#probably the end of the liveblogs era

[zhouxiangs]

i saw that you're currently reading my stand-in novel but you're not really spoiling anything. how are you finding it so far if i may ask? is it as angsty as people say it is?

(i waited until the end of the day to answer this because as i thought i've already finished the novel, so much for self-restraint lol also sorry this got a bit long... oops?)

i enjoyed it a lot! and it made me get over my reading slump, so i will even excuse it getting into some tropes i'm not particularly fond of at the end. it got cheesy…er, and not even in a way i like. amazingly, that didn't make me like it any less.

from the synopsis of the series and the tags in novel updates (and i only skimmed those because i didn't want to get spoiled) i had a pretty good idea of what the novel was going to be like, which is why i decided not to really liveblog since, transmigration aside, i'd say it's a pretty straightforward story. i could be persuaded to make a recap if there's interest though, since there's still over three weeks left until the series starts airing and i'm probably going to go over everything again and take notes anyway...

and oh, is it angsty! the whole thing hinges on zhou xiang (joe) being a sweet angel baby and yan mingxiu (ming) being a fucking idiot, and it's pretty much what you can expect from any dogblood/makjang with the scum ml, misunderstandings, heartbreak, regrets, etc. i have to say i'm not usually a fan of the misunderstanding trope bc i tend to find it annoying, but as with most tropes i don't particularly enjoy it's because of the way i often see it done. here it was painful for everyone involved, so i really liked it. also, please keep in mind that i'm a huge fan of big character development and characters redeeming themselves, so. there's that. wink wonk. (i've been reading some reviews and think for some people it may be best to know what kind of story this is before going in, other than because of triggers–which, very important if you need them, at least in the novel–because of the whole. scum ml more than anything lol even though yan mingxiu is not that scummy really!)

i love my stories character-driven, so having them being this well fleshed out and compelling was a joy, and being able to see so clearly what both zhou xiang and yan mingxiu were thinking and feeling, sometimes a lot earlier than they themselves could (please bl gods keep at least some of the internal monologue in the series, i am begging), was soooooo ugh. you're supposed to hate yan mingxiu allegedly but i just couldn't, not even in his scum era, because he was so obvious and so oblivious and so set in his own ideas he kept gaslighting himself into not noticing things. this could have gotten frustrating pretty easily, but again, everything feed into the delicious, delicious suffering. that being said, and because it doesn't seem to be a popular opinion... i think it's important to empathise with both of them, or at least sympathise, for maximum enjoyment of all that angst. you cannot cry over yan mingxiu's pain if you want him to get hit by a bus.

oh and the relationships (not only the cp's, though their progression is really good) are very important in this story, which is something i hope we get to see more of in the series because i ended up missing certain side characters in the later chapters. not tan yin though, i hope that fuck ass didn't make it into the series. how is a character so annoying while being in maybe six scenes total.

i can't say if it's good or not but it was extremely enjoyable, zhou xiang is my sweet darling angel baby, yan mingxiu is okay too (if you see me in the trenches defending him in about a month…), and i can't believe i am now, somehow, even more excited for my stand-in.

[lindleland]

And just like that, I'm done with Moon.

I was worried that I'd end up disliking this on a replay but it was much better than I'd remembered. Honestly one of my favourite games in the series.

These are still some of the best characters in the series, it has one of the best batches of new Pokemon they ever introduced, and you have a great set of team options throughout the game without it ever feeling like they're giving you too many options. I feel like the last couple entries have been maybe a bit too generous with the Pokemon you can get early on plus giving you enough XP to easily raise multiple teams, making each playthrough seem kind of indistinct. This one hits the perfect balance.

The region looks goddamn gorgeous and I love the aesthetic of these 3D models, there's a good balance between detail in the models and pixellated textures that have a real low-poly charm to them.

And this is still probably the best plot in the series, barring maybe Scarlet and Violet's.

I do have one big criticism though, and that's that this game is overwhelmingly handholdy. I think a lot of the changes to the formula were a good idea, but incorproating a strict linear plot with exactly one quest marker at a time makes this really feel like you aren't on your own journey, you're being guided through a series of preset objectives. So many roadblocks in this feel aggressively guiding, like the game is saying "this is NOT the way to progress the story, go follow your quest marker NOW", and there are very few opportunities to go off the beaten path. Additionally, while I do like the cutscenes, there are way too many of them. You can hardly enter anywhere new in this game without a cutscene happening.

With that being said, I still had a fantastic time here. And in fairness, Sword and Shield had similar problems outside of the Wild Areas despite barely even having a plot.

Glad I'm putting some good distance between this and Ultra Moon, though. Probably the worst pair of games to play through back to back given how little freedom there is in the experience. I'll be playing through the Violet DLC whenever I can afford it, but the other games in my immediate replay lineup are physical copies on old hardware that I can't screenshot on. Once we get back to the 3DS era though I'll probably liveblog Alpha Sapphire and Ultra Moon as well.

...Though I'm not really done with this liveblog yet, since Moon has (holy shit) an actual substantial postgame! Stay tuned.

[henghost]

Twig Liveblog for Arc 12

sy and jamie, hanging out together, caring for children: they love each other and will kiss imminently. this was the main thrust of the arc for me. their interactions, their dynamic--like a waterwheel of smugness, jamie on the one hand lording his memories and knowledge (of sex hehe) over sy, and sy on the other with his unstoppable torrent of taunts and jeers--carried me through an otherwise "filler-y" or "connecting" arc. i did enjoy how pulpy it got though.

the two plots going on here (1. dealing with the gangs of west corinth, and trying to develop a sy "orphanage" or "faction of children") are at once deeply wormcore and deeply twigcore. it reminded me of taylor's "warlord era" when she's trying (to varying degrees of success) to recruit people, to build a more moral world order. it seems quite doomed, of course.

there's such a fixation on the abuse of children in wildbow stories. it feels almost like a shortcut to pathos: children evoke the most pity of which we're capable, they're perfectly innocent, to harm them is the most egregious crime possible. it feels, in its moments of weaker execution, slightly manipulative (how sy-core). i'm quite cynical about this--it's a little too close to certain real-world shit, but i won't go into that here... there's also that little detail about how it was fray who commissioned the witch to test new drugs on kids... sorry, wildbow, but you're not going to trick me into being anti-fray or anti-mauer!!!

for sy, i think it represents a kind of repetition compulsion. he's trying to gain a mastery over past trauma by imposing his own past--albeit the "good" parts of his past--violently on his current world. like i said: it's doomed. i hope nothing too terrible happens!!!

i was a little too hung up on the possibility of seeing the lambs again (what a fucking anticlimax fuck you wildbow) to focus on the other new characters like "the devil," though the general concept is interesting. i'm enjoying the focus on combat drugs--people who know me know i'm always obsessed with the depictions and discussions of drugs in fiction, and twig is an interesting addition. i can't help but read it through sy's lens: is wyvern to sylvester as the weird emotion-manipulating drug is to the devil? once again, this augurs poorly lol.

please let the lambs reunite soon i don't care if it ends in disaster (and it probably will) 🙏🙏🙏🙏

[arcplaysgames]

The Persona 5 Post-Mortem, Part Three: The Royal

The Third Semester of P5R is so good it feels like it was dropped in from another game and I'm still reeling from it.

This post is going to be a mix of positive and negative, but to be clear: The Royal content saves Persona 5 from being a bad game. It's a masterful trick.

I have been thinking about the Maruki Arc since I finished it, haunted by it really, and what I'm settling on is that it's basically a refutation of the entire game up to that point, and in doing so, in being that, it manages to actually say something and give me hope.

It's like watching sleight of hand. Because I know there are probably people who played this game who weren't doing a liveblog analysis who just kind of rolled with the presented truths of P5 and enjoyed the rollercoast of a plot. The Thieves are good. The bad people deserve what happens to them. Society has failed, therefore rewriting people's brains is our last resort and is justified.

And then Maruki comes in and uses all his softboy wiles to interrogate all of those assumed truths. A person who recognizes the societal injustice of the world. Who wants to protect people from being hurt. Who rewrote bad people to be better people.

The final Mission of Persona 5 is to change the heart of the entire world, and Joker is empowered to do so in a big flashy triumphant sequence that drips coolness from its pores. That shit with Gnostic Lucifer and the big fuck off gun? Awesome.

So it's hilarious to me that Maruki getting the exact same opportunity, getting the power to change the heart of the entire world is treated like a full-blown psychological horror.

Maruki and the Thieves are the same fucking thing! It's genius! It's amazing! Finally, 80 hours into this video game, it turns the tables and aims that power right back at the player and the characters they've come to care for, and it shines a light that recontextualizes the whole story.

I'm a rehabilitationist. From the start, I was uncomfortable with the entire conceit of Persona 5. So reaching Maruki's Arc had me joyously enthralled.

But it's not just a horror show. It's not just the game going "Ha ha NOW you see the truth, YOU were the bad guy all along," and wallowing in it. No, finally Persona 5 Royal figures out something to fucking say with its world and half-formed ideas and its middling themes.

It's fun and easy to joke about how Maruki went evil. I'm sure I did it myself, but the truth is a lot more complicated. He's a well-intentioned man who sees the need for societal reform and tries to implement it... and becomes a practical lesson in why you can't flip a switch and reform society.

When I was young, like 16 or 17, I had this elaborate fantasy story I told myself. I grew up in the Bush years as a low class queer heathen, the era of Prop 8 and DADT, and to make myself feel better I would dream up these stories about how if I could just (to be blunt) assassinate a few specific people, I could fix it all. I had a mental list. It felt like it was that fucking easy.

Just like the Thieves talk about reforming society.... by targeting specific Bad People and causing what I would argue (and I think the game confirms tacitly) is a form of ego death. With the exception of Futaba, who was an outlier anyway, everyone who the Thieves steal from essentially becomes a different person. What is that but not death?

Maruki is a mirror held up to the Thieves, and they all flinch at it. The entire arc is agony as they are all forced to contend with their own sense of ethics and morality.

But to me, the best part, the cherry on top, the part that doesn't just make Royal a well-written deconstruction of itself, is that final confrontation with Maruki and Joker.

Joker and Maruki are foils of each other. I mean... c'mon. It's not a coincidence that Maruki looks like middle-aged Joker, the hippie to Joker's soft punk.

In the end, when Maruki understands the gravity of his failure and why he lost, he gives up and tries to die.

And Joker does not let him. He grabs ahold of Maruki and holds on with all his might and he gets Maruki out of there. All so Maruki can start again and become a taxi driver. No one tells him to go flagellate himself until he's atoned for his sins. No, he lives so he can continue and try to put some good back into the world.

Either intentionally or by accident (I do not know), the Royal content is a rehabilitationist narrative.

You can't steal the heart of every bad person. You can't kill every bad person. You have to believe that people can become better, can move on from the things they have done, or else society really is doomed.

Maruki doesn't go to prison for 500 years or get locked away in the sacred realm for eternity, he doesn't die, he isn't maimed. He survives, and all he can do from there is keep living and try to become a better person.

To slightly pivot, it's not an accident that this entire arc is anchored by the relationship between Akechi and Joker.

Talk about your masterful sleights of hand. Fucking Goro Akechi. Akechi without his facades and masks is a mean bitch, is dependable, is dedicated to his work, is grim as a fucking gallows, and is willing to die to save the world from suede-gloved tyranny.

Maruki's final real play of the game is pointing a gun at Akechi's head and smiling.

And yanno, maybe that moment didn't work for everyone. I assume that Akechi is so abrasive he has his share of haters, just like my beloved favorite Morgana. So maybe the twist doesn't work for every player.

But regardless of the player, it works for Joker. It's a threat to Joker, Maruki's reflection. Akechi is a curt assholish murderer who is directly responsible for the deaths of at least two people Joker knows by proxy (and a lot more if you get into it).

And the one desire Maruki fulfilled for Joker was giving Akechi another chance, bringing him back to life. Even if you the player didn't believe in Akechi, Joker did. It was his deepest desire to see him again.

Because you have to believe! If you are going to change society, you can't just say people are lost causes, that they need to die for the new world order! You have to fucking believe they can change!

Joker is guided by the player, but he is more authored than the previous two Persona MCs. He has his own morals and personality, and the game does not ask you the player if Akechi should live, if Maruki should live. Joker just says yes, they should.

The final stinger after the credits, the moment when Joker sees just a glimpse of Akechi from the train is more than a fun little tease. It's doubling down. Akechi was a murderer who shot Joker in the face intending to kill him. Akechi was also a teenager who took a metaphysical bullet to save reality itself, to preserve the basic agency of every living person.

You have to believe people can change, that they are more than the worst thing they've done.

/BREATHES OUT. I was going to go into the ways Royal fails, but I don't think I need to. Here's a fast, VERY short list.

Sumire is a dropped ball of a character that the game keeps picking back up and dropping again.

The gating around even unlocking the Royal content is way too fucking stringent for how vital it is to the story.

Asking a player to get through 80 hours of mediocre game to reach the Good Part is an outrageous demand.

To drive the message home, they should have reduced the flags around unlocking Akechi's true ending, I don't think Royal is as effective if you don't unlock the true 2/2.

That light bridge color puzzle in Maruki's Palace literally is incomprehensible, what the fuck happened there.

Human Morgana was mid at best, he deserved to be a hotass human.

But whatever. Royal is a fucking miracle, and it singlehandedly made Persona 5 a good game. It is the necessary final act turn that redeems a thoroughly mediocre story. The writing is tremendous, the voice acting is off the fucking chain, the cinematography and visual design is stunning, and BOY it fucking HATES cults! It's just fucking good.

Except for the bad bits, but again: whatever.

[hils79]

Hils Watches The King's Avatar - Ep 34

I'm trying not to think about how few episodes I have left

Wait, I thought that WAS the official verdict. I'm assuming that because this dude has been sitting here gloating for like an hour that it's going to be overturned somehow.

I love that this is a gathering all all the team captains plus Wenzhou's husband

Still unclear what he did to warrant a lifetime ban.

Okay now I want Shaotian to lead a revolution where no one will play because there's no point if their most worthy competitor has been banned.

Yes! Lead them into a strike! Also, this is my 700th screenshot of this drama. Nothing else I have liveblogged (or livetweeted as I used to do) has come anywhere near this amount and I've watched stuff WAY longer than this. Well, maybe my Lost Tomb Reboot rewatch but nothing else!

Wenqing is like 'I'm not sure 'friends' is the word I'd use for what we are'

Are you sure about that?

See, this is why I love them. Shaotian is loud and passionate, Wenzhou is quiet and rational. They balance each other perfectly and they love each other so much

I love that during his whole speech Wenzhou has his hand on Shaotian's shoulder. Probably to stop Shaotian from launching himself across the table and fighting the chairman of the league

It's a good thing Shiqin is there as the Excellent Era vice captain because Sun Xiang would never admit this even if he knows it's true

Not me crying because, for the first time, Shaotian decided to be tactful and stay quiet but his husband is there to encourage him to speak

So this dude said 'I can only overturn the ban if you give me a good reason', the captains gave him several good reasons, and the response was just 'cool but you have to respect the decision to ban him'. Well, that was a waste of 5 minutes (apart from letting me see the Blue Rain husbands who I have missed)

Okay, next we need the fans to protest I guess? If the pros and the fans all protest you don't have a league anymore

It seems weird to me that the captains of the other teams know Ye Xiu has been banned but his own team doesn't. Anyway, they've made him a sub which I hope means he's going to get unbanned in time to show up and help them win

That is not a good tactic. What if he doesn't show up? Also, you told Mo Fan to stall for time and he got a yellow card

Oh I hope she ends up having to fight three of them by herself and wipes them all out like she said she was going to do. Fighting!

Nope she got killed again. So much for getting to redeem herself.

Okay, I'm glad they rescinded the ban. But how do you even enforce this? Didn't he win them the championship a bunch of times? Are they going to take that back and give it to another team?

Sucks to be this guy though. And hi Blue Rain husbands in the background. I can't believe they've decided all of this in less time than it takes for Team Happy to finish a tournament. If this was real life there would be months, maybe even years of meeting with lawyers and league board members etc

I choose to believe Shaotian and Wenzhou are holding hands just out of frame

They could at least have given him a ride back to the game that they pulled him out of instead of making him try and find a taxi

He has friends who were in that meeting even if the league weren't prepared to drive him back to the game. Does no one in this universe own a car?

YAY! I have no idea how he got there so fast given he was hailing a cab like a minute ago but let's just go with it

I love her! Plays for another team but just walks on stage and sits with Team Happy in front of everyone after dropping off Ye Xiu

Aww you must be new here

Okay, it's not very clear in the screenshot but Baozi just punched the ground so hard he collapsed the cliff everyone was standing on and It Was Awesome

OH SHIT HIS UMBRELLA BROKE

And they lost. Devastating. What happens now? Are they out of running to win the league?

God I can't stand it when he's sad. It was bad enough when his dad made him cry. This is way worse

Well, that was a real downer to end on. More tomorrow I guess.

[mariana-oconnor]

Wisteria Lodge pt 4

Last time, we left Holmes and Watson about to mount an intrepid rescue of probable inside woman and possibly dead Miss Burnett, who at 40 years old is apparently too old for love, because the Victorian era was an ageist hellscape.

I have come up with a solution by which Mr Garcia (who I have decided is a bisexual spy) and Miss Burnet are actually the good guys. But this requires the two girls to have been pre-kidnapped and so Garcia's plan would be a counter-kidnapping.

I mean, I jumped straight to kidnapping as soon as it seemed likely that the governess was involved and there were two young girls. I may have jumped the gun a bit, but weirdly the idea is sticking with me.

It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old house with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour.

Psh, I bet they didn't damp Mr Garcia's ardour.

Yeah, that was a cheap shot, but seriously Watson, come on. Screw your courage to the sticking place and all that.

But it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous an ending.

...well that's anticlimactic. I was all geared up for a rescue mission! What am I going to do with these grappling hooks now?

“They've gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs.”

Did they go because of Holmes' investigation of the house or did they go because of whatever Mr Baynes' mysterious cunning plan is?

"I shan't forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I'd have a short life if he had his way—the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil.”

A lot of 'devil' faces in windows this time around. And all on ethnic minorities as far as I can tell. Racist Victorian tropes, my beloathed.

Good for Miss Burnet for fighting back even when she's been drugged up to the gills on opium. I really hope she wasn't planning a kidnapping because I want to like her. And I really don't like her employer. Not drugging or whipping your employees is like the lowest bar of employer conduct to jump over. Even Violet Hunter wasn't drugged or whipped and she had a terrible work environment. I want him to be unambiguously the bad guy. Also because I want the poor cook to be acquitted.

“I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected, and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet.”

OK, fine. You were right, but fuck you for arresting and attacking an innocent man. Poor show. Dick move. Be better.

(is that the first gif I've posted from an actual Sherlock Holmes media for one of these liveblogs? I think it might be...)

"We can't arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement the better.”

Read this as 'her without' rather than 'without her' and was confused about what was going on, as she seems pretty innocent of the murder. But then I reread and realised that I once again fail at reading comprehension. Not like I have a degree in it or literally work in a related field or anything.

“Henderson,” the inspector answered, “is Don Murillo, once called the Tiger of San Pedro.”

Who the fuck is that?

OK, Watson's going to become Captain Exposition for a minute, great. Gimme some backstory, bay-beeee.

Oh... Is San Pedro a fake country? Did ACD make up a fake country for this story so he couldn't be accused of being rude about a specific country? Or do I just not know history?

Central America, okay, not the Caribbean, but right ballpark.

The dictator, his two children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them. From that moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European press.

I feel... I feel like if this had been real information and a real country I would have worked this out? Like if I had known there was a mysteriously missing dictator from a formerly Spanish colony with a green and white flag, who had two children, I feel like I called every part of this except the specifics, which I couldn't have called because they're made up.

“Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. Now, again, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes safe."

Alright, so no kidnapping, just assassination. Chivalrous, charming bi assassin Garcia is once again on the side of good and not abducting children. Pity he got his face beaten in.

"My husband—yes, my real name is Signora Victor Durando—was the San Pedro minister in London. He met me and married me there. A nobler man never lived upon earth. Unhappily, Murillo heard of his excellence, recalled him on some pretext, and had him shot. With a premonition of his fate he had refused to take me with him. His estates were confiscated, and I was left with a pittance and a broken heart."

Vengeance!

"I was to see that the doors were open and the signal of a green or white light in a window which faced the drive was to give notice if all was safe or if the attempt had better be postponed."

Light not shutters, but coolcoolcool.

"But they determined to get rid forever of Garcia. They had gagged me, and Murillo twisted my arm round until I gave him the address. I swear that he might have twisted it off had I understood what it would mean to Garcia."

How did you... not know... what it would mean to Garcia? Like, what did you think they were going to do? Have a tea party? Invite him to play his guitar at their next shindig? Have a chat about gardening? I get that you were being tortured for information, so there's no shame in giving him up, but you can't say 'well, I didn't know they would kill him.'

"This afternoon a good lunch was brought me, but the moment after I took it I knew that I had been drugged."

Also feel like maybe you should have guessed this before you ate it, after they'd been starving you for days. But you were probably out of your mind hungry and on the edge of hallucinating, so I suppose that makes sense.

It is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to elapse before the Tiger of San Pedro should meet with his deserts. [...] Some six months afterwards the Marquess of Montalva and Signor Rulli, his secretary, were both murdered in their rooms at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid.

In the best traditions of these stories, the bad guys reach justice offscreen at the hands of unknown people. 😂

But Vengeance has been satisfied.

BUT, there is just enough time for some more racist discussion of the cook, because of course there is. And it turns out his entire inclusion as a character is completely pointless and a racist little red herring that goes nowhere and just had some extra racism piled on top for garnish. Wonderful. I hope they released him and didn't keep him in prison for assaulting a police officer/resisting arrest, because when you literally arrested him illegally for a crime you knew he didn't commit, that's bullshit.

I was right about it being a Victorian depiction of Voodoo, though, so... I get points for knowing my racist stereotypes? I feel like that's like an extra level of losing, though.

Wow this story went from gay hookup gone wrong to racist mess in two seconds flat, huh? I miss the simpler times when Mr Scott Eccles being an oblivious tory was the biggest problem.

On a happier note, Silver Blaze is next, and I remember a lot about this one just from the title, so I guess there will be no attempt to solve it, just memes for days.

ETA: That little wrap up does not tell us what happened to the children. What happened to the children? Where did they go? The little girls just disappear. Did I miss something? What happened to the children?

[khaleesiofalicante]

HI! I FINALLY HAVE TIME! VERY TIRED BEEN UP SINCE 7 BUT REALLY WANNA READ AND LIVEBLOG CAUSE I MISS THAT SHIT

also I think I might be lactose intolerant? but I only get really fucking bad headaches, nausea and the like from milk but am pretty okay with other dairy products and it...oh wait no ice cream and yogurt also make me sick after I pass a certain limit and is this why cheese makes my stomach feel weird sometimes? okay theory, I am not TOO lactose intolerant. main problem is milk and the rest I can have in limits. makes sense.

also HOW ARE YOU?? I'VE BEEN SO SWAMPED WITH THINGS THAT I'VE SPENT MOST NIGHT SO DRAINED AND DEAD IT'S CRAZY.

BUT I DID CATCH UP ON IALS AND READ THE FIRST 3 CHAPTERS OF LBAF.

alright! CHAPTER 4!!

david loml it'll be fine...probably idk man I am really scared for y'all

Alright random person...I will fight you in an abandoned parking lot for this DO NOT DO THIS SHIT

David :((

First I cry over IALS mavid...now I have to cry over lbaf mavid. what is this happening

DAVID! NO DO NOT DO THAT TO YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!

also there's this thing called Communication. Not sure y'all have heard of it though. Lmk if you need a dictionary :)

to the fucker attacking the institute, motherfucker I will literally push you off a building

maybe it's someone who wants him to not be the head of the institute for whatever reason?

Anyway Anjali so hot so efficient would literally die for her

david you good bro? God I love it when the kind ones go feral

no but srsly you good? Well no but like...Im worried. For his health. David :((

“Ask for help,” she said again. “And if you are feeling overwhelmed, take a break.”

QUEEN SHIT

“Revenge means you are being harmed in return for the suffering you’ve caused,” Anjali told him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You did the right thing. So, even if it is Asmodeus, this isn’t revenge. This is an attack, David. And I intend to put an end to it.”

God I love it when women

the picture I WILL SOB DO NOT DO THIS TO ME

Them :((

“Why do people call me baby boy or baby girl?” David wondered out loud.

AJHSHUIDC JACE

petition to only call david baby boy or baby girl from now on

I've been watching The Crown (it took me three days to get through episode 1 but let's not talk about that) so I am literally hearing all the dialogues in with an english accent. It's...something

Some people drank alcohol to relax. David drank tea.

Bitch same.

I've lately fallen in love with Earl Gray. I drink it while I'm studying. I sit down at my desk with my tea and only then do I get to work. Helps me focus and keep my anxiety at bay. Good shit.

same energy as me realising how quickly I had been going through my tea. I...I've been way too stressed lately too, hon. NOT THIS WEEKEND THOUGH HHAHA

he would love a cake <3

oh to have someone buy me overpriced magic chocolate

DARK?? HUH

prince...?

WJAT IS HAPPENING WOMAN EXPLAIN

that's so romantic though 🥺

LEVI?? TIS YOU??

in my relating a bit too much to david era kjkcuhud

Bitch I know you're stressed as fuck so like?? TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF?? Srsly, shit's really hard rn for you and it's gonna get harder. Take a nap or something

“Mon ange,” David chuckled and pointed at the screen. “He went back in time and is literally trying to sleep with his own mother.”

I AM SORRY, WHO IS DOING WHAT NOW

NOT NOW! FUCK NO!

not the ICE CREAM

also yeeeeeeeeeee camilaaaaaaaaaa

david and anjali wedding CRYING SOBBING SHAKING LOOK AT THEM

that's a really long proposal dude you're not writing an essay

 “My fave power couple is getting hitched. Do it soon!”

Live footage of me

omg the talk with the parents huduifuifugiugf

I love rafe so muvh omg

anjali truly the best person out there

THEM OH MY GOD THEM

I am so soft rn no one talk to me

Marry me. Marry me. Marry me.

SOBBING

they're so amazing I could cry

how bout I punch Kingsley

Oooo marcus

marcus is kinda cool though. I'll probably not like him by the end of this but still

what...what is he working on

what the fuck you on dude?

i love camila so much

damn girl!!

oh marcus...Yeah I remember now what he was doing...

ah yes, the seashell

cool motives but like...that's not gonna happen

we don't live in a perfect world bud. exploitation and prejudice are the first two words that come to my mind when I think of his thoughts becoming a reality.

He didn’t like it when Mallory was in a bad mood. He wanted her to be happy.

Mal in a bad book ends horribly for every person she has ever interacted with

DON'T SMOKE

I was watching The Crown and George is LIKE SICK AS FUCK MAN IS DYING LEAVING BEHIND A DAUGHTER NOT PREPARED FOR THE CROWN JUST YET AND HE'S SMOKING. Sir you just went through a surgery to remove one of your lungs?? you have cancer?? You're coughing up blood?? AND YOU'RE SMOKING!!!

"I know," she smiled at him. "My destiny is Max."

Oh no...I will stab :)

“I’ll ask Jeff to ready the jet,” he smiled at her.

The...what...that is so bad for the environment dude I'm pretty sure there is a beach in New York...I forgot how rich they were for a second there...Taylor swift core

Sometimes...you just wanna get stabby with someone...the someone is two someones...

If they do something to Anjali...

Sigh

AYY IT'S SELENA AND GIGI

AND LEXI

lexi...I love you so much but please...just talk to liv about this

YOU CAN'T DO SHIT LIKE THIS OH MY GOD

lexi YOU CAN FUCKING FLY

I will repeat advice I gave in part 2 (?). Fly there, tell her, fly away.

:)

gabriel and selena >>>>

“Relationship drama waits for no one,” Selena huffed. “Besides, stop making excuses, Lex. Just do it.”

putting off stuff like this makes it so SO much worse lex.

LIV AND LEX ARE SO AMAZING

OH I HAVE A STORY

We threw a farewell for someone right? and that day my friends and I were all sitting together and one of us had a permanant marker so like rational people, we wrote on our hands. I wasn't sure what to write but then I remembered seeing an anon say that their shipname should be lixi so that is what ended up going on the place underneath my thumb. You know where you can feel the bone? I wrote "Lixi" right there. Nice day that was.

which reminds me I need to make plans for my birthday next week with my friends-

ANYWAY

No amount of biceps or boobs will distract her today.

me to me every morning

and I love you guys <33

The man went to Idris to talk to the Inquisitor.

Good luck and god bless!

SCREAMING

Lexi stared at the numbers. It gave her a fucking headache

Me in maths everyday.

My math test went so well today I got everything right EXCEPT MY DUMBASS FORGOT TO SOLVE THE LAST PART OF THE LAST QUESTION I HAD THE TIME I SIMPLY DID NOT REMEMBER TO SOLVE IT FURTHER I WILL THROW MYSELF FROM A CLIFF

ahem

“Wait,” Lexi said. “Are you saying these are not demon attacks?”

Imma get the knives

Lexi was going to help Gabriel figure this out. She was going to find out who was hurting her brother like this.

Hurting him with paperwork!

And she was going to kick their ass!

AHHUKDCUIFV HELL YEAH LEX

lots of blob thingies

“Have you guys seen shadow demons? They’re the demons of Lucifer.”

foreshadowing

I am sorry they materialized WHERE

grabriel is so cool omg

THE SONG CHOICE YES

She was talking about some issue with the warlocks in LA not being able to use magic

foreshadowing

lexi NO METAPHORS PLEASE

Lex I told you not to go with metaphors...sigh

this is really entertaining though.

LMAOO LEXI PLEASE-

Oh. OH DISCOVERY

Shit. white...who's magic is white?

FUCKING HELL

and on this note a very good night I can't wait to sleep. LOVE YOU!

Evieeeee. I missed your live blogs so much 😭😭😭

Here is a meme that perfectly captures my reaction to it

I like the live blog too akskskssm but the random gossip 😍😍😍

Your Lexi energy is unmatched 😎

[saint-starflicker]

20 Questions for Fanfic Writers

Yoinked from @spacecasehobbit who remembers the days when works on FanFiction.Net would get spammed with hate comments for having a non-canon m/m pairing in it because (so it was implied) that was aberrant and didn't belong in fanfiction...and now fanfiction hosting websites are known as the non-canon m/m websites. Online fandoms have progressed a short way in a strange direction, but we have progressed!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 8 public ones.

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? Upwards of 100,000 words since 2020, but I'm not counting the hair fic that I took off my public works list for being too junior kid gloves and fluffy, or the backdated April Fools fic that I kept off my publics works list for being too gory and sexual (also secondhand embarrassment, warning for the real ones out there who can tolerate sex-and-violence content but implode when fictional characters get awkward in day-to-day interactions. You know my heart.) Also I'm not counting my fics from FF.Net or LiveJournal, during which I had creative constipation though so that's not a lot of words anyway, and that wasn't part of the question so moving on

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Bare and Fraternity, which currently have an active online fandom of fewer than 15 people combined. (Bare might skyrocket to maybe 38 active fans sometimes, maybe it's the summer.) I've dabbled in Babel and Dead Poets Society, because I'm in my Dark Academia era.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

I only have 8 public fanfictions, so it's easier to say than none of the 3 Fraternity fanfictions made it to the top 5 in kudos. I am slowly working on what I expect to be the next three flop fics regardless.

5. Do you respond to comments? I do try to. Mostly I fail.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

This is a tough one because I tend to write happy ever afters or mixed-bag ever afters, but not outright "farewell cruel world!" type endings usually. I would say Pygmalion Retold is the one, but I'll give honorable mention to have a cross to wear but the bolt reminds me because...it was supposed to end at chapter 6 though. While I liveblogged my process in the BAPO Discord and said "I can't keep them apart, they're too cute together" while experimenting with the seventh chapter...the central conflict* was one that still isn't worked through, that I knew when I started it wouldn't be worked through, and being cute together isn't conflict resolution.

* Peter never really forgave Jason for the plot of Bare, in this fic. Extradiegetically: it's been 25 years, maybe let's all forgive the teenager from 1999 for having internalized homophobia?? Jason's already dead what more apology do we want.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Speak Again, Bright Angel definitely. Let's get the Dark Academia gay boys out of school and into a space opera with giant mecha robot space ships that also shoot laser beams. The giant robots combine to make an even more giant-er robot. Changing the setting and genre to something as epic as that calls for epic victory or epic tragedy. I went for the former.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Probably, but not where I can find them. I got much more hate on my original fiction back in like 2007.

It's the internet, so there's gotta be a hater somewhere sometimes about really any goddamn thing for eyebrow-raisingly ulterior reasons that don't make sense or apply. I knit! There's knitting community drama! I paint watercolors, and some communities are yellow ochre exclusionists while mudslinging about the difference between granulation and flocculation. Human beings were not built to interact with each other or form communities.

9. Do you write smut? I have no qualms about writing explicit sex scenes. When the language to do that is either clinical or vulgar and I don't want to write like that, though, then I look for a Secret Third Thing and then maybe it's disqualified from smut because of that? Or maybe it isn't because it's still definitely obviously sex that they're doing. That's why I still don't know if I have written smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? Yes.

11. What's the wildest one you've written? It's in my drafts: a Fraternity crossover with Gregg Araki's road trip film The Living End and Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin. There's a prequel that I want to post the same time as the main story. The prequel is more complete than the main story because I was writing both parts at the same time, so it's not a prequel anymore.

I still would like to read Daniel Preston (Fraternity) and Farleigh Start (Saltburn) in a room together. Nothing smutty, I think they would just have a lot to talk about, such as what it's like being Black American demisexual/pansexual men written by white people. I want to read that but I don't want to be the one to write it. (But that wasn't the question.)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I was requested permission to translate, appropriately, my one contribution to the Babel fandom. 🥳 Of course I granted it.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Nope! Never say never, but right now I know my process and a co-writer doesn't fit in it.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? I think I still have a soft spot for Naoto Shirogane and Kanji Tatsumi from Persona 4, and Ruta Skadi with Serafina Pekkala with Lee Scoresby (but not Ruta Skadi with Lee Scoresby; she will kill and eat that rabbit) from the His Dark Materials trilogy book series, but right now Peter Simmonds and Jason McConnell are the most loyal and insistent patrons of the fanfiction café in my mind.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but you doubt you ever will? halp

16. What are your writing strengths?

This is funny to follow question 15 with but I usually know how to troubleshoot when I get stuck. I don't much like my writing style now, but after I'm done I still like that I turned a premise into a plot. I think plotting is my strength, although I have also gotten compliments on my dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Around the 18'000-word mark, if the story isn't finished yet, I lie down on the floor and throw a tantrum like a toddler because I want the story to be finished already so that I can do literally anything else with my life. I say that I get compliments on my dialogue, but I also know a major weakness I have is an over-reliance on dialogue. Finally, I post before I clear my mind enough to even self-edit, so very often I will re-read later and then edit a patch over a continuity error...which means that I know the iceberg-tip of my first-draft continuity errors. I have not mentioned my bog-standard sentence structuring and utterly potato punctuation use.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? It could happen.

19. First fandom you wrote for? The Book Series That Must Not Be Named, in pencil and lined notebook paper. I think the first one I posted online was for His Dark Materials, though.

20. Favorite fic you've written? I love them all equally.

[denimbex1986]

'Has it really been more than a year since we bid Jodie Whittaker farewell in a special episode laden with old-Who references that had to be liveblogged because we weren’t sure if we were going to get David Tennant or Ncuti Gatwa at the end of it?

It really has. But after a fourth-wall busting “new viewers start here” sequence, Russell T Davies, Tennant and Catherine Tate wasted no time in getting on with a whole new era of Who, now being made by Bad Wolf Studios and distributed by Disney globally, and with a visibly big hike in the budget.

We’ve been promised a big bold reimagining of the show for this second Davies era, and while this wasn’t quite that, it felt like a more-than-solid “holiday” special. Davies said at the launch he wanted it to be like a Pixar movie, with laughs as well as scares that the whole family could watch together. It successfully bolted a Sarah Jane Adventures-ish monster story involving kids on to an emotional reintroduction to Tennant and Tate.

Miriam Margolyes’s voice coupled with the Meep’s appearance was adorable, and the “Most High” of the Meeps remained a cutie even when they turned bloodthirsty. Another highlight was having Jacqueline King back as Sylvia Noble. During his initial turn as showrunner, Davies created memorable but somewhat abrasive mothers for the Doctor’s Earth companions, but King got a chance here to show a greater range and more sympathy for her daughter’s plight.

Yasmin Finney as Rose was a bright and kindly presence. The bores who thought the Whittaker era was too “woke” – whatever that means in the context of a science fantasy show that has always pushed stories with progressive values – will be choking on the scene where the Doctor is chastised by her for assuming the Meep’s pronouns.

Does the bigger budget show up on screen? You bet. The producers of Doctor Who in the 70s would have bitten your arm off to stage the kind of drone-shot street battle scene we saw here. The centrepiece, though, was the relationship between the Doctor and Donna, and it was genuinely lovely watching Tennant and Tate rebuild that spark.

Sum it up in one sentence? The Meep steals the show as the 14th Doctor crashes back into the life of Donna Noble and her entertaining family.

Life aboard the Tardis We didn’t get much inside the Tardis, but we did get a new Tardis inside, and wow, what a beauty. It is packed full of “the round things” and harks back to the classic era more than any Tardis interior since the 2005 revival. It was, apparently, Tennant’s own idea to do all the running round on the ramps, an idea that Davies said seemed less fun for the actor by the eighth take.

Fear factor The Star Beast was based on a comic book, and these were very much comic-book villains. There weren’t really any frightening moments, unless you truly feared that Donna might die – despite knowing that Tate is in the next two specials. And you definitely couldn’t fear the Wrarth Warriors after they opened their mouths to reveal plummy voices that would have happily featured in Doctor Who in 1963.

Mysteries and questions We still don’t know why that face for the 14th Doctor, we don’t know how Unit has reconfigured itself since being disbanded in Resolution and then time-manipulated during Flux, we don’t know where the Tardis is heading next and we don’t know who the boss is that the Meep alluded to. Well, OK, we probably do, as we know Neil Patrick Harris is in the third special as the Toymaker, and the three specials probably tie together.

Deeper into the vortex The Star Beast is based on a 1980 comic strip in Doctor Who magazine that originally featured the fourth Doctor, Beep the Meep and the Wrarth Warriors. It was written by Pat Mills who created 2000AD and John Wagner, the co-creator of Judge Dredd, and was beautifully drawn by Dave Gibbons, who is probably best known for his work with Alan Moore on Watchmen. It has long been considered a classic by the DW fanbase, and the plot of children discovering a crash-landed alien and hiding it pre-dates Steven Spielberg’s ET by a couple of years. But unlike Beep the Meep, ET didn’t want to drink anybody’s blood.

We heard about Wilf being in sheltered accommodation, and we know the late Bernard Cribbins filmed scenes last year, but he didn’t appear in this. Tennant said in April they weren’t able to film as much with Cribbins as had been intended. Hopefully we will get to see the wonderful old storyteller’s final appearance in the Whoniverse in the next couple of weeks – after all, Cribbins first stepped into the Tardis in the 1966 Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 AD movie, and it would be a lovely 60th anniversary treat and tribute to see him one last time.

If you are wondering why Tennant had a new sonic screwdriver since Power of the Doctor was broadcast, Doctor Who magazine has been publishing a 14th Doctor comic story – Liberation of the Daleks – which picked up directly from the regeneration scene and led in to last week’s Skaro-based Children in Need skit, and has seen Jodie Whittaker’s sonic screwdriver design come a cropper. Twice. All the people who hate the sonic being waved around so much in modern Who are probably not going to like the new features it had in this episode.

Next time At the time of writing there hadn’t been a standalone trailer for Wild Blue Yonder, and so, dear reader, you might already know more than the Guardian. Davies has said the episode is “weird” and really stretched the design team to realise what was on the page. Tennant has said it is “unlike any Doctor Who episode ever”, and the latest issue of Doctor Who magazine redacted the guest cast. So who knows. See you next week – allons-y!'

[d-lissa]

Liveblogging TMA - Season 2 - MAG 41-45

"Trust can get you killed."

TOO DEEP :

First episode of season 2 !

Or otherwise called "Jon's Paranoid Era". Here's to hoping it's just a phase.

When I first started the episode, I thought that Jonathan sounded kind of unstable in his statement, unhinged in a way that didn't suit him.

Turns out, he is ! But he is also aware of it, and self aware enough to use it to his advantage and make people focus on the wrong things. Which is good, I think, though I'd rather he wouldn't be alone in this endeavour.

He won't be for long, I'm sure, but knowing that Not-Sasha is here is putting me on edge, and I am glad that she is not aware of what he's planning. If Martin or Tim were, I'm sure they'd probably end babbling about it to her.

Elias is not even worth thinking of.

Robert Smirke and his architecture have made a comeback, and a new mystery is to be added. The tunnels, and who controls them. Is it the being that is watching him ? But then, why would it, whatever it is, go look through the files whenever nobody's there, as shown in the trailer ? What was it doing before the tunnels were discovered, was it trapped there ? Surely not, if Gertrude went there herself.

If she did at all, anyway.

The plot is advancing, and Jonathan's sanity has taken a plundge. Personally, while I do think that Prentiss is dead, it doesn't mean that the Hive is, I am calling bullshit on this one.

Still, entertaining episode and strong season opener.

Onto the next one !

GRIFTER'S BONE :

HELL YES MUSIC BABY !

Music so beautiful, it makes you violent, music so good, it makes you kill yourself because you just know that you will never hear anything as good ever again and what's the point of living if you can't ?

Oh, I loved this one.

Not much else to say about the oddity though. Grifter has probably made the same kind of contract or whatever it was that Angela from "Piecemeal" jiggsaw demon did, the ability to make the most beautiful music at the price of the lives of the people who hear it, or something like that.

A little cameo of the Dreamer (or Oliver as his name probably is), trying to warn the poor girl before it's too late.

The things stubborness and curiosity makes us do.

Speaking of Jon though, our dear is slipping more and more, he already sounds more perturbed than in the last episode, but to be fair to him, what the fuck was even that Martin ? I am going toassume that his mother is dead or something, otherwise why he wouldn't just send her a text and have a conversation with her is beyond me.

For what it's worth, I am pretty positive that Martin isn't the one who killed Gertrude. Again, I don't trust him, but that's mostly because I don't really believe that people like him exist without hiding something, which was confirmed this episode !

Whether or not his secret is dangerous is another matter though.

Pretty sure his sudden bouts of mastery is just his dedication trying to impress Jonathan though.

Those two are probably SO shipped by the fandom, I just know it.

SECTION 31 :

"The words you learn to look out for are “weird”, “odd”, “strange” and if you hear the phrase “I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at”, then yeah, you’re not getting much back-up."

EVERYONE SHUT UP, JON MADE A JOKE !!

Oh my God, we're getting more lore on the functionning of society in TMA, I am screaming. This is amazing, perfection, show stopping. I need more of that, please and thank you, gimma aaaaall the world building. I do want to learn more about the oddities, but I also really want to know how the world outside of the Institute works. Let Jonathan have a supernatural cop buddy.

He's already so alone, and so tired and unsettled. Let him get a friend that he is sure won't be coming after him.

Anyway, we got the name of the man from "First Aid", the one calling for the scorching demon, lightless light, whatever its name is.

The way the police force work is fascinating though.

Basira probably have been implicated in some of the statements we read. I remember some mentionning a female cop ? But considering that those never got really resolved, I have to assume that she didn't even realize that they were genuine cases. Working with Jonathan could potentially broaden her horizons quite a bit, and maybe she could learn the ways to actually protect people from those oddities.

I wonder, was she the one who went on to check on Not-Garam, from "Across the Street" ? If, maybe, she suspected something, I wonder if she would get implicated in the Not-Sasha thing, then.

And what happened to the Leitner of Diego Molina, that made Spencer kill himself ? Did Diego get it back ? Before getting killed by Gerard, anyway.

Plus, the whole guy who tried to kill himself. I have genuinely no clue as to what is happening here, maybe another immortal like the one in "Cheating Death" trying to die ? What with the ancient looking dominos in glass cases. She never mentionned anything happening after that. Maybe it was the same guy that made the statement, actually ! Nathaniel Thorp. I guess he was tired, and decided that living in hell wasn't actually worth it, compared to death.

I could see it.

From the little list, we also got spider-husks ("Arachnophobia" link ?) and vampires ("Obviously, from "Vampire Killer". I wonder if she ever met the hunter before he died.).

Lots of call backs and links to be made, that the police never realized because they never got a hand on those statements. Fascinating.

But anyway, next episode !

Considering the title, am I to understand we'll get a "Circus of the Other" statement ?

TIGHTROPE :

HOLY SHIT IT'S A GERTRUDE'S RECORDING !!

~~~~~~~~~~

"I wouldn’t have had to find this tape player tucked away in the storage room, covered in dust and cobwebs."

And it was, indeed, a "Circus of the Other" sighting ! Grandiose.

Great episode, as usual. This season didn't have a boring one yet, it's amazing.

I didn't expect to get a Gertrude's statement full on so early, but it was amazing. I really enjoyed her voice, though I kind of felt that Jonathan somewhat put more ... I don't know, emotions to them ? She did too, but the difference between her voice as she recites the statement and her archivist voice isn't as ... Stark as Jon's is, at least to me.

Still, it is there, and means that whatever is pushing Jon to make the statements the way he does has been here for a long, long time, and doing the same for each and every of the archivists.

More information on the circus, which I have been curious about, especially considering that whatever has destroyed statements at the end of last season took the time to destroy the one about the calliope. It never really made sense, and it still doesn't, to be honnest.

More about Denikin, the granfather who had the calliope, and who was apparently pretty violent and evil ? Considering where he was working at anyway. So what, one day he just decided he didn't want to murder and defigurate people to put them in a show with his friends and just ... Retired ? No consequences ? Peaceful end of his life ?

Goddamn.

What was the goal of this circus though ? And why did they suddenly decide to come to England ? Between Denikin and Breekon and Hope, does this mean the others from the circus troupe, (the ones that were actually crew and not puppets or disfigured victims at least) also came to England ? Is it because of the Leitners ? Probably not.

"Unfortunately, he appears to have passed away in 1984, but he must have been something rather special."

This quote intrigues me though. I hope to see a statement about the man some day, to understand what she means by that.

Back to Gertrude Robinson though, contrary to what Jonathan thought, she did know that something was happening. Actually, she probably (definitely) knows more than Jonathan himself ever has. I guess it makes sense, considering that she was the Head Archivist for 50 years.

Does this mean that she was faking not knowing, or being incompetent, to hide whatever she knew from being discovered ? Are all Archivists destined to become paranoid messes ?

And talking about paranoid messes, Jon is slipping, little by little. Suspicious of everyone, which, again, it's good ! Because Not-Sasha. But also, if he's gonna lose his marbles anyway, he could have been smart earlier and think to hide the tapes himself BEFORE, instead of letting them into his drawer.

Better late than never, I guess. Here's to hoping it wasn't anything.

... I think this post could fit another episode.

BLOOD BAG :

"Not just malaria though, but yellow fever, hepatitis B and signs of cholera."

Can we please stop with the bloody insects, for FIVE FUCKING MINUTE ???

Urgh, whatever. First miss of the season for me, though it was still good, just not something that spoke to me.

Onto the case itself. Again with the diseases and the insects and the blergh. An act by the Hive, maybe ? Or Asag, the demon/oddity of diseases and stuff.

Did the scientist really exchange his syringe for money ? I doubt he did it for another item. Maybe the syringe was protecting him, and when he gave it away, he stopped being protected ?

But then, why did he need to be protected ? Was the oddity after him, for some reason ? Maybe after his family, since it was mentionned that his ancestor had found a way to save people from cholera, which is ... Pretty significant. And I just know that oddities are petty enough to keep a grudge to last several centuries and generations.

Something else to notice is the emphasis on the type of blood it was in the bag. O negative. And infected with several, potentially deadly diseases that could kill any normal man.

... Unless he cheated death and somehow became an immortal with a wish to die.

Jonathan is slowly making his way through the team, which is worrying, but also good because Not-Sasha DOES need suspicion thrown at her, but I swear to God, if he goes easy on her or end up trusting her over any of his friends, I will find a way to reach through the screen and strangle him.

But I fear it might just go that way.

Because I know he is the most open with her. That she is the closest to him of them all, at least at this point in the story.

And Martin, with his hovering, is not helping with the trust issues.

Still, it was nice to have a bit of Timothy's background. I too am asking myself all of these questions.

The quote of the post will not be from TMA, but rather from Niccolò Machiaveli, an author I partcularly like, and who's quotes Jonathan this season has reminded me of, time and time again.

"Never was anything great achieved without danger."

End Liveblogging.

[assim-eu-sou]

Bia 2:59-60

2:59

- Manuel would be dumb if he were to think there could ever be anything aside from friendship going on between Bia and Alex

- I can see both of their grief in that hug… :(

- AW NOT A FLASHBACK WAAAAH I’M EMO

- That’s it I’m forgiving Alex, it’s better that way.

- Aww….

- Tsk tsk Ana… Victor has a point

- Fiore mio… sigh… Guillermo redeemed

- Zeta finally brings himself to his reckoning

- Voy crew, we’re missing the descant. But nice embellishments :)

- But perfect for me to sing along to actually :)

- AQUI ME ENCONTRARÁS IS A BIA SONG????? I love that song so fricken much

- Bruuuuuuh he is jealous. Manuel babey… come on.

- When Alex is the logical one of the two…. you know it’s trouble

- Woaaahhhh Victor has an opportunity to pursue the basketball thing

- Antonio definitely does want Victor out of his hair. But It is a good opportunity.

- Oooooooh I know this Bia outfit :)

- Me and my lack of self control

- Awww an international food party

- I love how everyone is from different places through, it’s cool

- Dang Manuel is slamming that piano again

- Dang…. Manuel is losing his brother again… pobre….

- Bros I’m getting sad…. The finality of it all is setting in

- WE DESERVE BIA 3 AND BEU IN THE RESIDENCIA KUNST :’(

- Awwwww I love Bia and Chiara’s energy so much ahhhhhh they really just make me smile I’m gonna miss them :’(

- MANUEL WITHOUT THE CAP!

- Carmín Spy

- Oooooh I think Carmín is gonna like that

- Alex is like. oh. oop. Did not mean for that to be heard.

- Aw her little nervous habits :’)

- Hahaha Paula is pleased

- Moving sucks for real

- Hahahaahahah Celeste will not forgive Alex so quickly

- uh.

- uh.

- Siempre fuiste vos…. Oh gosh…

- hey. Hey what’s happening. hello.

- There’s only 1 thing Ana needs to do right now and it’s talk to Bia. Sorry…

- Everyone when Chiara says she’s with Guillermo:

- CHICO DEL PIANO PLEASEEE IF I STILL HAD EMOTIONS LEFT I’D BE WEEPING

- IT’S LIKE THE BEGINNING AHHHHHHHH

- ohhh….. my babies…. oh….

- AL FIN.

2:60

- NOT THE MONTAGE I AM ON MY LAST STRAW FOR REAL THIS TIME

- This is too much truly I. I. Help.

- My heart is aching fam. I have so much to say about this truly.

- BAHAHA Bia’s face when she got the phone call. She’s gonna slap Pixie in her mind.

- OK ANYWAY, Back to what I was saying. Bia has been waiting forever for that hug… all of this pain they’ve gone through but they went through it apart and finally he is holding her and things aren’t perfect but they’re better than they’ve been in a while… that hug ugh it breaks me. Fam I am insane.

- Oh…. She misses being called Helena… ughhhh my heart

- ohhhh. That look of Ana’s. oh….

- Chiara won them over for Guillermo fast lol

- I’m so emo my gosh…. NOT THE FLASHBACKS TO THE FIRST EP

- Fam. My heart cannot take this. It cannot.

- Oh…. tender….

- I’m in pain. I’m more sad about this ending then when I graduated high school and that is completely serious.

- The lights turning off…. I’ve had enough….

- Ahhhhh Helena Gritarle al Mundo my absolute beloved

- Oh the growl. I’m <3

- It’s really such a good song…

- Oh… I haven’t heard Manuel’s voice like that in forever… I missed it

- Delfi.

- That’s not a lot to take all the way to Spain…. I am not a light packer tho

- Above all, Paula is a mother that would do anything for her children, for better or for worse

- [(Brokenly) I’m not sad]

- This is why we keep the subs on lol

- I can’t believe he’s gonna leave without giving Manuel a proper goodbye

- I can see a lot of emotions going through Alex’s eyes… it’s all so complicated

- PARTY TIME!

- I wanna goooooo

- Please have brigadeiros

- Oh I predicted it HA

- Ok anyway.

- Whew this fortune is INTENSE

- PLEASEE they think it was Manuel lol

- Oh…. That message from Ana…. Oh gosh…

- Aw Alex came :)

- Pixie and Jandino snuck right out of there

- Look at Proud Manuel in the audience

- I’m so happy to see them close again

- What a magical little place

- She’s so giggly omg…..

- Cuando Pasó piano in the background

- oh…. tender…. Don’t touch me

- ESAS MIRADAS….. I CAN’T STAND THIS

- Awwww Alex made his own suit BASED ON CARMÍN’S IDEAS

- Finally a happy ending for Carmín….

- DJ Thiago in the house!

- oh….. binuel…. I’m gonna miss you so much….

- Marcos and Mara came???

- Whew…. Victor waiting at the bridge

- Nice lil reality check in the middle of the party

- OMG LEAVE THIAGO ALONE.

- Cute of them to have that suspenseful little scene and then not renew the show. :/

- hUH

- Girl if someone embraced me like that rn I would freaking disintegrate

- Ngl folks I don’t really understand what is going on here

- Anyway Thiago is stressed

- “Pase lo que pase…. Te quiero…” uh. Hello????

- uh. Helena recording?????

- Bia may have extreme face blindness but she DOES recognize Helena’s voice

- Bia is woozy as HECK

- DJ Manuel!

- Hey Bia….. where are you going?

- MY VPN IS ABOUT TO RUN OUT I HATE IT HERE

- Ugh Gabi sounds angelic…. <3

- Ah. So this is what all the dizziness was leading to.

- BIA!!!!!

- Can you believe my VPN cut off rn. Unbelievable.

- OK. so I made another post analyzing the ending and this liveblog is already so long so. find it here.

[septembersghost]

still obsessed with the symbolism and the hollow exaltation of the beautiful room, how because we’re used to chintzy motels and dusty roads and dingy little diners and junkyards and gravedirt and smeary shadowed darkness, it’s all the more alien and uncomfortable in its false pristinity. it’s too bright, it’s too gaudy, you can feel that the shine is layered over the rottenness of its core.

also still obsessed that they really chose Fragonard’s The Swing and Blindman’s Bluff with their elegance and their inherent coding and their latent eroticism and seduction metaphors, because that’s all the angels have been doing with him all season - toying, objectifying, trying to keep him blindfolded, trying to nudge him off that last step. Dean is the subject of the paintings as much as he is the subject of the scene. they don’t truly care about him, not his essential being, they want his form, his usefulness. they lie to him, try to make him complacent. the paintings give their motives away. (what started in beautiful rooms ends with meetings in parking lots; and that's the thing about illicit affairs...)   

the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape resonates on Sam’s side of things, but everything with Dean and the place they want him to take and the tool they want him to be comes from such a different angle. they can’t deceive him with pleasing shapes, so they come at him emotionally, psychologically, with flattery, with guilt, with subtle threats, with demands he obey, with the temptation of The Swing there in the background. come on, darling, drop your inhibitions, let us give you one little push, let us make you what we want you to be, it would be so easy if only you surrender. capitulate, and we’ll give you pleasures. let us lead you down the path and over the edge and you won’t even have to think anymore, you’ll fight for us, be loyal to us. the good soldier. the righteous man. the beautiful, perfect vessel, the flaming, glorious sword (even though that hasn’t been revealed in the story yet, all the subtext is there).

but his humanity makes him more divine than they can even fathom. Dean can feel the oppressiveness and the danger lurking in that step. he quips at them. he tries to bust open those gleaming white and golden walls. his concern goes to not only himself and his brother, but to what will happen to the innocent people, to defiance of the plan, to compassion for the world at large.

Dean’s so unwaveringly himself that he’s not taken it by it for a second. 

if there’s anything worth dying for, this is it.  

[animebw]

Goodbye to The Anime Binge-Watcher

Honestly, there’s a part of me that wonders if there’s even a point in writing a goodbye post. I mean, I’m not actually leaving this blog behind. The only thing I’m saying goodbye to is the long-form analysis that’s been my focus since the beginning, and, well, I kinda already stopped doing that a while back. Going forward, this blog is mostly gonna look like it has these past couple months: regular One Piece updates, answering questions, chatting about seasonal anime, and maybe doing the rare shorter review once in a while. In other words, you’ve already gotten a pretty good taste of what “The end of The Anime Binge-Watcher” looks like, and considering y’all haven’t started unfollowing me like rats fleeing a sinking ship, I assume that means you’re mostly cool with it. So no, this isn’t really “goodbye.” It’s just me ending the era of my life where this blog was the most important thing I had going on, letting it become a background hobby as I turn my attention to other interests and responsibilities. Not exactly the kind of thing you write a big, dramatic farewell post about.

But whatever. Even if it’s not really the end, I think it’s still worth saying goodbye to The Anime Binge-Watcher as you know it. Considering how long I’ve been doing this for, I think I’ve earned a big, dramatic farewell post. And I’m sure plenty of you would appreciate that closure as well. So I hope you’ll all indulge me for a bit as I (sort of) say goodbye to the project that’s defined my life for the past... fuck me, it really has been three and a half years, hasn’t it? No wonder I feel so old.

Anyway.

I started this blog in the tail end of my sophomore year of college. I was big into the Steven Universe liveblogging scene back then, and I thought it was a cool way for people to share their thoughts on the media they watched. Problem was, I was way too impatient to take any show just one episode at a time. If I had to watch anime that slowly, I would spontaneously combust. So, I came up with a solution: what if I watched a bunch of episodes at once and talked about them all together with long-form analysis posts? Not only would that suit my ravenous media-consuming diet much better, it was a niche I didn’t really see anyone else filling on Tumblr. Long-form anime analysis was something I wanted more of, but just wasn’t seeing in my circles. So I figured, why not be the change I want to see in the world? I could share my thoughts on these silly Chinese cartoons in a way I couldn’t with any of my IRL friends, and I could do so in a way that felt genuinely new at the time. Yes, I knew anime bloggers were a thing that existed, but at least in the internet places I frequented, I was a bit of a trailblazer. At least, I like to think so.

Of course, those lofty thoughts weren’t really at the forefront of my mind when I started it. I just thought it would be a fun way to engage more deeply with the kind of media I most enjoyed. And I genuinely had no idea how long I’d keep at it. I’ve got a bad habit of getting bored with things quickly; I’m always searching for new ways to keep my mind occupied. Plus, I was doubtful I’d get much of an audience. I mean, long-form anime analysis on Tumblr Dot Com? It’s like I was asking to wither in obscurity. The way I saw it, this was probably something I’d do for a few months, get bored of, and move on to other things. A momentary diversion to pass the time without much of substance to really show for it.

I’ve never been so happy to be wrong in all my life.

Writing for this blog has been, without question, one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Not only did it grow way beyond my wildest dreams, it connected me with communities and friends I never would’ve found otherwise. I’ve met so many incredible people along this journey, people who enjoy talking about anime as much as I do. And in the process, I’ve enriched my understanding of how media works and my ability to express that understanding a thousandfold. I feel like I’m able to grasp the nuances of a story and how it’s communicated in a way I never did before, and it’s helped me fall even deeper in love with the media I consume. This blog made me a better writer, it made me a better watcher, and honestly? I’m pretty sure it made me a better person too. Sharing my thoughts with you over these past years has made me happier than I could ever put into words. As good an analyst as I’ve become, there are some things that are still far beyond my powers to properly express.

In some ways, I wish it could go on forever. That I could spend the rest of my life making my wrists bleed as I spill countless words over why I love the anime I love. But all things must come to an end, and truthfully, I can’t think of a better time to end things than now. I’ve got so many new projects I’m working on, so many new and exciting opportunities I want to explore (keep an eye out for my new webcomic, Beyond the Sable Shore, first chapter releasing on Webtoon on December 4!) Plus, at this point, I feel like I’ve said everything I need to say with this blog. I’ve talked about every kind of anime under the sun, all the different ways that media can succeed or fail. If I keep at this any longer, I’ll just start repeating myself. And if there’s one thing I could never stand, it’s stagnation. I’m always in pursuit of the new. I’d rather turn the page on this chapter of my life, satisfied that I’ve left behind a complete work with no loose ends dangling.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the last “official” TABW analysis I did was the final Gintama movie. Not just because it was the grand finale to my favorite story of all time, but because it so perfectly captured my emotions right now. Not sadness that we're at the end of the road, but joy that I’m able to say goodbye with such fulfillment. I’ve reached the end of a very long journey, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the memories I’ll carry with me. So as Dr. Seuss once said, don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

I could keep talking for a while. There’s so much I could discuss in detail, so many specific memories I could reminisce about. But I’d rather not linger too much in the past right now. So instead, let me turn to you, my audience, and say:

Thank you.

Thank you for reading my work. Thank you for sharing your own thoughts with me. Thank you for being a part of this community I never knew I would stumble into. Thank you for your enthusiasm, your gratitude, and even your criticism. Thank you for 42 months, 5344 posts, and 1054 followers. Thank you for helping make this one of the greatest journeys of my life. You are the reason The Anime Binge-Watcher lasted as long as it did, the reason I approached this blog with so much excitement each and every day. And if I’ve given you even half as much as you’ve given me, then I guess I must’ve done something right.

I’ll be back tomorrow, talking about One Piece and seasonal anime and all that good stuff. But I’ll also begin my first steps toward new horizons. I’ll be sharing more stuff about my webcomic as it begins publishing. I’m also still trying to get into China for work, so hopefully that’ll happen eventually. Where will the future take me after that? Who knows. But I can’t fucking wait to find out.

Today marks the end of one adventure. It also marks the start of another. And I can’t wait to share it with you all.

Thank you.

And see you for what comes next.

Love and Peace,

The Anime Binge-Watcher

[youngbeanpole]

A message from BP’s mail-lady

hoo boy here we go. this is gonna be a long post.

hi! im lemon, and i started this blog on april 2nd 2012. and today, april 22nd 2021, im posting beanpole’s last message here. its been one hell of a ride.

how it all started i was 15, spending time on tumblr, when i suddenly started seeing people posting about this movie that was about to be released soon, called the lorax. now, im not american, so i had never really heard of dr seuss, but people were so enthusiastic! so i watched a shitty cam-rip of the movie and joined the fandom. 

and then the askblogs started, the first one i came across being swag, of course. i had run askblogs for other fandoms before, so i wanted to join in on the fun. but regular once-ler was already taken... and green suit once-lers, and audrey and ted too... so i had to come up with something original. 

the movie started with the once-ler leaving home and his family showing just how awful they were, and i started thinking, ‘man, his childhood mustve sucked..’ ‘haha what if i made a blog about once-ler when he was my age?’ 

an impulse decision that somehow gained me 100 followers in a week. somehow relatable tumblr teen once-ler was relatable to 2012 tumblr. who couldve known? 

i get kinda emotional looking back at it, honestly. people were so fun and creative. id stay up late to keep talking to people (bc timezones are hell). and i had a lot of fun just pretending to be a flawed boy, one who seemed nice but could be rather snarky, who would lie and break promises at the drop of a hat, but only because he didnt know any better, not out of malice. and i couldnt have done it without you all. i never wouldve known that he hates tomatoes, or likes celine dion, or wears the same thneed every dang day just because that happened to be his icon. 

was it silly to get obsessed with a childrens movie? maybe. but i had a great time.  (im also happy to see there are still people in the fandom that are carrying on the legacy... you guys rock)

truffula flu i think most people that remember bp remember him from truffula flu’s camp entre, over at youngbeansprout... a blog ive sadly lost the password to. im a big baby so i never thought id enjoy writing about something as scary as zombies, but i saw my friends doing it so i went in blind, without any idea on a backstory for the au or whatever.  ....which is probably why he wasnt always all that prominent in the story, haha. well, that, and timezones. 

it was probably an even wilder time than running this blog was, because there was actual plot. and people would liveblog it. and make fanart. and cosplay??? someone out there? cosplayed my oc to a convention? its one of those things that make you go. huh. i made something cool. probably never gonna reach that high ever again, but it sure is a fond memory. i still have a folder on my computer with all the fanart and it still brings a smile to my face.

also... i never did get to finish zombie au’s story, but i did plan how it would end. so if youve managed to read this far, congratulations! youve hit the hidden deep lore.

---

so the thing with truffula flu was that entre made the trees fucked up, right? and those spores would turn ppl into zombies. and of course you could become a zombie from being bitten, but it also traveled through the air...

everyone in camp entre (who wasnt immune or already infected) wore a gasmask, a bandana, something to cover their mouth. bp, who wandered into the apocalypse by accident, did not. he didnt even know. 

so little by little, the spores gathered in his lungs, until he realized. oh no. im getting sick. oh no. oh no oh no oh no. he messed around audrey’s equipment to confirm he was infected, and he got scared. he was a scared kid and he was going to die.

except. ted had handed him a cure for safe-keeping. a cure bp had sworn to protect with his life. but it could save him, right? in a moment of cowardice, he uses it on himself... only to find out there never was a cure.  (now heres the part where my memory gets fuzzy but) the ‘’’cure’’’ was given to ted, who was already slightly rotting, meant as a mercy kill. the people who gave him the cure assumed he would use it on himself.

except ted was a good kid, who wanted to use the cure to help others. and beanpole? his lies and broken promises came back to bite him in the ass, and he died sudden and alone. the end. :)

ANYWAY

the end of an era ive wanted to wrap this blog up for several years now but i never knew how. younger me wanted to give him a happy ending, which back then i thought was getting him a girlfriend. 

but as i got older, i realized... not everything can be fixed with a relationship. he’d have to learn to overcome his flaws by himself, learn his lesson about honesty and sincerity and the dangers of greed. and then, maybe he’ll have a happy ending.

so as he rides into the sunset on this day, imagine. maybe he’ll end up cutting down a forest and regretting it the rest of his life. maybe he’ll become a rock-star. an inventor. a teacher. a gentleman. a cannibal? okay, maybe not that one or maybe he’ll continue traveling forever, singing songs about boredom.

who knows? there’s infinite possibilites out there.

--

and with that, im logging off too. if you ever need me, ill be over on twitter as his deoncelerized self, bean. 

<3

[salty-dracon]

Liveblog of Deltarune Chapter 2, in one Tumblr post.

DELTARUNE SPOILERS

Checking out Deltarune Chapter 2.

Does time move differently in the two worlds? I hope not.

Ralsei is so nice to us. Thank you Ralsei for your rooms made specially for us, and totally not over the course of 10 years.

Thanks Toby Fox dog for.... something.

The Internet world reminds me of Mega Man. Is this place like Web 1.0 with those giant cathode ray monitors or is it something else? The mention of Space Pinball makes me think it's the Windows XP era.

I just noticed that a sparkle flew off from us when we jumped into the new world. Was that our second uninvited guest, Rouxls?

Everything about Queen makes me want to punch her stupid face in. Good villain, I guess? Ughhhh she's so mean but in a 16 year old on a chat room kind of way.

The Werewires have such a good design.

Queen attempts to beat us at a fighting game, but with the power of friendship we got through it. "Bosom or Perish" lol.

It's not a highly emotional game without a dancing sequence by a highly irritating musician.

Yeah they're hinting at the Queen having a sidekick and him speaking in a way no one can understand. So it's probably Rouxls.

The enemies in this area look so good.

BERDLY!!! I have a voice in my head for this guy and it's Byakuya Togami, even now.

Triple trucies!

If I ever acted like Berdly towards you, I'm sorry. Also people who act like him suck. I want to draw him doing the Virgin Walk now.

Gamer's Delight of course it is.

I finally figured out the words for what Berdly is. An isekai protagonist. That's it. He's an isekai protagonist.

Hmm. Spamton. Don't like that.

Noelle's honest discussion about the city is a nice break from all the silly shit. I'm glad she could experience it. Why was she spelling out “December” on her walk, though.

I ONLY PLAY MOBILE GAMES

Wow, I didn't expect a shout-out to Kiwami Japan, aka the knife guy who makes knives out of increasingly weird stuff.

Berdly being ass at solving puzzles is giving me, who is good at solving puzzles, life. “Face it, you’re just as big a dumbass as the rest of us!” got me. The backstory for him is interesting, though. Once again, the word “December”, alongside a silhouette of Noelle. Hmm.

I knew those screams weren’t Ralsei! Lol, they were some of those giant conefaced plague doctor Phoenix Wright things!

The Tasque Manager enemy looks so cool.

Oh god. Blue checkmarks.

Is Nubert supposed to be a reference to Omori’s “Humphrey”?

I deeply adore all of the old computer references, like “Mouse Wheel” and the windows XP background behind Queen.

Thanks Toby Fox dog.

That post where it’s three versions of “has food thrown at me, inexplicably eats it all instantly” is what Susie just did. Like the “witch hitting me while i’m sitting in her cauldron: stop eating all the potatoes” one and the “woman throws a drink at me but i swallow it all perfectly” one. That’s what Susie just did.

mmmmmm battery acid and hands and logic puzzles

There’s Rouxls. He’s a pirate now.

GOD DAMMIT!!!

Noooooo poor Noelle. YESSS SUSIE COMING IN CLUTCH

amazing. pre character development noelle lent her a candy cane and susie payed it back by not picking on her. *slow, sarcastic clapping* bravo, asshole. bravo. fuck you

Noelle :’)

Wait a minute. Wait wait wait wait wait. Noelle calls her sister Dess. Noelle stayed silent when one of the words in the spelling bee was “December”. Noelle is Christmas-themed, with her being a reindeer, her name sounding like “Noel”, and mentions of Christmas songs and candy-cane pencils. Is it possible that Noelle’s sister’s name is December, and she lost December to an accident or something?

This is the funniest conversation ever, in the Ferris wheel. Aww. I hope it ends well for both of them. Ah. Berdly came to ruin it.

NOELLE????? WHAT????

This possible revelation that Noelle can strengthen the Darkness, and that a lot of this world is built on her own memories of this person named “December”, leads me to believe that actually, all of the worlds here are built from the memories of a person, in this case, this world was built from Noelle’s memories. But whose memories are the first world built from? Susie’s? Kris’s? Ralsei’s?

All of these boss themes ROCK!

Yeah as I thought, Queen is only acting to save Noelle.

What does the Knight have to do with any of this? There was a Knight in Undertale, though, I think- it was that guy lying on a wall near one of the shops. So the Knight apparently created the darkness through the power of determination, and with determination, which Lightners all possess, anyone can make more darkness. Hmm.

Epic final boss fight against Queen! I wondered what mechanic they'd bring back- turns out it was the fighting game. Despite being an asshole it seems she didn't really want anything bad to happen.

The Roaring is going to be the endgame I guess. Maybe it's the reason all the monsters are underground in Undertale?

And everything was back to normal!

At least Lancer's got a new mom now. Lancer's dad does not like her one bit.

Sans. Good to see you. Funny as ever. Cracking fourth wall breaking jokes about how goddamn long this part took to make.

There it is again. Kris's soul acting on its own- or, by the player's influence. If the last chapter suggested that Kris's soul wasn't ours to control, why did it let us do so again?

What the HELL? So Kris sometimes pulls her soul out, shuts it away, and lets it sit there while she goes out and does her own thing? That explains the connection between last chapter and this one. There's no discontinuity. We just didn't see her put her soul back into her own body.

So what Kris did just now was slash the cars tires. Why?

Oh. And there's the connection between The Knight and the events of this story. Kris, or at least her body without her soul, is the one causing these fountain of darkness to appear. That's why Kris, with her soul, is the only one who can seal them. Kris is the knight.

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 65-66

This is the start of the “Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times” arc, but I want to focus on these two chapters because they feature Mark.   I’ve got a lot to say about Mark under the cut, but the short version is that he’s a lousy Nazi and he deserves everything that happens to him.

A large chunk of Chapter 65 is just Caesar hanging out in Joseph and Speedwagon’s hotel room.   They try to play cards, but they’re both cheats.  This wouldn’t bother me at all until Speedwagon points out that he’s been here for eight hours, and never bothered to explain why.   You’d think Joseph would have demanded an answer a long time ago, since he’s not known for patience.  

As it turns out, Caesar’s been waiting for Mark, a buddy of his in the German Army.   Stroheim was in the German Army too, and he told Joseph that the Nazis had discovered three other Pillar Men in Rome.   That’s why he and Speedwagon came here, after all.    Well, Caesar’s an Italian, and Italy and Germany are allies, so Caesar managed to persuade the Germans (through Mark) to let him take a look at the Pillar Men.    So in this chapter, Mark rolls up in a car and drives them over to the site. 

But we already know what happened at the site in Chapter 64.   The Pillar Men have already reawakened, and all the Nazi soldiers stationed there have been slaughtered.   When Mark leads our heroes into the catacombs, they find the remains of the Germans, while Mark bumps into the Pillar Men themselves.  (Note: the above image is not to scale).

The thing is, bumping into the Pillar Men is hazardous to your health.    We saw that vampire grab Santana and large chunks of his body were completely absorbed.   The same thing happens to Mark, only faster, because Wamuu doesn’t even slow down as he walks past him.    He just walks right through Mark and half of his body is gone.  

So when I first watched the JoJo anime, it was right after I watched the Hellsing Ultimate anime, and I got a kick out of seeing two completely different anime takes on vampire lore.   Let’s face it, the Pillar Men are presented as something beyond mere vampires, but they’re basically just super-vampires, not so different from Alucard in Hellsing.    And both make use of the Nazis, except in Hellsing, the Nazis are the villains, while in Battle Tendency, they’re kinda sorta allies.  Stroheim is clearly a bad guy, because he killed his prisoners and tormented Speedwagon, but Mark is presented as a completely sympathetic person.   He’s got a sweetheart back home, Caesar’s the one who introduced them, and he’s planning to get married the next time he goes back to Germany.   And for his very brief appearance in JJBA, he’s completely friendly and helpful to the heroes.   We’re supposed to feel very sorry for him when he gets killed here.  

Part 2 is my favorite, but I think this stands out as it’s biggest flaw.   I get the idea.    Hellsing was dealing with a lot of dark themes, and the protagonists were horrifying in their own right.   So Kouta Hirano used the Nazis as villains to humanize his vampire characters.    By contrast, Hirohiko Araki seems to be using the Nazis to dehumanize the Pillar Men.   They’re so evil that even the Nazis look halfway decent by comparison.   At least the Nazis are human, with human loves and fears and honor.    The Pillar Men kill Mark without even noticing him, and Speedwagon likens this to a human stepping on an ant.     I get what Araki is trying to do here, but it rings hollow.    Fuck Mark, and fuck his Nazi fiance.  The first time we see him, we get a close up of his Iron Cross medal, with the damn swastika in the middle of it.    We’re supposed to buy into the idea that he’s “one of the good Germans”, and it’s 1938, so World War II hasn’t officially started yet, so somehow Mark is supposed to be cool.   But no, I don’t buy it.

Let me go off on a little sidebar and try to explain how we got here.   Battle Tendency was published in 1988.   Back then, Hitler had been dead for decades, and Germany had been partitioned into two countries, East and West Germany.   The Nazis seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, and as time passed, pop culture grew more comfortable using the Nazis as historical villains in stories like this one.    There was a sense that yeah, the Nazis were really bad, but they were gone now, and they would never come back.   I think there was a similar mentality surrounding the Soviet Union after the U.S.S.R. dissolved.    By the 2000′s there were all sorts of internet memes about Nazi stuff and Soviet stuff and it was rationalized as harmless envelope-pushing. 

The problem is, it doesn’t seem so harmless in 2021, when Russia is a autocracy that meddles in U.S. elections, emboldening white nationalists in the process.   The “alt-right” fanatics who marched in Charlottesville in 2017?   The rioters who stormed the Capitol building this past January?   Those assholes probably wouldn’t call themselves Nazis, but neither did the Nazis.   They called themselves “National Socialists”, because they were trying to make their ugly policies sound more legitimate.   The same holds true for “alt-right”, “economic nationalist”, “Qanon”, “truther”, and so on.   They’re just new labels for the same old horseshit.  

I don’t want to judge Battle Tendency too harshly, because it’s the product of a different time, an era when people could at least pretend that Nazism was one of the few problems that we didn’t have to worry about any more.   The same mentality can be found in Hellsing.   The Nazis in Hellsing are definitely villains, but the conceit is that they’re all immortal vampires or werewolves, because that’s the only way the Nazi menace could possibly exist in 1999.    Otherwise, they’d all be dead of old age.   Battle Tendency is set in 1938, so it takes the liberty of presenting sympathetic Nazis, because we already know they’ll be defeated in the end, right?   We might as well see what makes them tick.  

Araki may have thought that using Nazis in a story set in the 1930s would be no different than using Napoleonic French soldiers in a story set in the 1800s.  And in the long run, that might be true, but I don’t think we’re there yet.   In the here and now, it’s aged rather poorly.  

Of course, just because Caesar and Joseph feel bad for Mark doesn’t mean I have to.   And Araki may have been more self-aware than I’m giving him credit for.    Nazi Germany wanted to set itself up as the Master Race, and in this fictional world, the Pillar Men have come to do the same thing, only they’re much, much further ahead of the game.   I think part of the point of Stroheim and Mark was to contrast the Nazis’ supreamcist attitudes with Kars’ ambitions.   For all of Stroheim’s boasting, he’s helpless against Kars’ might.   But at the same time, for all of Kars’ power and brilliance, he’s ultimately chasing the same pipe dream as Hilter and his followers.  

Let’s get back on track.    While the good guys react in horror at what happened to Mark, the Pillar Men just stand around nearby and discuss their situation.   They completely ignore our heroes, just like they ignored Mark.   Kars wants to locate the Red Stone of Aja, because it’s the secret ingredient to the mask he designed that will make them immune to sunlight.   Esidisi doesn’t understand how the stone helps their plan, but he’s totally on board.    But as they head out, Wamuu suddenly attacks Kars, because Kars stepped in his shadow, and apparently Wamuu just lashes out at anyone who does this, friend or foe.   

Wamuu is deeply sorry for this, and begs to be punished, but Kars apologizes instead, because he knows about Wamuu’s whole shadow thing and he feels that he’s the one who made the mistake here.  I really love this exchange, because it defines the Pillar Men so well.    As indifferent as they are to human lives, they respect one another a great deal.   Kars is the leader, but he still treats the other two guys like close associates.    He needs Wamuu’s sharp senses and keen warrior instincts.   Meanwhile, Wamuu and Eisidisi practically worship Kars like a god.   They’ve literally followed him around the world and across thousands of years in pursuit of his vision. 

So yeah, if the goal here was to use Mark’s suffering to make me hate the Pillar Men, it doesn’t work.  The Pillar Men are evil, sure, but they’re pretty cool bad guys.   On the other hand, Mark looks ridiculous here, with Caesar holding and talking to half of his body.   This looks like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon.   

I mean, let’s set aside the whole Nazi thing for a moment.   Why should I feel sorry for Mark?  Because he’s in pain?   He got cut in half!   He should have died instantly!    Because he was going to get married?   We only met this guy one chapter ago!   Because he’s Caesar’s friend?  Well Caesar’s kind of a jerk too.  

Anyway, Mark begs Caesar to kill him and end his suffering, so Caesar uses the Ripple to stop his heart.    Or the half of it that’s still there, I guess.   

Okay, so the whole point of Mark’s death is to really get the good guys fired up to battle the Pillar Men, right?    Okay, Caesar tries to take them on, and he opens with the Bubble Launcher, the same move he talked about earlier.   It didn’t beat Joseph, but Caesar’s Hamon power does hurt Wamuu’s skin, which is more than Joseph managed to do against Santana.  

The Bubble Launcher is supposed to surround the opponent with dozens of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy.  Wamuu can’t escape without touching them and getting hurt.   But Wamuu just sprouts all these long braids from his head and clothes, and swings them around with superhuman precision to know the bubbles away without hurting himself.  

As it turns out, these Pillar Men are familiar with Hamon.   Santana was surprised to encounter Joseph Joestar’s powers, but Wamuu and the others have fought Ripple users in the past.    And Wamuu’s more intrigued than worried...

Oh, as one final aside, on the car ride to the catacombs, Speedwagon asked Caesar if he tried to use the Ripple to destroy the Pillar Men before they woke up, and Caesar explains that it didn’t work while they were in their dormant state.   Remember, at the very start of this story, Speedwagon called Straizo because he wanted someone to use the Ripple to destroy Santana before he could wake up.   Now we see that even if Straizo had agreed to his request, it wouldn’t have done any good.   Sunlight doesn’t seem to kill the Pillar Men so much as it makes them turn to stone, and the Ripple only hurts them while they’re flesh and blood.   So the only way to kill them seems to be by using Hamon in a direct confrontation, and that’s a tall order...