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pancake-breakfast · 1 year

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Second week, second volume! Trigun Book Club!

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Trigun Volume 1: Covers + 1-3, 3 Detailed Thoughts, 4, 4 DT, 5-6, 5-6 + DT, 6 DT, 7-8, 9-10

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts for Trigun Vol. 2, Covers + Extras, below.

Trigun Volume 2 Covers

The cover for this volume is so pretty, what with the plant all coming out of Vash's gun there.... Pretty and strange and kinda disturbing.

I wonder what's in those jars floating around the hairy-legged plant man thing. Are they even jars? Blood bags? Hard to say.

Hey! Wolfwood's on the back cover! WOLFWOOD IS ON THE BACK COVER!!!

Also, Legato Bluesummers. Shit.

Aaaand there's a blow-up doll on the fake back cover. Because why not.

There are a LOT of familiar faces on the back of the Japanese Volume 3 cover. I don't like it. They mean bad things are coming.

Ok, Legato's getting eaten by a shark on the fake version of it, though, and I think that's hilarious.

BUT NOT AS HILARIOUS AS MERMAID WOLFWOOD'S SEASHELLS AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I'M DYING!!!! Nightow's obsession with this man's tits confirmed.

Extra 1: Day In Day Out

Ooh, a glimpse into the daily life of Mr. The Stampede? Why do I suspect donuts are part of it?

I'm gonna be honest; I did NOT peg Vash as an early riser. Then again, it might be important if you're on the run all the time.

LOL, I remember him not being very good at meditation.

I'm imagining that egg is hard-boiled. Or hollow. Like, this is still a good trick. No need to waste breakfast on it if it fails, though.

Three HOURS?? Dang, no wonder the guy's got skills. I can't do much of anything before breakfast.

Oh, fine. I guess it was a raw egg.

LOL, "John P. Smith." The most boring alias he could come up with. I wonder what the P stands for. Pseudonym, perhaps?

Psh, Vash can be plenty sneaky. But only in fights. Or when fleeing insurance agents.

Serious Vash expression! I seriously love all his expressions.

Gambling at chess. Ok, man. Whatever floats your boat.

LOL, he lost all his money. I take it back; he needs a new hobby.

Yeah, he's definitely letting the kids get him. As we see with how fast he switches to being the person in power when the motorcycle comes through.

Funny how much trouble one can stay out of by simply foregoing revenge.

Vash would like oldies....

Ew, this bike guy's kinda creepy.

"Sonic Sodom." Yyyyyeeeeaaaahhh, that's not exactly a name that inspires trust.

I love the irony in this panel. They're talking about how dangerous Vash is while he's (apparently) being taken down by a small child.

Dude. Who fires a gun to get people to shut up like that?! Rude.

LOL, the bleeping.

Props to this lady. She's like, "I don't care who you are. If you're gonna come in here, shoot things up willy-nilly, make threats, and swear at us, then you take your ass elsewhere." Like, this happens after this guy does all these things. Mad props.

They bleeped out all that stuff, but he still calls her a bitch....

Hahahaha, that's a wonderful way to take care of the issue. Good job, Vash!

Extra 2: Pilot

(Fair warning: I'm in a Mood as I write this due to some real life stuff, so apologies if it's overly vague or anything.)

Post-Hiroshima environment?? Damn.

Heck, I'd take two years of food as a form of payment....

Ahhhhh, this jacket! It lacks the sexy leg slits, but I still love it. Also it still somehow manages to show off his waist. And throwing the Love and Peace fingers with his clearly mechanical hand!

I'm in love with this first line. "We fell from the sky like droplets of rain." Poetry. MAJOR props to @trigun-manga-overhaul for their choices in both flow and rhythm for the words.

The second sentence is a lovely contrast, what with the rain versus the sun. But also a lovely parallel, as both images are destructive.

Covering a few additional elements here: metal, wind, sand/earth.

He can't ever escape being surrounded by graves, can he? Babygirl here needs a break. I love how small he is relative to the field of death.

HEY. The right alcoholic drinks are GREAT with ice!

Oh, shoot. I recognize this story from '98.

LOL, look at him go. This was my favorite Vash entrance in all of '98. It's very memorable. I hope Johnny Yong Bosch had a blast doing the voiceover for it.

He's just dancing away from the bullets, as if it's all just luck.

LOL, three guns. It's Trigun!

Goshdarn stupid flip-up glasses....

I love how quick his reaction goes from this (Seriously, what is he, a teenager??)...

...to this.

Psh, as if Vash the Stampede needs a measly pistol to wreak havoc.

Ah, the return of lecherous Vash. NGL, was kinda hoping that moment was an anime-only. Though they really took it and ran with it, though, didn't they?

You don't get to say, "That's no way to treat a lady!" to others when you were just looking up her skirt.

LOL, I love her response here. Perfect.

Huh. Something tells me these guys are after a bit more than a rich guy's "pocket money." Is it the fact that one of them shoved a gun in the daughter's mouth? Could be. Could be....

Distracting table-crash provided by... Vash the Stampede. I told you he didn't need a gun to wreak havoc. Though of course the whole incident gave the guy's friends time to restrain him and get him away from the girl before he did anything rash.

Look at him. He's just a little guy....

Vash, not taking any chances. Distraction might not be enough. Use Advanced Projectile Gum Technique!

This sure is a colorful cast of characters....

I'm just saying, they don't really seem like the type of folks the sheriff should have on speed dial.

I love how pissed off Vash looks as they're talking about how he'll kill them all if he shows up. This is the face of a man who's had it with your lies and slander.

Dude, the rich guy was like, "Just so long as my daughter lives," and the sheriff was like, "They'll do the job so long as you pay upfront," but girl's gonna get taken down in the crossfire.

Or, she would if Mr. The Stampede wasn't there.

The girl is physically ok, but mentally, she'll be scarred forever. That's some Hellsing/AoT-levels of, "This character is definitely dead."

Aaaand three panels later, Vash realizes he forgot to continue pretending to be tied up and tries to remedy the situation.

Bossman here (I mean the gang leader, not the actual character named Bostalk) was already suspicious of Vash. Now he's extra-suspicious.

Somehow, Vash revealing his identity has not made the Bossman less suspicious.

Vash, the multi-talented. He can fight and preach at the same time.

Oh, so the field of graves at the beginning isn't Vash's fault somehow. That's... good.

I mean, dear old dad might care a lot for his daughter, but he clearly stated he didn't give a shit about the lives of anyone else in the building.

Vash is disappointed in Bossman's life choices.

BTW, Vash's hair in this whole chapter just makes me think of thistle flowers.

Yes. Refusing to do so just leads to more cruelty.

Vash just let the guy shoot the man, huh?

Oh, he's not happy about it.

Ah, yes. There's the greedy sheriff I remember!

This sheriff mentioned his hired help didn't think anything of taking human lives, but it seems they're not the only ones.

Oh, no. Sheriff triggered Angry Vash.

Not really sure what happened in this panel save that Vash was at the center of a bunch of destruction. Again.

Ah, gun arm. I thought it might be gun arm. I couldn't remember.

I love the sheriff's expression here. Like, he literally has his own gun to Vash's face, and he's effing terrified.

Vash, dodging bullets again.

WTF, he shot him right in the badge. Talk about insult and injury. My boy knows what he's doing.

LOVE AND PEACE!!!

Hahahaha, everyone else just looks sooooo confused. Hopefully, they'll get it someday.

#thanks trigun #i was having a bummer of an evening #but i feel somewhat better now #trigunbookclub #trigun manga #volume 2 #pancake thoughts

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gygygroupsblog · 18 days

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baileytomkinsviscomblog · 10 months

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'Intersections' planning & experimentation - Pt. 2

I initially spent a while researching deeper into the comic book design process. I watched several YouTube videos that helped improve my knowledge about the different stages involved in creating a comic keyword as well as tips for saving time. Talking to Utku was also helpful. One crucial piece of information that I learned was the importance of planning, spending a while on concept art, developing character designs, and then creating thumbnails. Thumbnails are small sketches created by comic book or graphic design artists that give them the ability to get a basic overview of the narrative as well as the final format and structure that they'll be following. All that's needed after this step is filling in the final lines and details.

Another aspect of the comic book story format that I learned about is the establishing shot. Similar to in movies and TV, the establishing shot in comics is often used at the start of a scene to give the reader some helpful visual context about the story, for example, the setting in which the scene is taking place. These establishing shot panels are usually a lot larger and more detailed than standard panels.

After deciding that I would be creating a short graphic novel, I began experimenting with the concept art and character designs. I wanted to create a style that wasn't too cartoony or bold but also wasn't too complex, especially since I learned from my comic book art research that when creating character designs, you should aim for simplicity because it will make the process of redrawing them multiple times a lot easier and quicker. When examining the style I ended up with, it's clear that it has been influenced by the work of Bryan Lee O'Malley; in fact, it was even mentioned to me by a peer who saw the similarity. I found that I tend to gravitate towards a specific approach when it comes to character design; this is something that I believe happens to most artists. Trying to break away from this habit and draw in different styles was very difficult for me, and it's something I will need to work on a lot more since I believe that versatility is an important aspect of working in the creative industry.

Once I had found the look I was happy with I started experimenting with the format and layout of the pages. I went into this without any particular plan, starting by creating a two-page spread and then using random shapes and border styles for the panels. Once I had created the borders I began creating a loose story structure that would fill the pages. Although this process was helpful in developing the mood and visual narrative that I would be using, I found that jumping straight into creating detailed panels without a plan or a properly organised structure was also somewhat detrimental to the design process since it was very time-consuming. Despite not being overly beneficial, this experiment did help me to realise the difficulties of working small scale and also that creating overly detailed panels was unnecessary and potentially distracting from the flow of the narrative.

At one stage of the design process, I decided to experiment with a negative drawing style. I did this as I was looking for ways that I could make the piece more exciting and unconventional. In addition to this, I thought that it might be an interesting idea to have one side of the story completely negative, not only to further differentiate from the other story but to reinforce the themes of negativity and hopelessness that the character was imagining in his head. This look was achieved by using black paper and a white gel pen. One of the main issues I had with this style was that it's very difficult to create rough sketches on black paper, meaning I had to go straight into applying the final lines. This meant that I was very anxious about making mistakes, which increased the time that it took to complete the drawings. One solution I found was using a black sharpie to cover over any mistakes, which was somewhat effective but not overly practical. Despite being a fan of this effect, I decided that the cons of creating several pages in this style, such as the complexity and time-consuming factor, would far outweigh the pros. However, I did decide that I would still create one page in this style.

After these initial experiments with style and formatting, I decided to do a bit more research into the comic book structure and the steps to take when creating a comic book or graphic novel. I looked at some articles, YouTube videos, and even spoke to a comic book artist on Instagram. I learned a lot about how to effectively plan your piece, including the importance of thumbnails and rough sketches. In addition to this, I found out more information about page layouts and how to make your narrative flow from panel to panel.

Another important decision that I made at this stage was to shorten and simplify my piece, limiting the number of pages to six per story and making the layout of my panels a lot more basic and consistent. I began by creating a rough layout of all the pages and then proceeded to add the thumbnail designs. Finally, I added small dialogue notes that gave me an idea of what the characters would be thinking or saying in each scene.

After creating the thumbnail images, I started drawing out the panels on the A5 pages, using 6 panels per page apart from pages that would include larger panels for important things such as establishing shots and ending scenes. Unfortunately, the style I chose was largely symmetrical, with specific details that had to remain consistent throughout the piece, meaning that adding the final designs to the panels ended up being a lot more time-consuming than I had originally planned for. Another factor that led to this final stage being so difficult was the fact that I was working at such a small scale, meaning that adding the small details was a fairly complex task that required a lot of focus and patience.

One solution that I came up with was duplicating some of the panels; not only was this useful in recreating scenes that were exactly the same, but it also offered me a good starting point for the scenes that had the same point of view and characters but with certain differences, such as the body language and facial expressions. I initially thought of this as I decided that it would be interesting to change the format of the piece so that the stories were more like mirror images of each other, emphasising the similarities between the two rather than intentionally making them different from the start. An example of this would be the scenes in the Edgar Wright film "Shaun of the Dead." In both of these scenes, Shaun is performing his usual morning routine of walking to and from the local shop; both of these scenes are shot more or less identically; however, Shaun's second trip to the shop is following an outbreak of zombies. The genius and hilarity of this scene is in the fact that Shaun is completely oblivious to the changes around him, such as the general destruction of his environment, bloody puddles, and handprints, as well as multiple zombies roaming the streets. I took a lot of inspiration from these scenes.

Once I finished the final designs I gathered them and took them in for scanning. Unfortunately when examining the final pages I found quite a few blemishes such as smudged ink and creases, however, I found out that these could be removed with some digital editing.

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psychewritesbs · 3 years

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Chapter 160: How much of Yuji’s life has been orchestrated? + Megumi the stage-five clinger

Happy JJK-Sunday!

If I had to describe chapter 160 with as few words as possible, I would say: Oh f*ck...

My favorite moment was, of course, Megumi acting like a stage-five clinger. His interaction with Yuji in this chapter is especially ominous in light of Yuji being adamant of protecting Megumi from Sukuna.

A second favorite was Sasaki showing up in this chapter because of the implications moving forward.

Let’s jump right in.

How much of Yuji’s life has been orchestrated by Kenjaku?

We start the chapter with Kenjaku talking to none other than Sasaki, one of the members of the Occult Club at the high school in Sendai that Yuji used to attend.

Of course, the bomb that Gege dropped on us in this chapter is when Kenjaku thanks Sasaki “for getting along with my son”.

Like... excuse you?

Not only does this 100% confirm that Kenjaku used Yuji’s mother’s body to give birth to him, but this specific moment + some foreshadowing from previous chapters also opens an interesting can of worms about Yuji’s life: just how much of Yuji’s life has Kenjaku orchestrated?

For me, the implication is that Sasaki had an assigned role to play in Yuji’s life that would inevitably lead to him eating Sukuna’s finger.

I am assuming this because although we don’t see Kenjaku’s interactions with the other people in Sendai, we get to see that, in addition for thanking her for getting along with Yuji, Kenjaku is incredibly kind to Sasaki. We also learn that she’s the only one who has received a special message from him (thanking her).

Ready to make this whole interaction more ominous? Someone pointed out that the kanji in Sasaki’s name means assistant.

All of this brings us right back to Yuji’s free will--or lack thereof?

We already know that Kenjaku claims he made Yuji “ingest” Sukuna’s finger and that Megumi is rightfully concerned with this idea because he witnessed Yuji eat Sukuna’s finger “of his own free will.”

It’s also becoming increasingly obvious that Yuji was "created” solely for the purpose of becoming Sukuna’s vessel.

What this new reveal about Sasaki does is that it makes everything feel like certain events have been part of Kenjaku’s master plan all along. While this still feels a little farfetched, it will come down to how Gege works this idea into the story moving forward.

Come to think of it, even Yuji’s grandfather’s dying words to Yuji take on a new meaning since we know Wasuke knew something was definitively up with Yuji’s mother.

Another possible bit of foreshadowing all the way in chapter 1: While the intersection in the second panel below could be ANY intersection in Japan, it sure looks like the Shibuya crossing:

A quick note on the importance of kanji meanings in JJK before moving onto the next section: knowing the meaning of Sasaki’s name tells us that names are important in JJK. If you haven’t, I recommend you read my break down on the meaning of Megumi’s FULL NAME. His first name is important, but so is his last name.

The plans moving forward

Going off to Tokyo Colony #2 are Panda and Hakari.

As the strongest, Hakari feels like he should take on Hajime. As for Panda, it looks like his focus will be on hunting down Angel.

Side note: I love that Hakari is still calling Megumi names. Guess Senpai can’t help himself.

I must admit I was disappointed to find that Kirara will stay behind to report, but it is what it is. I am assuming Gege could see no use for Kirara and decided to leave the character out of the action for the time being.

As for Megumi and Yuji, they’ll be heading to Tokyo Colony #1 to target Higuruma, everybody’s new favorite Law & Order boss.

This brings us to Megumi’s current state of mind...

Megumi the stage-five clinger

I had a hard time coming up with the title for this section because what I see happening is that Megumi is starting to feel the pressure of the looming deadline for Tsumiki joining the Culling Game. What his behavior shows, however, is that he needs Yuji with him and is clinging onto him but won’t come out and say it--opting instead for aggression towards Yuji, the very same person he needs most.

His behavior reminded me of how Megumi could be mean to Tsumiki even though he clearly adores her. Apparently that’s the meaning of being tsundere. I’ve read about the term tsundere before but it never “clicked” until this moment and I just love Gege’s interpretation of the trope through Megumi’s character.

It goes without saying that it was REALLY interesting to me to see Megumi’s dynamic and interaction with Yuji in this chapter because it looks like Gege is letting us know Megumi’s state of mind continues to be one of desperation--remember that dogeza bow from chapter 157?

The thing about Megumi is that he looks stoic on the outside, but he’s actually an incredibly emotional person who doesn’t often show how he’s feeling.

I hadn’t caught on, but in chatting with @justafrenchlondoner about the chapter, they pointed out Megumi’s behavior in his dynamic with Yuji appears nervous and aggressive.

Upon a second look I have to agree that Megumi is acting out of character and aggressive with Yuji when all that Yuji really wants is to protect Megumi from Sukuna.

And yes, let me go ahead and sound like a broken record as I remind you of Yuji’s rather ominous words from chapter 143 yet again:

And this is the part of the chapter that knocked the air out of me: Megumi telling Yuji to stfu about Sukuna but Yuji thinking to himself “as long as I’m around you will suffer” back in ch143 is so damn ominous.

Oh f*ck...

But this is what REALLY gets me about this whole interaction and why I’m calling Megumi a stage-five clinger...

Even though Megumi is calling Yuji selfish, in reality, the one being selfish is Megumi.

This is, of course, my own interpretation of the situation, but to me it feels as though Megumi is clinging onto Yuji’s strength for dear life.

It’s almost like Megumi needs not just Yuji’s physical strength, but also his unwavering conviction or mental strength.

If you think about it, Megumi has only recently started fighting to win. Remember how unsure he was of himself when fighting Sukuna for the first time? It wasn’t until he went up against the Cursed Spirit from the Yasohachi bridge that he let go of his inhibitions.

Megumi’s battles during Shibuya were the pinnacle of his growth as a character in that moment. If I remember correctly, according to the timeline of events, the Shibuya incident happened around two weeks prior to the current chapter. You could say that although he is more comfortable in his strength than before, Megumi is still growing into his strength at this point.

The thing about Megumi is that everybody and their Divine Dog believes in him and sees his potential except for him. As Gojo tells him “you undervalue yourself.”

Looking back, the way Megumi asks begs Yuji for help in chapter 143 is very enlightening of how Megumi needs Yuji’s strength:

I initially had read this to mean Megumi needed Yuji’s physical strength. Upon second look, however, Megumi has always seemed to have admiration for Yuji’s conviction.

With the looming deadline for Tsumiki’s vow to join the Culling Game, as Megumi starts to feel the pressure to make his plan work, who better to keep around than the person who will always go for the home run and whose strength he admires?

In other words, like hell he’s going to let Yuji leave his side. Which, again, only makes it more heartbreaking to think Sukuna is up to no good regarding Megumi and Yuji wants to protect him from that.

Oh f*ck.......

The panel below feels like a bit of a lighthearted and comical moment, but it’s also interesting to note that this is the second time they “fight”.

The first “fight” having taken place during the Cursed Womb Arc.

If you will remember, Gege used the Cursed Womb Arc and the Origin of Obedience Arc to show us how much our favorite trio had grown.

Not sure Gege is going to parallel something here again, but just interesting to note.

Oh f*ck...

Ya, please excuse the French.

Despite the many words I’ve shared here, this chapter left me mostly speechless.

I feel like I’ve been trapped in Gojo’s limitless domain expansion and all I can think is “oh f*ck” or “halloween” (if you catch my drift).

Chapter 160 was incredible because it looks like Gege has finally finished putting all his pieces into place and is ready to go for the kill by:

Starting to unravel the story bit by bit, giving us all of the twists we both saw and did not see coming, and

Ramping up the stakes. Taking into consideration the estimates that JJK is somewhere around 60-70% done at this point, It’s not a matter of whether some of our beloved characters will die, but about who, when and how they will die

One last detail

I love the last four panels of the chapter showing Panda, Hakari, Yuji and Megumi all wearing their uniforms (barring Panda) and getting ready to become official participants of the Culling Game by entering their respective barriers.

Knowing that Gege is a very talented artist capable of showing and expressing emotions through his art, I feel like these panels tell us a lot about what the characters might be thinking and I thought I’d expand on that.

Bear in mind this is my personal interpretation as an artist:

Panda looks excited and ready to fight, perhaps even confident. Panda is saying “bring it!” with his body language

There’s a hint of something I can’t describe in Hakari’s face. It’s almost like he’s coming face to face against how big of a challenge this is going to be and yet he’s resolved to walk straight into “the depths of hell itself”

Yuji looks focused, determined to go in and give it his best no matter what comes his way--that’s just who he is

And then there’s Megumi. I’ve been drawing Megumi recently, and one thing I noticed is that he has very specific micro-expressions. In his panel, he’s warming up his wrists as though he’s getting ready to fight, he has a focused look on his face, but the shadows around his eyes say he might be feeling like he is carrying the heavy burden of the uncertainty surrounding the situation he’s going through

With all that being said... the Culling Game is officially starting and we’re in for a one-way ride straight to hell.

Thank you for reading and happy JJK-Sunday!

What about you? What did you enjoy most about chapter 160?

#fushiguro megumi #megumi fushiguro #yuji itadori #itadori yuuji #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen manga #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #god i love jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen meta #jujutsu kaisen theory #jjk ch 160 #gege akutami #sukuna #ryomen sukuna #hakari kinji #jjk meta #jjk theory

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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 308: VIBE: CHECKED

Previously on BnHA: Lots and lots of Shindou idk what else to tell you.

Today on BnHA: Tired Nomad Deku rescues Shindou from Muscular, and us from Shindou. Muscular is all “OH BOY I SURE CAN’T WAIT TO FIGHT DEKU AGAIN AFTER HE TOTALLY KICKED MY ASS THE LAST TIME!! I’M SURE THIS TIME WILL GO DIFFERENTLY SEEING AS HE’S HAD ALMOST AN ENTIRE YEAR’S WORTH OF ADDITIONAL TRAINING, AND ALSO HAS SIX FOURQUIRKS NOW, IN ADDITION TO THE CONFIDENCE THAT COMES WITH HAVING EIGHT OTHER PEOPLE’S SOULS CHILLING OUT INSIDE HIM OFFERING MORAL SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT.” Deku is all, “[kicks Muscular’s ass effortlessly].” Muscular is all, “[gets his ass totally kicked].” I for one am very satisfied with this, and with respect to all, I would like to hereby declare this post a discourse-free zone. I’m just happy to see my son out here making good use of his FOURQUIRKS, and more importantly beating Muscular in less than seventeen pages so we can all go on with our lives lol.

damn Deku since when were you allowed to look this cool

from this perspective and with the smoke, cape, backpack, and mask more or less obscuring his actual profile, he looks less like a sixteen-year-old boy and more like a grownass man

OH SNAP

we got a glimpse of this in the cleaned-up scan of 307, but seeing both of his eyes looking so distinctively All Might-esque here is... whoa. I mean we know that his face still looks pretty normal underneath the mask and he doesn’t actually have the black sclera, but still, this is an awesome look. mini-Might

lol Muscular

you and me both. I mean no offense, but yeah

so Deku is just standing there silently

typical Deku. tight-lipped and expressionless. mum’s the word. quiet as a mouse. silent as a grave

okay no but seriously this is so weird and creepy though you guys. Deku please say something or else I’m just gonna mindlessly say whatever stupid things come into my head in an effort to make things less awkward

so Muscular is all “I should probably make a cool speech about revenge but Horikoshi couldn’t think of anything good so I’m just going to stand here clenching my fist real slowly”

“I’m not here to go on a monologue” he says, as he monologues about not monologuing

okay you guys I confess I have only read through/watched the Deku VS Muscular fight once because the arm-breaking is just way too uncomfortable for me to revisit. and so as a result, I have completely forgotten Whatever The Deal Is with Muscular’s eye lmao so let me go look it up real quick

okay so it’s a prosthetic, obviously, and he changes it out according to his mood. that part does sound familiar. I just can’t remember which eye is supposed to indicate which mood. don’t tell me I actually have to go back and reread this shit

lol I’m skimming through chapter 75 now and remembering/realizing that I hardly paid any attention to this the first time around because as soon as I found out the villains were after Kacchan my brain was like “TIME TO FOCUS ON THIS AND ONLY THIS NOW AND FOREVER” and yeah. ah memories

anyway so he started out with the flower-looking eye, and then later on he was all

which begs the question, how on earth could I have ever forgotten the most ridiculous panel I’ve ever read lmao

anyway, but so after all of that, I'm only just now realizing that this isn't one of his previous eye prosthetics in the current chapter; this is an ACTUAL FUCKING ROCK that he's just randomly shoved into his eye socket fkdsjlk

so basically (1) I did all of that painstaking research for nothing, five whole minutes of my life wasted THANKS A LOT, and (2) what, and I have never meant this more emphatically, THE FUCK

anyway so now he's leaping at the building that Deku is standing on top of. but he’s not aiming anywhere near Deku though, wtf

(ETA: HAHA YOU BROKE ALL YOUR MUSCLES YOU LOSER.)

...huh

lmao okay then. I hope those annoying citizens in the building next door are watching this go down and rethinking their life choices

dlkdkljk

just keep standing there pressed right up against the window, why don’t you. “WHAT’S GOING ON THIS SUPER CLOSE COLLAPSING BUILDING IS BLOCKING OUR VIEW.” well, folks, we’ve long since known there’s a critical shortage of hero and villain brain cells, but what we’re learning now is that civilian brain cells are also in short supply

OH THANK GOD DEKU IS FINALLY TALKING THAT WAS ACTUALLY UNSETTLING AS FUCK

SO HE’S STILL OUR GOOD, POLITE, WORRIED, CONSIDERATE DEKU UNDERNEATH THAT COOL AND MYSTERIOUS VENEER. for real, thank fuck, because I swear to god if he suddenly started acting like the Dekus in all of the vigilante AUs my interest in this series would have dropped something like 50% lol. just because he dropped out of school and ran away from home and is currently dressed like the physical manifestation of a Linkin Park playlist doesn’t mean he’s not still the WORLD’S BIGGEST DORK okay

I MEAN, THIS RIGHT HERE. THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. HE’S APOLOGIZING FOR THE DELAY

PLEASE FIND THE ATTACHED SHINDOU YOU REQUESTED. BEST REGARDS!!!

OH MY GOD WHY IS HE SUCH A BADASS

something about making bold, confident statements while obscured in smoke?? idk but damn it fucking works

ffjkkl

more importantly, should you tell him you actually need your copy of Shindou in excel format and not pdf?? on the one hand you don’t want to sound ungrateful, but on the other hand what are you even supposed to do with this

this chapter so far consists of like 50% smoke, but on the other hand Deku VS Kacchan 2 had a lot of cinematic smoke too so who am I to complain

OMG IS IT HIS ARMS

IDK DID YOU?! TELL ME YOUR SECRETS. PLEASE, AT SOME POINT THIS FIGHT HAS GOT TO ACTUALLY ADVANCE THE PLOT

OHHHHHHH

IT’S EN’S QUIRK!! OH MY GOD OKAY THAT’S ACTUALLY AWESOME

I CAN HEAR THE SOUND OF DISCOURSE RUMBLING IN THE BACKGROUND BUT I DON’T CARE LOL. WON’T CATCH ME EVER SAYING NO TO ANOTHER SIXQUIRK. GO AHEAD, BRING THEM ON, I WANT TO SEE THEM ALL but take it easy though Deku. don’t want to give yourself lung cancer or anything

also it’s good to see that in a very real sense he’s not fighting alone. the Vestiges really did mean it when they said they could appear more easily now. this is on a whole other level

so is this whole next page still En talking, or someone else? because whoever it is sure is chatty

okay, several things

pretty sure it is En, because he keeps saying “I suppose.” for someone who never said two words until one page ago, this guy sure never shuts up. we can’t all follow Muscular’s lead I suppose. oh my god now I’m doing it too

really like the suggestion of Deku using the SIXQUIRKS like tools in an arsenal, because that’s what he’s good at! it’s almost like he’s been training for this his entire life. “you value quirks too much” LOOK HE JUST THINKS THEY’RE COOL OKAY IS THAT A CRIME

where the fuck did all this rope come from

not gonna ask what the fuck that thing is sticking out from the back of his utility belt. Horikoshi will surely explain this

is that a fucking jetpack. I’m sorry Deku were six fucking quirks not enough for you. you can fucking float??? but JUST TO BE SAFE, LET’S STRAP A PAIR OF ROCKETS TO OUR SHOULDERS IDK

-- or wait, is this all supposed to be like a visual representation of En’s metaphor?? OH MY GOD AM I JUST STUPID LOL, DON’T ANSWER THAT. NEVER MIND. NEW LIST!!

rope = blackwhip

jetpack = float

radio = danger sense

and so I’m guessing that this ridiculously phallic thing is supposed to be a flare or something?? and that = the new quirk, smokescreen. well that was a fucking ride lmao we now return you to our regularly scheduled chapter

so now Deku is floating to his heart’s content and thinking that he’ll just sneak up on Muscular and vibe check his ass or whatever

WOOOOOOOO DANGER SENSE YESSSS I LOVE THIS FOR HIM

okay guys, I'm gonna press pause here for a sec to make a serious note, because I am loving the shit out of this, but tbh I'm having trouble enjoying it as much as I want to because I keep getting anxious thinking about the discourse. I know that a lot of the fandom has very strong opinions on Deku's character development one way or the other, and I want to respect that. but I also really have no spoons to debate this topic at all beyond what I’ve already weighed in on. so if it’s all the same to everyone, I plan on staying out of this discussion, at least this week

anyway! that said, YEAH BOI GET HIS ASS

VIBE: CHECKED. CURB: STOMPED. HOTEL: TRIVAGO

-- OF COURSE HE’S STILL FUCKING FINE LOL HE CRASHES INTO BUILDINGS FOR FUN IDK WHAT I WAS EXPECTING

dammit Muscular. how many fucking quirks does it take to beat you?! the annoying thing is that even with all of his cool new powers, Deku is still something of a mismatch against him. anyway r.i.p. to all these poor buildings

OOOOOHHHHH

you guys have no idea how intrigued I am at the prospect of watching Deku try to play both good cop and bad cop here lmao

anyway so Muscular says he doesn’t know, go figure

“I’m not here to make small talk or anything” he says as he small talks about not small talking

OH MY GOD DEKU

are you really gonna talk no jutsu all of these villains from now on?? that last battle really did have a profound impact on you, huh! interesting

you guys he’s really doing it omg

Deku this guy tried to murder a five-year-old literally just for fun. I mean more power to you, but holy shit you’re really gonna try to defeat Muscular with anger management therapy huh

I MEAN

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT RESPONSE COMING dlkjslkjk

FUCK’S SAKE DEKU, I KNOW YOU MEAN WELL BUT THEY CAN’T ALL HAVE TRAGIC PASTS KIDDO

but. I have to admit, I do still like that he tried. probably knew just as well as we did what the end result was going to be, but still. he made the effort in good faith and I respect that

uh oh

why do I get the feeling Muscular just got a whole lot deader

oh my god oh my god he’s doing the “powering up” stance ffff don’t fucking tell me you can still use your fucking arms here, Deku

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY WHAT’S THIS??

okay so basically he’s saying that whatever it was he sensed in Tomura, he doesn’t sense from Muscular. which, yeah, that sounds exactly right. good judge of character here lol

AHHHHAHAHA YESS

WHOOPS, GET FUCKED I GUESS

WOOOOHOOOOOOOO

lmao so apparently this is the belated result of Shindou’s attack from chapter 307?? I’ll be damned. good for you Shindou!! I always liked you buddy. please just take my word on that and don’t fact check that statement

okay lol the one tiny bit of discourse I will allow is that it’s bullshit that he just did that with his right arm. like, I’ll fully acknowledge that. that makes no fucking sense, and I demand an explanation from the Great Plot Hole Filler himself. he’s never let us down before when it comes to continuity so I’m trusting him not to suddenly start now

that said, we love to see a rematch against a boring guy settled quickly and decisively within the span of a single chapter. THANK YOU

I like that Deku implies that his power is being a smart nerd who battles villains using the power of ANALYTICS. he basically didn’t do anything except restrain Muscular and wait for Shindou’s attack to take effect while halfheartedly checking to see if he regretted any of that murder and stuff

(ETA: and almost forgot to mention, he made excellent use of all four of his active SIXQUIRKS. it’s like the chapter title said; this is basically him fighting all-out, and it’s a sight to see.)

also, as cool as the mask was, this just feels right. like, we had our fun, now let us see his face, yes good

anyway, I think this was a good start towards establishing What’s Up With Deku Right Now! so if it’s all the same to Horikoshi, I would next like to take some time to explore Why’s Up With Deku. that, and What’s Up With Everyone Else, Especially Kacchan. por favor

#bnha 308 #midoriya izuku #muscular (bnha)#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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teatitty · 3 years

Text

Re-reading the Loke arc for the thousandth time because what else am I suppsoed to do with my life and how could I forget the tiny details that fucked me up most on my re-reads, both in the “damn I’m never gonna recover from how cool Loke is” sense and in the “fuck me I’m sobbing into my pillow” sense

(Under read more because I fangirl a little bit oops)

1: For all he avoids her due to his ~trauma~ he doesn’t hesitate to punch someone’s lights out for her either. But that’s not what I’m focusing on here; he says these guys are known for “preying on women” and that he was here on a job to track them down. This might be a small resort town but it still gets a lot of tourists so Loke was either keeping an eye on his guildmates (Lucy and Erza/ Juvia is also here in the manga but not the anime) in case they needed him OR he’s been patrolling the streets at night to protect women in general and go after every sleaze he comes across (my kingdom for FT’s writing to have stayed good like this eugh)

2: Loke starting off as far from her at the bar as possible but then moving right next to her when she tells him he doesn’t have to sit so far away. Again, this is a subtle trauma thing because of Karen, but the fact he’s willing to get that close to her speaks volumes on how much he does trust her despite rarely interacting with her

3: Loke does not want to die. If he had truly 100% accepted his death there’s no way he would’ve reached out to Lucy (a celestial mage) here and told her this. Also look how tightly he clings to her...oof

4: His expression shifts from the dark numb one above to a more helplessly frustrated one here once he realizes what he just did. He might not want to die but he still thinks he deserves to (in panels following he also scolds himself for getting emotional and dragging her into his shit)

Also turning his face away from her so she can’t immediately tell that his laughter is false

5: Letting her slap him and not at all defending himself. Just...this panel has a lot of sadness behind it

6: This fucking shot of him and Plue looking at eachother. Because Plue knows who he is and Plue knows he’s dying but can’t do anything about it...*bursts into tears*

7: This is more just a funny addition for me but Loke breaking up with all his girlfriends in one night...I really wanna know how he did that lol

8: Just...how quickly she figured out who Loke was simply based on learning that he had a connection to Karen

Bonus sadness: this soft fucking look she gives him here. Also the implication that she could “feel” he was a Spirit after finally spending a while with him. Celestial Mage lore isn’t touched on enough quite frankly

9: Loke surviving on his own life force for three years while slowly dying is such a painful image btw. But anyway Lucy wasting no time demanding he let her help him (I’m trying very hard not to fluster over Loke’s earrings praise me for holding back)

10: This little tidbit which is just never expanded upon so it was either forgotten about or retconned. But then it also says the “real reason” he avoided Lucy was because she was his type which I simply don’t believe given all his angst lol

11: Bob’s anger over how Karen treats her spirits was good civ. I really wanted him to interact with Lucy and thank her for taking care of Aries and Leo

12: Loke, as the leader, can force his fellow spirits to switch places with him. He’s also strong enough that he could block Karen from summoning Aries completely

Subtle detail but Karen actually is afraid of him from the moment he pops up!

13: This entire exchange

14: Loke hits this state after 10 days

Yet still manages to hold out for another 30. And then another 3 months. And after Karen dies there’s the 3 years he then spends exiled. His power levels are so underused it’s ridiculous

15: Loke telling this story about Karen’s abuse to Lucy like man did you really think she was gonna see you as the villain here, just look at this face

16: Not as noticeable in the anime but when he’s fading away you can see the stars themselves

17: His happiness at just being able to meet someone like Lucy. Fuck me up man. + him thanking her for taking care of his fellow spirits

18: Thinks about this panel every single fucking day (also they both wear shoes with multiple belts on them lol)

19: This whole bit but specifically his face in the last panel

20: GENUINELY HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO BE NORMAL AFTER THIS!?

21: Spirit King’s arrival is so fucking cool my dude

22: Lucy has a fucking spine of casted iron is2g

23: THIS BIT! THIS BIT LIVES IN MY HEAD RENT FUCKING FREE (ignore the translations keeping some of the JPN words btw)

24: LOKE IMMEDIATELY REACHING OUT TO HER WHEN SHE COLLAPSES

25: I don’t think Loke has ever had a bigger “WHAT THE FUCK!?” moment in his life tbh

26: This. Just this

27: Bonus scenes I just find to be really cute

(Note that Lucy is more exasperated with his flirting than anything. Loke’s character assassination later on was an unforgiveable crime)

He says this was a place he planned to take all his girlfriends to and given Gray’s comment about the hotel there are strong implications that Loke was fucking loaded

#fairy tail #loke arc #long post #lore post #i didnt show it but this was also the arc where we learned #that crux knows about every spirit's current and past contracts #he just knows everything thats always going on lol #this got way longer than i intended oops

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prettywarriors · 3 years

Note

Ok ill bite whats the worst mg series

alright, whats the worst magical girl series in your opinion?

Thanks you two for letting me do some yelling. The obvious guess would likely be one of the recent edgelord shows right? Magical Girl Site or something similar? But nay I say, for while MGS and Day Break Illusion and such and what not generally tell you what to expect right away. Don't like super violence and suffering? Watch something else is the clear message from the get go. One of the bait and switch series then like Madoka or maybe Yuki Yuna? For what faults they may or may not have, at least these series do something and are interesting, even if you're not huge on what goes down in the series. A parody then? They range from affectionate to banned in New Zealand but regardless of quality and their feelings for MGs, it's a parody. It's a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously (plus they're usually short so you can just forget about them forever).

So what makes a series terrible then, I am sure you are asking. IMO? Setting expectations for an interesting and enjoyable series, and then dashing them to hell.

Come with me below the cut, as I talk about Key Princess Story: Kagihime Eternal Alice Rondo!

Spoilers abound so if you care about those for a 15 year old series, click away.

Background: Kagihime was a 4 volume manga that ran from 2004-2006 that was picked up for a 13 episode anime adaptation near the end of its run. The manga is created by a pair (Kaishaku) who you may know for making Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto. Kannazuki no Miko, and Steel Angel Kurumi, and the anime had a script written by the same writer (Mamiko Ikeda) for Tenshi Ni Narumon who also did some script writing for Princess Tutu and Seven of Seven. The anime also had 6 character music videos which are fairly simple but a nice addition to the series for the main girls. Discotek has been publishing the anime in the states in recent years, and the manga was brought over by *squints at book spine* Dr Master Publications.

The Premise: Girls transform and enter weird outside of reality spaces to fight each other with giant keys to take each other’s stories to create a third Alice In Wonderland story.

Well, an off-brand Alice story written by Alternate L. Takion, rather than Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson, that while the series uses all the aesthetic hallmarks of the tradition Alice, the little we see of the in universe Alice story is clearly different. Which is fine, at the end of the day, it’s still about someone who loves the Alice stories and wishes there was more, and even makes his own fanfiction version. His? Oh yeah, while the girls do all the fighting, the main character is Aruto, a teen boy who loves Alice, and for reasons we don’t know till late game, can enter the liminal spaces that the ‘Alice Users’ fight in. He chases a girl who looks like the Alice he sees in his story, who is named Arisu, and gets roped into this fanfic battle royale. He is also the older brother of the very needy Kirihara, who also ends up being and Alice User. As does Kirihara’s bff Kisa. To round out the group of enemies-turned-friends-who-will-work-together-to-collect-the-Eternal-Alice-without-having-to-fight-eachother group is a young genius researcher Kirika who wants to know more about Aruto’s connection that allows him to enter the spaces where the girls fight.

Then there’s all the other girls, some of whom still have real importance to the story and some who have a few panels or 2 scenes total. But with a whole bunch of girls to design, the creators reached out to a whole lot of other people to have them create designs! Eventually the battle gets down to the last few girls, there’s a confrontation with the guy running the whole thing, and while the anime and manga vary quite a bit the whole time, in both version Aruto ends up with Kirihara. Oh and Arisu was created by Aruto’s super imagination powers.

The Promise: Here on is subjective, particularly with what I personally saw as potential from this series. because I need you to understand how much I want to like this series.

~Alice in Wonderland themed: I know some people aren’t alice fans and that’s fine you do you but as a big alice fan this is great. We have a few alice episodes and themed characters amongst series like CCS and MGRP, and even Alice themes in other series like Tweeny Witches and Alice 19th. But damn it I am down for Alice series.

~Giant Keyyyyyyyys: Yeah yeah Kingdom Hearts but these keys are much more staff like for a lot of the characters which ads and air of elegance rather than the KH ones that for me at least feel well designed for big ol props rather than actual weapons. We also get...

~Weapon variety: It counts as a key if it’s a thorn whip that can be shaped like a key right? How about a giant pocket knife? Crossbows can also be keys. Hush. And we have this variety because

~Guest Artists: For magical girl series where we have a variety of outfits designed by different people, we have Kagihime, Uta~Kata, and uhh I guess Magia Record? But that’s a mobile game with a hella number of characters and with how mobile game works I wouldn’t count it just because it’s less the intent of the series to have variety and more the nature of having lots of girls. (Precure doesn’t count because unless I missed a memo each season’s set is still by one designer). If a series isn’t about a team and therefore doesn’t need cohesion, bringing in other artists is a great way for variety and new looks.

~The long term goal: Fighting with other people who love the same piece of media you do in hopes of creating new material that will be viewed as official? That’s just fandom nowadays. But it’s a legitimate interesting concept, and opens up so many doors for a message for the series, be it ‘what you create is no less valuable than the canon work’ or ‘it’s hard to let go when something you love doesn’t have more to it but you can still love it for what it is’ or ‘bond with the people who like the thing you like ya idiot instead of fighting about it’. The concept is interesting and there are so many narrative ways you can take this.

~Gays: Between the anime and manga, we have at least 5 wlw. Is it a magical girl series without some gays? (side note- the manga had a short thing where the MC wears a girl’s uniform and is pretty comfortable in it and while there is no way this was the intent, between that and the emphasis on the stories that live in girls and how the fight zones have no men, I’m just saying, Trans girl Aruto.)

~Greater Fairy Tale Premise: We meet a Little Match Girl based MG who is obsessed with Andersen rather than the Alice books, and touch on a Sleeping Beauty character in the manga. The manga at least implies that classic stories and fairy tale authors uh. Live on in a liminal space as immortals with world warping powers within that world and there could be opportunities for other girls in the real world to fight for Little Mermaid 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The Good: Everything has positive points, no matter how bad it is.

~Character Designs: Some of those looks slap. As do most of their weapons.

~Backgrounds: I have a strong opinion on backgrounds in anime that can be easily boiled down to old watercolor backgrounds good, modern filtered photos as background bad, and as a 2006 series, this might not be Memole nice but they’re quite attractive.

~Splash Pages: Easily my favorite thing after the designs, each chapter’s title page for the manga just has a character standing in a setting. Which is not everyone’s thing I’m sure but it’s a nice simplistic way to let the characters breathe imo. Even if at least some of the settings were deffo traced. But that’s how backgrounds work to some extent? If I ever get to the Met again, I am tracking down this exact photo, but here is a likely candidate for an example.

~Different Versions: I do not understand the need to make an adaptation that tries to be a 1:1. Kagihime had the same ideas and characters and did some of the same beats but very much had a different finale story and a lot of changes in the middle (like the Alice cops in the manga). Again, not something everyone probably wants I’m sure, but I very appreciate this, especially since the Anime kept good pace with the number of Manga chapters (reading the manga again while watching the anime at 3.8x speed just now was very interesting to see the different interpretations of events in a different medium.)

The ‘Fine’: Yeah.

~Anime Visuals: Look 2006 was still early enough into digipaint that I will give it a total pass on these. The colors are too bright but in a very bland way, the lineart is nothing interesting, and the faces are. Iffy. But it’s not total garbage to look at (probably helped by backgrounds and character designs...) it just came out in an era where not enough people knew how to stylize things to account for the weakness of the tools of the time. (It was 4 years earlier but I feel Kagihime is the polar opposite of Chobits with its painfully bland color palette while still being just. Flat. Sorry for the drive by Chii.)

~Music?: There sure were songs. Obviously, they are nothing to me.

The Bad: CW for.... somehow all the big things to an extent.

~Fanservice: Look, I am fine with fanservice, especially for a series that’s, ya know, not targeted at kids, big Mai Hime fan here even if I would recommend skipping the panty thief episode. And honestly the series generally isn’t fanservicey, at least by the modern standards of having the camera choosing under the skirt rather than an over the shoulder shot like I’ve seen plenty in other shows. Even the sexier outfits like the rose whip dominatrix aren’t bad BUT. When the girls fight. One takes her phallic key and drives it into another girls chest between the boobs while the loser cries in pain and then her book comes out and when the victor rips out pages, the loser’s clothes also rip. It is very SuperS Amazon Trio assault metaphor-y. There’s also a bit of fanservice with the sister becauseeeee....

~Incest: If you read the premise up there, first wow good job because I’m sure not re-reading that, you might have noticed I said MC ends up with his sister. As someone who is a big mythology fan and watches plenty of anime, I have a decent tolerance for your obligatory ‘oh we’re siblings but actually cousins so our feelings are okay’ or whatever the fuck Citrus has going on I don’t know that series and I don’t vibe BUT. I have limits and boy did this series go beyond that because multiple episodes are dedicated to the sister being in love with the brother? And the brother returns her feelings but knows that they are wrong so he put everything he likes in his sister into his version of Alice who, of course, physically manifests as Arisu who he creates accidentally with his uh. Magic imagination powers. But again in both versions MC still ends up with his sister. Hey, at least the manga eventually said the boy was adopted when the sister was like, 3, so if nothing else no blood relations? The anime did not ad this. -_-

~Under Utilized Characters: Arisu’s gradual revelation that she has no childhood memories because she isn’t a real person is so interesting and they don’t do nothing with it but also? That’s the kind of thing I personally would love to dig into and Kagihime, while touching on this world shattering revelation, easily loops back to So Anyway She Should Fight For The Man and to hell with developing a life or personality outside of what has been written for her. The rest of the main 5 were 2 note characters which. Could be worse? The most interesting character ends up being the child genius who accidentally murdered her childhood bestie (and/or lover? depending on version) and her coming to terms with that (the friend is alive but the version changes how and why she thinks she’s dead). Then the villain has the motivation of ‘i lost my creativity and now have become an immortal living outside of normal space and am getting girls to fight each other because that’s like a story so I’m still relevant right?’. But shoutout to the anime for then taking death of the author literally. The numerous other girls are canon fodder outside of like. The manga version of the dead gf and the little match girl.

~Battle Royale: This is not a thing I have an issue with generally. Again, but Mai Hime fan, I need to read MGRP 11, BUT by not developing the non-main girls there is no emotional connection which makes them just canon fodder and that’s boring as sin for a royale system. The initial main character fights revolve so much around the MC guy being there that they fall flat, and the 2 or 3 final battles in both versions still feel without any stakes. Also for a royale thing most of the characters don’t actually die, which cool! Neat! Except when they do? Some nobodies and a somebody are murdered (at least in the manga) and the tone never feels like it’s supposed to be upping the stakes, it’s just. Some people are dead now. And do you want to guess which of the main characters died?

~Gays: Oh boy the best friend of the brother-complex sister is in love with her and (in the manga) dies. She does apparently get better for the last chapter but the death itself is only felt by the rest of the cast for a page or two before we go back to feeling sad big brother wants to kiss his mentally generated sister clone rather than his actual sister u_u. Bury your gays is nothing new, but I wonder if it was also intended to be justified because Guess Who Is Creepy and a bit Perverted? Oh look the lesbian keeps the used swimsuit of her beloved and manipulates events to get an indirect kiss and when she sees the sister trying to strange Arisu for a moment she decides to do it for the sister? It’s not good. You want bad gay rep in a magical girl series, well here ya go. We also had a nobody in the first(second?) episode whose story pages reveal her having a kiss with a girl, and then we also have the prodigy again and- in the manga- her. Uh. childhood lover who she thought she killed but the girl has been wiping her mind over and over so prodigy remembers ‘killing’ the friend and not the she’s alive so she can keep? fucking with her? Toxic!

~Sexual Content: But wait you say, you already covered fanservice! Ah but that is sexual content for titilation. This is sexual content for dramatic backstory! The red riding hood character was sexually assaulted, another character was manipulated into sex first as a teen and then more often to ‘get into the publishing industry’, and the same writer forces some aggressive kisses on the MC. None of it is gratuitous which is nice, but also, was it necessary? Not making a new point for this but read riding hood’s dog was also murdered so unnecessary animal death gets tossed on in there.

~Male Lead: You can have a male, non magical character as the main character surrounded by magical girls. This is not how to do it. If I can make a vicious and hopefully not understood reference, Aruto is basically Tate from the Mai Hime Manga. If you understood that, I am so sorry. If you didn’t, congrats! Don’t read the manga. Or do and send me asks about the iconic final page of the first volume (18+). Anyway, this dude is boring, everything revolves around him, BUT I’ll be generous and say at least this isn’t a harem series? It looks like it out of context but it’s just a triangle with a fun attached scientist and token lesbian.

~Premise: They didn’t make good use of it. The initial goals of ‘take other girls pages from their soul books because if we get enough we unlock a third alice book’ is good! And then we add the twist that that was never going to happen and either if we get all the pages we can grant a wish, or these fights are just happening for the amusement of and asshole. Either way, yeah okay I guess. But at no point do we ever achieve this forbidden wish granting book and the asshole just. Lives. Nothing happens to him. His peers don’t even dunk on him. The only real changes from the beginning and the end of the series are: the siblings are now chill with dating, and the scientist lady won’t turn into a child in magical spaces. Oh. Yeah.

~Why did we make this adult a child sometimes?: I think we know why. Stop trying to get those types of folks to watch your already meh series. I also could have sworn at points in the past looking up images for this series I’ve seen extra art for Yuuri the Thumbelina-y Alice User that seemed like it would fit alongside anything by POP. You know, the Moetan guy. If you don’t know, god I wish that were me.

Wrap Up: I have definitely forgotten some points and am well within my rights to ad to this whenever I remember more points but uh. Yeah.

Listen you want an alice themed battle royale with nice outfits? Rozen maiden is right there. Battle Royale magical girl series that’s good with fanservice? Mai Hime. Series with different outfits while being based on a classic story? Pretear.

Hope anyone who read all of this at least got what I was saying, even if they don’t agree with it. And thanks for reading because whoops.

#why do ya'll let me write so damn many words #thanks ya'll for letting me write so many words #kagihime eternal alice rondo #long post #text #not fashion #whoops 3k words

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fyeah-anya-corazon · 4 years

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Ranking every potential love interest for Anya

Happy Valentine's day!

To celebrate the occasion let's look at every single character she has had as potential romantic partners. I'm including here every iteration of Anya so far.

For a teen character with more than 15 years of existence, it's amazing she hasn't had any sort of stable partner. As far as comics go, her main version has only had one romantic partner so far, but calling it a "relationship" is kind of a stretch. MSM did what the comics (embarrassingly) haven't and give her a romantic partner that I think we were all happy for, and even though it's not my favorite, it's probably the most high profile partner she'll have in a while.

Anyway, let's start the countdown!

Peter Parker

NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. Sorry shippers from MSM, but this is a big nope from me due to their student/teacher relationship from the comics and that she's still a minor in them.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I mean.... I don't doubt that at some point some hack writer might pull a Bruce/Barbara with them for some au. Probably one of the blessings of her not being as relevant as Batgirl.

Score: -110000/10 HELLSHIP HELLSHIP

Paul Townsend

Her original potential love interest in comics, he disappeared after Amazing Fantasy. He was still important enough that he even appears in the cover of AF #6 as part of Anya's civilian life.

Possibilities of becoming canon: Zero. It's clear we'll never see him again.

Score: -10/10 dude was very clearly into some shady stuff.

Rocky Flint

Her new best friend (?) they even lived together for a while. Introduced during the Spider-Girl relaunch, she is nice friend, but Rikki was the one who took the spotlight during this period.

Score: 1/10 prefer them as friends.

Black Tarantula

From the MC2 universe, I guess it works within it's "What if?" premise. A series that gives a antagonistic-but-not-too-much role to Anya in it's "what if she stayed longer with the Spider Society?" it does kinda feel natural that two characters with characters with similar origin to be attracted. (Let's not even mention how comfortable she feels with Fabian pursuing Mayday to join their harem).

Possibilities of becoming canon: canon in a reality, doubt in main reality this would happen. It would be interesting if 616 Fabian resurfaces as a enemy to Anya.

Score: 2/10 kinda works in it's reality, but I can't forgive DeFalco for thinking it was a good idea to pair a character who lost her family to narcos with a narco.

Lynn Sakura

Oh, the panel that started it all....

Anya's BFF, is a shame she was dropped after the original Araña series. There's is potential in there, but now it all rests on anyone remembering Heart of the Spider.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I mean, it cooould happen. To say there's no subtext in there would be a understatement....

Score: 4/10 just as Rocky I prefer them as friends.

Reptil

So far her only romantic partner she's had. It didn't start the best way, and ended... we actually have no idea how this ended. Next thing we know Berto was pursuing other relationships with Finnesse and White Tiger. It seemed that only Paul Tobin wanted it to happen.

Possibilities of becoming canon: He is kinda dead. He reappeared for a panel thanks to Bendis not caring about continuity, but God knows if anyone is gonna pick that up. Overall, I think there's a bigger chance for Reptil to pursue any of the previous relationships than going back to Anya.

Score: 5/10 good guy, but who thought it was a good idea making Anya's first kiss against her will?

Julie Taregon

Anya's hockey captain from very early, interviews from the time indicated that she was originally meant to have a much bigger role in Heart of the Spider. Just like Paul she was dropped by the main series, but nothing takes away from the distinction of being the one who activated Anya's powers for the first time after she asked her out.

Possibilities of becoming canon: As much possibilities as Paul or Lynn. Assuming a new Anya solo is greenlighted she would make a interesting addition to the supporting cast.

Score: 7/10 I dig it but wish she would appear more.

Mayday Parker

The newest addition to her potential partners, I've actually been shiping them from before Spider-Girls, the fact that in short 3 issues they generated enough interest that this is probably the second most popular ship at this point (came first in a twitter poll I made). There's a story with them just waiting to be written, they need to be together in a series again!

Possibilities of becoming canon: Um... I think that at this point both have the same level of relevance that if someone pitches a story were they become a couple it wouldn't hold much objection.

Score: 1000000/10 currently my fav ship.

Miles Morales

Marvel comics should be embarrassed that a cartoon made this pairing happen, as meanwhile in the comics they haven't even talked to each other. As you may notice, this list is dominated by women, if there's one guy I would smile from ear to ear if it becomes a thing it would be with Miles. They both have so much in common, it's a match made in heaven.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I actually think this has a good chance of happening. They will probably not be endgame, but I see them having a relationship along the lines of Tim and Steph.

Score: 9/10 If only Miles were a woman 😔

Gwen Stacy

Just like Miles, the cartoon did what the comics haven't and developed them into a lovely friendship (with something more...?). Arguably, the most popular ship involving Anya; on ao3 is the one with the most fics, and there's probably more fan art of this pairing than from anyone else. The main limitation with this is how in the comics writers tend to underwrite Anya while putting the spotlight on Gwen, and never developing their partnership into something more. Hopefully the upcoming Order of the Web series they've been teasing they'll finally have some heartfelt interactions.

Possibilities of becoming canon: you know what, I legit think this has a actual chance. As I said, this is a rather popular ship, at least even Seanan Maguire is aware of it and is fair to say other people at Marvel are aware of the fan art and the like. Gwen in the comics so far has ambiguous sexuality, it wouldn't be too far fetched if someone makes it canon. Just as Miles, I can't see this as endgame, but it can become a recurring relationship like Gambit and Rogue.

Score: 10/10 Marvel don't be cowards challenge.

Rikki Barnes

The og. The one that turned subtext into text. Completely unintentional, yet their relationship did eventually had ramifications on at least one of them. At this point, if anyone wants to reveal Anya as a wlw, they just need to point this relationship to justify it. Anya and Rikki were probably the closest between them than any other superhero they ever interacted with.

Possibilities of becoming canon: Uhm.... Just when I thought that Rikki wouldn't be back, she comes back AND confirmed as bi. The problem? Rikki currently has a girlfriend. Breaking up Julie and Rikki seems very mean spirited, specially for Julie. Hypothetically, if for any reason their relationship ends, Rikki and Anya would definitely become canon at some point.

Score: 1100000/10 @Marvel you owe Anya a girlfriend.

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last-operator-standing · 3 years

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Toll Of The Bell

Chapter 3 - Sonder

> Read on Ao3

> Chapter 1 (tumblr)

> Chapter 2 (tumblr)

> Chapter 4 (tumblr)

Summary: What now? He could roll over and accept the fate thrust upon him and die as Adler intended. Starting a new life away from it all couldn’t be that bad either. Or…

Or he could finish the mission.

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Warning apply this chapter

Words: 1.8k (7.3k total)

A/N: I'm sorry this one took so long asjdfjf I'm awful at keeping any sort of regular schedule- but i'm going to be trying much harder to keep the chapters flowing :') I'd love to hear any thoughts, and thank you all for the support <3 (p.s. Adler will be here v soon- Promise uwu)

"Please stop staring at me."

Bell has no intention of doing so. He's been staring down Lazar from the moment the man stumbled into the kitchen to join him at the table. The sunlight is harsh despite the closed curtains and the coffee fails to stimulate either agent's mind. This certainly isn't Lazar's ideal morning. The silence stretches on, but the uncomfortable feeling of Bell's eyes on him has him sighing loudly.

"Damn, Bell, alright." Lazar gives in. The chair scrapes loudly against the tile floor as he pushes back to stand, disappearing for a moment and returning with a bag. It piques Bell's curiosity; he was too tired to notice it last night.

A folder slaps loudly against the table and slides a few centimeters towards Bell. The Russian, unable to contain himself, surges forward to snatch it. "You're right about your buddy. Definitely a smuggler of sorts."

Bell flips the folder open and begins rooting through the contents. A picture of Kapano Vang is clipped on the inside. The first page has basic information. Name, call sign, date and place of birth. Bell's more interested in the finer details: A few suspected routes, potential cartel members, a list of what they believe is being smuggled. There's a few recurring words that catch his eye. Golden Triangle Cartel is scribbled at the bottom and underlined twice. Beside it, drawn in bold red ink and circled multiple times, Bell reads PERSEUS?

"What did you see yesterday, in those memories of yours?"

Bell gives a small shake of his head. "It was a bar, I think. He was there." He taps the portrait with a finger. "And someone else who knew us but.. I couldn't remember his face," The Russian gives a disappointed click of his tongue. "Or his name."

Lazar tries to offer a reassuring smile. "Hey, don't sweat it. It'll come back to you."

Bell wishes he could share in Lazar's positivity. He really does. But he can't be sure what brought the memories to him in the first place, or why they were so fragmented. After spending much of the night agonizing over any additional detail he might remember about Perseus or Kapano Vang or anyone else he had seen at that bar and coming up short, Bell's hope started to slip. In the end he could only point fingers at Adler and his MK-Ultra project. "So what's next?"

Lazar doesn't answer right away. He looks thoughtful. Even with their revelation on Kapano Vang and his cartel, they are nowhere closer to finding Perseus than they were before. They are back to square one.

"Well, I could try cross-referencing with MI6 again-" he means Park, Bell thinks with a snort "-and see if they have anything new."

Lazar's looking at him intently and Bell realizes he's waiting for a response. "Oh, uh. Yeah." Bell shifts awkwardly in his seat. "Whatever you say."

A week later, the two man team have no progress to show for their efforts. In that time, Bell's gone over the files at least a dozen and a half times and nothing's changed, nor have any new memories resurfaced. Lazar's cross-referencing has yet to unearth anything new either, telling Bell MI6 is just in the dark as they are.

"This isn't working, Laz." Bell slams the paper back against the kitchen table. His irritation is reflected in the other man's face but Lazar does a better job at hiding it. "We just have to keep looking," Lazar sighs. "We have the answer here somewhere."

Bell clicks his tongue in disapproval. "I've been over these files again and again. There's nothing here. We're not going to find Perseus on some piece of paper-" An idea strikes Bell. Something he never considered before now.

"Bell?" Lazar frowns. "You alright?"

"What if we look for that bar?" Excitement shines in Bell's eyes. Lazar's startled by his suggestion.

"I don't know-"

"C'mon, Laz, think about it. There was more than one Perseus agent there, in my memory." A plan was beginning to hatch in Bell's mind. From the way he's looking at him, Lazar doesn't like where he's going with it. "If we find that bar, maybe we can find one of those agents. Maybe even match some of these faces." He looks down at the file of unconfirmed but suspected Perseus soldiers.

"I don't know about this," Lazar repeats slowly, uncertainly. "If someone recognizes us it could cause some trouble. Especially if they recognize you. You helped stop Perseus the first time. No doubt his people are painfully aware of that."

Bell doesn't want to hear it, though. "It's just a risk we'll have to take," he argues. "I'm a spy, Laz. I know how to keep my head down."

After a bit of back and forth it's settled. First, they'll compile a list of bars in areas known or suspected to be frequented by Perseus. Then, while in constant contact, as Lazar insists, Bell will make his way through each alone and hope nobody recognizes him while he searches for the bar from his memory.

It takes two days to assemble a full list and another day and a half to narrow it down and map a route.

"I'm still not happy about this," Lazar grunts as he drops a duffel bag onto the table. Bell eagerly snatches it and begins shuffling inside. "You worry too much, old man."

The first thing Bell pulls from the bag is a change of clothes. They both agreed he needs something casual. And clean. It would make blending in with the crowd much easier. Too excited about the upcoming mission has Bell stripping where he stands. No time for modesty.

"C'mon, Bell, in the kitchen?" Lazar turns with a light pink tinting his face. Bell grins wide but doesn’t reply. The new outfit fits comfortably. He returns to the bag and roots around for his next prize. There’s a knife with a sheath and a small handgun waiting at the bottom. The knife is removed first. Bell carefully slides it free of its sheath. The blade is unusually slim and dark in color, and sports a dangerously sharp tip with partial serration of both sides near the hilt. Bell’s entirely absorbed in admiring the blade, so much so that he misses Lazar’s amused look until he speaks up.

“I thought you’d like that one.”

Bell returns the smile. “Oh, hell yeah. It reminds me of the one I had in-”

“Hey, Sims! You know reading that shit’s gonna make you go blind.”

“Yep! That’s why I want it alll up here.” Sims shot Adler a lazy grin. The commander slapped the book back against Sims’ chest.

“Bell, you’re with Sims. You usually bring out the best in each other.”

“RPGS! BRACE! BRACE!”

Bell watched in horror as a rocket collided with the chopper beside theirs. It careened dangerously before smashing into theirs, sending their own bird into a death spiral.

Everything was in chaos.

“Grab my hand! I gotcha! I got-!”

“We’ve lost power-!”

“We’re going down-!”

“BRACE!”

Bell blinks hard and his smile falls. There’s a knowing look on Lazar’s face and neither agent speaks a word about it. “C’mon,” Lazar gives a pat to Bell’s shoulder. “Showtime.”

The pair ride in silence. Lazar’s behind the wheel, giving Bell some time to think. He tries to keep the mission center focus, but the memories of Vietnam are overwhelming, fresh in his mind as if they just happened. And they’re not even real. I was never in Vietnam.

The car rolls to a stop and breaks Bell from his thoughts. “Alright, remember, coms on at all times.” Bell rolls his eyes and pops the door, deftly sliding from his seat. “I mean it, Bell!” But he slams the door without reply, turning towards the street. The small earpiece is already safely pressed into his ear and hidden behind his hair.

The checkered brick sidewalks stretch wide on either side of the street. There’s a decent amount of people strolling to and fro, some carrying briefcases and dressed in neatly pressed suits, others in casual attire with seemingly no important place to be. Lazar pulls off, leaving Bell to head for the first destination on his list.

The first thing Bell notices as he pushes into the first bar is the pungent mingling of smoke, alcohol, and sweat in the air. The floor beneath his boots is a glossy hardwood and matches the light oaken walls. The occupants chatter noisily, and although the sound is familiar, the atmosphere is not. This is not the right place. Keeping his appearance as casual as possible, Bell slips through the crowd and retreats out the back door. He glances around to confirm he’s alone before mumbling his findings to Lazar.

One down, seven more to go.

The second bar Bell stumbles into is smaller. There are less individuals milling around and the golden walls are all wrong from the dark cedar panels from his memory. The third bar is even less promising, while the fourth and fifth are so far from Bell’s memory that he’s positive he’s working backwards now.

Bell rejoins the thinning herd on the streets with a dejected sigh. This wasn’t working out. There’s two more bars to check and already it was getting dark. He’d hope for something; A clue, a new memory, a familiar face. Lazar keeps up with words of encouragement but Bell doesn’t have the capacity to share the optimism.

The sixth bar Bell checks holds a notable hushed atmosphere. Right away he’s stricken by the dark atmosphere. It felt.. Tense. Insidious. It doesn’t feel right, but for an entirely different reason. While most of the denizens ignore Bell, a few side-eye him dangerously. He steps to the counter and orders a drink, primarily to alleviate any suspicions from both inside and out.

Bell can’t shake the feeling of eyes boring into his back. It’s somehow different from when he first walked in and was certainly making him more uncomfortable. He shifts in his seat and tries his best to nonchalantly turn and find who the hell was staring at him so hard, but when he looks, he finds nothing out of the ordinary.

The feeling of unease doesn’t leave. He grows antsy and finally after paying with money given to him by Lazar, Bell downs the last of his drink and turns back into the streets. This is certainly not going the way Bell had hoped. The seventh bar is quite the walk from the sixth, allowing him some time to breathe and collect his thoughts.

The feeling of unease melts from Bell’s shoulders the longer he walks. Lazar’s quiet so he turns his attention outward and listens curiously to the broken chatter of the dwindling civilians.

“-think he talks about anything else?”

“Well, it’s not like-”

“Timur?”

“That’s not.. Point.. Why else-”

“Timur!”

“I just think you should consider-”

A hand lands heavily on Bell’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. He turns in surprise.

“Timur!” A man stands before Bell with a lazy smirk and a gleam to his eyes- as if he recognizes him. His dark hair is cropped close to his head and a pair of lightly tinted shades adorns his face. The accent is certainly not Russian, and it throws Bell off guard. “Hey! Remember me?”

#cod cold war #black ops cold war #russell adler #cod bell #male bell #bocw #lazar azoulay #fanfic #can you guess who he ran in to?#i tried v hard to put some features without making it obvious who it was-

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iamnightduchess · 4 years

Text

Reiner & Mikasa: A Retrospective Pt.2

“The Shield of Marley & The Blade of Paradis”

Why ReiKasa is a (BR)OTP ship that’s worth more than a fleeting glance

[*caution: a continuation of a long reflective post with the sole intention to share a fan’s perspective through available representation through manga, anime, exhibition & etc. This post is not to convince nor argue where is its place in canon, but only to explore the vast possibilities of these two amazing characters that I love. In the end, if the series ends with Mikasa alive & ending by herself or with X character, then it means Isayama believes that X character is the one she’ll find that eventual happiness with and I’m all for that. Same goes with Reiner :)] Special thanks to @berumika for sharing some of the additional points that are included in this post. Years down the line after SnK ended, I’d love to have a post I can revisit of these two amazing characters & the possibilities that could have been from time to time. I’m having absolute fun in observing how much both of these characters have grown since the series debuted in 2010.

Pt. 1 available here. Warning: Image heavy, potential spoilers.

When I first got to know SnK/AoT, it was through the anime first before manga. Bad idea for me. My initial perspectives of Mikasa & Reiner were skewed and that was later rectified as I navigated the original source directly. Eren is the first protagonist that was introduced by the series creator but I was drawn to Mikasa & Reiner when I started the manga after Season 1 ended.

Trainees

These top two trainees of the 104th batch are closely matched to each other in ranking. We don’t see them interact directly in the anime, but in the early panels of the manga, Reiner could be seen sitting down with Eren, Mikasa & Armin during mealtimes.

Sure, Mikasa can be expected to not converse with Reiner directly, but if her two childhood friends have their good friend sitting together for meals, at the very least we can expect them to have some brownie points in socialization.

Apart from being total gorgeous hotties, they’re both physically strong people, with Reiner always being second to Mikasa in terms of brute strength. Total muscle pairing and I could see them being at par with each other during physical drills. Reiner & Mikasa could go all out, even beyond 100% and the other would be physically capable to take/receive the force. Shadis would’ve tasked them to lead the physical trainings from time to time. They have been sparring partners, evident from the moment Mikasa threw Reiner across the field into Eren who’s sparring with Annie. Their fitness regime would be in-sync with each other. I could see them having mad respect for each other and secretly admire the other person’s prowess and skill.

Connection through Eren

As highlighted primarily in Pt.1, Eren has been shown to look up or aspire to be high achievers like Reiner and Mikasa both. He wanted to be as strong as the two of them. The odds of the very same people he look up to, as the two individuals who would be able to stop him, I would suspect as very high at this point.

When they were younger, Reiner has always been the one that’s pulled Eren up when he’s down, nearly giving up & at the lowest points of his life. He was also the one who convinced Eren to ‘keep on moving forward’, which we’ll learn later was one of the most ironic moments that Reiner recalled as he feels responsible for everything that begun, which also pushed his guilt inside him to his near-suicide attempt.

Survey Corps

Reveal on Wall Rose

Mikasa, was one of the few junior SC members who were called in for the secret meeting with the unit’s top brass the night before the reveal. She was made aware of Reiner & Bertolt’s possible identity as the enemy after she assisted with apprehending Annie in Wall Sina. While Reiner was talking to Eren, Mikasa could be seen being highly agitated, hands shaking as she waited with unease breath for Reiner & Bertolt to make their move.

She was later seen questioning her hesitance on delivering the killing blow or at least enough to incapacitate them. Mikasa called Reiner & Bertolt “the plague of humanity” in anger and absolute disappointment. They were still her friends that she knew for three years & it had been difficult for her to kill them.

Thunder Spears Training

Mikasa could be seen reflecting in a combination of unease, sadness & regret as she recalled back the moment she was unable to break Reiner’s armor with her blades.

Return to Shinganshina

Mikasa was the one who crippled the Armored’s legs. She wasn’t as emotional as Connie, Jean & Sasha but there was a deep, painful rumination on her part the moment they assumed that Reiner was dead dead. She was also the one who noticed the sudden move from Reiner’s Armored Titan. In the anime, she could be seen angry & frustrated at Reiner’s refusal to confess that she pulled too hard on the bandage in her hands while she was helping Jean with his injuries.

Time-Skip (Current)

Reiner’s reminiscence & nightmares

Reiner’s reminiscence of Mikasa was indirect, but he highlighted her (and Armin’s) fierce, unwavering loyalty towards Eren. He had recurring nightmares of her & Levi that are the symptoms of his PTSD. The anime specifically used her shot to highlight the last image of her that he saw: anger.

Assault in Liberio

You could see the existing disappointment on her face when Reiner’s partially transformed Titan appeared, having to cross paths again in such a way after four years. She could’ve intervened the way she did with Galliard’s Jaw but she didn’t. Eren said Reiner’s out of any energy left to retaliate and Mikasa didn’t disagree. At this point, Mikasa is already affected by Eren’s actions in murdering the women & children inside the building that he shifted in and the destruction they all left behind.

Connection through Gabi

Reiner’s young cousin reminded Armin & Mikasa of a young Eren. The difference is that, Gabi had an early opportunity to be saved through the compassion showed by Mikasa and Sasha’s beloved family. The very same people who had every right to be sad, grieving and taking out their anger on the child who gunned down their beloved friend & daughter.

Mikasa doesn’t verbally express her emotions but it can be shown through her body language & facial expressions. I love seeing the tender way she pressed Gabi’s head onto her shoulder as protection and a symbolism of safety. It was a bit sad that this ‘bond’ was short-lived but what an amazing connection it would’ve been if Mikasa & Gabi had been given more space to develop their bond in canon.

Concern for Reiner & Annie

Usually when Mikasa verbally expresses something, it is usually important/significant to her. In ch.124, she could be seen asking Gabi about Reiner’s location. Why? It’s because she is concerned for Reiner’s safety. If his Armors were undone, he was vulnerable and with pure Titans and the Colossal Titans walking around, he would be in danger.

“We need to help Reiner & Annie.” She was heavily concerned with Reiner and Annie’s lives at the docks. But this moment is more important for Connie as a callback to the moment when Annie & Reiner both had saved Connie when they were trainees.

Adjacent Manga/Official Art Paneling(s)

In the current final arc of the manga, (several panels have been highlighted in Pt.1) it’s quite interesting to note that Mikasa & Reiner’s characters/panelings have been drawn adjacent to each other. I could also see the way Armin, Reiner & Mikasa (ARM) are getting primary focus by Isayama in this final arc.

Others (Misc./Semi-canon)

Cool-faced Cookie (Attack on Titan Game)

When Reiner suggested the player to do a melee practice with two other sparring partners, he immediately spotted Mikasa & Historia. It’s very interesting to note that Reiner’s nickname for Mikasa is “Cool-faced cookie” as he hinted the player to ask Mikasa for an impromptu practice.

The blink and miss furtive glance(s)

In Lost Girls OVA’s ED by WIT, a screenshot of the primary 104th walking together could be seen. Mikasa could be seen sneaking a glance at Reiner.

In a scene during the fresh SC recruits discussing intensely about Eren’s role as humanity’s hope, Reiner could be seen glancing silently with concern for Mikasa, as Jean questions her vouch of confidence in Eren’s abilities.

In Snk OVA#3, Mikasa is grouped with Reiner for the excursion and they could be seen having good teamwork together. When Mikasa’s ‘sixth senses’ are triggered due to Eren being in danger, Reiner could be seen looking at her direction immediately as if sensing her distress.

Characteristics & Zodiac Signs

Amazing/Compassionate with children

Known as the Shield of Marley, Reiner’s a caring keeper, a natural leader and a provider who’s naturally amazing with children. Everyone looks up to him. Would’ve made a good family man if the circumstances were different. Based on his characteristics & physical attribute, he reminds me of Mikasa’s father below, no matter how short-lived he was. I could see her admiring that side of him even if it wasn’t mentioned directly. They are both loving, selfless, protective towards their child/ward.

Mikasa, true to her name, an Ackerman, a genetically-enhanced super soldier/warrior of Paradis that wields their blades with the highest efficiency. Though she might not seem as natural with children, did come from a healthy & loving upbringing with her parents for nine years. Her real persona as a child pre-awakening is a curious, thoughtful and actually a warm-hearted girl. Post-awakening characteristics could also be contributed from the traumas imposed by the murder of her parents, the fall of Wall Maria, the death of Carla & having to shoulder the immediate responsibility as Eren’s new ‘guardian’/caregiver/problem-solver/mess-cleaner.

She shown her compassion towards Gabi, which in turn had proved to the little girl how there are good-hearted, forgiving people in the Island. Mikasa could be observed as being heavily concerned with Falco as she questioned Jean about the young boy. One could see the anger on her face when she saw Connie took off and abducted Falco to be fed to his mom. She drew the line in harming children even if they’re trained enemy soldiers.

Aquarius & Leo’s Compatibility

Reiner’s a Leo and Mikasa’s an Aquarius. Their characteristics are too coincidental to their respective astrological signs to be disregarded completely.

He’s an extrovert (Ref: younger!Reiner. Older Reiner too but his PTSD’s and maturity have taken over his more outgoing personality) that compliments her introvert personality yet they both have their inner demons to deal with and could somehow understand that about each other. He’s a ray of sunshine that could enlighten her melancholic personality. Yet their dominant personalities, although might be clashing at first, eventually would lead them to respect the other’s perspective. This would ring true when they were younger. Currently they have grown older, wiser and more understanding of the other.

At the current Final Arc, this has been highlighted in Part 1, recent chapters have shown older Reiner and Mikasa’s unspoken respect and understanding for each other. The current Reiner’s natural leadership as a born Leo is very apparent. Reiner was being very mindful of her feelings as Eren is a very sensitive subject & Mikasa took in Reiner’s words with serious consideration.

It would be great to see more of their combined synergy as Reiner & Mikasa’s teamwork could be seen once again in ch.135. Aquarius & Leo would take turns to take a back seat while letting the other leads.

They are actually very physically and sensually compatible with each other & could potentially be an unstoppable force if they were to fight for the same side. At the moment, I’m hoping to see this potentially deadly combination once again in ch.136 onwards. They could’ve overtaken Eren’s Founding Form is it wasn’t for OG!Ymir’s one-sided overkill powers. To the real God who created the parasite worm, please take powers away frpm this uncontrollable grandma in a little girl’s body.

More of Mikasa’s Aquarius & Reiner’s Leo Compatibility Meter with description below:

Since this is SnK and not Berserk/Tokyo Ghoul/insert other josei manga titles, no one’s having sex directly haha In an ideal world, Reiner & Mikasa’s physical attractions for each other will almost be off the charts. “When they find true emotion, Aquarius might actually end up respecting the king”. In current arc, this can be observed. She respects Reiner & his words.

The above describes both Mikasa and Reiner respectively. Mikasa does not reach for heroism directly but it can be seen indirectly from the way she had inspired a child Louise through her bravery, protecting Gabi and rescuing/protecting the Azumabito Service crew from the Jeagerists. Reiner has always been born to be a hero, regardless of the circumstances of his conception or birth.

“If they end up fighting for the same cause, they could turn down entire governments and use their incredible force to change anything in the world.”

Even oppressive, destructive supernatural, God-like powers? Ymir & Eren, better be prepared.

“To get there, these two would have to stop the battle they have with each other.” Check and Check.

“Leo -- has the ability to give clarity to any situation.” Ch.133. That was not Reiner projecting. He’s always been Eren’s counterpart. He’s telling the readers that there’s a part of Eren out there that still wants to be stopped since he has surrender his will to Ymir. She took his words into serious consideration and in Paths, voices out to Eren on his sins and burden.

“Leo is exactly what Aquarius needs to find love. -- to liberate and shine as if they have been searching for one another for many lifetimes.” In an ideal world or in my gazillion AUs: Reiner and Mikasa could be soulmates.

This could ring true for the younger Reiner & Mikasa.

Reiner and Mikasa both are indeed strong, selfless individuals in each other’s eyes. This can be observed in Ch.133 & 135. Reiner feared her but respect her strength & feelings when it relates to Eren nevertheless. Even Reiner was taken aback by Pieck’s ultimatum in blowing the Founder’s neck, although Armin had suggested the same thing the night before.

“Just like the Sun and the lightning don’t go together, Aquarius should take over on a rainy day, in a depressive crowd or in places where they both feel as if they would drown. This is where Leo needs to give in and let their partner rule the sky--” It wasn’t a rainy day or depressive crowd in ch. 135, it was a chaotic shitstorm and they were all not drowning but dying. Period. Our dear Mikasa took charge like a BAMF Queen that she is. She was putting her life on the line to protect the four injured men behind them. She aimed to buy them more time if she could as everyone expected it to be the end. As highlighted in Pt.1, you could see the helplessness on Reiner’s face when he saw Mikasa’s breaking point.

Reference : http://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/compatibility/aquarius-leo/

Final Exhibition

The Final Exhibition highlights the Last Stand: the direct final confrontation between The Founding/Attack against The Armored, with Mikasa being in the middle of the confrontation, tipping the scales of the outcome. Before, she assisted Eren against Reiner. Currently, she is working with Reiner to stop Eren.

Trio(s) Parallel

An interesting panel from ch.97:

EMA & RBA have always been lauded as the main trio of their respective sides. We have seen Armin taking over Bertolt’s powers & is potentially promised a future with the girl that Bertolt had feelings for. Recognize the probable pattern?

Guy from trio 1 ate Guy from trio 2′s Titan & is promised a potential future with the girl he cares for/have feelings for/close with from the trio.

Only one between between Eren & Reiner will remain. What if the story begins with Eren but will end with Reiner all along?

SnK HighSchool AU / Breakfast Club X-over

In the movie, the Jock (Quarterback!Reiner) ends up with the Rebel (Goth!Mikasa). He looks past her eccentricity & see her for who she is. This is a fun crossover by Isayama but very interesting to see Armin, Mikasa & Reiner work together to save Eren in the fake previews.

Whether the combined strength and perseverance of the Blade of Paradis & the Shield of Marley be enough to save the world from total annihilation? It remains to be seen very, very soon.

No matter how the series ends, whether both Reiner and Mikasa survive or not, I’ll be looking back in pride upon seeing their journey, growth & dynamics as either individual or together in this beautiful series by Hajime Isayama’s brilliant mind. Because of him, these two characters inspired his readers, myself included, to be brave and fight for what they truly believe in: humanity & its continuation. It has been an incredible ride and I will continue to enjoy writing for this OTP/BROTP, that I’ve fell so deeply in love with and their vast possibilities.

#snk #aot #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #進撃の巨人 Attack on Titan #snk meta #snk thoughts #snk opinions #snk spoilers #snk 135 #snk 133 #snk 134 #Retrospective #reiner braun #mikasa ackerman #reiner x mikasa #ReiKasa #character appreciation #ship appreciation

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rallamajoop · 4 years

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...and the unironic joys of better living through chemistry

How do I love Venom: The Hunger, let me count the ways…

It’s by far the shippiest Venom/Eddie story to come out of the character’s heyday. It’s the only story of the era to treat Venom’s violent wild-animal instincts not as an immutable fact, but as something that can be managed. It pulls off an aesthetic like nothing else that was being done at the time.

And then there’s the way it says, Does the world around you seem sinister and foreboding? Do you lie awake at night contemplating metaphorical oceans of despair? Well shit, son – have you considered you may be suffering from a mundane neurochemical imbalance, and a round of the right meds could clear that right up for you?

It does all this without breaking the atmosphere, without a whiff that our story has been interrupted for a Very Special Message about mental health.

In the near-decade since I was first prescribed anti-depressants, I don’t think I’ve read another story that lands the message “Sometimes, it’s not you, it’s just your brain chemistry,” so well.

Fair warning: if you have not read The Hunger, I am about to spoil every major plot point. If you have, well, maybe I can still give you a new appreciation for a few details you might have missed.

It’s a strange book, whatever else you take from it. It’s almost the only thing either author or artist contributed to the Venom canon, and it’s so different stylistically and tonally from the 90′s Venom norm that it feels like a tale from some noir-elseworlds setting instead of 616 canon. When you take risks that big with a property, you leave yourself precious little landing space between 'unmitigated triumph’ and ‘abject failure’: if this book hadn’t absolutely nailed it, I’d be dismissing it as edgy, OOC dreck. Fortunately, if The Hunger is nothing else, it is a story that $&#@ing commits – to basically everything it does.

Now, I'm not going to tell you Venom: The Hunger is a story about overcoming depression, because I don't know whether author Len Kaminski even thought about it that way while working on it. There's always space for other readings, and this one take is not gospel. That said: holy shit is this thing unsubtle with its metaphors. And with that in mind, let’s start by talking a little about Kaminski’s take on Eddie himself.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to divide 90′s Eddie into two broad personas: the Meathead, and the Hobo.

Kaminski’s Eddie nominally belongs in the angsty, long-haired Hobo incarnation, but that’s a bit of a simplification: this version certainly has plenty of angst and plenty of hair to his name – but nowhere, not even at his lowest ebb, does he doubt that he and his Other are meant for each other, which is usually Hobo!Eddie’s primary existential quandary.

He’s also taken up narrating his own life like a hardboiled PI.

So that’s... novel.

The only other time Eddie’s sounded like this is, er, in that one other Venom one-shot Kaminski penned (Seed of Darkness, a prequel that sadly isn’t in The Hunger’s league), so I think we can safely file it under authorial ticks.

Then again, Hobo!Eddie’s always been one melodramatic SOB, so maybe this is just how he’d sound after learning to channel his angst into his poetry. You can’t argue it fits the aesthetic, anyway.

We’d also be remiss not to mention Ed Halsted’s art, which I can only describe as gothic-meets-noir-meets-H.R.-Giger. Never before or since has the alien symbiote looked this alien: twisted with Xenompoph-like ridges and veins.

But Halsted doesn’t treat Venom to all that extra detail in every panel. Instead, the distortion tends to appear when the symbiote is separated from Eddie or out of control – and I doubt you need me to walk you through the symbolic importance of that creative decision. More importantly, Halsted’s art provides exactly the class of visuals that Kaminski’s story needs.

Did I mention this is a horror story? You might be surprised how few Venom stories really fit that genre, but if all those adjectives about Halsted’s style above didn’t clue you in, this is one of them.

Anyway, with that much context covered, let’s get into the main narrative of this thing.

As our first issue opens, Eddie’s world has become a dark and foreboding place. He’s not sleeping, though he mostly brushes this off. (Fun fact: trouble sleeping is one of those under-appreciated symptoms of depression. Additional fun fact: the first doctor ever to suggest I might be suffering from depression was actually a sleep specialist. You can guess how that appointment was going.)

Just to set our scene, here’s all of page 1.

Eddie’s narration has plenty of (ha) venom for his surroundings, but the visuals are here to back him up: panels from Eddie’s POV are edged in twisted, fleshy borders and drained of colour, the people rendered as creepy, goblin-like creatures. A couple of later scenes go even further to contrast Eddie-vision with what everyone else is seeing:

As depictions of depression go this is a little on the nose, but then, you don’t read a comic about a brain-eating alien parasite looking for subtlety, do you?

Eddie doesn’t see himself as depressed, of course. As far as he’s concerned, he’s seeing the world’s true face: it’s everyone else who’s deluding themselves. He’s still got his symbiote, so he’s happy. He’s yet to hit that all-important breaking point where something he can’t brush off goes irrevocably wrong.

But he’s also starting to experience these weird... cravings.

He just can’t put a name to exactly what he’s craving until a routine bar fight with a couple of thugs takes a turn for the horrific.

(I include this panel partly to point out even in The Hunger, the goriest of all 90′s Venom titles, you’re still not going to see brains getting eaten in any graphic detail. We don’t need to to get the horror of the moment across. The 90′s were a more innocent time.)

Eddie himself is horrified when he comes back to himself and realises what he’s done.

Or rather, what his symbiote’s just made him do.

Kaminski doesn’t keep us in suspense about why, though. Eddie may have just done something horrific, but there’s a reason, and it’s as mundane as a vitamin deficiency. He’s bonded to an alien creature, after all, and his symbiote is craving a nutrient which just happens to be found in human brains. And if Eddie can’t or won’t help it meet that need, it’ll do so alone.

Now, giving us that explanation so quickly is an interesting creative decision: this is a horror story, and horror lives in what we don’t know. Wouldn’t it be all the more horrifying had the symbiote been unable to explain what’s going on, leaving Eddie without the first real clue as to where this monstrous new hunger had come from?

The Hunger doesn’t take that route though, and I love it. Eddie isn’t a monster, this isn’t his fault: he has a fucking condition, and wallowing in his own moral failings is going to get him nowhere. You might as well try to cure scurvy or rickets with positive thinking. Just like depression can make you feel like an utter failure at the most basic parts of being human, and all the affirmations in the world won’t fix it when it’s fundamentally your brain chemistry that’s the problem. Or like addicts aren’t weak-willed for struggling not to relapse, they’re dealing with genuine chemical dependency – or even like how someone who’s trans isn’t at fault for being unable to reconcile themselves to the bodies and the hormones they were born with by pure force of trying. Free will is more than an illusion, but we’re all messy, biological organisms underneath, and your own brain and biochemistry can and will fuck you over in a hundred wildly different ways for as many wildly different reasons and it’s not your fault.

We aren’t monsters. But if we do, sometimes, find ourselves identifying with the monster, there might be a reason for that.

(Ahem)

I’m just saying, that’s fucking powerful, and we need more stories that say it.

Anyway, in case you missed it during that tangent, issue #1 closes with the symbiote having torn Eddie’s heart in two itself free to go hunting brains without him.

I’m trying not to get too sidetracked at this point talking about Kaminski’s take on the symbiote itself. Suffice to say there are broadly two schools of thought on how it ought to function while separated from its host: the traditional ambulatory-slime-puddle version, and the more recently popular alternative where anything-you-can-do-with-a-host-you-can-also-do-without-one. I’m not much of a fan of the latter, personally: if your symbiote doesn’t actually need a host, I feel you’ve sort of missed the point. (The movie takes the route of saying symbiotes can’t even process Earth’s atmosphere without a host, which is a great new idea that appears nowhere in the comics, and I love it. Hosts or GTFO, baby!)

Kaminski has his own take, and I can only wish it had caught on. Without Eddie, the symbiote becomes an ever-shifting insectoid-tentacle-snake-monstrosity, driven by an animalistic hunger. It’s many things, but it’s never humanoid.

If you absolutely must have your symbiote operating minus a host, I feel this is the way to do it: semi-feral, shapeless and completely alien (uncontrollable violence and cravings for brains to be added to taste).

Issue #2 comes to us primarily through the perspective of the mild-mannered Dr. Thaddeus Paine of the Innsmouth Hills Sanitarium (yes, really).

Yeah, he’s not fooling anyone. Meet our official villain! He joins our story after Eddie is picked up by the police and handed off to the nearest available institution, on account of how completely sane and rational he’s been acting.

Naturally, Dr. Paine soon has copious notes on Eddie’s ‘crazy’ story about his psychic link to a brain-eating alien monster. Fortunately for Eddie, Paine also runs some tests and makes an interesting discovery.

Congratulations, Venom: the ‘vitamin’ you were missing officially has a name!

Finding the right meds isn’t always this easy. I got lucky – the first ones my psych put me on worked pretty well – but I have plenty of friends who weren't so lucky. In fact, the treatment for Eddie's problems is so straightforward it arguably has more in common with, say, endocrine disorders like thyroid conditions or Addison’s disease, which differ from clinical depression but present many similar symptoms (but can sadly be just as much of a bitch to get correctly diagnosed – please do read author Maggie Stiefvater’s account of the latter when you get the chance, because forget Venom, that is a horror story).

‘True’ depression remains much less well understood by medicine, either in its causes or how to effectively treat it. But simply having a name for what was wrong with me made so much difference, and that’s an experience I imagine anyone who’s dealt with any long undiagnosed medical condition could relate to. It put my life in context in a way nothing else had in years.

(I can’t speak to the accuracy of the way phenethylamine is portrayed in this comic – a quick google suggests there may be some real debate that phenethylamine deficiencies have been overlooked as a contributor to clinical depression, but having no medical background, that one’s well beyond me. Either way, scientific accuracy really doesn’t matter in this context – it’s how it works in-universe for story purposes that we should pay attention to.)

Since this issue is mostly from Paine’s POV, we don’t get Eddie’s reaction to having a healthy amount of phenethylamine sloshing around in his brain again, just the assurance that treatment appears to be ‘completely successful’.

He’s still a paranoid, hostile bastard though. Meds can turn your life around, but they won’t make you not you.

But even if Eddie’s feeling better, he’s still psychically linked to someone who isn’t. Symbiote-vision still comes through drained of colour and edged in viscera.

That’s the thing about meds: they won’t solve all your problems overnight. If you’ve been depressed for a while, there are good odds you have problems stacking up. But working meds can be a godsend when it comes to getting you into a space where you can deal with your problems again, whether said problems are doing-your-laundry or all the way into not-giving-up-completely-and-just-accepting-you’ll-die-alone-on-the-street.

For Eddie, ‘dealing with his problems’ begins with stealing a keycard and busting out of the asylum.

Of course, that’s the easy part. How do you solve a problem like a feral symbiote? Like any good 90′s comic book protagonist, Eddie tackles it by putting on his big-boy camouflage pants and kitting himself out with weapons and pouches while quoting “If you live something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down.”

We can add this to the list of things I love about this comic. Even if The Hunger is a weirdly-stylistic tract about depression at heart, it’s also still a goddamn 90′s Venom comic, and not ashamed to be.

We’re into issue #3 now, and back to hearing the story from Eddie’s POV.

Eddie is very much aware that his symbiote has murdered innocent people while they’ve been separated. Even if this is the result of extreme circumstances, there’s a good case to be made that the symbiote is too dangerous to be allowed to live. Plenty of heroes would treat it like a rabid dog at this point.

But Eddie isn’t a hero, he’s a mess of a character and an anti-hero at best, so we don’t have to hold him to the same standard. He’s well aware his symbiote may be too far gone to save, that he may have to put it down – but that’s only his backup plan. He wants to help it. He wants it back. He’s down in that sewer with screamers and a flamethrower because he knows all his symbiote’s weaknesses, but he’s also carrying a large jar of black-market synthesised phenethylamine, because if he can just get close enough...

Depression can’t make you a literal monster, but it can make you an asshole. Miserable to be around, lacking even the energy to care who else you’re hurting. The depression doesn’t excuse that, but it makes everything harder, and it’s that much easier to sink back into your spiral when everyone around you has given up. It can make you think everyone around has given up even if that isn’t true.

So to have Eddie here say, in effect, I don’t care how many people you’ve eaten, I know it wasn’t your fault. I still love you. You’re still worth fighting for – god, does that get me right in the id.

There’s still a whole issue left at this point – we’ve still got to deal with our real villain, Dr. Paine, who we’ve just learned is into eating brains himself and torturing his patients recreationally, and who wants to capture the symbiote for his own purposes. There’s the scene where Eddie and his symbiote finally bond again, and Venom beats up all Paine’s goons while singing David Bowie because like I said, this is still a 90′s superhero comic and this is what Venom does.

But for our purposes, I'm going to skip to the penultimate page of the story, because the way it mirrors our opening page is really lovely.

Remember that shot of Eddie dealing with a beggar back at the beginning of the story, thinking about how these people would 'get their despair all over you'? Here he is again, cheerfully forking over the last dollar in his pocket to the next man to ask him for change. For all the gothic atmosphere and gore, it’s moments like this that make The Hunger easily one of the most positive, uplifting Venom stories ever written. Funny, that. (I could probably write a whole other essay on sympathy for the homeless as a recurring motif in Venom stories, but that... well, whole other essay and all that.)

What’s Eddie learned from this experience? Don’t take your symbiote for granted. Is ‘symbiote’ a metaphor for mental health here, is paying attention to its needs an allegory for paying attention to your own? I still don’t know how literally Kaminski meant us to take this, but it’s a lovely note to end on no matter how you parse it.

At the end of the day, The Hunger isn’t flawless. The conflict with Paine ends on a thematic but slightly unsatisfying note. Eddie makes much of his symbiote's loneliness and desire for union, but when the two of them are finally reunited, the only reaction comes from Eddie's side. In fact, the symbiote seems to have no response to being able to return to Eddie at all, and that’s an omission that bugs me.

But Kaminski is more interested than any other writer of the era in the truly alien nature of the symbiote, in its relationship with Eddie from Eddie’s side, and though plenty of others talk about the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Spider-man, no-one else had the guts to portray their relationship this much like a romance.

And Venom: The Hunger is no less interesting in the context of Len Kaminski’s other work. You don't have to look far into his Marvel and DC credits to pick up that the guy has a real thing for monsters. (“All of my favourite characters are outlaws, misfits, anti-heroes,” he says, in one of the very few interviews I could find with him, “I wouldn't know what to do with Superman.”) He's written for vampires, werewolves, victims of mad science, and all of three at once, littering his work with biochemistry-themed technobabble, melodramatic monologues, gratuitous pop-culture references, and protagonists who must learn to embrace their inner demons. So The Hunger represents more than a few of his favourite running themes.

For our context, his more notable other work includes Children of the Beast, in which a werewolf must make peace between his human and animalistic sides, and The Creeper, in which a journalist must make peace with the crazy super-powered alter-ego sharing his body. In fact, The Creeper and The Hunger share so much DNA (including an evil doctor posing as a respected psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on our hero while he's trapped in a mental institution) that it’s quite the achievement that they still feel like such very distinct entities beyond that point.

The human alter-egos of both werewolf and Creeper even use prescription meds while wrestling with their respective dark sides. The difference, in both cases, is that these are stories where meds play their traditional fictional role – and that's a role that could be as easily filled by illegal drugs or alcohol without making any substantive difference. You see, if a protagonist is using them, it's a sign of unwillingness to tackle their 'real' problems. Even among work by the same author in the same genre, The Hunger represents an outlier. And that's just a little disappointing – at least to me.

In real life, of course, prescription meds are no magical cure-all elixir. Depression meds that work for one person may not work for another, or may not keep working in the longer term. Everyone has heard stories about quack doctors who prescribe them to the wrong patients for the wrong reasons, about lives ruined by addictions to prescription painkillers, or the supposedly-damning statistics about how poorly SSRI's perform in rigorous clinical trials. The proper way to treat depression is obviously with lifestyle and therapy. People will still airily dismiss medications that we all know previous generations got along just fine without, or suggest that figures like Van Gogh would never have created great art if they hadn't been mad enough to slice off an ear. I mean, the fact you think you need those bogus mediations is probably the best possible sign of just how broken you are, right? Who do you think you’re kidding?

Our popular fiction loves stories about manly men who bury their trauma under a gruff, anti-social exterior and come back swinging at the world that broke them, bravely refusing even painkillers that might dull their manly reflexes. Other genres make space for broken people confronting their demons in grand moments of catharsis, finally breaking down into tears when someone gets through to make them face their problems. "I could barely make it out of bed in the mornings until I found a doctor who started me on this new prescription" is not only wildly counter to the accepted social narrative, it's a hard thing to know how to dramatise.

Even other Venom comics have been guilty of this.

Believe me, I recognise all of this, and just how much progress we've made in the last few decades. But I haven't the slightest doubt that for so many vulnerable people, the stigma against prescription medications does infinitely more harm than those same meds could ever do. And just having the right to externalise my problems into it's not you, it's your brain chemistry, may have helped me more than the meds themselves.

(And again, no, being prescribed SSRI's didn't fix me overnight, but I honestly don't know if all the talk therapy and tearful conversations with family members in the world could've got me as far as I've come without them.)

I love Venom: The Hunger. It's no-one's idea of high art, but it doesn’t need to be. There is a whole other post’s worth of things I love about it that I’ve already cut out this one as pointless tangents, and that may actually be it’s biggest drawback as a go-to example: I fully recognise that I would not be making this post if The Hunger hadn't also also grabbed me as a great bit of Venom canon, being the massive fan and shipper that I am. Other people who are just as desperate as me for more stories with the same core theme, but not into weird 90's comics about needy goo aliens, probably won't get nearly as much out of it as I have.

But if it sounds anything like your jam, maybe you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

If nothing else, it proves that you can make a viscerally satisfying story out of a message that shockingly unconventional. And you may even have people still discovering it and falling in love with it 25 years after the fact.

#Venom: The Hunger #Venom #depression #SSRIs #Symbrock #Venom meta #meta #Venom comics #Len Kaminski

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lumau · 3 years

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Chapters: 2/7 Fandom: The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Irene (The Invisible Library), Kai (The Invisible Library), Peregrine Vale, catherine (the invisible library), Lord Silver (The Invisible Library), Li Ming (Invisible Library), Ao Shun (Invisible Library) Additional Tags: ilcharacterweek, Angst, Some Humor, Some Romance, all a bit trippy, but it'll make sense, potentially additional tags per chapter, minor spoilers for the dark archive and all other books Summary: 7 chapters, each focussing on one of the main / favorite characters (written for 2021 Invisible Library Character Appreciation Week)

Chapter 2 - Kai

╳

Kai snarled as he whirled around. The uproar of primal fury made his guts churn, calling out to the rivers, the ocean, the sea. But there was nothing to meet his call. It was not his powers that had left him or been barred to him. He could sense the claws taking shape at the end of his fingers, scales drawing themselves across his skin like shimmering droplets. Yet, no answer came.

This was unacceptable. There was no place he had ever encountered where there was no water, not the least bit, he could reach.

Where was he? What sort of impossible place was this?

The room had a simple, square layout, and it was completely empty except for a plain wooden chair.

There was no draft he could make out, and no visible light source, although the room was brightly lit and felt fresh rather than stuffy. Three of the walls surrounding him were made of a shiny material, while the other as well as floor and ceiling were solid.

A minute back when he woke up slumped on the chair, he had first thought the panels were made of a black metal. Until he saw the vague outlines of shadows that were slowly moving behind all three of them. He had sprung to life, all senses alert at once, but had not been able to make out anything else yet.

There was chaos in the air. Not enough to suppress his nature or inconvenience him in any serious way, but enough to give him an uncomfortable itch of disgust.

Anger was rising in his throat. He was trapped. Whatever it was that was moving behind those windows – he would be able to face it down. But how did he get here, and why could he not call on his elemental power?

Kai forced himself to slow his pacing, and actually think. What would Irene do in this situation? What would Vale do?

Certainly, either of them would handle being trapped better than he did. Maybe Irene would use the language to shatter the glass walls, and stake those creatures behind them with bits of the chair. And Vale would deduce his whereabouts from the dust in the corners and hold a fifteen minute talk about everything he had learned from simply looking at the single piece of furniture provided.

But none of them were here now. He was alone. In a mysterious cell. Without any recollection of how he had gotten here. What could he do? Should he change?

His draconic nature was urging to be released, the more his rage and confusion grew. But what good would it do to have his body fill out the whole room? Would he be able to simply break the walls by sheer physical force, when he had no element to call to his aid?

He had almost made up his mind to give in to the need to take his true form, and try to push at the walls or ceiling, when suddenly the lights behind the windows sprang on. Kai wheeled around. At the same moment, the atmosphere was flooded with chaos. The shock of it threw Kai to his knees, weighing heavily on his body and mind.

Behind the windows were no dangerous creatures lurking in the dark. There were three other cells, just like the one he was in. The one to his left was completely empty, apart from Vale, who was seated on the bare floor in what looked like deep meditation, clearly unfathomed by the change in light. The cell in the middle almost looked like a room of the Library, with bookshelves, a desk and wooden chair just like Kai’s. Pacing around in it was Irene. She went from brushing over the backs of the leather bound books to sitting in the chair, only to get right up again to run her hand along the far side wall. The last cell held Catherine. The fae was sitting in an armchair, just as she would have done at home. Piled up around her were stacks of books, and she did not look up once.

After the first moment of stupor, Kai stumbled to his feet and rushed forward to slap his hands against the panes of glass. He called out the names of his friends, but none of them reacted - they did not seem to hear or even notice him.

Kai stopped his useless efforts. He stood back, panting heavily and looked back and forth between the three other cells. Clearly the glass must be mirrored, so he could see in but they could not see out. How could he get their attention, so that they could escape together?

Then the grinding, mechanical noise began to thrum deep underneath him.

Kai froze. The far walls of each of the other cells had suddenly sprung into grinding motion, pushing into the rooms in a steady movement. Panic clutched at Kai’s throat, as he saw the bookcases in Irene’s cell being pushed into each other, splintering wood forcing her to throw herself down and cover her head with her arms.

Catherine did not seem to notice anything that was going on around her, she was still sitting in her chair, calmly reading. Vale had not moved either, but Kai could see he was rapidly muttering under his breath, a fine sheen of sweat showing on his forehead.

Kai threw himself against the windows in a vain attempt to break them. The chaos level in the room suppressed his stronger, draconic body from taking shape, but he kept trying with all the force that he had, fear and fury pushing him to simply act on instinct. He fell back with a scream of pain, as something cracked in his shoulder.

There was no time. The cells were already reduced to half their size. There were three of them for him to rescue and he didn’t know how. What could he do in his current shape? His eyes darted around in panic and fell on the chair. Maybe he could use it to break one of the windows? He had to try, and he had to try now.

He picked up the wooden chair, and hesitated, forcing himself to think before acting. If he managed to break a window with it, the chair would break, too. He probably only had one chance.

And which of the windows should he try to break?

Which of his friends should he save?

All of them, of course! He would not allow any harm to either of them.

By now, Irene was buried under a pile of toppled shelves and had taken cover under the desk. The grinding noise of the moving walls was almost drowned out by the crunching of the wood as they mercilessly pushed further into the rooms. Certainly Irene was in the most imminent danger from the broken furniture in her cell.

But Vale was completely without protection. And while Irene might still come up with a last minute plan on how she could use the Language to save herself, Vale was simply human and his skills lay elsewhere. He had also sprung up now, and was hastily pushing and scraping at the walls, rushing back and forth in the small room that he had still left. And Catherine? She was merely a child. He had to save her. But still, she was also fae. Could he save a creature of chaos, while risking his friends’ lives and live with that choice?

Kai screamed at the top of his lungs, putting all his anger, frustration and agony into the outcry. Under normal circumstances his energy would have raised rivers, called storms and shaken the earth - yet right now, the sound rang hollow and the only effect was that it hurt his throat.

He raised the chair above his shoulder, and with all the force he could muster, he slammed it into the window of Irene’s cell.

There was a crash and an ear-splitting screeching sound as the chair and the glass shattered. Thousands of tiny shards rained down, cutting the skin of Kai’s face and hands as he stumbled through.

Panic got him right back on his feet, but he froze, as he found himself inside an empty corridor, walls solid and unmoving and no sign of either Irene, broken furnishings or toppled shelves. All the noise around him had stopped. Everything was quiet but his own rapid breath.

Kai ran back through the hole in the now shattered wall, only to see that the other windows had faded to black.

Did that mean he was too late? But, no, surely… the noise had stopped, certainly the others were safe? They had to be!

What had he done?

Kai fell to his knees. He felt tears run down his face, they stung, where they met the fresh cuts, but he only vaguely noticed anything but the immediate pain of his own betrayal.

“Vale, I’m so sorry,” he sobbed in shaking gasps. “I didn’t mean to. Catherine… I had to choose, I… Irene, where are you? Please...”

╳

#the invisible library #ilcharacterweek #kai strongrock #more angst you said? sure

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shadow-scenarios · 4 years

Note

Omggg how you wrote out my request certainly surprised me but I totally enjoyed what you did with it!! And you said that you'd love to write a second part? Well, may I perhaps request that? 👀👀 (P.S.: I'm really relieved that you liked the idea haha, I've been sitting on it for awhile)

Hey again, simulationone!! I’m happy you like the direction I look it in. I was going to have the Reader become Akechi’s Navigator but I think that was a better direction to take it. Also, I tried a different style with this one, so I hope you like it!!

I loved the idea, it was so unique! If you have anything else that you want to request, you’re more than welcome to. By the way, this is suuuper angsty. If you don’t like that kind of thing, skip this post!!

Link to Part 1 here!!

- Nexus.

Trigger Warning: Major Character Death ;; Blood ;; Violence ;; Injuries ;; Swearing

Dance With Justice [2] | Goro Akechi

Perhaps there was a reality where she never had to hurt anyone. A world in which the Phantom Thieves never existed & justice was never an issue. Everyone could simply be happy without any concerns. However, thus was not her current fate.

This was never supposed to happen. She was going to die here, stuck in Mementos until she bled out.

{ Sat, 23 / 10 / 20XX }

Akechi had laid the plan out to her on this day: He had been given an opportunity to meet with the Phantom Thieves at the Shujin Academy. In particular, there was a panel in which a Q&A style show was being held. All they had to do was attend & imply they knew the identities of the Phantom Thieves before he ‘ inconveniently received a phone call ’. Afterwards, the group would be forcibly assembled in the Faculty Room & there they would unfurl the evidence. The photos the both of them had gathered & the video of them disappearing into the Metaverse.

As a result, they would be forced to stop committing their crimes after they took down the Palace of one individual in particular: Sae Niijima. He did admit that he was afraid for the life of his colleague because she was investigating the Phantom Thieves. If they were the perpetrators behind the metal shutdowns, she might be targeted next because she was seen as a threat.

However, there was one thing they were not to be informed about. The additional plan to arrest their leader as a warning of sorts. Additional police forces were to be sent out into the Metaverse & they would corner him when he was alone. It was quite simple but effective. All they had to do was cooperate with them.

This was all communicated to her over lunch in the school rooftop & she nodded, steeling her resolve.

{ Wed, 26 / 10 / 20XX }

Alas, the school festival came too quickly. The first day was ‘ unimportant ’, according to Akechi { although he did look rather embarrassed when she asked what happened with the Phantom Thieves... }.

It was about 20 minutes before the panel was due to start & she had already taken a seat somewhere near the centre. People were already gathered at this point because the Famous Ace Detective: Goro Akechi was going to be answering questions. Frankly, she found it quite creepy the levels most fans went to in order to see him.

Eventually the debate began. Makoto Niijima, student Council President, was hosting & essentially demanded answers related to his detective work reguarding the Phantom Theives. It was immensely impressive how he managed to dance around the answers, giving something vague yet satisfying. Was this is the life of a celebrity?

The question about the identity of the mysterious group soon came up. As her cue came, she texted him & there was the sound of Akechi’s ringtone going off. Silence spread through the auditorium in a strange mix of disappointment & comedic timing. After making a remark along the lines of not wanting to be trolled online, he quickly requested that a break be tacked on.

Quietly, she moved her way across the row & slipped out before the crowd could congest any corridors. The PE Faculty Office was easy enough to find, with many students easily offering directions. Slipping in before anyone else, there he stood.

“ Akechi. Are you ready for this? There’s no going back after we present the evidence. ”

“ Of course. The Phantom Thieves are a menace to society & by getting rid of them, people will finally feel safe in Japan. That’s what you want as well, right? ”

“ Yeah. Murderers aren’t welcome. ”

Once they had all entered, she presented the photographic evidence & introduced herself. Ryuji was in shock. Makoto seemed to be struggling to process the information. Explaining how both herself & Akechi had met, she pressed onto the point: Sae Niijima. She had to be saved from the mental shutdown culprits. An agreement of sorts was made by their rather stoic leader Akira. They would all work together to solve the cases.

{ Wed, 16 / 10 / 20XX & Thurs 17 / 11 / 20XX }

After the initial investigation into Sae’s Palace, keywords & location, these were the days of infiltration, so to speak. The Casino of Jealousy was vibrant & full of money. Coins were messily spread around on every single surface, posters containing snappy tag lines about how winning was key to survival. It was all so decadent. Cognitive shadows lined up for a chance to participate in the game known as the legal system. What a sick way to look at justice.

Despite the crimes they had committed, the Phantom Theives were very casual. They showed no symptoms of guilt nor doubt & insisted on these strangely flashy moves such as the All-Out Attack or the Showtime, in which they would defeat a bundle of enemies all at once. Although they were powerful, did they really feel the need to show off that much?

The other problem was their leader, Joker. He was tenaciously gripping onto both herself & Akechi { or Crow, was it? She never understood the need for the ridiculous code names... } to remain on the front lines to see what they could both do. Despite having bounds of energy at the beginning & regular breaks, it was quite tiring to keep having to constantly battle. Perhaps that was why she ended up being held captive by a Shadow.

It demanded Yen & safety. It was not a substantial amount of money & the Palace’s supposed ‘ Security Level ’ was not particularly high. She had seen how Akira had been picking through remains of the corpses of these beings, as they contained Yen. For some unknown reason during the negotiation, he simply refused to part. Apparently Joker, the supposed leader of the just Phantom Thieves believed some money more important than an ally.

Even as the shadow tore through skin & left almost fatal wounds, it hurt more to reaffirm her belief that the Phantom Theives were merciless.

Waking up was a surprise to be sure. To be greeted by Akechi in the nearest Safe Room asking if she was okay? It was very much a shock. He offered to patch up the wounds that were unreadable by her own hands & scolded her for being so reckless on that battlefield. It was good that both Queen & Mona were on hand, otherwise she would have died. Despite the presence of the other members of the group, this felt like a rather intimate moment.

The two of them kept having these strange moments: Delicately & intimate but as though something was missing.

A touch that lingered for longer than it needed to; Comforting words on a cool evening when she felt upset; Sitting within close proximity despite there being more space for the two of them than needed. Small signs that seemed to be hesitantly trying to convey something.

Even now as she paused to take in his appearance, it was startling. Dressed up in his princely regalia that was his Metaverse outfit, he looked rather charming. With golden tassels & a red cape, something about him seemed to just ooze noble. Though at times he could be slightly extra with the poses he pulled, Akechi was kind.

That was why she never saw it coming.

{ Thurs, 18 / 10 / 20XX }

Signaling for a meeting, Akira explained that they were going to write & send the Calling Card today. The debate about where to send it was long, strenuous & boring. After they eventually decided to be direct by mailing it to the Niijima residence, everyone disbanded for the day.

Aside for Akechi, who invited her to play Darts in Kichijoji. What a strange request.

The atmosphere was actually rather calming. At night, there were few around to disturb them. Handing over 800 Yen to play, the game began. It was nice to simply be able to talk about something unrelated to the Phantom Thieves for the both of them & although Akechi’s aim was unerring, she found it rather difficult to hit the tiny target, let alone land it in a specific place to score as many points as possible. After a while & with some expert advice, there was definitely some improvement.

By the time night struck, she had barely noticed until he had pointed it out. Everything was moving so swiftly. Offering to walk her to the train station, he was ever so polite. Until it rained.

It absolutely poured down with rain as the two of them descended the stairs of Penguin Sniper. Luckily, she had packed an umbrella into a crevice in her bag. The detective next to her? Not quite as fortunate as he sighed. Feeling bad, she offered to share & he accepted with reluctance after realising that it was better than the alternative of running home in the rain.

Being this close was both enthralling & embarrassing. Something about being forced this close to him was killing her. Akechi seemed to be doing alright, staying underneath to avoid both his hair & briefcase from becoming drenched by the cascading water. After a while that was in some respects a long time but in others not long at all, they reached the train station, parting ways when they had a difference in train line.

She knew exactly what she was feeling: There was no use in denial. Repressing such feelings would be more painful in the end. However, now was not the time to tell him. Catching the Phantom Thieves & saving Japan was more important than a high school romance. Filing the secret away for later, it was kept close to her heart.

{ Fri, 19 / 10 / 20XX }

It was almost too easy how quick everything was to fall into place. Putting on her best acting face was difficult but it was a believable lie, especially when most of the stress was based around getting Joker out alive. All their valiant efforts were for nothing. Similar to a spider spinning a web to catch prey, they had fallen victim.

After facing down the shadow of Sae Niijima herself on this strange roulette like battlefield, her desperate desire to achieve victory at all costs was her downfall & as she fell to her knees, clearly defeated, Queen went over to comfort her. Skull took Fox with him to steal the Treasure & once they discovered the numerous police forces that had made their way into the Metaverse, everything was taken up a notch.

Whilst Joker agreed to take the Treasure, thus becoming a distraction, everyone else would take the time to escape back to reality. A makeshift plan but one that would work in both her own & Akechi’s favour. Dashing along the protruding walls of the casino was thrilling as the group moved in sync, grappling along & weaving through like a natural born instinct.

Inevitably, he was captured. The leader of the Phantom Thieves, put behind bars. People would be safe from the mental shutdowns, they would no longer have to worry about having a psychotic breakdown. Without the branch that held them all together, there were no roots. As to not arouse suspicions, everyone parted ways until Akechi stopped her.

“ I... Know it’s rather late & we’ve just been to the Palace but there’s something I need to warn you about in the Metaverse. Will you join me in Mementos tomorrow morning? Preferably before school, if that’s okay with you, ” was all he requested with a ghost of a smile.

“ Sure, I don’t mind. Is there something else dangerous I should be worrying about? ”

“ It’s nothing too urgent but I thought I’d bring it to your attention since we are working on this case with the Phantom Thieves together. After all, we still need to hold the others accountable for their actions. ”

With that, she left. Akechi had always been a reliable source of information, so why would he lie?

{ Sat, 20 / 10 / 20XX }

It was the early morning. Despite the cold, she was in warm spirits as she approached the Shibuya line. Waiting there for her was the Detective Prince himself. Overnight, there was a decision made that once Akechi broke this bad news to her that she would change the mood by confessing. After all, it would be difficult to keep under lock & key.

Fading into the background as other students filtered in, they talked for a short period of time before getting down to business. Typing in ‘ Mementos ’ to the MetaNav was easy enough & there they were, standing at the dusty entrance.

Together, they fought their way down into a few floors below the surface. Although it took longer for them to traverse these levels due to not having a method of transportation such as the Mona Car, the Shadows were easy pickings for the two of them. At least, that is what she thought until two laser blasts from a ray gun burnt into her back.

Standing over her was a very different Goro Akechi to the person she had preciously known. What was once a charismatic smile that could charm anyone become a psychotic grin that looks unnaturally wide. Though she had once thought of his eyes as a storm of emotions, worries about the future & the safety of Japan, they were most definitely a typhoon, pulling victims in to tear them apart without a trace of mercy. Even as he called her a blind fool for trusting him & berated her sense of justice, the burning pain of the wounds that burnt through the Metaverse outfit were clouding her vision. She could have sworn there was the sound of someone walking away but there was too many sensations for her to clearly tell.

No one was going to find a dead body in the depths of Mementos. She found it morbidly ironic that her last thought was that she would never be able to tell Akechi how she truly felt.

Word Count: 2.3k

Publish Date: 06.10.20

#{ crow }#{ oh boy did I want to name this Dance With Justice 2: Electric Boogaloo }#goro akechi x reader #akechi x reader #goro akechi #persona 5 royal x reader #persona 5 x reader #persona 5 imagines #persona #p5r #tw: death #tw: blood #tw: injuries #tw: swearing #tw: violence #{ why is this my longest work what the heck }

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8requiems · 3 years

Text

A Webcomic Review of “Garden Club Detective Squad”:

Oh God Oh Fuck did someone just die?

By: 8Requiems

The Description:

“Gardening and solving crime aren’t what straight-A student Yeon Han thought she would be focusing on at her new school. But when she discovers a notebook that contains clues to a 15-year-old murder mystery, she and the other members of her new gardening club realize the murderer not only has access to the school -- they probably work for the school. Can the gardening club squad figure out who committed the murder even though the principal and their teachers seem desperate to cover it up?”

Now, this description is quite detailed, maybe a bit too detailed.

This comes down to personal preference, but personally, I don’t like seeing the plot in thorough detail before reading the story, especially if it is a mystery.

If it were me, I would write the description as:

“In her attempt to not become a backwater girl, Yeon Han eventually decides to become the President of the Gardening Club. But she’ll soon realize that maybe she might have bitten off more than she could chew”

This description may be a bit rudimentary, but it shows an idea of what my ideal description for this webtoon would be.

It says just enough about the story while also leaving enough to imagination. But the current description at present shows what the first 3-4 chapters are. Had the description not even mentioned the teachers, I probably wouldn’t have considered they were trying to cover anything up to begin with.

That being said, I did read chapters 1-3 of the webtoon blind. And I have to say, I didn’t expect the unassuming colorful cover of this Webtoon to show such menacing and dark panel off-rip.

(A panel from the first scene in Chapter 1)

But, let us familiarize ourselves with the cast, shall we?

Characters:

Yeon Han - The Brain:

Yeon is an honor student who moved outside of Seoul, presumably due to not having enough money to stay. Despite this turn of events, she doesn’t want to become a “backwater girl”. For the sake of her academic record, she decides to settle on becoming the class president. But her peers are just amused at how cocky she was despite being new to the school.

(A panel in the middle of Chapter 2 ^)

When that fails, she decides to settle on becoming the president of an after school club. But forget becoming president, they wouldn’t even allow her to join on the basis that she is too qualified. BRO, THE LITERATURE DISCUSSION CLUB HAS THREE MEMBERS. ONE INCLUDING A BODYPILLOW FOR FUCK SAKES. Part of me wanted to laugh but part of me also felt insulted for her.

I expected her character to be the “genius that finds a niche that she enjoys compared to other activities they would usually dominate at”, but she is already fed up with how hard gardening actually is. Not to mention the amount of faculty and students who ask favours from her.

It was a very pleasant surprise, because now I can rightfully assume that while she works on her cases, she might pick up skills from the gardening club. Dare I say, she actually comes to appreciate and enjoy it as a hobby? I guess only time will tell, as this is still a very new Webtoon, with 12 Chapters out as of this review’s conception.

The one thing I have on my mind at the moment, is if her range of skills she currently has will be useful when tackling the murder case.

Whether or not that is the case, I have high hopes for her as a character.

Mirim Shin - The Spiritual:

Although I said I have high hopes for Yeon, I think Mirim is my favorite character. As the daughter of a priest, she is in tune with her spirituality on a whole other level compared to her club mates.

An interesting tidbit about her is that she decided to practice all forms of faith before her baptism. I can only assume it’s so she could have an idea of what could have been, before deciding to lock in on one specific faith.

Honestly, I genuinely didn’t expect for her to say something like this, not because it sounded ridiculous, but because up until that point, it felt like her spirituality was just a running gag that came with her character.

It was nice to see her character expanded upon, and I hope the other characters get the same treatment, even if it is only brief.

Baekji Kang - The Muscle

Then there's Baekji, who easily wins in cool factor.

I can’t say much other than that in addition to being a part of the garden club, she is also in the Judo club. Although the story doesn’t technically address it, I feel like she fills the role of pseudo-leader / Vice-President of the club.

She’s cool.

Saessak - The Green Thumb’d Romantic?:

Ssaesak is a soft-spoken girl who attends to the garden's needs as one of the two members of the garden club.

She is unexpectedly a romantic, being interested in bad boys.

I only found her annoying for a brief moment because it seemed like she was going to hold back information on her latest crush, Hyeonsu Jeong (the lunch guy), before finally finding the resolve to give a possibly game changing piece of evidence to Yeon.

She’s alright.

Execution:

Despite the mostly positive things I have said in this review, my first impressions of Garden Club Detective Squad were more negative in comparison to the opinions I shared at present.

When I read Wizard of Arsenia, I had overblown expectations because my editor Nen had already recommended God of Bath, a webtoon I have now come to really appreciate. I assumed I would love it in the same way.

My expectations were what held me back from what I usually do best: Sit down and just enjoy the show. Granted, I still hold opinions about it that I believe hold back the story, but the opinions were way fairer than what I could have said.

This time around, I made a similar mistake.

I decided on my own to read Garden Club Detective Squad for this review, and held expectations for the mystery element of the Webtoon, which was reinforced by the first panel I showed in the review. Thankfully, even if the webtoon didn’t live up to whatever expectation I had, I know that I could still appreciate it for what it was because I just went with the flow. At worst, the mystery could come across as contrived.

(A panel from the first scene in Chapter 1)

That being said, somehow, I was disappointed. Even a bit annoyed 5-7 chapters in. Disappointment is one thing, but why was I annoyed?

At first, I was thinking it was because the story had a problem with how it presented tension. After all, the webtoon is categorized as a mystery, so I criticized it as such.

In my original draft, I wrote the following:

“The webtoon is categorized under mystery, but I don’t really feel the urgency of the case whatsoever. I feel like I am getting whiplash between moments that I feel are supposed to be serious and moments that are just ‘slice of life’ hijinks.”

I hadn’t taken into account that, although it was a “mystery”, it functioned more like a “comedy”, like God of Bath.

I feel as though the Webtoon was miscategorized. I use God of Bath as an example because it could have easily been categorized under “Action”, because of the Ttaemiri battles. But despite these battles, because of the way dialogue is presented, it is understandably under the comedy genre. Moreover, the action was more of a vehicle to tell the stories and values of the characters themselves. In other words, even if you were to take out these action elements, God of Bath would be fundamentally the same.

But according to my logic, does this mean that if this webtoon didn’t have mystery elements, it would be fundamentally the same?

No, and I do not think it would be the same if the webtoon didn’t have the comedy elements either.

To be perfectly clear, just because I think Garden Club Detective Squad is a comedy, it doesn’t mean that I think it shouldn’t present mystery elements, or vice-versa. But I wish Webtoon could at the very least categorize it as both a “mystery” and “comedy”.

Who knows, maybe my opinion will change as more and more chapters get uploaded. Or rather, I hope it does.

Personally, despite my position towards the webtoon being a comedy, it isn’t all that funny.

And as of the currently uploaded chapters, I think the mystery is all right.

In my opinion, what makes a good mystery is having all the clues presented to the characters and the reader to be able to solve the case. To understand 52chu’s take on mystery, I’ll break down the first suspect, Hyeongsu. Take this scene the beginning of episode 6 for example:

This scene is trying to insinuate that Hyeongsu is the killer. The dramatic irony of this scene, Saessak’s photo of Hyeongsu dumping bones in the garden, and the story deliberately pointing out that there are no cameras in the cafeteria/garden area are the three pieces of information the story provides to help the indirect claim.

(A panel from Episode 8 ^)

(A Panel from Episode 9 ^)

(A panel from episode 8 ^)

But it was all a misunderstanding. Whoops, my bad. “I was just trying to help you all”.

(A panel from episode 9 ^)

It's almost comical how much the plot just wanted to frame Hyeongsu, I can’t help but laugh.

All forms of evidence lead to Hyeongsu, except the fact that the bones were the remnants of ribs from past cafeteria specials:

(Panel from episode 9 ^)

If you were able to pick up the possibility, then great. But somehow, Hyeongsu’s mini-arc just fell flat for me. Whether you knew this one detail or not, it feels like I’m going to be dragged from suspect to suspect in the future. Everyone one of them will be the “killer” except for that one contrivance that makes them innocent. Honestly, I firmly believe that it isn’t any of the faculty.

You know what, here's my Trademark 8Requiems theory. The culprit is Chair Juyeong.

(A panel from Episode 6 ^)

I don’t mind the club reaching dead ends, but if there aren’t elements that could at least help me identify who the real culprit is, I doubt I could enjoy it as much as I’d like to.

Conclusion:

Reading and understanding this Webtoon has been somewhat of a ride. Although it is still ongoing, I have mixed feelings on whether or not I want to continue reading. But despite the gripes that I have with it at the moment, I think I will continue reading it just to see where 52chu takes the story.

You will likely enjoy this Webtoon if you like stories where the plot focuses on the reader having fun with the misadventures of the cast.

But what do you guys think? Do you think my criticism was unfounded? Do you think it really *IS* a mystery, and that I am looking at this Webtoon in the wrong light? Talk about it in the comments below.

And as always,

Arrivederci Brothers. May you attain your grain.

#Webtoon #Webcomic #Webcomics #Garden Club Detective Squad #GCDS #WebtoonReview #WebcomicReview #WizardOfArsenia #Wizard of Arsenia

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