#this is intended to be a series hence the title

[himehikoshrine]

Jack Jeanne Explainers: Takarazuka Revue

This post is a quick and probably incomplete overview of Takarazuka Revue specifically for the context of its inspiration on Jack Jeanne, for reference. It's a basic overview but it's not intended as a guide to the form and fandom.

Takarazuka Revue (JP: 宝塚歌劇団) is likely the most direct influence on the game. It also has a very dedicated fan base that maintains robust English Language resources, so if this aspect of things intrigues you, it is quite accessible to dive further into.

Takarazuka Revue is an all-female musical theater company founded in 1913 and based out of the city of Takarazuka. All roles, male and female, are played by women. It also has an associated training school, the Takarazuka Music School.

The original pitch for the game was an All Boys Revue School, so the reference starts at the very beginning, as a kind of gender swap of Takarazuka.

You may notice that the term used here for "Revue" 『歌劇』 is the same one that the game uses. It gets translated sometimes as "opera" sometimes as "theater" - in general the term does mean "opera" but it's pretty clearly not opera that they're training - it's being used as "Revue" the same way that Takarazuka uses it. Which is, loosely speaking, musical theater.

Continued below the cut --

(I suspect that the similarities in first sound and also first character between 宝塚 - Takarazuka and 玉阪 - Tamasaka are intentional as well)

Takarazuka was founded by a businessman looking for an attraction to draw people to the city and settled on the idea of an All Female Musical Revue and a focus on more western style musical, mostly, as far as I know, as a business decision and a feeling that traditional styles of Kabuki were falling out of favor with most people. It drew heavily from French Musical Revue. The full history of the company, like I said, is well documented in English, and is longer than I can get into, here.

Compare and contrast this to the information we get about the 13th Himehiko, the current principal's great-grandfather, Chuza Dairi. He's said to have been born during the Meiji era and lived into the Showa era, and was fascinated by western style musicals. He's credited with the name Univeil, and starting to use the Jack and Jeanne terms.

Takarazuka stands in contrast to a long line of male exclusive theater forms in Japan. Japan, of course, also puts on co-ed musicals, both originals and adaptations, like the rest of the world, but Takarazuka is very much, to use the phrase the game uses, the "pinnacle of all-female revues."

This image is of a showcase from 1930, where you can see the lavish, european revue style inspiration clearly.

In Takarazuka, male roles are called otokoyaku (男役) - which just means 'men's roles' and is the term Jack Jeanne uses for what "Jack" roles are. Female roles are called musumeyaku (娘役) - which translates to 'girl/maiden/daughter roles'. The game actually uses onnayaku (女役) or women's roles when introducing Jeannes.

(Worth noting that the character Kisa plays in the Newcomers' Performance is translated as Maiden but is 娘 (musume) in Japanese which means occasionally when she or other characters are talking about "playing the role of the maiden" they are saying "musumeyaku" which I think is probably an intentional reference.)

Takarazuka puts on Musicals as well as both song and dance revues. It adapts many things, from extant musicals to manga to film, as well as history and classic stories. It has a reputation for being bright, sparkly, and lavish in costuming and set design and dramatic in style.

The voice actor for Tancho, the singing teacher and head of Rhodonite, is a former Takarazuka Otokoyaku. Tancho's outfits and style of speech are directly taken from Takarazuka. The feathers Tancho wears are part of the standard Revue portion of Takarazuka shows.

Right - Tancho's image, from the website, Left - Tancho's voice actor, Nanami Hiroki, from the Asashi article announcing her retirement from Takarazuka, showing her wearing one of the typical feather backed outfits that leads appear in parades after performances.

Otokoyaku are the stars of Takarazuka and tend to draw the biggest crowd and they get top billing, though each troupe tends to have a top Otokoyaku and top Musumeyaku, decided by a complex mix of seniority (especially for otokoyaku) and gradings. I will stop short of saying these are kind of like Jack Ace and Al Jeannes of a class, though. The Musumeyaku is expected to support her Otokoyaku. Using the terms Jack Jeanne uses, for Takarazuka, the Otokoyaku is essentially always the Flower, the Musumeyaku the Vessel, which is more standardized than the point of view of characters at Univeil.

The top Otokoyaku and top Musumeyaku are called the Top Combi (コンビ). Takarazuka and its fandom use that, rather than Partner (パートナー) that Jack Jeanne is fond of, which carries a potentially romantic connotation.

Takarazuka expects its actresses to maintain a more masculine or very feminine (depending on their role) persona on and off stage, and the expectations for behavior and appearance are quite strict even off stage. For example, much like Idols, they are expected to not date, let alone marry and have kids, until they retire.

EDIT: Someone who knows more than me let me know that the rules for dating are slightly more lax now, and relationships are tolerated so long as they are kept strictly out of the public eye - though still no marriage.

Jack Jeanne remains frustratingly vague on the rules for this during school -- No one seems to think dating itself is an issue, but Ao does say that it would 'cause trouble' if people saw them holding hands. So perhaps we're supposed to imagine something similar? But back to the post.

Takarazuka is divided into several different Troupes (組, kumi, read as gumi when used after the name of a troupe). They currently have five.

They break down as follows

Flower Troupe (Hanagumi 花組) - 1921 Moon Troupe (Tsukigumi 月組) - 1921 Snow Troupe (Yukigumi 雪組) - 1924 Star Troupe (Hoshigumi 星組) -1933-1939, reestablished 1948 Cosmos Troupe (Soragumi 宙組) - 1998

Each troupe has a reputation, though they are fairly loosely followed, and many performances get performed by different troupes for different runs. However, I suspect this was a strong influence on the way the classes were divided in Jack Jeanne. For example, Moon Troupe is known for singing. The newest troupe, the Cosmos Troupe is written with a character in Chui's name, and their stereotype is 'experimental and tall'. Snow troupe, interestingly, is known for more traditionally Japanese works (loosely) which is a conspicuous absence from Univeil, especially considering Tamasakaza's style is said to be more traditional than Takarazuka's -- closer to kabuki, even.

In Takarazuka, stars are sorted into these upon graduation. The Music School is probably better as a whole separate post.

The term "Newcomer's Performance" used in the game to refer to the first show of the year is also used in Takarazuka -- shinjin kouen (新人公演), where it has the meaning of a different casting of a play with all newer Takarasiennes (a term used for the actresses of Takarazuka).

The specific announcement that Tsuki makes in the intro is almost exactly, in both wording and tone, the announcement made before each Takarazuka play. His outfit in that scene is a version of a very famous style of Takarazuka Costume, inspired by fancy French dress and specifically the manga Rose of Versaille, whose adaptation is one of Takarazuka's most iconic plays.

I would strongly encourage you to browse their official English Language site (or Japanese one, if you can read it), which can be found here : Takarazuka Revue

While you're there, if you're there for Jack Jeanne reasons, it may be interesting to pay attention to the use of the word "dream" which is one of the theme/motif words of Jack Jeanne, and is use heavily in Takarazuka's official material as well as writings on the subject.

Had to throw this in because these? These are the Takarazuka words right there. Well, their official Motto is "Modesty, Fairness, Grace" or "Be Modest, Be Proper, Be Graceful" (which is a whole lot to unpack elsewhere) but unofficially it could be "So Dreamy and Sparkly."

You'll probably get a more thorough history on the website, too, than I provided.

Rather than make this even longer, I'm going to make a separate post on Takarazuka Music School, the path into Takarazuka, and it's similarities and difference with what we know about Univeil.

I'm by no means an expert of Takarazuka, and I should probably defer to people more involved in the fandom for that, but if anyone has anything to add that I missed in this brief post, please please reblog and add! If you have any questions, I can try to answer, asks should be open!

[cherrygukki]

after last night (m)

➸ pairing: rich fuckboy! jungkook x f. reader ➸ word count: 4.3k ➸ genres: acquaintances to fwb, smut, unreciprocated love, mild angst if you squint, and a sprinkle of fluff ➸ summary: After last night, Jungkook doesn't know what to do. You got to tell him when he's gonna see you again before he drives himself crazy. ➸ warnings: alcohol consumption, cursing, protected sex, whiny jk, rough, making out in public for like a minute, grinding, lots of kissing, hickeys, dirty talk, praise kink, face sitting, cunnilingus, fingering, spitting (once), overstimulation, multiple orgasms, squirting, he's WHIPPED for reader's pussy, i almost forgot to say that jk also finishes early but that's okay he makes up for it🤭🤭 ➸ author's note: As what the title suggests, this short series (maybe) is inspired by After Last Night by Bruno Mars. I'm literally OBSESSED with this song so I couldn't help but write something dedicated to it. As always, enjoy reading!

Wishin' on a shootin' star, say a prayer for me

And hope it comes true

Jungkook can't help but heave a sigh, twirling the almost empty wine glass around in his hand while looking at the night sky with such loneliness in his eyes.

The sight above him is beautiful, but to him, there's nothing more beautiful than the image of your face in front of him right now. He craves you by his side, appreciating the view outside his window as you spend the most loving time in your lives.

So, when his eyes spot the phenomenal shooting star that swiftly passes through his home, his mind screams your name right away, praying to whoever's listening to him in the sky to have you here with him.

It's foolish, but he'll just about do anything to see you again, hoping that his wishes will eventually come true someday.

Throw my phone out the window, there's no player in me

Those days are through

When he said that he's willing to do anything for you, he meant it with every fiber of his being. Hence, it doesn't take Jungkook any second thought to pull his phone out of his pocket only to throw it out the window. He lets it fall freely from the high level of his penthouse without a care. Perhaps it's the alcohol seeping into his veins, putting him under the influence, but there still remains a part of him where he doesn't regret what he just did. After all, he only wants to prove you one thing by the end of the day —

He's more than willing to enter a new chapter in his life, and the title of that chapter is you.

You put it on me like I never felt before

That gushy, gushy good, girl, I want some more

While Jungkook continues to appreciate the mesmerizing city landscape beyond him, his mind couldn't help but drift off to the moment you met each other for the first time.

He had only intended to have a great time with his old friends during that highschool reunion of your batch. If only you hadn't attended that party like the gorgeous goddess you were to his eyes, then perhaps he wouldn't be so crazy like he is now.

Back then, Jungkook merely thought of you as the smart student who had a few admirers here and there, only ever getting the chance to talk with you every time you're paired up on a project, but he never thought of batting an eye towards your direction. However, the clearer view of your beauty in the present is in no doubt, indeed a present to him.

Without hesitation, he strikes up a conversation with you right away, leaving everyone else in the ditch as his entire attention was now directed on you, and you only.

It took hours for the party to end, thus it doesn't surprise you to see Jungkook impatient to get the both of you out of the venue, for you already knew where this night was about to end the moment he greeted you.

You haven't even gotten the opportunity to jump inside his car, but you're already making out on his hood like horny teenagers all over again. He kisses you with a spark of fire, spreading flames all over your body like a wildfire. You moan when he bites your bottom lip before pulling away, extending his warmth down to your exposed neck where he marks you like his personal treasure. You throw your head back in no shame whatsoever, disregarding the environment around you when you begin to grind your crotch against his thigh. The moans you let out our wanton, especially when he easily locates that sensitive spot on your neck to lick, suck, and bite on it that already has you reeling for the man.

You're certain there's a wet splotch in your underwear by now, already aroused from merely grinding away on Jungkook's thick thigh as well as him leaving dark spots all over your neck as if tomorrow will never come.

He slithers a tattooed hand beneath your dress to rub your clothed folds. You gasp loudly at the abrupt intrusion, letting him do whatever he desires at the moment while you relax at the sensational touches he leaves on you.

Whimpering, you grip tightly on his shoulder to urge him to go on. "Don't stop," you whine, "Please don't stop, fuck—"

"I won't, sweetheart." He licks at the fresh hickey he's just made while whispering. "I won't."

Before anyone could even catch up to what was going on, Jungkook hides the both of you from out in the open, hastily fishing his car keys from his pocket to unlock the Black Mercedes he's about to drag you in. He opens the backdoor, and soon enough, he's messily falling along with you on the leather seats where you continue to explore each other's bodies.

He locks the car again before hunching your dress around your waist to take a look at the sopping mess you've done with your panties, pushing them to the side when he finally gets to touch your bare pussy for the first time tonight.

Growling, he leans down to your ear only to send you a hot wave of shivers with the raspy whisper he lets out. "Gonna make you cum so hard tonight, sweetheart." He chuckles, "So fucking hard."

Jungkook wasn't expecting to receive exactly the same treatment he intends to give you tonight.

The moment you arrive at his penthouse, the two of you are already sticking to each other immediately like opposite poles of a magnet until you eventually navigate yourselves to the large couch in his living room. He settles you comfortably on his lap, hands traveling down to your clothed ass where he kneads them as you continue to lap each other out. You're the first one to pull away after a few more seconds, for he's already sucking the breath out of you with his plush lips alone.

You impatiently begin to unbutton his dress shirt, admiring the bulky figure that's hidden underneath the flimsy layer of fabric. He does the same to you, wrapping an arm around your back to unzip the tight outfit refraining his eyes from indulging in your gorgeous figure. The straps fall loosely around your shoulders, and soon enough, your dress is already messily hunched around your waist, exposing the entirety of your body to Jungkook's lust-hungry gaze.

By the time you get rid of his top, you don't hesitate to lean down and place kitten licks on his nipple. He quietly gasps at your bold move, resisting the temptation to have his eyes rolling back when you lick a fat stripe on his chest. He shivers underneath you, falling victim for your presence as he tightens the hold he has on your waist. Your pussy is gushing your arousal like a waterfall, and Jungkook doesn't fail to notice how desperate your whimpers get when you pick up the motion of your hips on his thigh.

Pulling away, you attack his lips ferociously, moaning oh-so wantonly that it has the tent in Jungkook's pants growing angrier by the minute. "I wanna ride your face."

"Fuck yeah, baby." Jungkook almost whines when you hastily settle yourself on his face, having your panties already ridden off earlier from the steamy car ride on the way home. You pant heavily, sensing his warm breath knocking right on your entrance, steadily aligning your core above his pillowy lips until he takes matters in his own hands — becoming more desirous for the sweet nectar leaking over him.

"Oh! Fuck, Jungkook—" You draw out a long mewl when he laps at your pussy like an oasis, leaving no drop of your juices out of his mouth as he dances his tongue around your sopping folds.

Nothing left could be heard in the spacious room aside from your lewd moans and the obscene noises of your wet pussy being eaten out by Jungkook.

You desperately grind on his face, searching for more friction, repeatedly nudging the tip of his nose with your clit which only has you throwing your head back in bliss.

Jungkook, on the other hand, feels more than euphoric seeing your fucked out expression from below. He wiggles his tongue in every spot he deemed fit to have you toppling near the edge. Your taste alone is enough to get him off, bucking his hips in the air to seek for a release himself. Swallowing every drop you offered him only has him going crazier by the second, only urging him to fuck you with his tongue this instant, and that's what he exactly did.

The abrupt intrusion of his tongue between your folds elicited a loud whimper from you. He fucks you with his tongue like how he would with his cock — messy and fast.

Breathy chants of his name and a messy mantra of moans and whimpers come tumbling off your tongue. You bounce on his face like the desperate one you were, chasing that orgasm that's merely boiling from deep within your core.

He simply couldn't get enough of your essence, akin to getting intoxicated by the best form of addiction in the world. He continues to lap on your dripping cunt as if he's the next one in line on a death row, moaning every now and then which sends vibrations reverberating up your spine. Your mind blacks out, and now the only thing you can think of is Jungkook's skilled and wet tongue bringing you to an intense orgasm.

You don't hold back from leaving your mouth ajar to spill out the most sinful, yet heavenly noises Jungkook has ever heard, provoking him to add up to your pleasure by encouraging you to swivel your hips around his face.

Your pending orgasm is peeking around the corner, and the knot that's about to blow up inside you is about to make a mess on Jungkook's swollen lips. "Fuck, Jungkook, I'm cumming—" you whine, thighs shaking profusely until the knot snaps.

Gasping, Jungkook doesn't leave any of your juices unwelcome, for he's greedily drinking your juices up in pure gluttony. Your pussy keeps gushing out new waves of your orgasm for Jungkook to consume, and he can never get sick of it. If anything, it leaves him wanting more of that gushy sweetness you provide him, never ever being stunned from the way you do it.

Sweet, sticky, thick and pretty

You changed the game

At this point, Jungkook wants nothing more than to shove his cock in the prettiest pussy he's seen in his life, similar to a messy abstract painting that always succeeds in enticing the people's eyes — that's how beautiful Jungkook saw you.

Slowly lifting your hips off his panting face, you finally take a glimpse for the first time on how fucked out he already seemed. His lips are absolutely smeared with your essence, and perhaps a few of it even landed on his chin and his nose. However, your appreciation session on the man's features are cut short when he rips open the condom hiding in his pocket, swiftly stripping himself off his pants until his dick is finally sprang out in the open; tall and leaking with pre-cum.

He rolls the condom around his shaft, and before you know it, he's already forcing you down on his lap where your soft walls gain contact with the tip of his cock.

"Gonna fuck your pretty little pussy with my cock, baby. You want that?"

You mewl in response, eagerly nodding as you visibly bite your lower lip. Spreading your slick all over his tip, you steadily sink yourself around his girth, eliciting a guttural groan between the two of you. For a moment, you can feel the wind knock out of your lungs from how full you felt. Your walls kept themselves snug around Jungkook's veiny shaft, and he swears, he's losing his composure faster by the second.

"Fuck," he lowly whimpers when you finally bottom out, large hands settling on your hips to slowly drag you up again. Your pussy already leaves a trail of dribbling slick down the length of his cock, and it definitely earns a hiss to come out between Jungkook's teeth.

He helps you in riding him, a lewd yelp falling off your pretty lips when your hips crash down on his thick thighs, causing his tip to kiss the top of your cervix inside. Soon enough, your pace becomes increasingly desperate, as what seemed to be mildly moderate a few seconds back turns to a merciless wrath of Jungkook's cock roughly fucking into your dripping cunt.

"Jungkook!" You cry his name in utter bliss before the weight of your head gives in, leaning on his shoulder for support as you unknowingly drool on the taut muscle. He growls animalistically, fucking you with full force and great speed which leaves the air humid, and the sound of skin slapping and wet squelches of your pussy fill the quiet space of his penthouse.

A staccato of breathy moans spill out from your lips like a waterfall. His cock was covered in your slick, shimmering in your thick arousal which only heightened Jungkook's stimulation.

"God, look at you—your cunt is drooling all over my cock, baby. Wettest pussy in the fucking world, shit—"

Your walls clench from his words, another wave of your juices gushing out from your pussy. No one else can make you hornier than the man fucking you right at this very moment. His brows are furrowed in concentration, mind unable to think of anything else aside from his cock rearranging your guts. He's practically pierced everywhere, and the fact that he has a full-sleeve tattoo covering the whole of his right arm only aids on to your arousal.

He catches you momentarily staring at him, and he only simpers at you. "Fuck, like what you see, baby?" The clench you do confirms your thought. "Yeah, I know you do, baby. Your cunt is so fucking wet for me, isn't it? Such a good fucking cunt, taking dick so obediently, yeah?"

"S-So good," you mewled on his shoulder, breathing becoming labored when his tip repeatedly nudges your sweet spot. The obscene noises increase in volume, which encourages Jungkook to remain consistent with his thrusts.

Everything feels messy and sticky down below where your arousal has certainly reached Jungkook's balls, covering them in white as some of it land on your ass where they clap in motion of his rough thrusts.

Jungkook swears to God that he's losing it every minute, feeling his climax build up faster than usual, too lost in the incredible sensation of your tight walls clinging onto his length for dear life. Oh, and was he extremely whipped for the way you keep creaming around the base of his cock as if you're marking him as your own. He tries to hold back the fighting orgasm bubbling within his gut, but you just had to keep him snug against your warm folds for one last time until he's eventually reaching his breaking point.

"Shit, baby, your cunt's so fucking good I think I'm gonna cum soon—" He draws out one last whine before he's filling up the thin latex material. He breathes heavily, knowing that he's never been the one to cum first during sex. Feeling his dick immediately soften, he pushes you off his cock and pulls the condom off his shaft, hastily flipping you around so he's the one on top of you this time. He grips your knees to force your legs wide, kneeling down so his face is directly in front of your dribbling cunt.

"You haven't cum yet, haven't you, angel?"

"N-No," you stutter, sensing the proximity of his face between your folds.

"Sad you didn't get to cum on my cock, but my fingers will do the trick for now."

Before you could even fully react to his statement, he's already plunging three long digits in your warm cunt, plunging them inside and out at a swift rate that has your eyes rolling to the back of your skull in an instant.

"Holy shit, pussy still so fucking tight even after getting split open with my cock." He bites his lip, pleased with the wet noises your cunt makes whenever he digs them deep within your cavern. You throw your head back as if you're floating on clouds, eyes giving in as you surrender to Jungkook's fingers finishing you off.

"Such a good girl," he coos, "taking my fingers like your pussy's made for them."

You can feel your high lingering in your lower abdomen, that familiar knot beginning to form and Jungkook detects it right away. You almost lost it when he began to increase the speed of his fingers, but what has you screaming in such a pornographic manner is his mouth sucking your clit ferociously.

He laps on your clit like a madman, desperate to reach your climax. Your legs begin to profusely shake, and your screams morph into pleasurable sobs that have Jungkook smiling against your heat. You're flooding more and more juices on his hand, his tongue aiding to your fast-approaching orgasm.

"Don't stop, don't stop, pleeeaasseeee, don't fucking stop!" You pant wildly as your hands fly to his soft locks, gripping on them for dear life to lock his mouth in place of your clit. Jungkook was absolutely shameless for loudly slurping on your wetness, flicking your clit with his tongue simultaneously which brought the cherry on top for your orgasm.

"So good, I'm cumming, shit—"

He temporarily pulls away from your cunt. "Go on and make a mess all over my face, pretty girl. You did so, so fucking well for me."

With that, he sucks on your clit for one last time before your vision fades to black. A large wave of your wetness gushes out of your pussy, forcing his fingers to pull out which has him aiming for your clit right away. He rapidly rubs your clit, groaning in satisfaction with the mess he caused.

"Damn, angel, you just fucking squirted all over me."

You're panting heavily, unable to register anything that Jungkook's saying to you, for the recent orgasm you experienced has just hit you in the head like a truck. Your body is still twitching due to the overstimulation, but Jungkook didn't seem to care at all.

Jungkook appreciates how your pussy appears to be more glossy from how much you squirted, licking his lips in temptation before leaning in to swipe a fat stripe of his tongue from the bottom of your folds to your gorging clit. You shiver from the overstimulation, taking the pleasure nonetheless.

How can you ever make him stop when this man is an absolute fucking sex god?

"Fuck, your pussy's so sweet, baby," he whines on your folds before proceeding to flick his tongue left and right at a rapid pace. Your eyes struggle to keep themselves open, for the only sensation you yearn to keep is his mouth working wonders on you. Your moans increase in both volume and pitch, and you swear the man eating you out like a whole buffet is about to pull another mind-boggling orgasm out of you.

He only adds on to your rapture when he inserts three of his slender digits inside you again. You gasp loudly, legs profusely spasming to the point where you can't keep them open anymore. You attempt to squeeze your thighs between Jungkook's face, which causes him to forcefully pry them open when he growls on your pussy.

"This cunt will be the fucking death of me, angel," he chuckles, planting a soft peck on your clit contrary to the merciless motion of his fingers. "Make a mess one more time for me, sweetheart, hm?"

"I-I can't," you sob, nails clawing on the fabric of the couch as you feel your climax flying to its peak. "Too much..!"

"You can and you fucking will," he growls again, and the vibrations felt on your heat is what triggers another mind-shattering orgasm to crash down on you. Your legs wail around from the strong intensity, but Jungkook held you still. His mouth remains unbothered when you spill your juices all over his lips, happily lapping up on your remains.

The overstimulation makes you shudder, and your cunt at this point is overly sensitive from the continuous motions of his wet tongue. "T-Too much." You use all of your remaining strength to push his head away, and you're thankful he did, only to land a wad of spit onto your sensitive cunt, anyway. He rubs the small bundle of nerves in slow, circular motions, which makes you whine.

"Jungkook, I really c-can't anymore," you whine, and he finally separates himself away from your cunt despite the addiction coursing in his veins. He leans down on your face to pull you in one last tender kiss. Your taste has definitely made its mark on Jungkook's lips, evident when he tangles his tongue with yours.

He's the first to pull away before things become more heated again, abruptly carrying you in the air with his taut arms to bring you to his bedroom. "You should look at yourself, pretty," he snickers, "You look fucking adorable in my arms like this."

You blush at his comment, shying yourself away from his gaze which Jungkook merely chuckled to. He brings you to his bedroom where he provides you with the most tender care you've experienced in your life, gently cleaning you up here and there with a wet tissue as well as giving you a generous donation with one of his shirts to keep you warm.

Jungkook was never a big fan of aftercare, preferring to keep things casual by letting whoever he hooked up with leave right away. However, seeing you laying there, exhausted from everything, gave him this strong urge to cradle you in his arms in an instant, which makes him exactly do that.

In tangled sheets, you and Jungkook sleep through the night with your limbs intertwining one another. He couldn't exactly place the blossoming sensation in his chest, but he decides to brush it off, thinking it'll all wither away in the morning.

Boy, was he wrong.

After last night

After last night, I think I'm in love with you

The next day, Jungkook wakes up next to the large empty space of his bed. At first, he could hardly remember everything that occurred last night, until the memories all came crashing down at him at once when the image of your face appeared in his brain.

His heart hammers the moment he thought about the long, yet ephemeral night he spent with you. His first instinct is to get up from bed and call out your name, thinking you're still somewhere within his residence.

"___?" He's been chanting your name like a broken toy, searching for every part of his penthouse. To no avail, though, it seems you have left Jungkook alone without bidding him a proper farewell. The only trace of you he has is the small note you wrote placed on top of the counter. It merely stated about you leaving extra early for personal reasons, saying you enjoyed the night with him nonetheless.

However, Jungkook feels himself pouting when you didn't bother leaving a number for him nor any sort of connection that'll have him talk to you again. He reminisces about the valuable time he cherished with you last night, remembering even the smallest details of you. His favorite feature of yours is definitely your smile, following the sound of your giggles echoing through his ears. You possess the plumpest lips that are worth dying for, and definitely the belle of the party last night.

To top it all off, you also had the sweetest pussy he's ever laid his hands on.

He didn't realize that he's been staring into empty space for the past few minutes, immediately blinking away any thoughts of you before deciding to proceed with his daily routine.

A lingering sensation of longing for you still remains in his chest, though. And it's slowly driving him to madness.

After last night, he's probably in love with you for all he knows.

Woke up and I can't get you out of my head

After last night, I don't know what to do

Jungkook has never seen himself be this crazy for a woman, let alone it being after a supposed one night stand.

Did you perhaps cast a hex on him? Your face haunts him even during the middle of daylight. You're like an addiction he can't get rid of no matter how hard he tries. You come to him like you were meant for him, and he can't help but be simultaneously overwhelmed and amused from how much he's thinking about you.

He can't think straight from how much you've been conquering his mind throughout the day, spacing out every minute and so to cling onto the last traces of you by solely remembering you.

Jeon Jungkook is absolutely head over heels for you.

(Baby, you've got to tell me)

When I'm gon' see you again

On the couch is Jungkook endlessly scrolling through his phone, checking out every social media app possible to possibly find you and gain contact with you for the sake of his remaining sanity. It seems like fate has been on the wrong side with him when he's unable to find a hint of you no matter how thorough he searches.

He can only sigh when his hope begins to plummet. Perhaps you were only meant to be another mere one night stand that'll add on to Jungkook's promiscuous history and nothing more. After all, you were aware from the very beginning that a man like Jungkook can't be trusted, thus making you leave before you could possibly get attached to the man.

However, after last night, he doesn't bat a single eye to any other woman whenever he's out with his friends.

After last night, you're all that takes up most of Jungkook's mind.

After last night, he began doing the craziest shit all because of you.

After last night, Jungkook only clings onto one question for the following weeks of his life: When is he going to see you again?

after last night (two)

[thyandrawrites]

On "dream doping", or the lesson to be learned from despair

Alteratively titled: why breaking up with your high school sweetheart is vital for a career in soccer (with or without said sweetheart. Signed: Ego Jinpachi)

buckle up, this is a long one

We know that Reo went into this match with several hungups as to why Nagi would leave him behind, even going as far as asking Chigiri and Kunigami why they'd pick him

And his voice shaking (notice the wobbly speech bubble) as he repeats the validation, like he doesn't quite believe it to be true anymore. And then during the match he kept alternating between talking himself up and trash talking Isagi with increasingly frantic urgency. He needed to test his worth against Isagi and come out victorious to prove that he was worthy of being the genius' partner, yes, but one important factor is that he did all of this specifically seeking Nagi's approval. He needed to hear it from him, because it's Nagi's departure that crushes Reo's confidence in the first place. Before that moment, Reo was self-assured and cocky, even looking down on other players he felt were beneath him. But we could argue that confidence was born from a shaky foundation—the idea of staying a team with Nagi until the world cup and their eventual victory together for Japan.

I think a factor that doesn't often get brought up in Reo commentaries is that Reo derives a lot of his winning self-image from tag-teaming with a genius

And it's from "borrowing" his talent that Reo feels he lifts their collective value to genius level

And in the process, Reo also tends to undersell his own skills by comparison, and letting them stay an accessory to Nagi's brilliance,

despite how it's been remarked that Reo's a bit of a genius in his own light. If he honed that potential, he could be a big threat, too. Alone.

This is by design, of course. He foils pre blue lock Rin for this reason, too. Reo and young Rin are similar in that they both consider their soccer partner the true star of the show, subordinating their own skills as just a fancy accessory to make their partners shine and become world's best with them right at their heels.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that they end up internalizing that their dream is not achievable without their partner(s), because they ingrained being a sidekick so deep into that plan that they simply see themselves unwilling or unable to chase it on their own.

Hence why, for the continuation of their dream, it becomes vital to have their partner's approval. They just don't see the point in going on alone. Losing the partnership means losing the reason to play altogether.

Now, of course this mindset is incompatible with blue lock. Nothing really new there. Reo was always framed as the delusional oddball for signing up for the program with the intended goal of using it to make Nagi the best, rather than himself. In other words, for trying to bend the system into accommodating his dream rather than accepting Ego's philosphy and playing by Ego's rules. And of course, that plan was bound to be put to the test when Reo&Nagi got the first taste of "despair".

The series posits that despair is the feeling you get when your dream doesn't measure up to reality and threatens to crash and burn. Ego posits that there's only one way out of it that doesn't involve self-destruction. And that's avoiding the trap of the so-called "dream doping".

But what does "engraving despair" even mean in simple terms? I think Ego's point is that after experiencing a crushing, frustrating defeat, some players (the normies, or those who don't go very far) simply think "next time we'll win" without putting any active energy into changing their playstyle and rebuilding it anew to face the growing challenges and "devour" them along the way.

Think of Barou, and how he managed to come back after Isagi and Nagi made him effectively useless in the field. What Barou did was evolving into someone even more chaotic and unpredictable, and devouring them right back. Barou himself cites the despair he felt during that match as the catalyst of his growth and winning goal. In other words, instead of dream doping, Barou adapted and survived in a battlefield that would've otherwise left him in the dust.

But not every player has the presence of mind to pick themselves back up as the match is still unfolding, and when the defeats rolls around, they fold under the weight of that despair. We see this in action. When Sae evolves so rapidly in Spain and eats Rin for breakfast during their 1v1, Rin's reaction to despair is dream doping (at least at first). So is Reo's when he loses to team white. Faced with opponents that had an explosive soccer growth, they struggle to keep pace, and then refuse to face reality and admit they also need to change their playstyle to keep staying in the game.

In Reo's case, he even goes as far as saying he doesn't have "the courage to let himself be destroyed and reborn." And that defeatist attitude is what leads team white to choose Chigiri instead. A real egoist doesn't think "I cannot do it" but instead keeps fighting tooth and nail until the end.

But Reo isn't there yet. If you analyse his body language at the end of the match, it's clear he expects a rejection before it even comes. Notice his posture

Having just had a taste of the limits of his skills against strong opponents, his reaction is resigned. His stance is defensive and closed off. His arms and legs are crossed, he's the only one on the ground, his head is hung in defeat and avoiding Nagi's eyes. Even the camera angle looks at him from above, like he's already doomed himself by deciding to stay on the ground, not picking himself up. Remember, it's Kunigami who lifts him from his collar. Reo doesn't have that strength alone.

This transition here also shows it well imo. True to fashion, he only shows a reaction when Nagi's directly addressing him. A part of him is still wishing for things between them to mend, to go back to how they were. There's hope written all over his face in that second panel, but the moment he hears what Nagi has to say, it abruptly morphs into pain.

Nagi echoes the words Reo wanted to tell him when they split, but to Reo it doesn't come across as the approval he was seeking. Rather, as the opposite: while Reo couldn't bring himself to encourage Nagi to go ahead in fear that Nagi wouldn't look back (that is, in fear Nagi wasn't as attached to him and their dream as Reo was)... Nagi says them easily enough. And to Reo, that's more crushing than the loss itself because he misconstructs it as indifference towards their promise.

It all circles back to Reo's insecurity. While Nagi just showed him he's able to change even without Reo as his partner, Reo is insecure about being able to do the same because he sees them as his biggest weapon, not anything inherent to Reo alone. Thus, once Nagi mines the foundation of Reo's confidence (their team up), any step Nagi takes in an effort to get them closer to the world cup in Reo's eyes is just another step away from it (and from him). Reo always assumed they'd crossed that finish line together, that he'd build Nagi up into the world's best striker. He wasn't prepared for a path where Nagi teams up with other people, leaving Reo powerless in the sidelines—their combo (and thus himself) a weapon that outlived its usefulness.

Much like Rin declaring that he'd lose his reason to play soccer if he can't chase his dream with Sae the way they had agreed to, Reo metaphorically sees his future as the "abnormal monster duo" crumbling away (notice the decaying effect on the square with his internal narration). Instead of taking steps towards ensuring their dream still has a chance of happening in the future, he sees it as already doomed.

The thing is, Reo isn't ready to give up on it, though. He doesn't want to. I could be wrong about this but him seeking out a clean cut from Nagi came across to me less as if he was blaming Nagi for leaving, and more like he seeked a fight as self-punishment for his thoughts during the match. In the previous chapter, he tried stifling Nagi's potential and then resented himself for it. Now, his internal narration is almost goading Nagi's anger. I think it's still up in the air whether he was lashing out because he was overwhelmed by his conflicting feelings or if he was seeking out Nagi's rejection because he hated himself for not measuring up to his own standards during the match. Maybe a bit of both.

Point is, Reo is refusing to face reality. By saying "then pick me", to cite Ego, he's denying that he was powerless in the match, and putting the entire brunt of his loss onto Nagi's shoulders for not choosing him. Simply put, he's relying on Nagi to open up the door to go further in blue lock instead of growing into the player that gets to choose who to pick.

And Nagi recognizes this and feels hurt by it, cause if Reo refuses to evolve, switch up tactics and try new things, he's also implicitly refusing to go further in the program. From Nagi's perspective, it's Reo that's breaking their promise by being unwilling to put in the effort to keep staying in the game. Remember, the consequence for failing blue lock is no longer being allowed to play professionally for Japan. If Reo quit putting up a fight, his dream would be over for good.

And the story tells us, the measure of a great striker is how they react to the challenges thrown in their path. Nagi's growth happens specifically because he doesn't tie his success to Reo, but knows when to throw in other variables and when cooperating with Reo makes them stronger. In Nagi's eyes, their dream is not reliant on their combo, but their combo is a weapon that makes their dream achievable. Whereas Reo based his plan to get the world cup around his partnership with Nagi, and let his own skills lay dormant and underdeveloped cause he always defaulted to passing to Nagi to score.

But when Nagi leaves the equation for good, Reo's forced to address where his own strengths really lie and how to weaponize them to avoid elimination. That's why the chameleon awakens for the first time. It gets roused by Reo's despair, which gets "engraved" only when it dawns on Reo that their combo is not an option anymore, and it's on Reo and Reo alone to fight his way back up, evolving and devouring rivals along the way. And much like Nagi's talent for trapping, Reo's stregth was also inherent, and never just reliant on them being a team.

[julianobungus]

Neomorphs are the 'peeled', natural versions of Xenomorphs, stripped of the psychosexual symbolism and design that permeates through them.

Spoilers for Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Okay so, my headcanon/idea is that the Neomorphs are essentially the 'natural', or unaltered form of the xenomorphs which haven't been too altered by David's experiments.

That's not to say they haven't been engineered by David already, but to me, they feel like mainline Xenomorphs but *without* the symbolically-applied sexualised aesthetic (giant penis head, mouth dripping with pre, oral r@pe of facehugging).

The Xenomorph's life-cycle *feels* sexual, with every facet of it being akin to rape and reproduction... but the neomorph lifecycle doesn't come off as that; it's much less complex, being very cut-and-dry. Overall, it feels more focused on the organism's birth in a bloody, efficient way, rather than the Xenos' rigid reproduction plan and its quasi-sexual undertones.

I made a prior thread detailing my idea of the Xenomorphs' biomechanical design and sexualised aspects being a symbolic representation of David's repression, but brought to horrifying reality. The Xenomorph is the next step of the Alien's evolution, with David basically perfecting his creation: an animal that focuses on survival and procreation, but also kills all other life around it without judgement or abandon.

We can basically say that the Praetomorph (the 'Xenos' we see in Covenant) and the mainline Xenomorph are one in the same, with later iterations adopting the biomechanoid aesthetic of their grandfather, David 8.

Furthermore: The neomorph design was lifted from unused character designs from Prometheus, which would have included the 'Holloway Alien', or the 'Beluga-Xenomorph'. Much like the Neo, the Beluga-head was a pale white, non-mechanoid version of the Xeno, and was implied within the script (then titled Alien: Engineers) to be the natural, base form of the Xenomorph.

Carlos Huante, the original designer, intended for the monsters of Prometheus to stand in stark contrast to Giger's aesthetic, as the film canonically took place before the series: he wanted every creature to have a ghostly white visage, like a beluga swimming through the murky depths (paraphrased from him) - hence the albino, black-eyed look of the Engineers. As we can see, the Neomorph's design was influenced heavily by Huante's design of the Beluga-head - a creature intended to be the natural Xenomorph, free from genetic, specialised alteration for purposes of war or combat.

So, tl;dr The mainline Xenomorphs are symbolic stand-ins for David's sexual frustration and sociopathic tendencies/ideation, and the Neomorphs are the 'peeled' version of them; lacking those nuances and frustrations that their father would bestow to their brothers.

[amageish]

Thinking way too hard about the queer possibilities of X-Men ‘97

When X-Men ‘97 was first announced, I’ll admit I was kind of ambivelent to the entire project... It felt very nostalgia-focused and was just less interesting to me then an all-new X-Men cartoon that could do its own thing without being burdened with established canon...

...and then I listened to the X-Men 60 Uncanny Years event earlier this year and hearing the executive producer of the series discuss what the X-Men meant to him as a kid as a gay black man in Florida basically changed my mind about the entire project. Now I’m excited for it!

The X-Men are so fucking queer. Even ignoring the ways that the mutant metaphor have been used to discuss queer issues before queer issues could be discussed textually, Marvel’s merry mutants just have... so many queer members and even more when you expand the list to include sub-textual and intended queerness.

So, with all that in mind, I did a little thinking and decided to take some guesses about who could make for queer representation in '97... Let’s dive in!

Part One: The Comic Canon Gays

Let’s start with the characters who are explicitly no-subtext-required queer in the comic books themselves. These are a few of the characters Marvel uses in Pride events and generally parades around every June.

Northstar

Jean-Paul Beaubier may seem like the vanilla ice cream of this rainbow sundae, but there’s far more going on with this character then the “Marvel’s first explicitly gay superhero” title that he is so often boiled down to. A French-Canadian superstar athlete, he’s lived never being entirely sure if his skiing career success was a result of his talent or his mutant abilities.

While his depiction in X-Men The Animated Series just had him be painfully French-Canadian with an on-the-nose accent and French exclamations, there’s a mean catty gay under the surface that is just waiting to be unleashed. They could also adapt his famous wedding arc, wherein he married his husband Kyle Jinadu...

Also he hates cops, so y’know... Maybe Marvel did nail the queer experience on their first try?

Iceman

Bobby Drake is arguably the most famous queer character at Marvel. A member of the original five X-Men, he was famously confirmed as gay when his teenage self was transported to the present and, with some unsolicited help from a teenage Jean Grey, questioned why his older self remaining closeted, even in a world that was (comparatively at least) accepting of queer desire.

In the original show, he showed unrequited interest in Polaris, as he had in the comics before his coming-out. This reboot could potentially give a more grounded and less fantastical take on coming-out then what he had in the comics... or maybe time travel will be involved again - who knows really!

Prodigy

David Allyene, aka Prodigy, is one of the most notable bi men at Marvel with one of the most distinctive coming-out stories. His mutant powers cause him to instantly learn things that other people know, hence the name Prodigy, and, through his powers, he also learned his own sexuality. How’s that for a crazy journey of self-discovery.

Prodigy is a newer character who did not appear in the original animated series at all, so there’s no continuity concerns there...

Mystique and Destiny

Destiny, also known as Irene Adler, met her lover Mystique when he was presenting as male and operating as a consulting detective in Victorian London.

Yeah uh. This is implying what you think it is.

The two of them have been lovers for centuries now, though both took other partners at different points during their relationship. Their love is something special though and together they raised Rogue as a child - as well as maybe sired Nightcrawler together? That was once intended to be Nightcrawler’s origin, but it was famously scrapped due to Marvel editorial not wanting to depict a child that is a product of a queer relationship at the time... but now this November a new comic will explore the “true” origin of Nightcrawler, so maybe Mystique/Destiny having a biological child is back on the table!

Mystique was, of course, in the original series. I’m not sure the actual odds of her relationship with Irene being acknowledged in ‘97 - partially just because I imagine Marvel would be concerned about backlash to queer villains... but also they’re adorable and good to me so I’d like them!

Captain Britain and Askani

Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers are two incredibly complicated characters to summarize. Rachel is the time-displaced daughter of Scott and Jean from a hypothetical alternate feature, while Betsy Braddock spent like 30 years of her publication history trapped in the body of Kwannon, a Japanese assassin. While these two characters are some of Marvel’s most actively in-your-face unquestionably queer characters - the last Betsy story had a surprising amount of implied sex for only five issues - they’ve never really had a chance to shine in a multimedia way (well, at least not with Betsy in her own body and not being merged with Kwannon).

In the original show, Rachel cameoed briefly as a prisoner of Apocalypse while Pyslocke appeared without being named - assumedly they didn’t want to bother explaining the body-swap storyline. Personally, if they were to be in the show, I’d suggest that Betsy should be introduced as having inherited her brother’s title of Captain Britain, with Pyslocke of the original show being revealed to have been Kwannon in her own body all along...

Part Two: The New Mutants

There’s so many queer New Mutants that I’m just giving them their own category here... plus, with Sunspot being in the main cast, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the time got (Sun)spotlighted as well!

Note that the sapphics of the first generation of New Mutants can also be mixed and matched when it comes to shipping. I present them based on the pairings that are currently canon/teased in the present comics, but Dani/Xuan, Xuan/Kitty, Kitty/Rahcel, etc. are all valid too and could be within the cards for the show.

Karma & Galura

The first explicit lesbian of the X-Men line, Xuân Cao Mạnh is a refugee of the Vietnam Boat Crisis, a thing which makes no sense when you consider that she is still canonically like 20-something years old in 2023. Her coming-out was a much lower-key affair then Jean-Paul’s, with her friends just casually running into her at the Exploding Person festival (i.e., Burning Man) with a shaved pink haircut and already travelling with her two “girlfriends”.

After the musical festival, she proceeded to fall in love with her roommate Kitty Pryde and then her co-worker Dani Moonstar, both of which were never (textually) requited. Recently, she’s started dating the winged mutant Galura and finally gotten to do stuff like “kiss a woman on-panel regularly” after two decades of being a lesbian denied a girlfriend...

She has cameoed in X-Men ‘92-related media with a design that is truly terrible IMO, but I think she could be rebooted and appear in this series in her full glory... especially after the New Mutants movie left her out entirely!

Mirage and Wolfsbane

Introduced in the original New Mutants run, Dani Moonstar and Rahne Sinclair share a unique telepathic connection, helpfully described as them being “soul-mates.” The Comic Book Code prohibited depictions of queer people, but uh. This first run is incredibly not subtle, even as Rahne nominally has interest her male teammate Cannonball.

Unfortunately, post-Claremont, their relationship was more or less abandoned for a few decades (coinciding with a massive downward spiral in Rahne content in general) climaxing with Rahne being killed off entirely in an allegory for transphobic violence... Thankfully, she recovered from her death and has recently been written by a non-binary author and now a trans author, both of whom have leaned back into the idea that these “soul-mates” may, in fact, have romantic feelings for each other.

Oh, also they were explicitly gay in the movie. So. Good for them for that!

Magik and Shadowkat

Another classic pair of X-Men “roommates,” Illyana Rasputina and Kate Pryde are another Claremont-created “soul-mate” duo - albeit without the telepathic bond. After decades of queer-coding, both were able to do queer-adjacent things explicitly for the first time in the Krakoa era, with Illyana asking a group of people of various gender presentations to make out with her and Kate kissing a tattoo artist who looks suspiciously like her bestie on-panel.

Pryde famously lost the spot of “Teen X-Men PoV character” to Jubilee in the show, but maybe X-Men ‘97 could give her a second chance... plus Illyana is one of the most popular X-Men characters not given a full spotlight in the original show, in spite of her more or less being an A-list X-Men in 2023. I don’t know if Marvel is brave enough to make this one canon, but I do think these two are two of the most obviously missing characters from the ‘97 line-up.

Escapade

Shela Sexton, aka Escapade, is a transgender sapphic who debuted in Marvel Pride last year and has since then had a starring role in the most recent New Mutants series. She has the incredibly unique power of the ability to “steal” things from people - including everything from stealing physical objects like their wallet to stealing abstract concepts like their emotional or physical state. Her character also generally has embodied the intersectional approach to mutant identity which has become more and more prevalent in the modern era - her mutant identity and trans identity are both important to her character, but neither are allegories for the other.

I think she’s probably too new to be added to the X-Men ‘97 cast pragmatically, but maybe they could have snuck in a cameo at the last minute? Idk. I figured I’d include her on the list.

Part Three: Let’s Get Wild!

Okay. Fuck it. Let’s talk about some comic book justifications that could be used to queer up the actual main cast from the original classic X-Men The Animated Series.

Jubilee

Jubilation Lee, the teen PoV lead of the X-Men, has been written as queer a handful of times, but never explicitly in 616. Most notably, she was gay in an AU Runaways story (written by N.D. Stevenson), where she dated a bisexual version of Pixie as well as an ice-powered sapphic named Frostbite. Monet also had a crush on her in the X-Men ‘92 animation-inspired comic book series. In terms of 616 content, her relationship with Laura Kinney has often been read in a sapphic way, especially in Liu’s X-23 series where Laura notably breaks up with her boyfriend only for Jubilee to be waiting back at her apartment to go out with her.

Storm

Ororo Munroe, aka Storm, famously has had a subtextual Sapphic fling with the bundle of chaos that is Yukio. They two met for the first time when Ororo went to Japan and their time together was almost immediately followed by her famous punk Storm era, which is very queer when you consider that context. Yukio was also later made explicitly queer in Fox’s Deadpool 2 movie, though the movie character doesn’t share much of the personality and thrill-seeking antics of her comic book counterpart...

Storm is the central protagonist of the original Claremont Uncanny X-Men and will be central to the ‘97 series as well. It’d be really bold to confirm her as queer, but I’d say this is the kind of move that would be worth it if they want this to stand out among X-Men adaptations.

Wolverine, Phoenix, and Cyclops

Finally, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, and Logan were implied to have been in a poly relationship throughout most of the Krakoa era - though they have fallen on hard times recently in the run-up to Fall of X.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that Marvel corporate would approve this being textual... but I’m willing to be proven wrong, I guess!

WHEW. Okay. That’s my list. This is nowhere near definitive of course - I didn’t discuss Shatterstar’s bisexuality, Deadpool’s pansexuality, Gwenpool’s aroace identity, et al - but also basically every X-Men character is either textually queer or could be justified as being queer based on comic book lore. This entire brand has a queer poly energy that even the straightest writers weren’t able to fully shake off of it... so, while this is my list, they could really do anything they wanted (and that Mickey Mouse lets them do, at least)... We’ll see what happens!

[PS: In light of the strike and the general shitty way that megacorporations in entertainment have been treating their workers for years now, I’d be remissed if I made this post and didn’t encourage people to consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund as well!]

[amazing-spider-man-book-club]

The Amazing Spider-Man #5

Published: October 1963

Containing: "Marked for Destruction by Doctor Doom!"

Synopsis: Doctor Doom hides away in NYC in an effort to use Spider-Man as a means to strike the Fantastic Four, and Flash Thompson is captured in Peter's place forcing the latter to take action.

Read alongside us here:

@frankendykes-monster : I had to look up if spiders actually communicated through radio waves or whatever given that Doctor Doom is the second villain in the series to now contact Spider-Man through frequencies attuned to spiders. I did find out that spiders can communicate through every available means you'd assume from animals aside from radio waves, probably a predictable end but whatever I needed to see if it was a real thing.

The Amazing Spider-Man has now been bumped up to monthly publication status, with #4 having been released in September of 1963. It's a quick way of realizing that the character was almost immediately becoming the crown jewel in Marvel's line-up, and frankly what a great issue to celebrate this milestone. You can tell we've settled into a groove given that all of zero new characters are introduced here, but we do get Flash Thompson and Liz Allen *and* Betty Brant as fully named cast members with their respective relationships to Peter also having been settled in; though I think it might be some time before Liz and Betty realize that they're romantic rivals. I love the subtle dichotomy between Peter and Spider-Man; Peter figures it would be cool to let Doctor Doom just kill Flash but knows he can't stand aside, more and more subtle hints at the character's eventual emotional breakthrough near the end of this run.

Something funny to me is that Jameson admits so casually that he's in the news business for money which is the reason for nonstop Spider-Man coverage. Funny because even in-story, Spider-Man is the little guy, surely The Fantastic Four or The Hulk are more newsworthy items. A reasonable critique on my part given they didn't *have* to make Spider-Man have three crossovers with that team so far.

This isn't a fan blog for the Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four run so not much to cover with Doctor Doom beyond him being the definitive comic book supervillain. Everything about him is marvelous and on display here. It's interesting that this issue takes place immediately after Fantastic Four #17 (Ditko was a noted comics reader, Kirby wasn't, hence when the latter handles Spider-Man in other titles, Peter just shows up disregarding anything actually happening in this series), but Lee doesn't leave a little editorial note pointing readers to that issue. Doom being able to whip up multiple new lairs in NYC is beyond hilarious to me, he's easily the most stereotypical character Peter has had to face so far but that's probably more than anything a showcase of how low the relative stakes have been so far. Remember when The Vulture was just hiding out in a barn planning petty thefts? Doom has a right to gloat about his prowess on multiple levels given that that's what we've seen so far.

One thing I'm not keen on is that we've fully entered an era where Spider-Man's webbing can do things just because an action scene calls for it, like here where Peter can make web balls that break open that reveal thicker webbing inside or creating huge shields to defend against ice attacks. There's a general rule of thumb on Spider-Man does with webs and this goes far beyond that, a rare instance of this reminding us that this is still the earliest portrayal of the character and not everything stuck (no pun intended).

This is our first issue where Spider-Man's suit is finally colored blue instead of using a soft purple as the secondary color. Lee's narration has started to enter that self-aware era that people constantly associate with him, and while it by no means detracts from the issue I can't say I'm a huge fan of the fourth wall breaking by highlighting that there may be better comics out there or apologizing for taking so long to get to the final fight, for example, but I digress.

@duel1971 : This story pits Peter against Doctor Doom, arch-nemesis of the Fantastic Four. The FF themselves don’t appear for more than a cameo, allowing the story to focus on the conflict between Doom and Spider-Man. In typical bombastic fashion, the narration boasts that the fight between Spidey and Doom will be the “gol-dangest, ding-bustedest, rip-snortin’est super-characters fight you’ve ever seen!” I don’t know about all that, but the fight is in fact really cool, featuring some innovative panel layouts by Ditko and creative use of Peter’s webbing.

I love Doctor Doom but the moments in this issue that really stuck with me all involved ASM regulars. Liz Allan, who Peter struck out with previously, speculates that Spider-Man is a dreamboat under his mask. J Jonah Jameson admits explicitly that his feud with Spider-Man is a tactic to sell more newspapers and magazines, revealing how hollow he is beneath his bluster. And, most notably, Flash Thompson dresses up as Spider-Man to try and prank Peter and ends up getting kidnapped by Doctor Doom.

Doppelganger Spider-Men are a recurring theme by now, and putting Flash in the role is interesting to me given how he would develop in later years under different writers. In terms of this story, however, we just get to laugh at the bully’s expense for once, and Peter has a devilish moment where he considers just leaving Flash to die. He does, in fact, forget to actually save Flash at the end after defeating Doom, leading to a very funny scene where Ben Grimm threatens to beat him up after the Fantastic Four find him cowering in the wrecked lab.

[teawaffles]

yuumori ch76 [end of part 1]

Now on: Cubari / Mangadex

Thank you for waiting! And that wraps up Part 1 of Moriarty the Patriot (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)

Some thoughts on the new chapter + a summary of the new announcements under the cut:

Some thoughts:

It’s the veterans (Jack, John, Moran) who were getting all sentimental about the battle in Vermissa

Mycroft was probably trying to play it cool and keep up appearances back then, when Miss Hudson mentioned him grieving…

Ohhh Moran... Just wanted to offer the view that his outburst there does reveal a certain trust on his part that he can show emotional vulnerability to William, and not be pushed away for that

Have a feeling that Moran has indeed had some terrible experiences with Albert’s cooking, hence his apprehension 🤔 (He’s not dumb!)

Also have a feeling that despite Albert’s apparent inability to cook, he was able to learn this one dish at least, especially since it was Jack who taught him the recipe (≧∀≦) (Something akin to Yor from Spy x Family and her stew maybe?)

Can’t get over Albert’s face when it was time to burn the sugar xD

So many callbacks to the start of the series: fire as a means to bring joy instead, Albert sharing baked goods with William again, William making tea for Louis as he reads the papers (the inverse of how they usually interacted at the start)…

The last page has the 7 doves we first saw in Ch57! And they’re all flying in the same direction now ☺️

Summary of new announcements

The light novels will be turned into a manga drawn by Miyoshi-sensei herself! Titled Moriarty the Patriot -The Remains-, the first chapter will debut in the April 2023 issue of Jump S.Q. — which is slated to be published on 3 March 2023 (JST). A plot summary was given in Ch76.

Part 2 of the main series will commence after the novel manga finishes its serialisation in Jump S.Q.

More information will be provided in the next issue(s) of Jump S.Q.

📆 Summary of projected timeline

February: V19 released

March: Moriarty the Patriot -The Remains- begins serialisation

(Once the novel manga is complete): Part 2 begins serialisation

What’ll happen now?

I’m working on my versions of Ch57-59, and am aiming to release them by the end of December (hopefully!). I also intend to work on the new manga adaptation as we wait for Part 2^^

[xray-vex]

THIS IS HAPPENING!

If you love Edward Teach of the iconic hit series Our Flag Means Death, read on!

@xray_vex, @amzbailey, and @politestmenace (on Twitter) present:

THE A to Z of ED TEACH CHARITY ZINE PROJECT (latest update: 8th August 2023)

The A to Z of Ed Teach is a charity digital zine project inviting authors and artists OF ALL LEVELS AND STYLES to submit art and short written works using assigned prompts based on letters of the alphabet.

Each participant will be assigned a letter/word, and will create an Edward Teach-themed piece based on that prompt. The projects will be arranged in alphabetical order, hence the title "The A to Z of Ed Teach"!

Patrons will be able to “purchase” the zine(s) by donating to an LGBTQ+ charity and sending a screen shot of their donation receipt to the zine team; they will be given a link to download the zine when it's finished!

If you've been intimidated by larger group projects, please consider this one! This is intended as a FUN, low-stress, low-pressure project to raise money for LGBTQ+ charities AND to help keep us going til OFMD Season 2!

For more details, visit our main project site HERE , follow the hashtag #AtoZofEdTeachZine , and help share this project -- THANK YOU FROM ALL OF US! LET'S DO THIS!!

[vani-candy]

epic title reveal!!!! i've decided to call my webcomic series Swan's Treasure going forward! my fellow Fang enjoyers will probably get the title's meaning but there's a little bit more to it that will be revealed in time, truthfully i'm a little bad at titling things hence why so many of my doodle filenames are keysmashes so i had to get my brain gears turning for this one, but i'm happy with it!

Truthfully, i didn't expect to still be making fancomics of these two today; I expected to drop Cheery Picnic and then just draw little fanart here and there from that point forward. Drawing OC x canon has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, but i was always used to myself or others being bullied or harassed and called "cringe" for making it, so i was turned away from creating such content for many years. However, seeing all the support and positive feedback people gave me on Cheery Picnic and seeing so many people liking Mitty's character inspired me to keep going!

I'm still floored by the support people give me, but it genuinely makes me happy to see people loving Mitty and wanting to see more of her and Fang's story. (Especially cause my sad brain expected people to dislike her oops.) That's why I felt it necessary to finally give this little series an overall title; it's grown far beyond my expectations and I intend to keep working on it especially after the game's full release! Of course, another motivator for me is the endless brainrot I have HAHAHA

I didn't quite mean to get sappy on main, but I nonetheless want to thank you all for your support so far. As I always say, thank you for enjoying my self-indulgent art and comics, it means the world to me!

[boyfridged]

What's your opinion on each of the members of the bats? Do you think that they're becoming too saturated and that the new additions serve no purpose in furthering the plotline?

Also, do you think DC should have ended Robin altogether with Jason's death?

to start with the last question first: it's a difficult one, because in a way, you are asking if dc should have ended batman with jason's death. robin is such an inseparable part of the title. barr once said: "i'm convinced robin is a major reason why the batman strip has had such longevity” and he was right. it's impossible to imagine the series to keep going without robin long-term, which is what makes the reasoning behind killing off jason (which was originally supposed to remove robin from the narrative altogether) so imprudent.

on the other hand, i do hate how the re-introduction of the mantle was handled. there definitely should be a longer gap in-between jason and whoever was to be the 3rd robin. it might seem contrary to what i just said about robin’s presence being crucial, but it could work, because there's a sort of presence in absence, a whole set of hauntings that occur anyway, the memory of jason so tangible that it pervaded the continuation even with new characters occupying this space in the narrative. and i have learned to appreciate the shift in mood brought by jason's death (even if i'm still a firm believer he should have simply never been killed off), so it could be interesting to push this notion of gotham becoming darker and bruce never quite recovering even further.

i actually have a duke-centric wip about that-- tldr: bruce does not take tim as a robin, too consumed grief and not willing to take responsibility for another child; steph briefly tries to take the mantle, but bruce fires her even earlier; however, robin remains a symbol of hope, and we are robin still happens. since batman stopped investigating in the daylight and reverted to a status of an urban legend, duke becomes a self-made daylight protector of gotham.

but, as you can notice in that scenario, i presume that without robin bruce would get... sidelined in his own story, in a way. which i don't think would be necessarily a bad move, because i'd love it if dc let such huge changes to happen. but i do acknowledge that it's just not realistic for this medium/franchise. batman has to remain teh centre, and robin has to be there; i'm not sure a mere spectre would be enough in the end.

so hm. my answer is: no, robin should not end with jason's death, but there should be much more struggle with the mantle and its place in the narrative later on...

re: your first question(s), this is not a precise answer either, but i mostly agree. i reckon rn there are two main issues with the bats: 1. there are simply too many of them 2. and whenever dc actually makes an effort to acknowledge them all, they do it by putting them into a nuclear family like dynamics. additionally, they all get flattened down and there’s no exploration of individual relationships between them whatsoever; everyone needs a quip, a niche, which is the opposite of what they should be as a group; their skillset is intended to be strikingly similar.

moreover, i am (embarrassingly) very conservative when it comes to general themes of batman, and i feel like most of the contemporary batfam characters are way too removed from them, hence offering very little contribution to the mythos. because of that it also seems like dc (and fans) are playing with dolls rather than engaging with storytelling or the kind of social/political commentary that used to be much more prominent decades ago... which also, in consequence, means that (as you said), there's no progress in the plot; and i do not even expect anything radical, because this type of storytelling will probably always rely on preserving a certain status quo... but i'm a firm believer so much could be done at least in the domain of jurisprudence, for example- and it will not happen because it's hard to conduct long-term narrative changes when there's a whole crowd you have to accommodate.

also, each of these characters means there’s less narrative space for civilians and (non-villainous) opposition to bruce.

i will not get into detail about each of bats because it would take me forever and i'm not sure how broad your question is (do you mean only characters who work closer with bruce or every character associated with the symbol?) but if you're curious about particular ones, feel free to ask:)

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

so… ao3 year in review, huh! this was a good year for me for writing, mcyt content really sparked my brain and i wrote FAR more than i had in the last few years. this post is gonna be mostly mcyt fic, hence why it’s here, but there’s a bit of blaseball left too.

i found the photo of the friend that i was looking for-written for the boston flowers fic exchange commemorating the return of blaseball (heh….), fluff about the flowers being friends and sharing photographs

space’s blaseball poetry collection-exactly what it says on the tin! i joined my school’s poetry club last fall and wrote a lot of poetry about blaseball in that time. (i’ve written a bit of mcyt poetry too, maybe i’ll post that someday)

stop me if you’ve heard this all before-empires s2 cannon divergence where pix is the only survivor of the other universe blood sausage was in and he gets brought to season 2. i swear to god this will be done in the new year, i promise.

would you mind if i tried to take a pass at it?-my longest fic to date and the fic i made this account for in the first place so i could post shipping and people wouldn’t be weird. you all should thank wither husbands for my presence in your life (/j)

just put your sweet lips on my lips-really living up to my ao3 username on this one with a second fluffy wither husbands fic, this time with an established relationship!

i still taste you on my lips, lovely bitter water-i intended for this to be SLIGHTLY cannon divergent and then realized i’d made up an entire piece of empires lore in my head by accident. read this one it’s good.

but when it comes to the end, you’re just the same as them-clock duo are messy as hell and i love that for them. if you could bash someone’s head in with a clock in minecraft impulse would’ve made this fic cannon by now.

men are fools, oh, men are frail-one of my favorites this year about martyn, the end of liml, and misleading prizes. very excited to write more treebark for the title exchange.

she says i’m spread thin, but baby, i’m just restless-deceit had me by a chokehold for a month and i still really like this HOWEVER legundo follows me on tumblr and vaguely implied in his end of the year stream that he reads at least some fanfiction. terrifying.

never forget number 46-another one of my favorites this year, partially because it’s so deeply self indulgent and partially cause it’s GOOD. read my blaseball au even if you don’t know anything about blaseball come closer i promise.

how to rest-the first in the perpetuity/secret life crossover series inspired by @wooshofficial and @betweenlands ‘s ghost fics that wasn’t supposed to become a series. lmao. the third installment will be here shortly.

it’s not something that you put to bed-the second installment in this series and the last of my top 3 fics this year. something about jimmy and chrys’ personalities were so fun to write together and allowed me to play in a very interesting space with him.

so what’s in store for next year? probably a lot of stuff that i don’t know of yet! but definitely on the docket:

blaseball winter exchange fic (will be going on main ao3 and blaseball side blog if you’re interested)

whatever fic(s) i write for treebark title swap (hoping to write at least two!)

second chapter of “stop me” i SWEAR

more blaseball au! i’ve got so many ideas floating around :)

and a million other things i’ve got ideas for that may or may not see the light of day, who knows!

happy new year, everyone!

[vdelta]

we've been mutuals for a while but i know nothing about you so like, your sona character, can you tell us a little about them? i remember seeing a ref posted once a while ago but not much else haha

oh!! i will absolutely take any opportunity to talk about My Boyn't but talking about them requires context involving the world they exist in so i'll take the opportunity to talk about that as well. you will regret this

so my Project™ (because everyone on tumblr has a Project™, no?) is a hypothetical series of video games that i intend on making some time in the near future revolving around a galaxy known as veritia (hence the title, veritian legends). the first of these games stars the character i've kinda adopted as my sona, varent:

(↑ this is the ref anon was talking about, btw)

varent's whole deal that gets them the main character schtick (and leads into the plot of their first adventure) is that they're picked by the queen of the gods to go after these cool relics that she created at some point, mainly because the main antagonists (team working for the goddess of the ether, basically the physical manifestation of chaos) are trying to get the crystal artifacts first for their own nefarious purposes

as for what they're like as a person, that's kinda touched on in the lil bio thing — they're a good kid at heart, they just happen to put up the front of a jackass most of the time (at least in the beginning). a lot of their time is spent tinkering with stuff in their cousin's workshop (which is also where they work up until their first quest starts), taking part in fighting tournaments around their home world of zolara, and generally just being a lil weirdo

sorry a lot of that was more worldbuilding than character stuff but i wasn't really sure what to touch on beyond elaborating on the stuff from the refsheet lol

[originalleftist]

Wheel of Time Theory/Headcannon (Spoilers):

So, if you know The Wheel of Time series, a big part of the premise is basically that time is cyclical (hence the title), with ages and events recurring, and people being reincarnated, in slightly different forms each time around. And the setting has a chosen one, known by the title of the Dragon, who's role is to be reborn again and again to fight against the Shadow, but who also ends up causing the apocalypse. Save the world and break it, etc. And while the series is mostly epic fantasy, it's also heavily implied that it is the far, far future of our modern world (or the past, I suppose, given the aforementioned cycle).

Accordingly, the series draws on (or, less charitably, appropriates) quite a lot of different inspirations from both different mythologies and actual history, but there's one connection, as someone who's done a fair amount of amateur research on this part of history, that caught my attention. I honestly don't know if Robert Jordan ever intended it, but it fits, at least to me. Probably someone has come up with this before, but if they have I don't recall seeing it, so here goes:

Sir Francis Drake was an incarnation of the Dragon.

If you've been living under a rock for the last five centuries or so and don't know who Sir Francis Drake is, he was an English sailor and slave trader (yeah, not exactly a heroic figure, but the Dragon isn't always either) who made a career shift to pirate/privateer (basically a state-sponsored pirate). But the thing is, he was basically THE pirate. The one who pirated on such a scale that he basically changed the course of global history, and set the standard for every pirate (or at least every Anglo pirate) afterward. He led the first English expedition to circumnavigate the world (and the first commander ever to survive the voyager). The treasure he plundered on the way basically single-handedly paid off England's debt, with treasure to spare. Then he went on to help lead the fight against the Spanish Armada, and basically save England from invasion. He is, arguably, one of the people most responsible for the existence of the British Empire, and the shape of the modern world as we know it.

He came at the transition from one age to another (Middle Ages to modern), and he remade the world- though whether for the better or worse is debatable.

But the real kicker? His name, Drake, refers to a mythical creature much like a dragon. And the name the Spanish gave him? El Draque- literally, "The Dragon".

(Side note: He was even red-haired like Rand Al Thor).

So yeah, within the Wheel of Time universe, it makes considerable sense for Drake to have been exactly what his name suggests.

Edit: I can't believe I left this out, but there is actually a legend that Drake' will return whenever England is in danger's drum will sound whenever England is in danger, and that Drake will rise from the dead to save England.

[tavyliasin]

 Of Living, Loving, and the Strangest of Bedfellows - A Tav's Guide to Fucking Across Faerun: Sordid Coast Edition (ATG)

Trying something new, scheduling full fic chapter drops on Tumblr throughout this month! They'll drop around the same time every day, and enable those without AO3 to read the full works. So we're starting with my ongoing series, which is usually shortened to ATG in the titles so that's how you'll see it referred to from here on in! The chapters will also all be reblogged on my side blog @atavsguide for anyone who wants an easy way to find the posts again!

----- General Notes About ATG, Tav, and The Story Overall

Who is the Tav in this Fic?

Named in the first chapter as "Tavylia Rugala", this was my first concept for a Tav who would be able to be known as Tav but with a little of her own unique identity. One which I promptly adopted as my Psuedonym. By the time we get to later chapters, I no longer refer to her as Tavylia, and just call her Tav, as Tavylia has become more my identity than hers, and I do not consider her to be a self-insert. Tav is a cis woman, a high elf (wood elf) Rogue with the Urchin background. Her parents were former adventurers, one leaving when she was very young and the other died of sickness before she was 10. Because Rogues with living parents is weird, and it makes for an interesting enough start, and gives her reasons for her personality.

More details follow!

------------ So, Why The Long Title?

When I started, it seemed fun, fairly accurate to the vibe I'm going for, and ATG (A Tav's Guide) is a nice little shortening of it.

What's the Plot?

The premise is following the game, approximately, with a few changes to spice it up or allow for a parallel story. There's a lot in the game to expand on, and to add flavour to. The idea really came from the amount of options there are to have sexual encounters in the game, and how that can be a premise for a character who is interested in experiencing all of this to actually do so in a believable way to their personality. Hence, ATG's Tav. She's bold, maybe a little too bold for her own good, but having lead a hard life her philosophy is one of living in the moment, taking what pleasures she can get in life. Love and Lust are separate entities to her, she is quite happy to have a meaningful relationship, but doesn't need one to have good sex. And with the full agreement and ongoing communication with a romantic partner, she is confident indulging in sexual endeavours outside of the relationship, or even having a full polyamorous relationship if the context is right. So we will have the canon sex scenes, along with a few extras that I felt we were cheated out of (Raphael, please, just let me smooch the old devil). The main romance is Astarion, there will be poly involvement with Halsin, and I will try to cover every canon sex scene available in that setup along with some extras and canon-divergent relationship building amongst the characters.

How Long Will ATG Be?

Currently I am at 13 main chapters, and in Act 3 of the story. I think we can go to around 20 chapters to cover the pairings and story beats I intended, with a few fun spinoffs and side stories.

AMA!

Ask me anything about ATG, Tav, the pairings, characters, story, or anything else around the fic in the comments below~ I'll read and respond to all of them.

[mjohnso]

Quarterly Debut Review: Q1 2023

Quarterly Debut Reviews are a new supplementary series to my biannual Periodic Rookie Group Reports, which as the title indicates will be published quarterly. Each installment will cover three rookie groups that debuted over the past three months, one from each month. For this first installment, I covered MAVE: (January), HAWW (February), and Delight (March).

As always, a full list of rookie groups that have debuted thus far in 2023 is available here: 2023 Rookie Groups Debuts

January / MAVE: Debut: January 5, 2023 Debut Song: “Pandora”

As with the debut of every virtual idol group, MAVE:’s debut was greeted with what I refer to as The Question: “Will they eventually render human idols obsolete and thereby replace them?” Treating it as a simple yes/no question, I would say no, probably not. But if I consider this a more open-ended question, I would have a different answer arguing that this is the wrong question to be asking. That is, rather than asking if they will replace idols, it is more salient to ask if Metaverse Entertainment even intends to.

At least in the case of Kakao Entertainment, which partnered with Metaverse Entertainment (itself a subsidiary of the gaming company Netmarble F&C) to create the group, I would say no. Instead, I suspect their interest in creating a virtual idol group stems from the same reason they set about acquiring SM Entertainment earlier this year. Much as the that acquisition of gives them access to SM’s stable of talent to feature in original content for Kakao branded platforms and apps, so can the same be said about virtual idols like MAVE:. Kakao has already given us an idea of how this might look with the group. A month after their debut, they announced a MAVE webtoon that would be published through Kakao Webtoon and Kakao Page.

This is not the extent of their plans for a group like MAVE. It is likely they will take a page from Japanese VTubers like Kizuna Ai or anime idols from media mix projects, whose status as fictional characters allows them to appear across a range of properties. This is all to say that it would not be surprising if in the future MAVE: branches out into television shows and video games, all delivered through Kakao’s suite of apps.

February / HAWW Debut: February 23, 2023 Debut Song: “How Are You”

Even as the rest of the industry has made strides toward recovering from the shock of the pandemic, boy group debuts have remained a stubborn exception. Their numbers dropped 39% from 2019 to 2021, slipping to a low of 22 groups total for 2021 and 2022. Hence why the debut of every new boy group in 2023 takes on such outsized importance. Each holds the possibility that they will be the one to herald or mark the reversal of this downward trend.

Unfortunately, HAWW is no such herald. Their debut was not part of a wave as much as a trickle; they were the only boy group to debut in February. They were the fifth boy group to debut in 2023 out of a total of seven boy groups that debuted during the first quarter of the year. For the sake of comparison, eleven girl groups debuted in total over the first quarter, with four girl groups debuting in February alone.

Yet of all the few boy groups that have debuted thus far, HAWW is the perfect group to offer as a chaser to such dour news. Casting the members as what amounts to emotional support k-pop boys, the group describes themselves as a “healing group” that seeks to soothe listeners through their music. Their debut song, “How Are You” is very much in service to this goal. Lyrically, it addresses a significant other asking how their day went, although it keeps the identity of said significant other vague. It could be anyone, including the listener, which is the point. Their music is not meant for just a small group or those willing to buy into their lore or multi-month debut rollout but for everyone.

March / Delight Debut: March 31, 2023 Debut Song: “Neverland”

Condolences to that YouTuber commenter who pleaded with Rainbow E&M to please stop debuting new groups—three years on, they show no indication of stopping soon. This is because the groups under the Future Idol Asia umbrella are not being debuted and promoted as traditional girl groups. Their existence is purely taxonomic. Groups are the most efficient way to organize and present the greatest number of trainees at the Future Idol Asia showcase, the centerpiece of the Future Idol Asia project (For more about the Future Idol Asia project, see Periodic Rookie Groups Report No. 20).

Understanding this is the nature of the Future Idol Asia groups explains the aesthetic choices of these groups, like their budget music videos. As it would not make financial sense to sink money into expensive music videos with elaborate sets or effects for temporary groups, they tend to recycle the same formula: photo rental studio + choreography version inter-cut with close-up shots + maximum two outfit changes.

That applies to the naming conventions for the groups well. Their names tend towards the unoriginal and SEO-averse. Many of the Future Idol Asia groups share their names with the title of at least one k-pop song (Memoria and “Memoria,” Black Rose and “Black Rose,” and Dream Girl and “Dream Girl” and “Dream Girls”). In this respect, Delight is an especially unfortunate choice for a group. In 2013, another girl group debuted with that same name, and despite disbanding in 2015, still crowds them out of YouTube search results. Key and Rolling Quartz have released songs titled “Delight,” while CSR, Baekhyun, and Daesung have released albums with that name. Meanwhile, the name of SF9’s 2022 tour was Live Fantasy #4 [Delight]. This does raise the question of why bother naming the groups at all, although I suspect it is partly because Delight sounds better than Group #22. It may also have something to do with the fact that while Rainbow E&M is not chiefly marketing to a general audience, they are trying to sell these trainees to outside agencies. Names decrease the chances that an agency will confuse one group for, but also individuates them, clearly dividing one group from another.

[superthatguy62]

Final Fantasy III Followups

Square-Enix is no stranger to development shifts and changes. Sometimes their games can influence other games; The nature of game development means that a concept or idea that went unused in one game can be reworked into another. And then, of course, there are games that include key staff members on them. Thus, it is unsurprising that there are numerous games that can be considered follows ups to certain Final Fantasy games. For example: Final Fantasy III has:

Final Fantasy IV

The most clear case is Final Fantasy IV as the second sequel to III, IV’s primary form of influence is in its jobs; Most of which were in III in some fashion and those that were different would grow into their “traditional” forms here. Dragoon, Bard and Summoner, are some of the jobs introduced in the previous game

Interestingly: FFV is probably the clear cut case for a game that would be influenced by III... but I have yet to see interviews that actually state that specifically. It clearly is, what with the return of the job system, some of the job designs, such as Krile’s White Mage getup being inspired by the Devout. Heck Bartz’s Blue Mage outfit is reused from Dark Knight’s intended design. But at the time of this writing, I haven’t seen an interview directly confirming it.

Secret of Mana

And speaking of FFIV

One that may not be as expected is Secret of Mana: The second in the Mana/”Seiken Densetsu” series. Released for the SNES, it was the first game in the aforementioned series to be disconnected from Final Fantasy, as the first game was titled “Final Fantasy Gaiden: Seiken Densetsu” (or “Final Fantasy Adventure” in the west).

But not entirely.

Secret of Mana was originally intended to be Final Fantasy IV before blooming into its own project: a massive game targeting the SNES’ CD add-on (which ended up getting canned). Eventually however, the project got split into two different projects: The game’s code name and some of its ideas were reused for Chrono Trigger, while the game itself was condensed and eventually turned into Secret of Mana.

Hiromichi Tanaka, a key member of the original Final Fantasy III dev team who was also an executive producer and director of the remake, initially worked on FFIV, but when the project shifted, he went with the Mana team (hence him only having a “special thanks” credit in the final version of IV). Secret of Mana would also use the proposed battle system for the original SNES IV, being a seamless overhead system. Tanaka has said that Secret of Mana always felt like a sequel to III to him as a result. It should be noted that Koichi Ishii, the graphical artist of the original III was also heavily involved with Secret of Mana (and the Mana series in general).

Final Fantasy XI

And speaking of Tanaka and Ishii

Final Fantasy XI is an MMO based on the series (y’know, before That Other One). It is notable for being the first game since the original Final Fantasy III to have both Koichi Ishii and Hiromichi Tanaka involved with the Final Fantasy games, having worked on the Mana series in the meantime. Ishii in particular feels that XI is close to the view in his head of what he envisioned the Final Fantasy he wanted to make.

As for III, Tanaka credits it with being a major influence. In particular, the job system in XI is said to have been born out of a reflection of III’s job system and how to improve it. In an interview, Tanaka also acknowledges that FFIII and FFXI have similar “worldviews”, citing how they were originally most heavily involved with I-III as the reason. In a twist of recursive fate, he also reveals that an intention was to reuse models for the Final Fantasy III remake; While it didn’t pan out and new models needed to be made, the remake does still have a complete list of XI weapons in the code, presumably a remnant of this idea.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

And speaking of the FFIII remake

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light was the third Final Fantasy title produced under Tomoya Asano, but the first and last original one. More notable are the directors: Hiroaki Yabuta was a planner on both of the previous 3D remakes while Takashi Tokita is a co-director; Tokita has a long, storied history with SE, having worked on games like Live A Live, Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy Dimensions. For the focus on our topic, however, he has largely worked on everything directly FFIV-related (so original game, After Years, and the 3D remakes of both).

The 4 Heroes of Light proper harkens back to the Famicom-era FF games. While there are cutscenes, they aren’t elaborate and the plot is told in a somewhat loose manner compared to the SNES-era FF games (sort of somewhere between FF2 and FF3). The party dynamics are also reminiscent of the FF3 unused text where the Warriors of Light were somewhat dysfunctional, although the dysfunction here is to such an extent that the party splits shortly after the first real dungeon and doesn’t get back together until the end of act 1. There are nods to both games (and various other ones) scattered throughout the game.

4 Heroes of Light might be somewhat obscure now, but has had a significant legacy. The game’s sequel turned into its own IP, Bravely Default. The game also established Team Asano’s gameplay quirk of Boost: having the player manage a resource they can build up over turns, a system that would be utilized in both Bravely (with turns themselves) and Octopath Traveler (with boost points). Bravely itself includes nods to 4 Heroes of Light (The Adventurer returning and bosses returning as optional bosses, complete with a remixed medley of 4HOL’s battle and boss themes) and to a lesser extent, FF3 (the Water Crystal chapter has some nods, Tiz gets an Onion Knight outfit, some of the jobs are inspired by FF3′s takes, etc)

Final Fantasy III is not the only SE game to have far reaching influence. FF2 famously was a heavy influence on the SaGa series and with how many employees cite FFV as one of their favorites in the series, there’s no doubt that it and many other Final Fantasy games have inspired others. Again, that is simply the nature of game development: Sometimes one game can lead to a slew of games for different reasons, whether they be direct sequels or something new entirely.