much we’re all gonna stay here even if it kills us.”

General Kwy wants to have the three of them executed straight away, but Madame President belays that and lets them all go sit and eat tiny food and talk while she figures out what to do with them.

[ID: Spock, Kirk and Uhura sitting among the small buildings eating and talking. Narration: “Later, as crowds watch from a distance...” Uhura: “How could they think of altering their sun even if they had the ships to reach it?” Spock: “Quite impossible! All the harnessed power of the inhabited worlds of the universe could not destroy—or even alter—a star!”]

All that harnessed power of the inhabited worlds couldn’t alter a star! It takes inexplicable space explosions to do that.

Since altering the star is out of the question, Kirk proposes making some kind of antidote or shielding to deal with the shrink rays. But to do that, they’d have to fly close to the sun to gather samples of the rays. I don’t know how you capture samples of radio waves but he seems confident. Little does he know, however, that the general has an “audio-magnifier” trained on the trio to eavesdrop on their plans, because just listening would be too easy.

Madame President is okay with this plan. Suspiciously, so is General Kwy, though he proposes that they leave a hostage to guarantee they don’t just escape. Which doesn’t work super well when the people in question have remote teleportation technology, but he doesn’t know that.

[ID: A very pale-looking Uhura leaning over Madame President and saying, “In that case, Madame President, I volunteer to be the hostage!” Madame President is saying, “I was hoping the woman among you would show that courage! Congratulations, Lieutenant!”]

As a woman, I was hoping the woman among you would show courage! Here on my advanced world, we like it when women show courage. Have I mentioned I’m a woman recently?

Uhura is often—though not always—quite distressingly pale in these comics. With the way it varies I’m not sure whether it was intentional whitewashing or just bad coloring. Or some awful combination of both, maybe.

With Uhura staying behind, Kirk and Spock prepare to leave, although not before General Kwy stops them to give them a container of fruit as a gift. Absolutely no one bothers to check that the box does indeed contain fruit. Surprise! It doesn’t. It contains a couple of stowaway soldiers assigned to sabotage the mission. Because Kwy still thinks the humans want to make slaves of them all. Or something.

Part Two begins with the Enterprise approaching the sun, as Kirk says that they have no way of knowing whether the ship’s anti-radio shielding will stop them all from getting shrunk. That seems like something they should really have made sure of before doing this. Oh well, too late now.

As they get close to the sun, Sulu tries to raise the radio energy analyzer dish—it’s a thing, apparently—but it won’t go up. Apparently there’s a mechanical problem that necessitates someone go outside and unjam the thing. Even in the future, someone still has to occasionally go personally hit things until they work again.

Luckily, Scotty’s on the case, showing up all dressed in special anti-radio foil before Kirk even has a chance to give any orders. Kirk is a little miffed about this since he’s supposed to be the captain and all but Scotty doesn’t have any time for that.

Scotty struggles with the radar dish while everyone stands around watching and making helpful comments.

[ID: Four panels showing Scotty struggling to lift a radar dish on the top of the ship while Kirk, Spock and McCoy watch on a viewscreen. In the first panel, Scotty is thinking, “But it must be doin’ the job—or those rays would be shrinkin’ me already! Now to get the dish up into position! UGGGGGH!” Second panel, Kirk: “It’s jammed all right! Look at him struggling! I wish we could communicate with him!” Spock: “Our radio signals can’t get through that foil, either, of course!” Third panel, narration, as Scotty raises the dish with a ‘whooosh!’ and ‘klang!’: “Finally, with one mighty effort...” Kirk, from offscreen: “He made it! Nice work! Even you have to admit it, Bones!” McCoy, from offscreen: “Why, Captain? He’ll be telling us all about it for months! Ha-ha-ha!” Fourth panel, showing Scotty collapsed on the top of the ship, McCoy: “Hold it! Something’s wrong! He’s collapsed!” Kirk: “Emergency! Break out another foil outergear! I’m going after him!”]

I wasn’t aware that Scotty and Bones had any particular rivalry, but this writer seems to think otherwise. 

Anyway, as you can see, Scotty promptly collapses, and since as we know there are only about ten people on the whole Enterprise Kirk has to personally go out after him. Instead of Scotty, though, he finds an empty suit.

[ID: Kirk, wearing a foil spacesuit and holding up another spacesuit, seemingly empty, while McCoy looks on and Spock leans over the suit with his hand to his ear. Kirk: “This is exactly what I found! But how could--” Spock: “Shhhhhh! Listen! Do you hear it?”]

I don’t know why, but that picture of Spock with his hand to his ear is cracking me up.

As you can probably guess if you’ve been paying any amount of attention to anything, Scotty done got shrunk. Apparently the radar dish tore a hole in the protective foil. Don’t design your radar dishes with sharp edges, folks. Since Scotty was so close to the sun at the time, he got a heckton of radiation (that’s a scientific term), so he’s still shrinking. In fact, Spock speculates that Scotty might quickly be reduced to microscopic size, meaning that “the very bacteria in the air will menace him as much as a prehistoric mammoth would us!”

An odd choice of metaphor, but we can’t have Scotty be menaced by mammoth bacteria, so they rig up a sterilized environment for him.

[ID: First panel, Spock and Kirk are looking at a glass dome with a tube going into it. Narration: “Full technical facilities of the starship are put to work on the problem and shortly...” Spock: “Under that dome is a complete antiseptic atmosphere! The ‘breather’ tube circulates sterilized air!” Kirk: “A microbless world! That should do it!” Second panel, McCoy is holding up a miniature Scotty wearing a blue handkerchief around his waist. McCoy: “I’ll say one thing, Scotty—that kerchief looks better wrapped around you than it ever did in my pocket!” Scotty: “And what’ll I be wearin’ next—a speck o’ dust for a fur coat?”]

This one’s for you, Scones shippers. I...guess. (???)

Luckily for Scotty it doesn’t take long to identify the mysterious radio energy, as someone helpfully announces over the intercom.

[ID: First panel, McCoy is standing next to the dome and looking off to side, listening to an announcement from the intercom. Narration: “Painful minutes tick away as Scotty continues shrinking..” Intercom: “Attention! We have identified the mystery radio energy!” McCoy: “Did you hear, Scotty? We’re half-way home!” Second panel, McCoy is looking into the dome, now empty with the handkerchief huddled at the bottom. Narration: “And then the dread moment...” McCoy: “He’s gone! Yet I know he’s still in there—too small for the eye to see!”]

Unluckily for Scotty, the two little soldiers have arrived on the scene, and take the opportunity to fire on the breather tube. McCoy quickly captures them and puts them away in convenient storage box, which is just an empty box with ‘storage’ written on it.

[ID: McCoy putting two miniature soldiers into a box labeled ‘Storage.’ McCoy: “We’ll settle with you later!”]

He seals the tube with a bandage, but it’s too late—down in the land of microbes, a germ has gotten in.

[ID: First panel, Scotty is facing off against a large green eyeless worm-like thing. Scotty: “Glory be! A microscopic monster! Some germ that broke through the sealed system!” Monster: “EEEYAWWWRRRR!” Second panel, the monster lashes out its tongue at Scotty, who narrowly dodges under it. Scotty: “Missed me! But how long can I keep this little dance goin’?” Monster: “UNNGAWWRRR!”]

Sure, that’s what germs look like. Why not.

As promised by the splash page, Scotty has to engage in some germ warfare, using some microscopic dirt boulders that also got in as ammunition. It’s thrilling. Truly.

With the germ monster defeated, Scotty gets retrieved by McCoy, who’s wearing some sweet micro-specs.

[ID: First panel, Scotty is being lifted by a thin pointed silver rod. Scotty: “I’m caught! Feel like a whale being harpooned! No—more like a sardine! But what’s doin’ it?” Second panel, Spock looks on as McCoy, wearing goggles with a giant scope in one eye, lifts the rod. Narration: “And, in the world of ‘giants’...” Spock: “Are you sure you’ve got him, doctor?” McCoy: “Yes! I can see him clearly through these micro-specs! He’s struggling like a demon!”]

They stick him under the newly invented anti-shrink ray, which hasn’t been tested because there’s NO TIME, but it works because of course it does. Everyone’s very happy about this.

[ID: The Enterprise flying away from the sun with a ‘fwooosh!’ while people onboard exclaim “Hurrah!” “Yahoooo!” and “Eeeyowwww!”]

Eeyowwww, indeed.

[ID: First panel, Spock and Kirk watching a small Scotty gesturing. Spock: “Listen! He’s trying to tell us something!” Kirk: “The first report by a human returned from the land of microbes!” Second panel, Scotty: “--I said, ‘Get me some clothes, mon! I’m poppin’ out of this silly thing!” Spock: “Ha-ha-ha!” Kirk: “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”]

Ha-ha-ha-ha. Yes, that’s Spock laughing. I guess “Spock doesn’t laugh” wasn’t covered in the, I’m guessing, three sentence summary of Star Trek that the writers of this had to go on.

Anyway, they go back to the planet and tell Madame President that they’re going to deliver the anti-shrink rays so the population can be restored to proper size, although ‘proper size’ is not the size they’ve been used to being all their lives so one wonders if they really want that, but, eh, who cares. With General Kwy’s treachery exposed, Madame President has concocted a special punishment for him: he’ll be the last one on the whole world returned to full size. That’ll show him.

A happy ending (?), but of course we have to wrap up with something pithy.

[ID: Kirk sitting in the captain’s chair while Scotty and Spock stand nearby. Scotty: “--And I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll never make fun of another man’s size again!” Spock: “Experience is a great teacher!” Kirk: “Teacher? This kind of experience is a full professor!”]

Well, they tried.