#page 287

[sharry-arry-odd]

They were men who guarded their free will with wiles and murder. Their wills could be subverted only by death. Or the utmost reasonableness.

The Godfather, by Mario Puzo

[macreadsstormlight]

actual footage of lightsong’s dream

[pesterloglog]

Jade Harley, Aradia Megido, Davebot

Page 286-287

JADE: As a point of curiosity-

ARADIA: oh shit!!!!

ARADIA: :(

JADE: as a point of order, you never answered dave’s question.

ARADIA: which one he is very chatty

JADE: you experience time in a way that is woefully unfamiliar to me and it has... piqued my curiosity enough to learn more.

ARADIA: ?_?

DAVEBOT: shes asking how old you are

ARADIA: in this form our bodies stop aging once we reach maturity i think

ARADIA: the god tier keeps our physical form locked in a state of undying

ARADIA: even in death the bodies do not decay

ARADIA: only lay dormant

DAVEBOT: no thats boring

DAVEBOT: like how long have you been alive

JADE: yes, that one.

ARADIA: oh maybe a few hundred years or so

DAVEBOT: what

JADE: what?

ARADIA: well if i had known you were going to be so judgy about it

DAVEBOT: when did this happen

ARADIA: oh i spent some time in other doomed realities and timelines and came back before anybody could tell i was gone

DAVEBOT: oh just out for a bit of fun then

DAVEBOT: just hopped on over to a different reality

DAVEBOT: real casual like

DAVEBOT: oh hello dont mind me just popping in to see if it really is as doomed as they say it is

DAVEBOT: did not disappoint

ARADIA: yes almost exactly like that :)

DAVEBOT: who did you hang out with are they cooler than me

ARADIA: it is complicated to explain

DAVEBOT: oh ok nevermind then

DAVEBOT: all clear

DAVEBOT: a whole alternate universe ripe with the coolest motherfuckers imaginable

ARADIA: you were there too i threw your air conditioner into the sun

DAVEBOT: wow thats fucked up

DAVEBOT: thats not where that goes at all

JADE: these events are not-canonical.

ARADIA: rude

DAVEBOT: i think what the ghost possessing a corpse of my ex is trying to say

DAVEBOT: and correct me if im fucking wrong

DAVEBOT: which for the record im not

DAVEBOT: is that the trope of being hundreds of years old but looking young forever patently sucks ass

DAVEBOT: a plot device an asshole would write

ARADIA: :(

JADE: that is not what i am trying to say at all.

DAVEBOT: hmm wow yeah thatd really be a sort of pot/kettle situation i guess

DAVEBOT: i cant believe im the only woke one here

DAVEBOT: its hard being such a visionary AND such a fine metallic specimen

DAVEBOT: but im an altruist first and fucking foremost

ARADIA: so selfless

JADE: yes, the greater narrative is truly blessed by your beneficent presence.

DAVEBOT: oh so you got jokes now huh

JADE: i have always had the ‘jokes’ of which you speak, but i have heretofore exercised restraint in laying you low.

JADE: i possess knowledge of many of your iterations, as the scope of my powers allows me to exist in several narrative structures at once.

DAVEBOT: but can she see why kids love the sweet cinnamon taste of cinnamon toast crunch

JADE: i do not know, or care, what that means.

ARADIA: neither do i :)

JADE: its cultural significance to you as an earthling is wasted on the two of us entirely, as we have not conflated the misguided notion of clinging to nostalgic cereal advertisement trivia with socially relevant conversation.

JADE: one could say that your reference is lost to

ARADIA: .....

JADE: ......

ARADIA: .......

JADE: time

ARADIA: ouo

[spookyfoxdreamer]

[softpaladin]

sorry ive fallen back into fandom shit lol

[heahven-2023]

oct 15, 2023

it feels so surreal with what happened today. when i thought it was just an ordinary sunday- with ordinary housekeeping chores, i get a call from dad asking us to all go visit grandpa. i really didnt think much of it bc he seemed so fine yesterday.. it was really hard to say goodbye, but i’m glad he was surrounded by the people that he loved. wherever you are grandpa i hope you are happy. i love you ❤️

[heahven-2022]

oct 14, 2022

i had a pretty good friday. aside from the very bad day we had yesterday, the kids were much better today. (fingers cross they’ll behave during my observation on tuesday 🤞😵‍💫) anyway, it’s the weekend. hurray for that!!

[noctivagant-corvid]

part 2 of my prime defenders dash simulator (pt 1, pt 3, pt 4)

🪼mackleless Follow i make a post asking for tide x wavelength rpf fics. the post semi blows up. tidalwave(WE HAVE A SHIP NAME????) now has 300 fics. guys.

🪼mackleless Follow not complaining though. you guys are making the old guys fuck nasty and cry, and i’m here for it

5,231 notes

🤺tearfulatthefalling Follow my college is haunted by a emo kid

🍋 forscoreandsixyearsago Follow TEARS????? ELABORATE?????

🤺tearfulatthefalling Follow ALRIGHT GATHER ROUND LITTLE CHILDREN LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE EMO BOY WHO HAUNTS MY CAMPUS. around a year ago, people started seeing a pale boy with a strip of white hair and blue raccoon tails, along with little blue fires floating around him. he would appear, stare at the person who saw him, then disappear, along with his little fires. he wears a black hoodie with some weird text and sweatpants. he is almost always in the freshman boy’s dorm- except for twice people saw him in the library. he hasnt done anything but theres a tall kid with purple hair whos name i dont know who wore his sweatshirt once, so he might be fucking a ghost.

🍋forscoreandsixyearsago Follow tears what the fuck

👾bonemarroni Follow reblog if you are a kid with purple hair who might be fucking a ghost

12,374 notes

🪐plutoisaplanetish Follow some days you are the hero putting a giant sword through a space meatball. other days you are the space meatball getting a giant sword put through you.

🪐plutoisaplanetish Follow stop making this post about sex

287 notes

🪷locustlotus Follow shout out to lightspeed, the patron saint of lesbians. a roller derby queen.

🌜crescentshendo Follow [[ ALT TEXT: An image of superhero Lightspeed from two years ago, posing with a college roller derby team after a match. She's very sweaty. End id. ]] here's an image for all the women likers :3

🌜crescentshendo Follow [[ ALT TEXT: A screenshot of various tags left under the previous post, reading "#HOFOSGOS. #HOLY SHIT." , "#wwomen heart eyes" , "#i am. a lesbian!!!!!!" , and "#LORD IN HEAVEN FORGIVE ME FOR MY THOUGHTS." . End id. ]] glad we're all on the same page

8,674 notes

👁‍🗨darlingsos Follow DCs hair is red bc red has more positive associations than negative ones

🍭sweetlikevinegar Follow LET THE JOKE DIEEEE

👁‍🗨darlingsos Follow NEVERRRR

23 notes

🧿untimelyprophetess Follow do you guys think the heroes know they have fanfic

🧿untimelyprophetess Follow does bacon man sit down at home and decide to look through his ao3 tag (which has. 25k works.)

🧿untimelyprophetess Follow AND SOME OF THEM HAVE CHILDREN,,,, imagine you log on to ao3 and your dad is trending with either x readers or fucking his coworkers. horrifying.

🧿untimelyprophetess Follow [[ ALT TEXT: A screenshot reading "ASHES2ASHES liked your post: do you guys think th..". End id. ]] ASHES TWO ASHES ??????????

765 notes

🧶handsupplayingmysong Follow there's two kids on the train next to me and they're both wearing those big, over the ear Autism headphones and clearly overstimulated. theyre also holding hands. a great day for the gay community

17 notes

☄tapedtogetherhope Follow one of my friends grew up in deadwood and they will just say. the most concerning shit. at any given time.

☄tapedtogetherhope Follow examples of this: 1. "you know, the part in the forest where all the blood is." 2. "everyone's got the old man on the outskirts of town who might eat people." 3. "if you see a rabbit with too many eyes you just keep walking! same goes for a wall leaking black liquid." 4. "sometimes people just disappear. usually one every year. the highway is hungry. or maybe it's the forest." 5. "sometimes if you walk near the cliffs at night you feel like something's leading you to the edge." also how to skin and gut a deer but im not putting that here

🦌letheliketheriver Follow i think youre actually the weird one hope. this is all very normal

☄tapedtogetherhope Follow I GUARANTEE YOU IT IS NOT.

21,079 notes

[gwaedhannen]

[Excerpt 12 from Sorrow Beyond Words: Collected Testimony of the War of Wrath, 4th Edition; edited by Elrond Peredhel.]

Editor's Note: The following is a partial listing of various graffiti and artefacts within the thrall quarters reported by the cleansers of Angband. The documentation was done at the command of Prince Ingwion, and a copy of the final report given to King Gil-Galad before the Prince returned to Valinor. The full report also contains medical examination information for every captive and corpse recovered, and is several thousand pages long.

[Sindarin Tengwar text, located in barrack 1443]: “Lenlim died here, and she did not forget the sun.”

A doll made of heavily-stained cloth and leather, in the form of an Eruchîn. Object shows heavy wear, and one arm is nearly torn off from the torso. Located in a refuse pit.

[Sindarin Tengwar text, located in barrack 933]: “They will offer you better food if you’re pregnant. Refuse.”

[Black Speech Tengwar text. Located in a mineshaft]: “snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga snaga“

Several bones from a foot, wrapped in cloth. Bite marks make age estimation impossible. Located in barrack 23.

[Sindarin Tengwar text, located in barrack 521]: “Feirdal is a snitch. Don’t trust him.”

[Sindarin Cirth text, located in barrack 521, on the opposite wall]: “Faranel is a hollow. Don’t trust her.”

[Taliska Tengwar text, located in a connecting tunnel]: “I told my son what rain is today. He doesn’t believe it exists.”

[Sindarin Cirth text, located in a mineshaft near a cave-in]: “[undecipherable] was here. Remember me.”

The handle of a rock hammer, with the head entirely worn off. Located in a dead-end tunnel. The rock wall at the end of the tunnel is heavily scratched and contains numerous broken fingernails and teeth.

[Sindarin Tengwar text, located in barrack 287]: “I came back. There is nothing beyond these stones for us.”

[Sindarin Tengwar text in three different hands, located in barrack 1242]:

"When I get to Mandos I am punching him in the face." "I’m aiming for the crotch instead." "We're not going to Mandos. Stay alive."

[Quenya Tengwar text, located in a latrine]: “The signs are compromised. Only believe your ears.”

[Taliska Tengwar text, located in barrack 932]: “They will offer you better food if you’re pregnant. Take the deal.”

[ask-the-meteor-crew]

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[quinnylouhughesx43]

Insta Edit ✩ Jack Hughes

“You can’t ‘out’ what has always been here.”

Summary: a gossip page thinks they’re outing Jack’s relationship but he turns it around on them.

Requested: yes / no

Warnings: all pictures are from Pinterest. none are actually Jack. use of “youruser” and one (y/n)

Authors Note: please keep in mind everything written in edits like the one below, in AUs, or fics/blurbs is completely fictional but may happen to fall in line with factual life events. Just because the storyline may line up with day-to-day life in some way it is not intentional. Unless noted before hand.

nj.hockeytea

liked by user63, user22, and 12,438 others

tagged: jackhughes, youruser

nj.hockeytea: These pictures sent in by an anonymous user of Jack Hughes and a mystery girl. The message attached with their pictures:

Jack and his family were staying in a beach house [redacted]. This girl came with them. So she isn’t a random hook up. Unless he picked her up at the airport but by the way he was all over her I doubt that’s the story. When they were outside and it was just the two of them it was pure couple stuff, but if his brothers were around she became one of them. I don’t know if she’s trying too hard or if she’s just that in with them.

load more comments

user98 ➤ shes been seen with jack before

user3 ➤ could they not give them privacy???

jackhughes ➤ she isnt a mystery girl, she is MY girl and has been my girl.

⟱youruser ➤ jackhughes dont get too worked up j, they just want something to get excited about.

jackhughes

liked by _quinnhughes, njdevils, lhughes_06, and 84,387

tagged: youruser

jackhughes: (y/n) and I have never believed that we have to post one another to prove our love to each other. We have have never believed that we should have to come straight out to the media and say “hey we’re together!!” That is why you don’t see these pictures or any other. Our lives are chaotic and when we are together we want to be able to freeze time just like anyone else but it be for us, not the world.

comments have been limited by user

_quinnhughes➤ did jack just go soft...

⟱jackhughes ➤ shut up. ill be anything i need to be for (youruser)

youruser ➤ jack, you have always been the sweetest. except when you let your brothers dump ice cream on me when we were 12. :( but i wouldnt trade you for anything or anyone

youruser

liked by jackhughes, trevorzegras, and 287 others

youruser: im begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans, thats my maaaan♡︎

trevorzegras➤ hes going to be so upset you used swift lyrics and he wrote a book

_quinnhughes➤ ignore the idiot above me

_quinnhughes➤ your account is private no one would see if you called out media

_quinnhughes ➤ trevorzegras rowdy is probably staring at them in the pictures and hasn’t looked at the caption

youruser➤ im going to block u spammer

jackhughes➤ willow is damn jam

lhughes_06➤ dear god youruser what did you do to my brother. 23 years around each other is too long…….

⟱youruser➤ too bad youre stuck with me lukie pookie, im here forever. because i said YES.

[sharry-arry-odd]

"I don't want to be muted," Thrash said. "I don't want my natural magic erased. And I'm not the only one. This is bigger than just me now." "I understand." Osmarra used her magic to whisk away her own tears. "Would the face of the revolution allow her mother to dry her tears with a little magic? Only if you want, of course."

Fat Witch Summer, by Lizzy Ives

[clevercatchphrase]

Page 287

(Links coming in afternoon reblog!)

[pesterloglog]

Dave Strider, John Egbert

Act 2, page 287

TG: hey bro check it out im working on some new rhymes

EB: dude, i don't have time for your nerdy raps!

TG: come on this is hells of ill just listen

EB: it sounds like you don't even believe me that i was about to get blown up!

EB: but i really was, but now im in some weird dimension that sburb sent me to or something.

EB: and now on top of that i think i'm being haunted by my dead grandma!

TG: huh

TG: for real

EB: yeah, it's true but i'll talk to you later about it!

TG: i think i could drop some sick rhymes about all this

EB: man, see i just don't think all the rapping stuff is really as cool as you think it is.

TG: no thisll be dope check it

EB: no, i have to go! bye!

TG: wait wait

TG: armageddon's gettin waged on us

TG: but im-a gettin armed and dangerous

TG: sending men in space for savin us

TG: see which playa's more couragerous

TG: ben or bruce? dudes reach a truce

TG: put their blowchutes to use and up-suck it

TG: afflecks saclifice, i mean -crifice, would have to sufflice. aw fluck it

TG: bro be a stained-glass saint, up on a cross gettin hella christ-plagiarous

TG: bruce's like offa that cruciflix, nuff a this fuckin savior-fuss

TG: restrained his ass per mclane-redux while buscemi remained derangerous

TG: when a plan gone astray pays off a wasted craterous

TG: ash tray caterin to layers of matt maconnaheys vague remainder-dust

TG: wait

TG: uh

TG: macconahey wasnt even in any of those meteor movies was he

TG: ill have to make a rap about

TG: i dont know

TG: morgan freeman or something

TG: being the president

TG: itll be called

TG: "obama made it so that no one gives a shit about black presidents in movies anymore"

TG: see youve got to fill me in on whats going on

TG: so i have something to rap about besides all your dumbshit movies

[hamaonoverdrive]

How to get into Hokuto no Ken, A Guide

Hokuto no Ken, localized as Fist of the North Star, is the wildly popular and influential series penned by Buronson and drawn by Hara starting in 1983. It is a timeless tragedy about the power of love that taps into imagery from both Catholicism and Buddhism, while also being an homage to a variety of western 80's pop culture from Mad Max to Blade Runner to Rocky.

In the current anime fanscape, HnK is perhaps best known for being one of the key influences behind Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Berserk, however it should be known that the series' influence permeates the entire Shonen genre. Traces of the tropes and dynamics that it popularized can be seen throughout Shonen today, from Naruto's drive for love and friendship that contrasts with Sasuke's rejection of the idea and desire to sever any bonds of love, to the implementation of Haki in One Piece.

So with all that in mind, let's get into the specifics.

The place to start with this franchise is very straightforward: read the original manga or watch the anime adaptation. There are a number of movies that retell parts of the original story, but they all have different downsides and cut important aspects of the source material and thus are a bad place to start.

This primary canon is broken down into two (three) parts, as follows:

HnK or "HnK1" is the core of the series, starting at the Shin arc through the originally intended ending at chapter 136/episode 108. Most of the time if someone is referring to HnK, this is what they are talking about. The beginning of the series is a bit of a slow start, bouncing between villains of the week before actually kicking off the primary conflict (especially in the anime, more on this later). This is somewhat typical for the era-- these early arcs were written while the authors had no idea if they were going to get dropped from Shonen Jump. For this reason, I highly recommend sticking with the series until the Fang Clan Chieftain and Jagi arcs even if the beginning hasn't clicked with you yet.

HnK2 is the continuation of the series, where the authors were pressured to continue working on the series because of the money it was raking in. This naming convention comes from the title of the anime for this portion of the story, chapters 136-210/episodes 110-152. Quite frankly, the fact that this is past the originally intended ending is very evident; Buronson has been quoted as never re-reading it after publication.[1] It's very much worth checking out at least once if you enjoyed HnK1-- there are absolutely memorable characters and fights, as well as some of the best art in the series-- but be prepared for a general drop in writing quality.

"Post-Kaioh HnK" or "HnK3" is the last leg of the original manga, which has never been adapted elsewhere. Chapters 211-245.

Content Warnings

Explicit Sexual Assault

The elephant in the room when discussing this series is that some social aspects of it are very of-the-era. There are two instances of explicit sexual assault, which get dismissed as "well the perpetrator didn't have the best execution, but he did have the right idea..." The pages/timestamps to avoid this are:

Manga volume 02 pages 287-289; volume 03, pages 063-066 (Ultimate Edition numbering)

Anime episode 24, 13:04-13:53; episode 26 08:29-09:22

Mild Gore

I almost feel like it goes without saying, but this is famously the series where the protagonist makes baddies heads explode. While this is never depicted in graphic detail, HnK as a whole is going to be a bad fit if this distresses you in any way.

An early example of the aforementioned head asplosions.

Photosensitivity

The anime makes period-typical use of flashing lights in nearly every episode. If you are photosensitive (and can't take measures to mitigate the flashing), you should read the manga instead.

If you want to read the manga...

The manga is the way that I personally recommend getting into the series due to Hara's absolutely gorgeous art.

The manga is also generally seen as the true 'canon'; For example, colorschemes used in subsequent works typically draw from colored chapter/volume covers rather than the Toei anime. For this reason, this version of the series is what the Japanese audience usually thinks of when they think of HnK.

I know some people are very passionate about redhead Mamiya and crest toothpaste-head Rei, but the Toei colors functionally exist in their own separate continuity.

Reading the manga in English is far better now than it was even three years ago, as there are multiple English versions now available.

The official VIZ release is the defacto highest quality out there (support the print copies if you can). While there are a few odd translation choices and the SFX have been replaced with English ones, it has the highest fidelity copies of the original art and even has the original color pages that have not been published since the original Shonen Jump release.

To think that these wonderful colored pages were completely inaccessible, even to JP audiences, until Viz started rolling out the English volumes.

However, the Viz release is ongoing and only covers until volume 11 at the time of writing. If you want to read the rest of HnK2 (or highly value the original SFX and a smoother translation), you should seek out the official eOneBook release. This is sometimes labelled as "Digital - 2018" and is a rip of an official English translation that was released for a specialized eReader, copies of which been floating around online since about 2020.

There is also an older set of scanlations out there, which I would not recommend reading; The image quality is low-resolution and muddy, and there are a number of edgy translation choices such as inserting a homophobic slur that was not in the original text. I only mention this translation because it's the one on many online manga sites. Please love yourself and look elsewhere if you realize that you are reading these scans.

(left) English-language scanlations (right) Viz release from 2022. I distinctly remember first reading these pages and then immediately scouring the web to find a version of it that didn't have the contrast blown out, only to discover that this quality was all that available. Now, newcomers to the series don't have to worry about this at all.

There are two different versions of the complete manga, the original tankobons (27 total volumes) and the Ultimate Edition (17 volumes).[2] Both the Viz release and the eOnebook release are derived from the Ultimate Editions while the old scanlations are from the original tankobons, so this can be an easy way to identify which version you are reading.

As to what makes these versions different aside from chapters per volume, the Ultimate Editions clean up some of the art in the last few volumes and also includes "Last Piece", a one-shot by Buronson and Hara inserted between HnK1 and HnK2. This was written as a part of the 30th anniversary celebration, and Hara's art looks quite different 30 years down the road, making the abrupt change in style rather jarring-- consider this your heads-up.

TL;DR Read the Viz version for volumes 1-11, and the eOnebook rips for the rest.

If you want to watch the anime...

The 1984 anime adaptation of HnK is an all-time classic. It's often what western fans will think of first, between the manga being legally inaccessible in English until very recently and constant anime reruns in some markets (especially parts of Italy and France).

Toei has a tendency to copyright-strike anime clips on Youtube, so hopefully this clip of the opening will stand the test of time.

The anime genuinely excels in a few departments, namely: music, sound design, and voice acting. Even if you don't decide to watch the anime, I highly recommend looking up the OPs/EDs and putting on the OST while reading the manga.

That said, there are definitely some downsides to the anime, a lot of which were typical for Toei animations of the era. Character models and direction are all over the place, some of the animation itself aged like milk, flashing light effects make the series difficult to get through for photosensitive viewers, and stock footage gets reused many times. There also isn't a complete English dub of the show, as it got cancelled after episode 36.

And the biggest caveat to the anime: Filler episodes. Oooooh boy, early HnK filler episodes are baaaad. They don't match the rest of the series tonally and completely botch any sense of pacing. Remember how earlier I said that the series takes a while to get its footing because of early bad-guy-of-the-week format? The anime drags this out for about twice as long by adding new bad guys of the week.

The infamous "Nanto Cannonball Fist", where users are launched from a cannon and descend on their opponents with a sword. Yeah, I don't know how this counts as a school of martial arts, either. [img source]

For a first watch through, I highly recommend following a filler episode guide to skip these episodes in the Shin arc and get a better feel for what the series is about. Post Shin-arc filler tends to be a lot better, as these episodes match the manga's original tone and often fix pacing problems in the source material rather than worsening them.

That said, there are a few early filler episodes that are well-liked by fans for one reason or another, which I will detail here.

Episode 17: A (non-canonical) view into the internal politics of Shin's army.

Episode 18: In which Kenshiro fights a tank.

Episode 19: The goofiest of the goofy filler episodes. If you want to watch one filler episode to get a sense of what they are like, watch this one.[3]

Episode 21: A continuation of some of the conflicts from episode 17.

Episode 38: Features one of the best-written woman martial artists you'll see in this franchise. (This is after Shin arc, but I had to point her out. Watch this one.)

Rage Quitter 87's fansite also has an excellent episode-by-episode guide covering anime and manga differences, which can be very useful for highlighting some of the more subtle differences between the two.

An anime remake that more closely follows the manga has been announced, but we have no further details on it at the time of writing. (I wouldn't hold my breath for this, it could be several years before we know more.)

TL;DR skip the episodes listed here under "Shin arc".

So I got through the main canon, what next?

The sheer amount of secondary content for HnK out there can be overwhelming. It's one of the most profitable IPs of all time, with the bulk of those profits coming from pachinko machines that will never make it to the west outside Youtube phone clips and asset-flip games (more on this later). When the series isn't being used to sell soap, there are a number of supplemental works that are absolutely worth checking out. In this guide I will focus on works that are currently available in English.

The Official Gaidens

A series of manga with different protagonists and created with different creative teams, the Hokuto side-stories fill in some of the gaps in the primary canon. Most of them are very loving additions to the continuity and are a good place to go after finishing the primary material.

Toki Gaiden: Silvery Savior follows Toki starting from the founding of the Village of Miracles and ends after his climactic final fight, providing his lens on the events of the series and his relationship with Raoh. This gaiden does a good job of understanding what fans like about the series, and has a lot of secondary character interactions that were missing in the original work such as conversations between different Ken-oh underlings.

Jagi Gaiden: Flower of Carnage follows Jagi through his childhood, interspersed with the events of canon. This gaiden does a lot to explain why Jagi ended up the way he did, provides additional context to what the Hokuto children's training looked like, and how the world changed when the apocalypse happened. cw: rape

Yuria Gaiden: The Affectionate Mother Star follows Yuria before the apocalypse happens, giving us a snapshot of domesticity with Kenshiro, a better understanding of her abilities, and illustrating how her life was always influenced by those who had fallen for her.

Juza Gaiden: The Wandering Clouds follows Juza as meanders around canonical events, giving insight into what he was like as he shifted from wandering without drive or purpose to becoming a sworn guardian to the Last Nanto General.

Rei Gaiden: Bloody Wolf's Darkness is one that I wish I could leave off of this list, but that I will include for completeness' sake. It follows Rei before his appearance in HnK as he goes through the exact same character arc that he has in canon. The city that he wanders into has a setup directly out of a porn plot, thoroughly justifying the manga's ecchi genre-tag. cw: sexual assault. repeatedly.

Souten no Ken and Souten no Ken: Regenesis

Souten no Ken, otherwise known as Fist of the Blue Sky, is a prequel series that follows Kenshiro Kasumi, 62nd successor to Hokuto Shinken and uncle to the Kenshiro from HnK, as he has martial arts adventures and tumbles with gangsters in 1930's Shanghai. The series revisits many of the character archetypes from HnK and plays around with the same plot points in different contexts, ultimately dealing with themes of friendship and fate.

Souten no Ken is a complete manga, drawn by Tetsuo Hara with plot supervised by Buronson. Souten no Ken: Regenesis is a direct sequel that is currently ongoing, drawn by Hideki Tsuji and written by Hiroyuki Yatsu. Regenesis has been on hiatus since 2020 due to Hideki Tsuji's ongoing health problems.

While there are animes with both of these names, here I am referring specifically to the manga-- neither anime is worth your time.

There. Now you've seen the only things that matter from both animes.

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise

Released in Japan as "Hokuto ga Gotoku" (Like a Big Dipper), Lost Paradise is an action-adventure game from the studio behind the Yakuza/Like a Dragon/Ryu ga Gotoku series. Fans of the RGG franchise will immediately recognize the game structure and mechanics, which balance advancing the main story thread with a semi-open world where the player can stumble into comedic sidestories and play assorted minigames.

Bartending is just one of the jobs that Kenshiro can take up in Lost Paradise.

The core story of the game features an entirely original cast, but most of the main characters of HnK show up for just long enough to have fights and cutscenes full of loving references to the source material. It's pure fanservice, in the non-horny sense of the word.

Team RGG really knows how to nail dynamic fight intros and epic QTEs.

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage and Ken's Rage 2

Even though some of the character design choices for this game are painfully mid-aughties (looking at you, tribal tattoo pattern Ken), this intro still goes hard.

For many years the Ken's Rage series were the definitive HnK games, and with good reason. A Musou game much like the Warriors series, you can play as most main characters from the series and mow down waves upon waves of bandits. Some may find the gameplay repetitive, but it can also be relaxing depending on how you look at it. (If you've played a Warriors game before, you know what you're getting into.)

Ken's Rage 2 in particular brings "Dream Mode" to the table, which is a "what if" story mode told from the POV of each playable character. This gives us a lot of interactions that we didn't get to see in canon (such as the delightfully shippy Jagi story featuring Amiba) and also expanding on some characters that should have gotten more screentime in the original material.

Hokuto no Ken (1986 animated movie)

It's the movie produced by (largely) the same team as the anime, created simultaneously to the show. If you want to know what the anime would look like if it wasn't trying to stretch every yen as thin as it could, this is your ticket.

That said, there are some odd choices made to carve a 110 minute long arc out of the early manga. The movie starts with Ken receiving his iconic scars, and ends with the first confrontation with Ken-oh.

DD HnK

This officially kicks off the "HnK comedy series" part of this list. I feel like comedy in particular can be subject to personal tastes, so keep in mind that each of these projects approaches the series from a different angle and that some may resonate better than others.

DD HnK is a comedic take on what the Hokutobros would get up to if the world didn't end. They end up working at a convenience store managed by Ryuken (voiced by Akira Kamiya, the original VA for Kenshiro), where hijinks ensue when other characters from the series show up.

It's worth noting that there are two animes and a manga with this name. The first anime is a Flash-based ONA (which is hard to find nowadays, for understandable reasons) and the second anime is the TV anime; Both of these series as well as the manga are very largely different. All series are complete, although the English fan translation for the manga is ongoing.

DD stands for "Design Deformation", evidently.

Ichigo Aji (Strawberry Flavor)

An average day with the Holy Emperor.

Ichigo Aji follows Souther on his quest to make some good friends. :) No really, that's more or less the premise of this spinoff.

While there are animated IA shorts at the end of every episode of DD HnK2, the meat and potatoes of this series are in the manga. The manga is ongoing (albeit on long-term hiatus) and the English fantranslation is currently incomplete (also on hiatus). Each volume of the manga also has a serious chapter following different characters from the series, serving as "mini gaidens" of sorts.

Genius Amiba's Other World Overlord Legend - Even If I Go to Another World, I Am a Genius!! Huh? Was I Mistaken...

In what originally started as an April Fool's Joke, the Amiba Isekai is perhaps one of the most unexpected additions to this franchise. The story begins after Amiba's death at Kenshiro's hands, where he finds himself transported to a fantasy realm where magic and creatures like dragons are real. He decides to use his self-proclaimed "genius" to learn magic in lieu of the martial arts that he studied earlier.

This manga series started in 2021 and is is still ongoing, although the English fantranslation is incomplete and has been on hiatus.

End of the Century's Drama Shooting Arc

The End of the Century's Drama Shooting Arc, more colloquially known as the Actor AU, is a retelling of the series as though it was a live-action TV show, covering the efforts and foibles of the actors and production crew as they struggle to produce the series.

The manga for this series started in 2021 alongside the Amiba Isekai and is ongoing, although the English fan translation is currently incomplete (Noticing a reoccurring trend here? a12 and Sakura Leaves, if you're out there, we really miss your work 🥹). If you can navigate the points system (new chapters are free within a few days of release) and use Google Lens, you can get a rough translation from the official Comics Zenon website.

The Winckler Dub

While not intentionally a comedy spinoff, I'm including the Winckler Dub in this section. There are apocryphal stories about this dub being produced as a means to teach Japanese schoolchildren basic English, interviews point to this dub being a sincere project to create a version of this series palatable to an English-speaking audience.

Please, just unmute this series of clips.

The only editing I did here was to append the files. They just. Speak with pauses like that.

With several downright bizarre directing decisions (Raoh is a pirate now, evidently?) and some of the strangest line-reads I've heard in an anime, this relic of an older localization industry can easily fall under "so bad it's good". Watch this with a group of friends after having a few drinks or late night at an anime convention, ideally.

The dub does not cover the whole series, instead bundling sets of 4 episodes into a series of 6 movie-length "sagas": Shin, Ray (sic), Souther, Toki, Raoh, and Kaioh.

Hokuto no Ken: Legends ReVIVE

I feel like it would be a bit disingenuous to finish this list without mentioning Legends ReVIVE, the current ongoing gacha for the franchise. (Worth noting: I am the admin for the unofficial discord server for this game, which is also the largest and most active English-speaking community for HnK.[4])

This game is possibly one of the biggest lovenotes to the franchise as a whole, with character releases that reach into the most obscure pieces of fiction, from Last Piece to (formerly) Pachinko-only Gento practitioners. Early character models and story cutscenes were entirely asset-flips from pachinko models, but things have grown far past that in the game's past 4.5 years.

As a part of the 40th anniversary celebration for the manga, it was mentioned that there would be a new continuation of the manga's plot featured in-game, but at the time of writing we have little elaboration on this.

For a gacha, the game is relatively F2P friendly and doesn't ask much of your time on a day-to-day basis. But at the end of the day, it is a gacha that relies on predatory monetization and exploitation of gambling addictions. Caveat emptor.

But what about [x]...?

Legend of the True Savior: this movie series is another adaptation of the manga's plot, but this one doesn't really bring anything novel to the table. The same caveats about making a movie out of the manga apply, in that some odd choices get made to get arcs to fit in a movie timespan. It's there I guess, if you can stomach the artstyle.

Shin HnK/New Fist of the North Star: is victim-blamey rape apologia. There really isn't any reason I can recommend watching it, outside maybe looking up the final fight (where Junichi Hayama's direction really stands out) and the closing song (Oasis by Gackt).

Animated Gaidens (ex Ten no Haoh, Kenshiro Den, etc): these are one of the few things I haven't seen, and for the most part they don't come up in discussion. They're probably fine, but I just don't have the knowledge to comment on them.

Live Action Movie: don't. It's not even so-bad-it's-good, just don't.

In Conclusion

I hope this guide helped take the edge off of trying to figure out how to navigate such a sprawling series, and that it was genuinely informative about both what each work entails and the general context around it. This franchise is something I've really enjoyed digging into over the years and I did my best to convey that love and enthusiasm in this guide.

I may write more meta about HnK in the future, because I absolutely have a lot more to say. There's a lot for me to go on about regarding what the series means to me and why more people should pick it up, as well as putting together standalone character analyses from assorted ramblings on Discord.

Thanks for reading!

References

[1] From running the provided link through DeepL:

Buronson: By the way, I don't read much when a work is published in book form. As far as Fist of the North Star is concerned, the second part has never been published. Interviewer: What? Not even once? You didn't read it at all? Buronson: That's right. But I read the whole book from the beginning the other day.

[2] Not to be confused with the unrelated Master Edition, which was the first attempt to bring the manga to the English market. This version is a full-color version of the original tankobon release, of which only the first 9 volumes were completed. It can be a neat novelty to check out once you're familiar with the series, but the non-Hara colorings can be a mixed bag.

[3] There is a story that this episode was so goofy that it made Hara and Buronson visit Toei in person and tell them to cut that shit out. This claim comes from the book "Our Favorite Fist of the North Star" , which is a fanbook that featured some interviews with members of the anime studio staff, with absolutely zero input from Hara and Buronson themselves. Between the fact that Hara and Buronson were both stated to have been incredibly busy with producing HnK and did not have time to watch the anime and the fact that this claim directly contradicts how they barely met in-person during the production of the series, it seems likely that this bit was made up as a gaff and/or hyperbole by the interviewee.

[4] There are also smaller, more fandom oriented, centers for discussion-- but I'm not about to link them on a post that gets recirculated publicly.

Special Thanks

@/KiliHito (discord) for helping me source the interviews, digging into the truth about the fabled Nanto Cannonball episode, and giving me context for some of HnK's influence in modern shonen.

@takis-breathing-dragon for having the Winckler Dub clips on hand and spotting some typos.

[wolfstargazer]

Jan 15 - Before - @wolfstarmicrofic - word count: 287

Before he had managed to compartmentalise, to fool himself at least. But then he'd seen the map in Snape's hands and it had shattered everything.

Remus had been stunned to see the map again. The faded parchment, the means of so many adventures, confiscated and forgotten all those years ago.

All at once he was a boy again sitting on the floor of the dormitory, huddled over it, waiting for the coast to be clear.

Or trying desperately to conceal it when James had shoved it in his direction, trying to avoid the prying eyes of teachers and students alike.

In the days after Remus had taken it he had spent hours staring at it, watching the spidery writing of the names of current students and teachers bloom and fade across the parchment. It was a constant feature, open on the desk in front of him in between lessons, spread across the bed in the small apartment he'd been allocated when he'd returned to teach.

But try as he might to will them into appearing Remus couldn't conjure the names of his former friends onto the page.

Then one night the map finally revealed its secret. The sun was sinking low outside his window, the ghost of a full moon hidden behind the mountains. The Wolfsbane was abandoned in its glass, undrunk, forgotten in the instant he saw the name Peter Pettigrew appear...

Twelve years of regret and longing surged through him, a flutter in his stomach, a tightness in his chest, obliterating the sense and reason Remus clung to to give shape and meaning to his world.

And then another name bled into the parchment, black against buff, revealing itself at the edge of the map, changing everything.

Sirius Black.