#this is not a mindless reading kind of comic. not that you should be reading comics mindlessly anyway. but you get the idea.

[schemelin]

every now and then i experience brief moments of self-awareness telling me to make major changes to the fusionsprunt story

[fungi-maestro]

Mr. Seal, I have seen people talking about The Death of Vic Sage lately. I don't know what this is. What is it and is it good? I am very new to The Question and my favorite is Renee. I wanted to ask due to it being a hot topic in the tag for these characters.

The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage is a DC Black Label series that came out in 2019-ish. It follows Vic as he uncovers a conspiracy concerning a shapeshifting devil and cowboy reincarnation, all while under the influence of some serious hallucinogens. It also includes discussion of racism, both historical and current.

Some of the strongest criticism I've seen of this series is about the depiction of racism (combined with Vic being the only person in the world that can stop racism, apparently.) I would definitely say this is valid criticism. It's not a super great way for the narrative to frame it. They put a spin on it toward the end to talk about how Vic feels like he's the only good person in the world & seems to think he's the only one ever that can fix anything and how this isn't actually true, which felt like they wanted to talk about the white savior trope thing, but it seemed like the writing just shrugged at it. And then the story ended. Overall it felt like kind of a weak message. It deserves criticism for that, which I have seen people discuss recently and I agree with.

As far as whether it's "good" or not, this is something you'd have to decide for yourself. I liked some things, like the tie-in with plots and characters from the 80s run, the idea of The Question verses a monster that takes a million different faces & what that thing is supposed to represent in the human experience (bigotry and hatred that any person is capable of if they refuse to look at themselves and see it), and the entire thing with the hallucinating (a staple of the Question) and how it gives the comic a kind of dreamy atmosphere. Also, we get to see the amazing handiwork of Denys Cowan again, which feels right.

I obviously don't like the way they handled the Question's savior complex. I see what they were trying to do, but I felt like having him.... I shouldn't spoil it, should I? It made me facepalm when I saw him doing it. I wouldn't deprive you of that experience. But anyway some of the things he does in the comic seem antithetical to the point of the faceless, nameless Question in their mission to work behind the scenes. Maybe that's the idea, though. Vic is unreal levels of proud and arrogant in this comic. Way more so than usual. Slipping into Ditko territory, to be honest, and yet still within the realm of bizarre but standard Vic behavior. As Tot says, "Vic... You bastard."

Speaking of Tot, I am not a huge fan of him in this comic. He's fine, I guess, but he feels like he's only there to shake his head sadly at everything Vic says and does. Not very helpful. This isn't the old man I know and love. It isn't really the most important thing with the comic, though, so I guess I'll let it slide for now.

Anyway, my final verdict is that it's... Complicated. I think that would be the best way to describe it. It isn't super great, but it might be worth a read if you can approach it with a mind that is prepared to think critically about some of the themes and messages it presents. It's DC Black Label, so it isn't technically canon to anything, and I wouldn't consider it compliant to canon regardless. It has some good internal monologues for those that love them (I like them), and it has a section where it plays with The Question as a subset of a private investigator type character (which I appreciate as a detective connoisseur), but the clumsy and, in my opinion, tasteless attempt to tie it into current events combined with the portrayal of Vic with such a strange personality (definitely one of his oddball arcs) means this isn't a series that I would recommend if someone wanted an idea of what the character is. It's in the same category as PAX and that Frank Miller comic to me. Interesting, but not necessary to the character's story or personality building, and not for everyone.

TLDR; It's a hit and miss series. The artwork is good, some of the writing is good, but the parts where it is bad can easily outweigh the good. Read it for yourself if you want, but be warned for violent racism (I'm serious, please be warned for this. Do not go in without preparing yourself), and a weird characterization for basically everyone (I feel a little uncomfortable putting this here because of how not a big deal it is compared to the other warning. Still.)

[mooncleaver]

Love Is The Reason

ღ pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, familial fushiguro megumi x fem!reader

ღ warnings: MAJOR JJK268 SPOILERS. pls don't read if you don't wanna know!! slightly cannon divergent

What the hell.

His ears didn't stop ringing as he brought his body up from its position on the surprisingly soft surface, feeling every ache known to man throbbing all over. Megumi felt the cosmic numbness ebbing away like a flash, and suddenly, he could discern the warm cotton wrapped around his upper body along with the linen sheets that lay beneath him. The three—out of many—scars on his face pulled his skin tautly, so close to his eyes where that devil's face wore his for however long this limbo period was. It hurt to open his eyes. Well, it hurt to do anything, but he's thankful that he can see the world through his own view.

Megumi's ears perk up to the sound of poorly attempted hushed arguments. The sound was so familiar that for once in his life, he felt relieved to hear it. To feel that irritation ticking in his chest, the mindless crease that's fully starting to make itself known on his forehead, and that growing scowl—he could truly cry at the return of bodily autonomy.

Nobara was trying to fit herself inside a present-shaped cardboard box while Yuji stood next to the thing, pushing down the lid on top of her head, which ruffled the strands like crazy. Of course, the girl would not stand for this butchering of her beauty. She spent a lot of time trying to look presentable, not that this pink-haired fool would understand.

Megumi is hit with a deep sense of dejavu as he sits up against the headboard, looking back at the memory of Gojo doing the same exact surprise tactic to announce that Yuji was, in fact, not dead after his literal heart got ripped out of his chest. The boy can feel a smile forming on his lips, and he makes no move to try and stop it.

"What are you two doing?"

He sees Yuji and Nobara freeze in their spots, both eyes widening comically. A second passes before the two let go of whatever it was they were contending about, rushing forward to stick their faces into Megumi's. The former vessel looks—well, he looks like he's had better days. He's thankfully clean of all the blood oozing out of his skin when he fought Sukuna for the last time, his usual uniform with the red hoodie looking incredibly pristine, absent of any rips or blood. Still, some are sticking onto his face, notably a darker shade cutting down across his eyebrows as the dried blood clings onto his wounds. Nobara looks happier. God, he thought she died. He was ready to mourn her with all the losses he'd suffered, but for once, Megumi was glad to hear her voice. He welcomes it. She's wearing a black eyepatch on top of the eye that she lost fighting Mahito, and her uniform is equally as clean as Yuji's—Megumi can tell that she's relieved by that fact.

Finally, they're back together again. The trio of first years with lost dreams who've gone through horrible, terrible things now have found hope again—hope that never died within each other.

"Fushiguro!!" The two yell in unison, going in to hug him despite knowing he didn't usually like that kind of thing. But to their honest surprise, Megumi returned the gesture, fully and truly, closing his eyes and letting out a breath. Yuuji and Nobara didn't hesitate to tighten their arms around the spiky-haired boy, be damned the near-death exhaustion clinging to their bones. They may be battered and bruised, but they survived.

After a quiet moment, the momentum was back again as Nobara looked at the two boys with a disgruntled expression, her exaggerated self on display at the lack of reaction to her return. "You know, the class's Madonna, who everyone thought was dead, by the way, turned out to be alive?! You two should be either wetting yourself or crying with joy!"

Megumi didn't even bat an eye, unlike Yuji, who was scrambling out of his mind, replying to her in his usual stoic and flat voice. "I see. My bad."

"So, the bastard is dead then." The Fushiguro didn't phrase that like a question, more so stating a fact. The fact that he was here in his own body, alive and breathing, undoubtedly meant that the curse was dead. It was still surreal to utter, knowing that this was the one thing they'd all been fighting for since forever. Maybe now, everyone who was gone didn't die in vain.

Nobara sounded like she was still in disbelief, shaking her head slightly while she grinned and exclaimed, "Ha! Yeah! Itadori beasted that guy like it was a piece of cake!"

"Eh.. well, it was pretty tough, I'm not gonna lie. I cried a little when resonance was hit." Yuji himself could only scratch the back of his neck at the rare praise, his eyes crinkling into thin lines as he admitted his own emotions. It was kind of daunting to be the one who killed Sukuna with the fact that he used to be the curse's vessel. But out of everything, making that final blow was something he didn't once hesitate on. Yuji was going to finish all this madness. It all started with him and ended with him—the way it should be.

Megumi didn't sound too surprised at the boy's admission, only giving him a look in response. "I know. I saw everything happening inside Sukuna."

"Ugh... don't even remind me. Well, at least you two have the shared experience of being a vessel now." Well, no matter how sour the fact was, it was true.

Breaking his thoughts, Yuji suddenly lit up as he shifted through his pants pockets, haphazardly pulling out the crumpled pieces of paper in his hand. "Oh, wait, guys. I have something for you two. It's from Gojo-sensei. Gojo-san, too, I think."

The pink-haired boy grew incredibly sullen at the mention of both his teachers. He'd miss calling out to the two Gojo's, mixing the couple up despite your previous urgings to the students of simply calling you by your first name. Of course, your husband would not absolutely have that, sneakily going behind your back and basically forcing his students to call you Gojo, too. If he couldn't get the second years to follow, he'd make his own kids do it. The man would not pass on the chance of hearing people call you by your shared last name.

"A letter.." Megumi looked shocked at the fact. His sensei (and self-proclaimed dad who stepped up) never did this kind of thing—seriously, that is.

Growing up with Gojo and his wife, Megumi knew the white-haired sorcerer never strayed away from being lighthearted and childlike. Despite witnessing the lanky heir change from the bratty 18-year-old who approached him as a child in the streets into the mature, married man he was the last time, it just wasn't in his nature to be doing some sentimental things like this. That was more like something you'd do. From the daily lunch notes, deep-meaning gifts (that he still kept to this day), and the affectionate texts you'd always send, he would wager that you might've been the one to drag your husband to write the letters. But, knowing that Gojo probably had a feeling that he wouldn't make it out of the fight, it's not impossible that this truly came from him.

Nobara chuckled at his tone of voice, silently agreeing with his disbelief. Gojo was definitely not the type to do this.. it unsettled her.

"I feel you.. this is totally not like him. It's slightly gross to even imagine him writing letters.."

Though, after reading, she crushed the piece of paper in her hand, pursing her lips. Yuji noticed this, facing her to ask what it said. With slight hesitation, Nobara revealed that it contained information about her mother's whereabouts. To be honest, she wasn't sure how to feel. Some part of her still longed to feel her love.

"Oh, did you even want to know in the first place?"

She shook her head as she looked down, leaving no room for the topic to be continued. "Not at all."

Suddenly, they heard the very, very rare sound of Megumi's laughter ringing out from the bed. Gojo would've bawled knowing he made his son laugh. It took a moment for them to snap out of the shock, seeing the fresh face of their friend's smile. He looked like a brand new person—content, young and carefree. It was refreshing.

Megumi hasn't felt this happy in a long while. He expected that the message wouldn't be some deep, meaningful thing, but out of everything, it was a joke about how he killed his biological dad. He wasn't sad, surprisingly. Megumi never really knew the man that left him and his sister to fend for themselves, and the memories he had of him weren't great. At least he found some closure. The boy shook his head, reading the familiar and large handwriting of his father figure. You'd think that it'd be messy, but as the former heir of the Gojo clan, Satoru was a trained guy in the art of handwriting. He wouldn't be caught dead with scribbles.

Unfortunately your father isn't around anymore!! Cuz I killed him!! Sowwy!! :P

Short, simple, and kind of foolish.

He bit back a grin. Even in death, the man couldn't take anything seriously.

Beneath it was a softer and more serious note. From you, of course. Megumi did not doubt that you wrote this to make up for your husband's short message, writing a heartfelt one that he could sense even before reading. The two of you must've known that this was not a fight you would come out of. And as much as that hurt him, Megumi was glad that he was in your last thoughts. It meant a lot to know that you and Gojo believed he, Nobara, and Yuji would live through everything.

Firstly, don't take this idiot too seriously. If you're reading this megs, we're probably gone, but hey, you're okay! Live your life fully okay? Don't forget that you're still a kid in the end. We're always looking out for you, sweetheart. ♡

There was a chibi doodle in the bottom and a sweet greeting that said,

— Love you beyond infinity, mom & dad

Megumi could tell that this was Gojo's handwriting. It was meant as a joke (the boy didn't call Satoru dad very often, despite calling you mom. It was kinda cringe.) but he accepted that sincerely. You two were his parents, biological or not. He loves you so much.

And he'd promise that for you. For Satoru, too, to be honest. To live life fully. Ever since he knew what living meant, he never intended to live a proper life. The absence of his biological father and the death of his mother left an untreated wound in his heart, altering his mind in a way that left him isolated—a recluse from the world, almost. The only thing that used to keep him going was his sister, Tsumiki. Now she is really gone. But then, everything shifted when he first saw Gojo Satoru.

It was a big change to have people to look up to. To have a mother. Megumi called you mom way before he even considered Satoru as his father figure, and it was one of the most precious things in life. You never took that for granted, always spoiling him and treating him like he came from your own womb. You knew you'd never take the place of his biological mother, but you wanted to be someone the boy could rely on in such a cruel world. It was a bit strange when Satoru first brought up the idea of raising the Fushiguro boy. You were both still 18, barely even adults with so much pressure and responsibilities. But you knew, from the moment you saw this poor boy getting dragged home by your boyfriend, that you'd love him like no other.

You and Satoru gave him and Tsumiki a home. An unlikely one, but a home nonetheless. You gave him a love like no other, an unconditional, wholehearted, and absolute kind of love, even when the two of you were struggling. It was a type that couldn't be described by words and only felt. That, along with the friendship and true family he found within Nobara and Yuji, made him realize that even if he didn't live his life for himself, there were others in the world. Other people, whether that'd be a mother, a father, a sister, or a brother could give everything meaning. A reason to keep going.

At first, he only lived for Tsumiki. To use everything he had to save her. But then he found himself living for you, for Satoru, for Nobara and Yuji. Once more, he would try again. This wasn't a chance he'd take for granted.

Reading the note made Megumi feel a kind of warmth he hadn't felt in a long time. The kind that he last felt when you hugged him tightly and kissed his forehead before everything in Shibuya happened. That was probably the last time he saw you happy and alive. The world was dull when you died. A victim of that son of a bitch curse Mahito. That was a loss like no other, so incredibly painful and numbing.

At least you died in an honorable way.

After that, he didn't know how to function. Tsumiki, Nobara, and now you. The boy felt half of his soul chip away.

Your husband was even worse. Inconsolable. Watching his wife die in front of his eyes before getting sealed the second after. When the man came out of the prison realm, anyone could tell he wasn't the same. There was no chance the old Gojo would ever return. And sure, he was still lighthearted, but Megumi could tell there was a weight in his gait—the heavy burden of the loss of his darling wife dragging down every word that came out of his mouth. He saw the sadness, longing, anger, and pure vengeance in his eyes. It never did go away. Not even when Sukuna butchered the man in half. At least now, the two of you were together in the afterlife. Megumi truly hoped that. He didn't believe much in that kind of stuff, but for his mother and his father, he prayed for a final peace to be granted.

That hope—along with the one amongst the living pushed Megumi to go on. To not just survive but to really live. Even beyond that, there were others too. His cousin, Maki, who was thankfully alive, and even Toge and Panda.

This was love. That unanswered purpose of life. It's to give love and find love in others. Love is why people do crazy things: to sacrifice the world, to sacrifice themselves. That's why he kept living even when his own dad disappeared or why he kept fighting to keep his sister alive. Love is why, despite the grief, Satoru still fought for you, for your memory, and for your efforts. Love is the reason he's alive.

And if anything, Megumi learned that when you have people in your life, you'd do anything to keep them in it. That's what you and Satoru taught him. Waking up in his own body again and greeted by the sight of his best friends—that was one of the biggest blessings he has ever received.

For his family, he would do anything.

i'm fucking crying. like actually. 3 chapters to go until this manga ends and i still can't fathom everything happening bruv

btw, this is what i imagine the letter would look like haha. half cannonical cuz it's the panel translation!! excuse my handwriting um

also sorry this isn't really proofread lol, i really wanted to post!!

dividers @cafekitsune @i-mmaculatus

[positivelybeastly]

X-Men #2

Late, but who cares, let's do this.

So, will freely admit, this issue felt a little bit like filler to me. Good filler, mind you, I enjoyed it pretty decently, but unlike the first issue, which sketched out pretty interesting character trajectories, gave us a status quo, and introduced us to the general concept of what our team are going to be fighting - seemingly Orchis remnants that are turning themselves into mutants, possibly in conjunction with 3K - this issue is . . . mostly just kinda mindless fun?

Which, I don't mind, necessarily, it just feels like a bit of an odd choice for the second issue of your run that's coming off the collapse of the previous insanely popular status quo. You want to sell people on why they should still care about X-Men, and, for a lot of people, the answer that they should still care about X-Men because, look, there's the X-Men and they're doing X-Men things, isn't quite enough.

That being said, this is still fun!

I know that, objectively speaking, this is a bit of a waste of page space, dedicating basically a third of your page to credits and white space for visual contrast, but. I like it. This has impact, it demonstrates kinetic energy, it's a statement. I notice it. Generally speaking, if I'm noticing your panel composition, then that is a good thing.

Appreciate the callback to the San Francisco years of the X-Men, which I liked and still recall with some fondness, and I do appreciate the consistency of Scott's outlook towards humanity - yeah, sometimes they can be dicks and massive obstacles, but also, helping them generally makes mutant lives better and easier, and also, it's the right goddamn thing to do.

It's not quite classic boy scout Scott, he puts mutant lives front and centre here in a way that 60s-90s Scott wouldn't, but it's not 'did you really think we weren't going to just take what we were owed?' weirdo creepazoid Scott from House of X, either.

But. That's not what this issue is really about.

This issue is about Quentin Quire being lame.

Now, I understand that there are some people who care about Quentin Quire. I understand that for some, this book is a bit of a regression for Quentin, compared to where he was in X-Force and Wolverine.

Given that my favourite character is currently dealing with a 40 year regression in development, all I really have to say is, I'll get around to really caring about Quentin Quire's development when I've got time.

Also, I never really bought that Quentin developed all that much under Ben Percy anyway, given that he was doing gross, privacy invasive shit like keeping bright pink husks of his teammate's bodies around to wear, and confidently making entirely the wrong call in tactical decisions in such a way that he nearly doomed Mars to being eaten by a black hole gun because he didn't bother to psychically scan the Beast clone when X-Force brought him back.

He grew? Vertically, maybe.

Also, irrespective of whether or not you think Quentin grew as a person during X-Force, the Quentin I read there would also have forced a Neon Genesis Evangelion reference here that someone would have sandbagged.

Anyway, people are talking about Hank!!!

The implication that Hank came back to life, sorted out his dumb evil self, lived with Simon for a bit in LA, moved to Alaska to become part of Scott's X-Men, realised that Juggernaut was now a good guy and on the team, and immediately started working on a way to fire the man out of a cannon, is amazing. I have no notes.

I also appreciate Cain just. Being kinda cute and wholesome here? He's just a good dude. He's fistbumping, he's reassuring, he's just. Nice. This feels like the same guy that became good friends with Sammy Pare.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I just kinda like it when my heroes are nice and they like their teammates?

Amazing. Love it. Beautiful. This is what I read comic books for.

Hank's human rail gun. I love it, too, Illyana.

I also kind of enjoy this dialogue here because it reminds me of this little exchange from S.W.O.R.D.

I doubt it's an intentional reference, but it just makes me think that MacKay and Gillen share a kinda similar ethos when it comes to crafting dialogue, and that this mission and maybe this era, is maybe meant to be something other than what people are expecting it to be.

People are expecting it to be the next grand epoch of X-Men, as dramatic a turn in the world as House of X or New X-Men, and. It clearly isn't? And I don't really think it's trying to be? I think it's trying to be fun comic books. Which. Is not a crime, provided it's done in the right context. There's a difference between doing just some fun comics when the era is just getting started and things have yet to hit the fan, and doing just some fun comics when the era is coming to a close and people are expecting you to try and put a bow on some five year long character arcs.

Take a hint, Gerry Duggan.

I like this moment because it's basically the mission statement of the X-Men in general. We're here for you. We're here to help. I fucking hated Bendis' All-New X-Men with a passion, but one of the few things I didn't mind was Scott's rescue of the younger mutants in the first few issues, because that's what the X-Men should be doing. If I was picking this comic up as a launching point and I had never read X-Men before, this would be very good at communicating what they're about. What Scott is about. And that's good.

I am beyond tired of kill teams, gang. I am beyond tired of that shit.

I also appreciate the guy in the background with his phone out. Whether that'll be important or not, I have no idea, but I like it. It's a nice little detail.

Hank's only in the one panel here, but I do appreciate the gravitas of this. Scott's tactical genius got Ben out of danger and now Max and Hank have a piece of the puzzle to unravel, which is a dynamic I appreciate.

Even if Hank and Max didn't get a ton to do here, they at least feel like they're being afforded respect as other parts of the triangle that issue 1 set up, and . . . I realise that this may seem like a weird thing to compliment, I just appreciate these characters being respected?

Maybe it's just a shock after 5 years of X-Force, but that series never respected Beast, or a lot of its characters, to be honest, it treated them as props or ways to elevate Wolverine, the actual main character, and this . . . even though they haven't been on panel doing stuff, the positioning here makes it important that they have an effect on the narrative. I just appreciate it.

That being said, I do have to ask . . . who's taking care of Ben here? Because Hank ain't a medical doctor. This Hank doesn't have any of that medical expertise. Is Xorn hanging around? Did Scott or Max hook Ben up to the medical doodads he's got going here? Or did Hank do a load of catch up courses and now he's a doctor again? These are questions I need to know the answer to.

Finally, I did notice this in the back of the issue . . .

RIP, Don Perlin. I genuinely loved your work on Defenders, and you drew a very lovely Hank McCoy. You had a damned fine innings, and I hope you knew you're gonna be remembered for decades to come for your contributions to the comic book industry, though I doubt it brought you as much financial success as I think you deserved.

To commemorate your passing, here's one of my very favourite scenes you did the pencils for. I'll think of it, and you, for a long time to come.

[wanderingmind867]

She-Hulk is a character I like, despite reading none of her comics. That being said, may I present some alternative ideas for the character that just came to me? These ideas aren't meant to take away from what was written for her already, merely to present some of my own ideas.

• She Hulk should be Tall. She-Hulk always looks so much smaller than her cousin. And I don't like that. She's the female Hulk, make her the female Hulk. Make her tall and strong looking. If you're the female Hulk, you should like a female hulk.

• Make Jennifer Walters and She-Hulk different. But differentiate her from the Hulk by making the difference between the two a bit more different. Make Jennifer Walters a bit more shy and timid, while She-Hulk is confident and bold but also super impulsive and angers easily. They aren't as likely to destroy a building in a mindless rage like The Hulk, but they should still have a tamer version of what the hulk has. Also, impulsive. Being so much stronger makes them over confident and prone to risk taking. They're incredibly impulsive. So while the Hulk's thing is anger, She-Hulk's thing is overconfidence. Maybe not arrogant, but definitely overconfident.

I kind of rambled here, but I like these ideas. I think they make a lot of sense. And if nobody else has thought of this before, I'll be a bit shocked. Because these are some easy and simple ways to differentiate her from her cousin while also keeping some core components of the Hulk character.

[leprosycock]

do u have any fav book recs!???? love ur literary mind and would love to know if u have any good must reads sorry this is random

thank you!! i don't read nearly as often as i should but i have a lot of books that i love:

the furry trap by josh simmons is a wildly weird, disgusting, and obscene piece of work that i've loved for years. it's satirical and deranged and very darkly funny and his style is so unique. it's a collection of eleven short comics and some standalone illustrations. my favorites are cock bone, christmas eve, and demonwood, but none of them are bad. at least in my opinion. a lot of people think it's just edgy for edgy's sake, but even if it is, it's still really fucking good. i always find that criticism to be so funny because it's only ever flung at media with any kind of sex and violence and taboos in it.

tender is the flesh by agustina bazterrica is one that a lot of people are familiar with, but it's far from overrated. it's about a world in which cannibalism is legal and humans are bred, bought, and sold for meat. a very lonely, broken, divorced blue-collar man begins to form a bond with a specimen despite any physical contact with her being expressly forbidden. it's twisted and stomach-churning and intimate and i love it.

poison for breakfast by lemony snicket is insanely funny and tender and witty and entertaining. it's essentially an unreliable autobiography that follows strings of consciousness and memories and musings as he panics after getting a note under his door that tells him he had poison for breakfast. it's short and sweet and there are so many wonderful poignant lines throughout it that made me close the book for a second and think for a while.

the wasp factory by iain banks is awesome and it's about a sixteen year old boy named frank with a very fragile older brother who's been sent to a psych ward. frank is ruthlessly violent and unstable and he takes all his anger and frustration and bloodlust out on helpless animals, either human or non. it has a really interesting ambiance to it that traps you in both this violent teenager's headspace and this murky, unsettling little scottish village and things just get worse and worse until you realize you can't get out. highly recommend!

someone who will love you in all your damaged glory by raphael bob-waksberg is a fantastic collection of surreal/sci-fi-based stories that have one foot firmly grounded in realism and very human relationships. it's very vulnerable and tender and tragic and romantic. this is the same author who created bojack horseman, so if you're into that show's brand of drama, you'll really love this

i hope you find me: the love poems of craigslist's missed connections by alan feuer is one of my most favorite little coffee table books ever. it's what it says on the tin: dozens of posts from the missed connections section of craigslist are compiled and wrangled into individual poems and it's really fascinating and it makes my heart ache to see all these very real little individual cases of lost love. i think it's really important to study real people just as much as stories that people can craft.

i luv halloween by benjamin roman and keith giffen is a HIGHLY underrated, EXTREMELY early 00s trilogy about zombies, aliens, and a group of really shitty, violent, obnoxious children who get stuck in the midst of global panic around halloween. it's super edgy and indulgent and gory and gross and childish and it's a whole lotta fun. i go crazy for the art style and the general mindless self indulgence of it all

memories of my melancholy whores (memoria de mis putas tristes) by gabriel garcia marquez is a really lovely and flowery novelette about a ninety year old man who's on his deathbed and he believes that true love will help him feel alive again. he manages to find it in a very young prostitute and reflects on what sets her apart from the others. a lot of people call it the spanish lolita, but it's wildly different. really the only similarities are falling in love with a young girl and realizing she's different than you envisioned her to be at first. it's not for everyone, but i think marquez's prose is beautiful. pretty much everything in his bibliography is worth checking out, he's a genius

holy robots by vasilina orlova is a stunning collection of poetry and it uses the ideas of humans falling in love with and forming lives with machines that try very hard to be human but can't quite do it to illustrate real-world relationship struggles. it also delves into other themes of nature and pure romance as it goes along. it's a quick read and it's so worth checking out, i love it to death

arkham asylum: a serious house on serious earth by grant morrison and dave mckean is a standalone batman comic that's VERY worth reading even if you only have a passive knowledge of batman. it's a beautiful piece of work all on its own. the art style is absolutely fucking gorgeous and it's unlike anything i've ever seen. essentially, the inmates at arkham have overtaken the asylum and batman has to sacrifice himself in order to save the hostages. thus, he subjects himself to brutal psychological torture at the hands of the criminals he's put in the asylum himself and he wastes away little by little. it's good!! it's so good!!!!!

stray toasters by bill sienkiewicz is one of the most intense, gorgeous, twisted, and surreal experiences i've ever had while reading a graphic novel. it might take you a couple of reads for it to really sink in because it's not at all straightforward, but it's a fucking masterpiece of art and writing and it really influenced a lot of my own work and the way i tend to approach art. essentially, it's about a lonely, burnt-out detective who gets released from a psych ward to hunt down a serial killer who's mutilating housewives and young children. it's insanely difficult to find physical copies of, so i would personally just read it online.

[thewadapan]

Circling the drain in Twisters

In an interview with CNN, director Lee Isaac Chung is quoted as saying, "I wanted to make sure that we are never creating a feeling that we're preaching a message, because that's certainly not what I think cinema should be about. I think it should be a reflection of the world." If this is the case, then Lee Isaac Chung is clearly an idiot, because his studious commitment to avoiding anything that could be construed as an ideological statement has seen him create a world where tornadoes are wild beasts—something like a tiger, or a hippopotamus, maybe—which roam the American plains and will hunt you for sport, as opposed to a mindless confluence of meteorological factors. Says one of the characters: "We're having a once-in-a-generation tornado outbreak in Oklahoma. […] It's getting worse every year." An "outbreak", as if this is some freak disaster, a sudden pandemic of unclear origins, and not a predictable trend where each year is the worst year on record. Don't think of it as a microcosm for the meteorological hardships happening all over the world, year after year—think of it more like 30-50 feral hogs, a consistent but localised problem, the kind of thing you can solve by climbing into the back of your pickup truck with an AR-15.

Certainly, it can't have anything to do with climate change, two words which—despite scriptwriter Mark L. Smith's assurance that the film would "shine a light on […] the causes and effects of climate change"—go completely unmentioned in the entire 122 minute runtime of this dumpster fire.

Pass through the eye of the "Keep reading" button below to see the rest of my blustering.

I know that everyone is sick of ecological stories. I know that, if we're being bluntly honest, all the movies and books and comics and thinkpieces in the world don't mean a fucking thing to the blood-soaked oil industry or our ghoulish politicians. I can understand the instinct to flinch away from the aesop. But to put it as simply as I can: there is no way to neutrally talk about the weather. To even try is to fail, because you end up coming off like a climate denialist.

Oh yeah, this film is also dogshit on pretty much every other level you can conceive of. From the opening prologue, which introduces protagonist Kate's hi-and-die friends, the film is constantly two steps behind the audience, as it clumsily plays out the most paint-by-numbers plotting you can predict in your sleep. You know these people are going to die, you can divine the fucking order they'll be killed off in. And still, on a pure spectacle level, this prologue is about as exciting as the film will ever manage to be; every subsequent bit of tornado action is just a bloodless encore, devoid of stakes or novelty, just CGI nonsense completely divorced from any kind of spatial grounding (in one scene, an oil refinery sort of just appears from nowhere so that the tornado can blow it up).

The film's main conflict is between a team of meteorologists led by Kate's old friend Javi, and a crew of redneck storm-chasers led by a YouTuber "tornado wrangler", Tyler. While I wouldn't say that these groups are overtly representatives of "science" and "gut feeling" respectively—because again, Lee Isaac Chung is a spineless filmmaker who clearly wouldn't know substance if he ate a brownie laced with it—their differing approaches to storm-chasing are contrasted throughout the film. To begin with, we're led to trust Javi's team because of his existing rapport with Kate, their professionalism and preparation, their apparently noble goals, and their class status as white-collar engineer-types. Meanwhile, Tyler's gang are initially presented as stupid, reckless, dangerous, opportunistic, money-motivated, and backwards.

But then, aha, here comes the movie's one (1) twist! (And here I thought the whole titular basis of the movie was that there'd be multiple.) It turns out that actually the rednecks have only been selling all those T-shirts to charitably fund disaster relief, food for the victims of tornadoes. Actually, YouTuber Tyler is a really good storm chaser, and he's also quite caring, and also hot. Meanwhile, the scientists are actually in the pockets of land baron Marshall Rigg, who's profiteering from the tornados by buying victims' property from them for rock-bottom prices in the wake of devastation. For a moment, it actually seems as if Marshall Rigg is some kind of MCU supervillain with an evil master plan to create his own tornadoes and take over the entire USA—because that's the kind of level of reality this film is operating on. If this truly is a "reflection of the world", as Chung claims, then it's a funhouse mirror- no, a flimsy plastic compress, free with a girls' magazine, a paper sticker inside, printed with the face of a beautiful cowgirl.

This "what if the bad guys… were good!" twist isn't really a reveal, so much as it is the script turning these people into completely different characters. They start out as cardboard-cutout trailer-trash, hooting and grinning, and then they are substituted out for an entirely different set of cardboard cutouts, doe-eyed.

The character writing in this film is absolutely embarrassing. In one scene, Kate and Tyler end up at a motel when the tornado sirens start going off. The other people at the motel, ignoring this, continue complaining to the receptionist. "Nine times out of ten, it's a false alarm," one of them says. The power goes out, causing the siren to stop. "You hear that? No tornado." Another anonymous alien says to the receptionist, "Hey, I don't want to give you a bad review." Then a tornado rips the roof off the place. They run outside. The first person is yelling, "There's a tornado! There's a tornado!" Then gets sucked up and killed. Look, nevermind the mean-spiritedness of it, nevermind the misanthropy—what sane writer would ever think that real people would actually behave this way? The script is constantly tripping over itself to make sure you get the jokes; here, the joke is that the woman thought there wasn't a tornado, but then she realised that actually there was.

I recall another example from earlier in the film: when Kate and Tyler are still competing, two tornadoes appear, and the rival storm chasers wind up splitting up, each going after a different one. Just as it seems like Tyler is coming up into the eye of his storm—suddenly, the whole thing dissipates, as though it was never there. They get out of the vehicle, and he looks over the horizon, where Kate's tornado is still swirling. And Tyler's pal says, "We should've went with her." Buddy, I am watching the fucking screen! You can see it right on his face that he should've went with her, you don't need to have one of your characters blurt it aloud. Are you scared I've fallen asleep in the ten seconds since someone last spoke?

God, I haven't even talked about the romance yet! Throughout the movie, YouTuber Tyler keeps popping up around Kate, and you can tell the filmmakers really don't want you to think about the fact that this plotting contrivance basically just implies he's stalking her everywhere. Kate reveals herself to be a country girl at heart. Tyler reveals himself to know about science and stuff, through dialogue where he reels off complicated jargon which you figure probably isn't accurate, or if it is, is the kind of basic meteorology the scriptwriter could piece together by poking around on Wikipedia for a couple of hours. The film doesn't actually give a fuck about science, or the scientific method, or meteorology, because in this movie science is a glossy CGI simulation of a twister which our heroes plug numbers into until the whole thing flashes green or whatever. It's telling, I think, that the onscreen simulation and the CGI twisters themselves are no different from one another—it's all artifice, isn't it, intangible particle effects swirling around, signifying nothing.

People seem to be going mad over Glen Powell in this thing, but come on, are you really satisfied by this sexless nothingburger of a romance? They don't even fucking kiss, right? All blockbusters are like this. I'm starving. This film can't even be bothered to crystallise a proper love triangle between Javi, Kate, and Tyler, even though you can tell it's thinking about it. It's as if the film itself knows it wouldn't even be compelling if it tried. Considering the absolutely abominable emotional manipulation Javi uses to get Kate onboard with the project—which the film never seems to quite become cognizant of—it's for the best anyway. "Hey, remember how your boyfriend and your best friends all died right in front of you? Well if you don't come help me by putting yourself in that exact same situation again, loads more people are going to die like that too!" Unhinged. Put that man in the twister, and the filmmakers too.

So yeah, I think I hate this flick. It's a movie that exists to soothe the conscience of its audience: see, we don't really hate the South, it's not our fault the planet is trying to blast us off the face of it, we're all trying our best. Let's watch a rodeo or something. It's the kind of film that can lull you to sleep, like a final, fatal injection.

Rating: 2/10

If you’ve enjoyed this review, you can find dozens of similar essays over on my Letterboxd account.

[machinesuper]

The black mirror batman

And now Wayne is back but doing something else. Also, apparently Wayne’s son from Son of the Demon (which I did read back when it was released) is Robin now - or maybe was Robin because he doesn’t appear in The Black Mirror. I believe Identity Crisis was about to begin when I last entered a comic book store on a Wednesday, but since then I’ve been tangentially aware that somewhere along the line Bruce Wayne “died” (comic book scare quotes in full effect) and Dick Grayson took over in his place. As well, though I’m not a regular reader, I am familiar with some of the changes to the title over the last several years. I’m familiar with Batman and his mythos but I don’t read his books save for special occasions - books or stories that come highly recommended or hyped. It’s not the salvation of the genre and it does stumble awkwardly in places, but simultaneously, it does get some things right and those things are worth the time of the superhero enthusiast.Īt this point, I should mention that the caveats from Batwoman apply here as well. And in some ways, The Black Mirror vindicates his sentiment. He’s proven himself to have great taste in the past and it was on his recommendation that I gave Big Questions a shot against a warehouse of reservations and came out quite pleased.

Book critic Dan Goodman, knowing my reluctance to heartily endorse the superhero genre, gave the book a pretty nice recommendation and said he thought it was one of the best examples of the genre in years (I’m paraphrasing from memory here, but I think I’m doing him justice). I mean, think how many enemies I’ve made by saying that Batwoman: Elegy was mostly awful and that All-Star Superman fell flat to me partly because Frank Quitely’s people drive me crazy.) So my general rule for this sort of thing is that I won’t review a superhero book unless 1) I really found something special in it (and I really need to do more of this) or 2) the book was recommended to me. On average, even the better books will only be able to rate an OK rating by the measures I use. And that’s why, for the most part, I don’t really review a lot of superhero books. Sometimes we just want to turn our brains off and take in an unbelievable story. I read and loved The Hunger Games, even though it wasn’t anything particularly special. We don’t expect romance novels or westerns or Elizabeth George mysteries to be Remains of the Day or Cloud Atlas. There are Good books that find themselves nestled in the genre that has been Marvel and DC’s bread and butter since the ‘60s, but they’re rare and all the more special for it.Īnd that’s fine.

Rather, the problem is that so much of superhero fiction doesn’t actually succeed. It’s not that a superhero story can’t succeed and rank among the best of the medium that would be like saying The Long Goodbye isn’t great American literature. Because there are standards of good storytelling that sort of just exist over and above genre concerns, I’m not often kind (or perhaps better: generous) to superhero fiction. The same awkwardness exists here on Good Ok Bad. But we shouldn’t expect a neck-and-neck race. Certainly, a critic might make note of Twilight's purpose and express some evaluation of how well it succeeds on its own terms. On a site that reviewed both books side-by-side, we’d expect reviewers to use at least most of the inches on the same yardstick to measure out their respective values. While it may seem unfair to compare the two books, one is entertaining trash and the other is awestriking and thoughtfully composed (at least according to most everyone who’s read it and isn’t thirteen). See? They’re both great because they both succeed within their unique contexts! After all, how far could you trust someone who rated Twilight and Brothers Karamazov as being Great Books because Twilight succeeds at its goal of being a mindless-but-amusing supernatural romance/thriller and Brothers Karamazov succeeds at its goal of being kick-ass, world-class literature that people will be talking about for hundreds of years or more. I try to extend some graces to the contexts in which these books operate, but completely divorcing genres from the general expectations of the medium would perpetrate some pretty wild discrepancies. One of the weird things about this site is that I rate genre books alongside, quote-unquote, more serious fare.

[spaceorphan18]

Marvel Movie Nights: Avengers Infinity War

It has been a long time since I've seen this movie - mostly because I had been waiting to get here in this project. (Can you believe it's been four years since I started with Blade??) And I've been super curious to see how it holds up all these years later.

And -- I think in a lot of ways it does! And in a few way it doesn't. But - by the

I think, for me, what makes this film so brilliant is the sheer comic book-ness of it. It truly feels, in so many aspects, like I'm reading a comic book crossover event -- where a bunch of titles come together to create one big narrative. And that is such a (sorry for the pun) marvelous thing.

I can't praise the script enough. It's got a lot of great humor in it. It's got emotion. It really lets it's incredibly incredibly huge cast shine in all sorts of ways. And it ties in all of these plot threads that we've been following for so many movies now. It's an insane kind of event to do - but I think the Russos (and screenwriters) did such a good job of keeping it about character.

And really the key thing is that it all ties around Thanos and /his/ quest to get the stones. It's ultimately his story. I still remember being in the theater and thinking about how it's essentially a fetch quest to collect all the stones. Except, that person getting the stones is Thanos. And then he wins. The snap happens. And Thanos gets what he wanted.

It's a dark, dark ending. The Wanda/Vision story still got me. Spider-Man dying got me. And, god, Thanos telling Tony he hopes they remember him - god, that really got me (but for probably not Avenger reasons.) Everyone always goes back to Star Wars Empire Strikes Back -- and this does that cliffhanger-y, get everyone to their lowest point ending, and it does it extremely well.

The story is narratively satisfying even as it breaks your heart.

Alright, so some of the things that don't necessarily work for me?

This film relies on years of build up and the surprise of what happens throughout. I don't know if it necessarily has the endless rewatchability of some of the other, more individual films. Once you've seen it - some of that emotional weight is taken away since it's no longer a surprise. And being away from its context also detracts from it as well. I don't know how well this movie stands on its own.

(Ultimately, that's fine, though - like a comic book crossover, it's almost not meant to stand on its own. It's supposed to be an event. And any good event relies on what came before it.)

There are also a few, maybe smaller, film-ish nitpicky things. The action feels a little mindless at times. It doesn't help that there are a lot of nameless monsters and a few henchmen, but unless it's Thanos himself, nothing feels that tense. And outside of the Dr. Strange duel, I don't think much of it is that visually interesting, either.

The look of the film, too is... well not great? The visual style is kind of boring (which -- hey, they had a short amount of time to do a ton of work, so I don't blame them for kind of cutting corners a little). Some of the CGI stuff doesn't hold up very well. And there are times when you just can feel that it's on a soundstage somewhere.

And, of course, there are a few story related plotholes/logic issues. It's not even why Peter Quill didn't take down Thanos when he had the chance - I actually understand the emotional issue there. But things like - how did Dr. Strange not just use his powers to cut off Thanos's hand - especially when he did it earlier in the film. And it takes Gamora way to long to figure out she should just kill herself.

But I mean - it's like asking why didn't the Eagles just take the One Ring to Mt. Doom. Sometimes you sacrifice a little bit of logic for the overall story.

Final Verdict: And like I said above, the overall story -- the characters and their emotional beats -- that really works. I love how authentically comic book this film is. And I love how it feels big and bursting and yet still manages to have all of these little moments in it. It's still a great film, and it's great that I had some time between viewings because some of the emotion was really still able to shine.

It's interesting - because there are a whole lot of people who love this more than Endgame - perhaps because of the darker tone and more seriousness of it? But, omg, I'm so ready for Endgame now!

Up Next: However, we have to wait for Endgame - Deadpool 2 is next. which I should probably watch soon, because I have never seen it and Deadpool 3 is just around the corner....

[junithys]

Passing Thoughts 1

This blog is pretty much an op-ed piece where I talk about random things that I have thought and/or written about in my diary — may make a PART 2 in the future if I decide to talk about miscellaneous topics again. Mostly involving anime, because as most of you know — I'm a really big nerd. Though I am less into review-writing as I used to be, partially due to the fact that I have dabbled in art and animation, so it is harder for me to be impartially critical when I know how difficult the work is.

I heard an episode of the Anime World Order podcast a long time ago, where Mr. Surat said that if you love anime enough, you'll eventually want to contribute creatively in some way or make your own. I fought against this idea for many years, I kept telling myself that I would just be satisfied with just writing a novel and that would be the extent of my narrative-making skills, that I would dedicate the rest of my time to music.

But then, I picked up the pen (stylus) again and started drawing again, and then I starting imagining my stories in visual novel format, as I once did when I first discovered them as a teenager (as a choose-your-own-adventure game). I then realized that I could not escape the impulse to want to create something with an anime art style. It was like the figurative Mephistopheles clawing cloyingly at my back.

Detective Conan

It is hard to get other people into Detective Conan, there's a common misconception in my native country — if there is a main character that looks like a kid, then the show is for children. In the case of Detective Conan, this simply isn't true; there are elements of it that seem written in to appeal to younger people, like the word game (shiratori) riddles in the films, but the series is actually very cerebral and something that I would mostly suggest to teens and adults.

The murder mysteries are so well thought-out that they are hard for me to predict at times, and they are often very elaborate… there are some episodes that will leave you thinking, how would you even think to kill someone in that way? The characters are very lovable and wholesome, like you would expect in a family film, but the narrative devices are employed in a very complex way.

Thoughts on Fanservice in Anime

I was thinking about this after listening to the recent Otaku Spirit podcast episode called "Is Anime Problematic?" where the hosts vent their worries about the growing concern of censorship in anime, and they discuss the moral dilemma of "if an anime is problematic, should it be erased?" Obviously, I don't think so — I think aspects of media that are troublesome can often reinforce a sense of right and wrong in people.

I know that there are, of course, mentally ill people out there but the complication with writing to avoid stimulating a psychopath is that if someone is sick, I think censorship will only make the person feel more oppressed and radicalize them even further? I. am sure that someone so unhinged would see secret messages in a show about a baby wallaby, the course of action for creators is often hard to take when there are so many expectations and culpability on how it will affect the public. 

I used to wonder why more fictional series didn't push the envelope to explore untapped subjects more openly, but as I've grown older — it makes more sense, although I can't say that I like it. Media-enforced morality is a difficult subject to broach, but I have never been a strong proponent of any kind of censorship, particularly in literature and comics. 

I do not think it should be up to the government or people in power to decide what us common-folk read — I know there are dangerous ideas, certainly, but if you spoon-feed the population then critical thinking will become raw and premature as a result. If the public blindly follows whatever is told through the news and publications without thinking things through, history has shown that that kind of mindless thinking can lead to many tragedies and terrors.

Note: I do believe in trigger warnings and content filters though, people should be allowed to put up boundaries with what they intake. Particularly those with traumatic pasts.

This circles back around to my view on fanservice (ecchi) in anime. There has always been arguments about whether fanservice with younger-looking characters should be allowed, and I personally do not see a problem with it as long as it is tasteful and does not become pornographic. In school shows, there's an innocence and element of comic mischief to it, it feels like reliving your youth in a sense because it encapsulates the feeling of hanging out with old friends or falling in love for the first time. There's a feeling of purity with most ecchi and moe series, though I do admit that some can be excessively dirty, too.

A lot of people from my generation originally fell in love with anime as a medium because the animation and art is not only top-notch, but the ideas are fresh and for the most part, it is unrestrained. Anime felt like an expression of freedom that sees its viewship as competent and not infantile, there was a lot of experimentation and intellectualism in the writing. I think that anime creators should try their hardest to retain that sense of artistic integrity.

Vtubing VS Blogging

Sometimes I don't write blogs as often because I talk about a lot of my opinions on stream or the blurbs about anime become verbal, and then I am too tired to repeat them via text… it feels like blogging is kind archiving my opinions or setting them in stone, and sometimes the thought of that can be daunting. Especially when I have changed a lot over the years, I guess it is still good to have a record of who I used to be — like a journal entry.

Unconditional Love

It's a given that pets, for the most part, express their unconditional love to you. Of course they do, you feed them — clean their litter — give them a warm place to sleep during the winter, but I realized recently how grateful I was for that. With our cats, while they love both of us, Kenma is closer to me and Karna is the closest to SakihataLily. I realized how grateful I was for that innocent intimacy recently, I have been waking up with Kenma curled up to me every morning! I am so happy that we decided to adopt cats!

Saber Route

So — Saber is my favorite heroine in the original Fate/stay night story, ufotable has announced that they will adapt Artoria's route. Though the date remains unannounced, I am still eagerly awaiting that version of the narrative!

Note: I was reminded of this because yesterday, ufotable uploaded all of the Réalta Nua OPs to their YouTube account and Twitter, and there were a lot of Saber fans asking for the adaptation. I can't blame them, Saber is wildly popular for a reason!

Tumblr: Then VS Now

The last time that I used Tumblr before now was in 2015. I eventually switched to Twitter because back then, Tumblr seemed pointless — there was a sub-sect of active artists, but most of the blogs that I saw were a collection of reposted fan art from Pixiv and quirky GIFs. I am okay with people posting official art, but when people repost fan art, I do not like it — the dignified part of myself thinks that it should be up to the artist themselves to share their art on whichever sites they want to. 

It feels pointless because the reason why I share pretty fan works to begin with is to directly support the artist in some way, but if I am reblogging reposted art, it does not feel like I'm directly showing support to the artist and thus, feels like a waste of time. Tumblr seems to be much better with that now, but since I am older, if I don't want to see an art-reposting blog, I just block them. 

That may sound rude, but it saves me the confusion of having to figure out whether they are the actual artist or not, and since I am working on my own projects — I do not have time for that. I like some of the newer features of Tumblr, like the option of hiding followers, it makes it feel more cozy and less competitive. Overall, I am glad that I made Tumblr a secondary blog, I have never used blogging sights like Blog Spot, other than to lurk on pages of musicians that I used to like back in the day, but if I need to… I feel more comfortable with the idea of branching out now.

As an aside — if you are an artist in any medium (illustration, prose, game dev, musician, animation, etc.) or Vtuber, please hit me up — I like to support other artists and network whenever I am able to!

[distort-opia]

I see a lot of people say they don't want Joker to be important in The Batman sequels, that they're sick of Joker, etc. but is it just me or do people kind of overstate how ubiquitous Joker is in Batman adaptions? He appears in most of them yeah but that's to be expected when he's Batman's archnemesis. There are some where he doesn't show up, or if he does, isn't necessarily the main/only focus of the villains. The only time I can think of where it got egregious was in the Arkham games, but even then other villains still got a good deal of attention. Or do most of the people making these complaints just not like Joker in general?

Mm, no, I would agree Joker isn't as ubiquitous as he's made out to be in Batman media. However, I do agree with the complaints regarding him to an extent. I'd say it's less about how often he shows up and more about how he does it. Him showing up frequently should be a consequence of him being crucially important. Whether people like it or not, Joker is essential to Batman, that's impossible to dispute -- as you said, he's Batman's archnemesis. But there is a difference between writing a good Joker story and just... sticking Joker in one because he's a popular, titular character.

For instance, in the current Batman run they had Joker be the one who hired Deathstroke to kill Robin way back in the day, and I rolled my eyes so hard. They shove Joker in whenever they're in need of a Plot Twist (aha, it was Joker all along!) or when they have something horrible happen, because of course Joker would do that, he's deranged! Even if the act itself is not in character for Joker. He's come to be used as a plot device when writers don't know what villain to pull out of the hat, and it wouldn't annoy me as much if it were well-written. But instead of trying to fit the story within Joker's core characterization, his personality tends to get rewritten a lot, in order for the writer to tell the story they want. That's how you get... one-dimensional, shallow, typical serial killer and not-actually-funny Joker. So I get how this might make people feel Joker shows up too much, because a lot of the time he's not showing up in the right way, and it becomes grating. I love Joker, but even I am torn between watching his character get skewered vs. not reading about him at all.

Plus, something to keep in mind is the fact that a lot more people watch movies, and not nearly as much read comics. For many fans, the contact they've had with Joker has been through live-action films, and The Dark Knight (2008) especially. Ledger's iconic performance forever influenced what came after. Every attempt at playing Joker since then has had elements from it, and this after Joker got turned into a mascot for dudebros who watched TDK and thought "I'm an agent of chaos" is all there was to him. So many people associate Joker with this "We live in a society" kind of message now -- which Joker (2019) played into heavily, creating a completely different version of him -- when Joker in the comics is so much more than that. It's actually baffling to me how Joker, such a heavily queer-coded character (even within TDK) came to represent toxic masculinity for a lot of people. This, I would say, is another big reason why Joker has become so hated. People have heard of Joker inspiring a shooter to go into a theater and unload a gun into the audience, they've heard about Leto sending dead rats to his colleagues, they've seen all the toxic mysoginist 'alpha' males with Joker posters in their room, and they've landed on this horrid image of him. Which does annoy me to no end, because that's not who Joker is. Joker isn't about wanton destruction, the same way Batman isn't about mindless vengeance. But that's an essay for another day.

Also... it's become a bit of a trend in the last five years, especially on Tumblr and Twitter; to complain about Joker's every appearance, to wish for Batman to kill him or for Joker to disappear entirely, etc. Obviously not saying there aren't people who genuinely dislike Joker (and that's their prerogative), but there's a bit of a 'getting woke points' aspect to this more recent wave of hatred, which has become more prevalent right now for villains in general. Hating on Joker is an easy way to show your moral superiority -- after all, he did so many horrible things. And it's tough to even introduce nuance in a discussion about Joker with people like this, who only view the world in black and white, because they do not seek to understand. The goal, conscious or not, is more the performance a 'pure' moral stance so that they feel good about themselves, and so others flock to agree with them (which in turn makes the commentators feel good about themselves, and on it goes).

Sorry, anon, this got way longer than I expected :)) In the end, this Joker fatigue many DC fans are having right now is influenced by many factors, and it’s such a pity. When done right, Joker can be an absolute delight.

[joyfulexperiment]

Joyful Experiment, Day #1: "Anna" Study, charcoal

"So I'll walk through this night Stumbling blindly toward the light And do the next right thing."

Art diary (and excuses, explanations) under the cut.

All things considered, I think this is a good start to the month. It's not polished by any means, but it's better than usual. Let me tell you the story of "the usual."

I drew all the time as a kid, but primarily for the sake of telling stories. I didn't make "hang-on-the-fridge" art. I made comics and magazines and newspapers and storyboards and scenes for computer games. Plenty of OC's, but I stole my style from 80's cartoons.

(Not my art, but very much the style I was learning from. Credit to Peyo, image from "Johan and Peewit")

Around eleven we moved to another province, and my pencil crayons disappeared amongst the luggage for months. I focused on writing instead, and write my first little novel that year. And thus I became a writer, not an artist. I honed my author craft religiously throughout my teens, and if I ever drew, it was mindless doodling during family read alouds - doodles of people who still looked weirdly like Smurfs and Care Bears despite being human. I went through a fortnight of sketching historical costumes out of a book, mostly for the validation from my parents, who loved them, but little of the experience stayed.

Then, I took an art history course that required us to sketch ten acknowledged masterpieces of the past. Our professor was not particularly picky about skill, as there was no artistic instruction in the course, and it was only necessary to produce something that demonstrated you'd looked at some art.

Nonetheless, perfectionist that I am, I spent ages on every one of those sketches. I made grids with a hundred squares and painstakingly reproduced every detail of the "Starry Night" and the "Muse of Comedy" and the Michelangelo-inspired philosopher in Raphael's "School of Athens." Several audiobooks sketched themselves into those works in the process - for me Rudyard Kipling and E. Nesbit are still heavily associated with charcoal fingers.

By the time I turned in my portofolio, I had rather astounded myself, because, while the work was nowhere near excellent, it was mindblowingly better than anything I had produced before. Because I was actually looking at the shapes and using reference carefully. My professor told me that though my art was rough there was something there and I should pursue it.

Reader, I did not pursue it. I seldom do aught but doodle, and I am capable of drawing two poses: Standing up straight with hands at sides, or with hands behind back. I cannot eyeball proportions, even making a character hold out a hand reveals that I have never seen a human arm in my life, shading tends to look a bit like leprosy -and just - it's a mess. Here's a good example of what my art looks like when I'm actually trying:

(It wouldn't be too bad if the character in question wasn't supposed to be a grown man...)

Things turn out a little bit better if I use reference, but frankly, I'm afraid to use reference that isn't someone else's art. Drawing from life or photos is HARD, because someone else hasn't made the artistic choices for me, hasn't chosen which lines are needed and which can be left out. But, that kind of thing is generally frowned on as intellectual property theft unless you keep the art strictly to yourself.

I want to start drawing from photos. I want to start mixing and matching elements from multiple photos. I want to mix ideas out of my head with appropriate reference. So... I picked a middle ground for this starting sketch. I picked a Disney CGI movie, because it's a bit like drawing from a photo, but still with a number of artistic choices already clear on the screen. (Also Disney is so huge I don't mind doing studies of their screencaps and posting them the same way I would just finding an Indie artist and doing a study of their work.)

It's a stepping stone - I don't want to stay stuck doing this kind of thing, but it's what I need to get the ball rolling. I'm not especially a "Frozen" fan, but I do have a soft spot for Anna.

Disclosures: When I uploaded the sketches I arranged them to be closer together for a more pleasing look, and I increased the clarity by 25% to make up for the greying/fading my scanner causes. Otherwise, this is the art as it looks on the page. For the large image of Anna, I did permit myself to cheat by tracing rudimentary markings to show the distance from eye to eye, from top to bottom of the face, etc, but I tried to avoid any major tracing. (It's from a screencap, not from lineart so there wasn't much in the way of lines to trace anyway.)

[neopuppy]

Preview-

Hot Sauce (M): Deeply Dip That

Hot Sauce: Intro—>

Hot Sauce: Part 1–>

Hot Sauce: Part 2–>

Hot Sauce: Part 3–>

Hot Sauce: Part 4–>

a/n: To thank you for 2000 followers(little under 100 away atm), this happened so fast and I never expected more than a few 100 followers. I’m very appreciative for all your messages and support! I’ve decided on one last Hot Sauce installment to celebrate🥳 The fivesome that was requested more than a few times, hopefully will wrap this up nicely for you all😮‍💨(not that I do requests but..)

This will be a lengthy one shot- and filthy. Reader be mindful, always read to your level of comfort💙

please do not ask when I will post- if you would like to be tagged just lmk!☺️

There is also this.

“Why’s he always gotta be such a dick? What does he want? He won’t fuck any of the girls we bring back. Now he’s pissed we got his sister here..” Haechan scoffs. Hands busy behind the little bar set up by the pool mixing a drink. Renjun sighs, leaning in on his elbow.

“Step sister, when you just say sister it’s kind of weird. After what we all had to watch..” he rubs his sweaty nape with a smirk. Other hand snapping at Haechan for a beer.

“Don’t act like you didn’t like it. You came faster than all of us.” Haechan lets out an appeased laugh. Pouring golden bubbly liquid into a red cup. Under his breath, he whispers quietly “wonder why.”

“Fuck you dude, talk about Jeno being a dick.” Renjun snatches the cup out of Haechan’s hands, sniffing the contents cautiously. All too familiar with his stupid pranks by now.

“Renjun.. hear me out.. if he’s not gonna fuck her..” Haechan’s brows lift suggestively. Eyes darting back and forth between where you stand. Tension evident in your body language as irritation overcomes you the longer Jeno ignores your presence. “Been awhile since me and you shared right?..”

“Haechan, he almost killed us once already. You really want to risk that chance again for some pussy?” Renjun leans back, contemplation passing his eyes none the less.

“You know it wasn’t just some pussy. Love me a good freaky bitch.” Haechan’s grin grows. Sipping alcohol through a straw, having started early today. Slight buzz reaching his head already. Maybe with a clearer state of mind he wouldn’t dare test Jeno again- yea right.

“We’ve been 6 feet deep in ass since we got here. You just love to piss him off dude.” Renjun stands up from the bar stool, hands smoothing down his t-shirt. “I’m not completely opposed to the idea though..”

“You act like Jeno doesn’t deserve it. Look at him seething away over there like some big baby. He needs to learn his lesson already, just cause he’s hot and has chiseled abs doesn’t mean he should always get what he wants.” Haechan says shooting a lazy glare Jeno’s way.

“You have to stop watching those enemies to lovers movies. You’re one more hour of Jeno walking around shirtless away from proclaiming your undying love.” Renjun responds with a disgusted tone. Tossing back the rest of his drink. Combination of summer heat and alcohol causing sweat to pool in the crevices of his body.

“Whatever..” Haechan laughs to himself, finishing the rest of his drink off. With a spin, he grabs two cans of beer making his way out from behind the bar. “You in or what?”

Renjun sports a hesitant smile, eyes bouncing between you and Jeno. He should know better by now than to let Haechan talk him into these messes. Against his moral judgment, he nods, smile spreading wider into his cheeks. “If we get caught, I’m blaming it all on you.”

“We’re not gonna get caught. Jeno’s too busy pretending she doesn’t exists.” With a roll of his shoulders, and an elbow nudged into Renjun’s side they make their way over to you. “Act cool. Don’t make it obvious.”

Renjun scoffs, stepping ahead of Haechan. If anyone knew how to be inconspicuous out of the four of them, it’s him.

“Why are you standing here all alone? Are we not friends now?” He steps into your space under the roofs ledge where you’re trying to catch shade. Pulling a can of beer from Haechan’s clutches, earning a scoff. “We got that sugar free kind, girly spritzer stuff? You thirsty?”

“First off- ew, we are not friends. Second off- why would you idiots invite me to this party?” You spit out, snatching the can from his hands. Haechan’s expression turning amused over Renjun’s shoulder muttering- “Should have let me handle this one.”

“God she’s just like Jeno..” Renjun tucks his chin into his shoulder whispering to Haechan. Face turning back to you quickly with a kind smile. “Let’s be friend then? You’re here right? We all know each other well.”

“You know fucking doesn’t equate to friendship right?” Your tone laced in annoyance. Hand swatting at mosquitos circling around you. Haechan’s eyes light up, the bulb in his mind sparking to life.

“Bug spray!” He shouts out, a little too enthusiastically. “We have bug spray inside.. come on let’s get you some before you turn into a mosquito feast.”

Renjun looks at him with confusion. Haechan motioning for you both to step inside the house. Majority of the party goers outside by the pool- a pool party after all. He throws Renjun a look indicating ‘I got this’, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Jeno doesn’t spot the three of you. You make your way inside, Haechan placing a hand on your lower back.

“Still can’t believe Jeno ruined your summer plans over something so petty..” Haechan mumbles, throwing another knowing look at Renjun behind your back. You take in the gorgeous beach house, anger building up inside of you the more you think about it. Unable to stop yourself from picturing all the surfaces Jeno could have been fucking you into mindlessness on.

“He’s so immature.” You sigh, slumping against Haechan’s hand. Renjun nods in return, wrapping himself around your arm.

“You have no idea. He’s just lucky we all agreed to help him pay this off.” Renjun bites back his smile. Leading you down the hall toward their bedrooms.

“I know you guys are like besties, but Jeno’s just..” your hands shoot up, groaning in frustration. “Why would he even bother to rent this place out for us. It’s not like I wanted to go out with that Mark guy!”

“Oh I know..” Haechan pauses, turning you to face him. “He told us all about it.” He tsks, head shaking.

“He can be such an asshole right?” Renjun strokes your arm up and down, free hand brushing hair off your shoulder. You slump into his pets, soft warm hands sweeping up and down your bare skin.

“You need to get back at him, give him a taste of his own medicine.” Haechan’s tone deepens. Hands finding their way to your hips. “Let us help you.”

“Help me?” Your eyes widen, Haechan’s lust filled gaze pulling you in. This can’t happen again, or can it..

“Jeno abandoned you for weeks to come fuck around out here with us. He doesn’t deserve anything from you.” Renjun leans into your ear with a hushed tone. Fingers finding the tie on your bikini bottom, toying with the strings.

“I think it’s only the right thing to do..” Haechan slides a hand down your fluttering bare stomach. Fingers reaching for strings on the other side of you. His mouth falls open comically, pulling the tied knot free.

“Wait..” you look around the hallway with slight panic. Thighs squeezing together, clenching the fabric of your bottoms between you. “Here? Isn’t this..”

“What? You’re shy all of a sudden?” Renjun bites your earlobe, tugging free the other knot. Bikini bottoms betraying you as they fall to your feet. Eyes drifting down, toes kicking the cloth aside. Stomach heating up, fiery heat coiling around inside of you.

“I’m not.. I just.. what if he..” Swallowing, head tilting as Renjun’s tongue slides down your neck. Soft lips leaving hot pecks on your burning skin.

“What if he what?” Haechan clasps your chin, eyes blazing with intent. “Jeno deserves this..” fingers drag down your neck, between your chest. Lips pulling back, sucking air through teeth. “You deserve this.”

A whimper passes between your lips, legs trembling holding you up. Haechan’s head tilted down, hand slowly stroking between your abdomen. Eyes look up, half lidded and menacing. Fingers sliding in-between your squeezed thighs, tapping at your clit.

“Don’t you?” The questions dangerous, almost threatening. Biting down on your lip as Renjun’s teeth dig into your neck, humming in agreement. His fingers running along the dip in your back. Giving in you nod rapidly, cocky smirk on Haechan’s lips spreading.

“That’s right. Nasty little whores like you love getting fucked where anyone can watch.” Haechan’s grin grows. Fingers gliding between your folds. “As expected, dripping wet.”

“Let me” Renjun steps in front of you, lips pouted with a sheen of spit. Lust hazy filled eyes racking across your body. He swiftly falls to his knees, arms wrapping around your thighs.

“I got you” Haechan steps behind you, arms wrapping around your waist. “He loves to eat.”

Renjun’s face dips down, nose shoving between your shaking thighs. One of Haechan’s hands squeezes your hip, landing a smack loud enough to echo against the walls.

“Stop acting shy, that pussy’s hotter than my ps4” lips drag across your nape. Teeth skimming down skin, tongue lapping at your shoulder. Hips jolting forward Renjun’s nose pressing against the hood of your clit.

Sandwiched between their bodies has your temperature rising quickly. Haechan pressing flat against your backside. Licking the top of your back, tongue languidly dragging up and down your spine. Renjun pulls your thigh forward onto his shoulder, you tense up reluctant to relax your body weight against him.

Haechan slaps your hip again, firm hand landing on your ass after. “Stop acting innocent, where’s that whore that begged for cock in front of all of us huh?” He hisses against your ear, hips thrusting forward against your lower half with emphasis.

Pathetic whimpers fall from your lips, body slumping as you release control, giving in. Renjun’s eyes shine bright below you, cheeks bunched up with eagerness. His jaw stretching open, mouth enveloping your mound. Hot tongue forcing between your wet folds. Loud sounds of wetness burning at the tips of your ears.

“That’s more like it, dirty slut” Haechan lets out a laugh, teeth digging into the crevice of your neck. “You gonna let me fuck this ass?” Fingers reach between you, tips circling around your clenching up hole. Gasping in surprise, instinctively rolling forward against Renjun’s mouth.

“Fuck..” your eyes squeeze shut, biting down a moan. Tongue finding it’s way to your entrance, moans shivering up your core.

“Ride his tongue baby, he loves that shit” Haechan slaps your ass again. Finger prodding at your backside. Mouth marking up your neck with endless licks, sucking and biting over every expanse of flesh. Haechan thrusts forward, Renjun’s tongue gliding inside with a firm wiggle. He doesn’t stop thrusting, finger running up and down between your cheeks. Face growing hotter as you speed up, neck dropping back against Haechan’s shoulder.

“Feel good? Come on, tell him how it feels.” He hisses meanly into the back of your ear, teeth nibbling.

“Yes! Oh fuck, yes yes” eyes dropping open, the ceiling spinning above succumbing to the pleasure. Renjun knows what he’s doing, hands squeezing around your thighs. Tongue relentlessly working away inside of you. The combination from Haechan’s torment and Renjun’s stimulation too much. Haechans fingers not giving your ass a break, hole fluttering against him with each pass.

“Dirty slut..” he mutters, reaching around you. Hand sliding down your stomach. Your eyes follow the motions, head dropping forward. Eyes locked on Renjun’s squinted crazed look. Practically fucking down on his mouth. His head moving up and down with each thrust of his tongue inside.

“I’m..o-oh..oh fuck…stop stop!” You squeal out. Still too aware of your surroundings trying to control your vocals. Haechan smirks behind you, hand swiping down. Thumb teasing at your clit.

“Gonna cum?” He presses down on your clit harshly. Roughly circling it, working you from both ends. Your head shakes, waist curling forward in his hold.

“No! I’m… I’m gonna..oh f-fuckk” your face contorting tightly. You grind down on Renjun’s tongue, legs shaking around him. Body jumping forward, squirting out past his tongue. He groans beneath you, eyes falling shut in ecstasy. Continuing to work away, licking all over your drenched folds. Heavy sounds of slurping mixing in with your panted drawn out moans.

Foot steps sound around as they reach closer, stepping into the hallway. Bottoms of feet pattering down on the wooden floor approaching. Moans and a tongue swirling in your ear much louder. Distracting you from hearing any warning. A displeased huff of shock paired with a deep voice breaking your thoughts— “Are you two fucking serious right now?”

ps- they are so going to get caught🤓

pps- 💙love you all💙

[cyoc49]

Auto Pilot

James was 18 and already shaping up to be a disappointment in life. After spending four years of high school slacking off, doing drugs, and not caring about anything, he now found himself a freshman in college with little prospect of where to go. He was attending the local community college - he hadn’t even wanted to do that, but his parents threatened to kick him out and cut off funding if he didn’t do some higher education. Now he found himself wandering aimlessly around campus. He had no idea what his major would be, no plans of any kind, really. He wanted to stay as distant from this college experience as possible.

To be honest, James did sometimes think about his lack of aim in life. The truth was he truly did fear committing to anything in life, for the risk of making the wrong choice, and so invented a “don’t care” persona to cope with his lack of place in the world.

James arrived at his dorm, and made his way upstairs to his room. He shared it with some guy, Clide. They didn’t talk much. As he got to the door of his room, he noticed a package sitting in front of the door. He picked it up and inspected it. Relatively small, lightweight, addressed to him. Odd. Usually this type of thing would be sent to the mail room. As James entered his room, he put the package down on his desk. Clide wasn’t there, he was probably at class.

“Might as well check this thing out,” James said to himself as he opened the box. Inside was a big red button reading AUTO PILOT.

Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t that. It was one of those comically oversized buttons like you saw in movies. He had never seen one this big in person. And what did “Auto Pilot” mean?

Looking back into the box, James found a small booklet labeled “User’s Manual”. He picked it up and read the contents:

“INCREDIBLE AUTO PILOT BUTTON

Life can be exhausting. School, jobs, bills, food, house troubles, and countless other decisions have to be made and executed every day. At the end of the day, is all the grind really worth it? Wouldn’t you rather take the easy route? The better route?

The Auto Pilot button is simple. Press it, and your life will be set to “auto pilot”. We’ve spent decades studying the behavior patterns of successful people, and have created a formula by which we have the correct response to every obstacle and issue you will ever face in your life. Job troubles? You’ll always be a hard worker who knows how to get what he wants. Social issues? You’ll have the right line for every occasion. You’ll be more outgoing, more ambitious, and best of all: you don’t have to do any of it. When you’re on auto pilot. You can sit back and watch as your body makes all the right decisions for you. One press is all that’s needed.

Enjoy your life on auto pilot!”

James checked the back to see if there was anything else. He didn’t know what to think. He almost wanted to laugh. It had to be a joke, but the tone of the pamphlet was so certain that it could also be the delusions of some eccentric billionaire. Ah well, at least he finally had something to go on his barren desk. He slid the auto pilot button to the back corner of his desk, then paused. He pressed down on the button, just to see what those big red buttons really feel like.

Unfortunately for James, one press is all that’s needed.

*click*

As the button clicked down, James’ body slumped.

His eyes went dead.

And then he suddenly smiled.

And he kept smiling.

James was 22 and life was looking pretty great. After pressing that button his freshman year, James completely turned his life around, as if overnight. He suddenly started paying attention in all his classes. He began going to the gym, and joined an intramural soccer team. By the end of his freshman year, James had gained 25 lbs of muscle, going from a boney 150 to a beefy 175. He also ended his year, with a 4.0 GPA, and used it to apply to the local state school. It just offered him more opportunities than community college, and had better networking circles. James got in handily, and that fall found himself moving across state to university.

Almost as soon as he landed on campus, James continued his life climbing. He declared majors in international business and finance, knowing the money opportunities that lay there. The course load was nothing for James, as he always worked on homework at maximum efficiency. In fact, he had time left over to join a club lacrosse team.

Through his finance classes and lacrosse practices, James came to realize the social circle he needed to join if he wanted to get ahead: The rich preps. They were the ones who exuded the aura of success he wanted to project, and the ones with the connections to jobs after college. He modeled himself after them. He began to dress like them, in khakis and pastels, and leather loafers. Vineyard Vines, Ralph Lauren, and Brooks Brothers invaded his closet. He began to manage his hair, combing it into a neat side part every morning with pomade. He researched golf news, followed stock market trends, so he would have topics to talk about with these preps.

Slowly, by bringing up the points he now new about with classmates, and by projecting the image of a successful young preppy professional, James came to be accepted as one of their own. One of the boys. His ultimate dream. From that point it was easy: James was Mr All American, effortlessly witty and charming. By the time he was a senior, James was on fire. He had served as captain of his lacrosse team for the past 2 years, was top of his business classes. He had met several of his new friend’s fathers (all of them CEOs), and in most cases the fathers ended up liking James more than their own children. James was a professional in all aspects, and he did it all with a bright, mindless smile.

The one thing James hadn’t accomplished in college was finding a girlfriend. Of course he’d had several offers, but he never took a woman to call his own. Every once in a while he found himself staring at the guys on the lacrosse team while they changed, but these were only fleeting feelings. Certainly not the most efficient way to live his life.

But this didn’t matter to James. In just a few months he would be graduating top of his business program, and thanks to the father of a friend he had a job lined up at Plexicorp, one of the biggest marketing chains in the nation. James was only 22 and he was a consummate professional. Is this what a perfect life looks like?

James was 30 and on top of the world. After graduation he went right into work at Plexicorp, and immediately assumed the stereotype of a “young urban professional”. His work ethic was tireless, and through a mixture of countless golf matches and the perfect water cooler humor, James quickly became the most popular guy in his office, and the model employee. He rose in the ranks quickly, and was now a regional manager with a six figure salary at only 30.

With extra cash to spare, James had gone to work giving his life an upgrade. He bought clothes from extremely expensive brands, though sticking to his preppy classics. He got salon quality pomade for the classic styling of his hair (which had only gotten lighter over the years), and routinely had dermatology and dental work done to keep his face looking as fresh as possible. He bought a serene little cookie cutter McMansion out in the suburbs. Even with all this going on, he perfectly worked time into his schedule for gym and nutrition, keeping his body in peak shape even as he got older. At age 30, James was quickly approaching a DILF.

With the perfect job, the perfect clothes, and the perfect body, you’d think James would have quickly found a suitable wife, or at least someone looking for a QoL upgrade. But even over the years, James still never found himself fully committed to women, even though he knew starting a family young would be most productive in the long term. In a particular night of conflicting emotions, James made his way to a leather bar on the outskirts of town, where a nice 50 year old man with a beard and a harness taught James what he had always known. He was gay. And he loved it.

There must have been a hole in the Auto Pilot system. Certainly heterosexuality would be most efficient for a successful life, but somehow James’ base feelings came through. Of course he had no way of knowing what was going on in his body. All he knew was what was most efficient, and what felt best were in opposition to each other right now.

Eventually, with a smile, the straight James won out. After his encounter with the leather clad friend, he quickly found himself not thinking about sex at all. A life of chastity was certainly good enough for him. Letting sex be for pleasure hardly worked out, as we see. Sex should be for utility. Creating the family. And to get a family, he needed a wife.

The following weekend James took a trip to his local country club, and after a bit of scouting, chatting, and brown-nosing, James was introduced to Amber, an interior decorator. She wasn’t the most brilliant with a conversation, but she was single and looking to marry and that was enough for James. They went on several incredibly vanilla movie and dinner dates, where hand holding was the most action either of them got. After 8 months, they married and moved in together.

Now standing here at 30, James looked in the mirror. He felt his decently-sized chest push against the cotton undershirt and mint green button up sitting on top. His rotund and muscular ass was perfectly wrapped by his khakis. He looked down at the counter of his bathroom. Marble. With plenty of space. Even with his tricky sex situation, James had to admit he had a great body and a great life. He had made (almost) all the right decisions, and was reaping plenty of the rewards. As far as living life, this was a pretty good way to do it.

James was 40, and life was perfect. The shareholders of Plexicorp were so impressed by his keen business instincts and impressive management, and at only 32 offered to make him the youngest shareholder in the history of the company. From there he went from “pretty well off” to “disgustingly wealthy”. James knew how to invest his money well, and from the moment of that promotion never worried about money again. He moved into a mansion in the nice part of town and upgraded his wardrobe to suits, suits, and more suits. Now that he was one of the elites, he had to project as such. He kept his appearance as clean and refined as possible at all times. He loved to flash off in a khaki suit (a nod to his preppy roots), and with his now perfectly-blonde hair, he was the absolute image of refinement. He had certainly aged like fine wine, and there was no doubt about it: James was a DILF.

The only sore spot in his life has been Amber. After years of trying and failing to conceive due to lack of excitement, Amber eventually asked to file for divorce. James knew he had to grant her this, and handled the proceedings quietly (and generously) to let go of her gently. At 35, James was finally meeting a dead end that his Auto Pilot skills were unable to find a solution to.

Until he had an investment meeting with a local stock analyst named Robert

Robert was an image of success, beauty, and sharpness that James had seen in only one other man: himself. It was almost unnatural how beautiful and crisp Robert was. His perfectly parted hair. His well-fit gray suit and polished dress shoes. As James eyed this man up and down, it dawned on him. Robert must have made every decision perfectly in life to look like an image of success in his his 30s, because he did. Robert had help from Auto Pilot too. And judging by the lack of a ring on his finger, and the way he was eyeing James in the exact same way James was eyeing him, James had a suspicion that Robert had the same problem he had.

Robert was someone whose every value, choice, and lifestyle matched up with James’.

James knew exactly the right decision to make.

The two flashed each other perfect smiles and firm handshakes, and although the topic of their first meeting stayed on stocks, it was clear there was a mutual spark between the two. They quickly decided that weekly investment meetings would be best, which turned into lunch meetings twice per week, which turned into dinner, which turned into something much more. The two took it slow, to be safe, but it was clear they were disgustingly perfect for each other. On Tuesdays and Thursdays they met up at the gym at 6AM to exercise together. They had quickly learned they wore the same suit size, and exchanged looks on several occasions. Robert taught James just how he achieved his razor sharp part, and James taught Robert how to match pocket squares to outfits. After a few years of dating they married in a picturesque countryside summer wedding, and both knew this one would last.

Now standing here at 40, James could genuinely say life was perfect. He had gone from an aimless place in his life to the top of the world, and although it had been a bumpy road, he was now with the perfect partner living a life of gentility. Checking his suited image in the mirror one last time, James left the bathroom and walked to the front door where Robert was waiting. The two had plans to attend an orchestra show and get dinner at the nicest restaurant in town.

James flashed Robert the perfect smile, and Robert returned the favor.

“Ready to go, darling?” James asked the man of his dreams.

“Of course, love.” Robert replied in a smooth tenor. The two briefly joined to kiss, before heading outside where the driver was waiting to take them into the city for another wonderful night.

[maxwell-grant]

Jumping off from my previous question/suggestion, might I please ask if there are any superheroes you think would make fine Pulp Villains and any Supervillains you think would make convincing Pulp Heroes?

I'm gonna go ahead and remark that I'd personally suggest to anyone who's trying to create pulp characters inspired by superheroes (which would be probably about 90% of you who may want to do that sort of thing) to flip the script around a little. As in, don't try to create pulp analogues to the Justice League/Avengers upfront, but play around with some of the lesser-known icons and filter those through your idea of what “pulp” means (which is gonna be quite different than my own or anyone else’s). 

I’m not gonna really mention characters I’ve already talked about before like Vandal Savage or Namor, instead I’ll pick new ones and see what can be highlighted about them.

Regarding “Superheroes who could make fine/convincing Pulp Villains”, even though he’s a character I've read basically nothing on, Martian Manhunter definitely leaped out to me as an obvious option. He’s a Sci-Fi Superman who takes the first half of the name to an extreme that borders on comical, except he’s not a square-jawed white man, he’s a 1.000 year old green alien from Mars with shapeshifting powers who can look as monstrous as the artist desires. He’s the product of an advanced civilization and genetic modification, and on top of the Flying Brick powerset and shapeshifting, he also has incredibly powerful and extensive telepathic abilities, he can become invisible, phaze through matter, use telekinesis and other weird abilities. A lot of pulp stories closer to sci-fi were based around the idea of taking one of these abilities and extrapolating horrific consequences for them, and J’onn has those by the dozens. He also has an extremely mundane weakness that would allow him to be beaten by Macready with a blowtorch if that’s where the story ended.

He was also a law enforcement officer from Mars who became a police detective and it’s even right there in his name, and again, I have never read anything he’s in (I should probably pick the Orlando mini), I know he’s for all intents and purposes a generally nice man who tends to job a lot in crossovers and cartoons, but the idea of taking all those great vast and horrifying alien powers, combining all of them into a single character who also happens to be the last survivor of a doomed planet (and one who actually lived through it’s collapse), and then making that character a former cop trying to resume his work on Earth? 

That is a Pulp Supervillain begging to happen, and a particularly horrifying one at that. And hey, speaking of The Thing-

Now, Plastic Man’s potential for horror has already been explored quite a bit in some of the darker DC continuities like Injustice and DCeased, and it’s quite funny seeing a lot of these turn Plastic Man into The Thing because there were quite a handful of Wold Newton pages that ran with the idea that Macready from the original story was Doc Savage, and that the secret chemicals that Eel O’Brian was hit by that gave him his powers were actually samples of The Thing contained in one of Savage’s labs. Regardless, the idea of a former street crook suddenly gaining bizarre shapeshifting abilities that allow him to reign terror on his gangster associates could make for a great premise as a pulp crime story that veers into horror as the gangsters gradually figure out what is Eel O’Brian’s deal, and then the story can take a more tragic turn.

The thing about Jack Cole’s Plastic Man that modern takes on the character neglect is that, while Plas was a lively roguish anti-hero (arguably the first of it’s kind in comics), he’s still for intents and purposes “the straight man” (HA, right, Plastic Man being “straight”). He’s the relatively sane hero who plays off Woozy’s wackier misadventures and the imaginative madness that Jack Cole paints his adventures with, and it makes for an interesting contrast considering Plastic Man is already a weird character, having to ramp up the strangeness of the world around him so that he still remains the sane man. There are ways to twist this into something quite horrifying, even tragic for Plastic Man as he either struggles to maintain coherency, or embraces the shifting chaos the world’s spiraling into for better or worse (and definitely for the worse towards those on the receiving end of his vengeance, or even his humor).

Now, onto the flipside, regarding Supervillains that could become Pulp Heroes -

Normally I’d not mention the Batman villains here, because I already have a lot to talk about in regards to them as is, they comprise some of my favorite comic characters, but I pretty much have to make an exception for Two-Face in this topic, as not only a pretty obvious option but one with even case studies to prove it, as not only do we have The Black Bat, a 1930s costumed pulp hero with an identical origin story and several other conceptual overlaps with Batman, as well as The Whisperer, a young hotshot police commissioner who dresses up as a disfigured vigilante to kill criminals without consequence (and who’s somehow less of a maniacal asshole in his secret identity than in his regular one), but it turns out that there actually was a 1910s pulp hero called The Two-Faced Man:

Crewe was created by “Varick Vanardy,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter, Doctor Quartz), and appeared in three short stories and two novels and short story collections from 1914 to 1919, beginning with “That Man Crew” (The Cavalier, Jan. 24, 1914). 

Crewe is “The Two-Faced Man.” 

He is in his forties and has gray hair and a “sharply cut and handsome profile—until one caught a view of the other side of his face and saw the almost hideous blemish that nearly covered it, and which graduated in corrugated irregularity from a delicate pink to repulsive purple.” 

Crewe is two-faced in another way. Crewe is a saloon owner in below Washington Square. But he has another identity: Birge Moreau, portraitist and socialite hanger-on. Crewe uses both his identities to solve crimes as an amateur detective.

The only person to know about both of Crewe’s identities is a police inspector who is also Crewe’s friend and who Crewe helps in pressing cases - The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heores by Jess Nevins

And speaking of obvious picks for Supervillains turned Pulp Heroes,

Assuming I even need to make a case for Kraven the Hunter other than just presenting this cropped panel from Squirrel Girl and in particular the art painted on the Kra-Van, or even just telling you to read Squirrel Girl and it’s take on “The Unhuntable Sergei” (I had no idea most of the people saying “Kraven’s arc in Squirrel Girl is as good if not better than Kraven’s Last Hunt” weren’t actually joking in the slightest and I speak as someone who has Kraven among their absolute favorite Marvel characters, it had no right being that good), I’m going to quote the brilliant Rogue’s Review from The Mindless Ones that lays down in painstaking detail why Kraven could make a killer protagonist in that horrifically over-the-top pulp fashion

One thing that strikes me writing this, is how well Kraven could hold his own comic. There’s always room for a book spotlighting a ruthless, hardcore, gentleman bastard, and Kraven’s raison d’etre makes him supremely versatile, so well suited to any genre, any environment. It’s odd that more writers haven’t jumped on the fact that in a universe where off-world travel is possible – indeed, common – a hunter like Kraven would have a field day. 

I can just imagine the opening scene – herds of weird cthuloid bat creatures grazing in the gloomy green nitrogen fields, bathed in lethal, bone splintering fog, when, suddenly, LIGHT! from above and an unholy bellowing: “CTHGRGN fthgrgnARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGN!”

They look up in fear and then they start to run – ploughing into and over each other, tentacles flailing, as from the space-ship’s docking bay Kraven silently plummets, barely dressed for the cold, a glowing knife smothered in elder signs jammed between his teeth. 

You should have seen him one night previous, sipping alien tokay around the Captain’s table with the other guests, discussing the morning’s hunt; and the way he insulted the Skrull dignitary by forgetting himself and accidentally sporting his favourite piece of formal wear: his boiling unstable dinner-jacket of many colours, fashioned from the hide of one of the Ambassador’s super kinsmen.

Whoops!

Midway through Kraven explaining how the best way to irreparably damage a symbiote is to wait until its bonded with you and then seriously maim yourself, the Skrull decided it might be a good idea to simmer down, while his beautiful Inhuman lover hung on every word.

The deeper I get into this the more convinced I am that the MU’s hunter-killer extraordinaire wouldn’t limit himself to bloody planet Earth. And neither would he limit himself to this dimension, or universe or timeline. The guy’d be just as at home leaping, sword raised, onto the back of a T-Rex in the Savage Land, as he would be ploughing through werewolves in the graveyards of Arkham or tracking a howling Demon across Mephistopheles’ realm. 

He’d work perfectly in all these environments because he has a damn good reason to be casting a bloody swathe through them: wherever there’s big game, you’ll find Kraven.

The next choice I guess is an oddball, but not that much of an oddball if you know already what is my main frame of reference towards Marvel

I don’t think people appreciate enough that the main reason Shuma-Gorath has anything resembling a fanbase has nothing whatsoever to do with the comics he was in, but entirely because, when Capcom designers had a list of Marvel characters to pick from to work on Marvel Super Heroes, they took a look at the diet Cthulhu and went “gimme THAT one”, and then went all-in in giving the alien squid monster a funky personality along with a great stage and music and animations and all that great fighting game character stuff, and now he’s maybe the most popular Dr Strange villain along with Dormammu and Mordo, despite having ZERO film appearences or major showings in comic sagas.

Capcom's designers redefined Shuma-Gorath from a nebulous cosmic evil into a comically smug cartoon bastard who can rant about devouring all dimensions and souls horrifically while also cracking poses and zingers like “How do you expect to win a fight with only two arms?” and having dinners with Dhalsim or hosting Japanese game shows in his endings, and it kills me that none of this ever made it’s way into any depictions of the character outside of MvC. 

So that’s kinda what I’d go with. I’d take Capcom’s Shuma-Gorath, depower him a bit obviously from his canonical power, and run with the premise of his MvC3 ending where he decides that, well, if he's the unlikely savior of this pathetic planet and these wretched human dogs like him so much, and he’s clearly having a much better time here among them than he ever had drifting among the stars cealessly consuming life, then maybe he can take a break from all that eldritch business and keep up hosting the Super Monster Awesome Hour and maybe fight whatever PITIFUL villains think can take HIS planet. I mean, he’ll probably still end up destroying the planet by the end, but why not give this hero business a try?

Just until he gets his full powers back of course. 

I mean you can’t deny he DOES look pretty good in that bowtie, surely The Great Shuma-Gorath wouldn’t be so unmerciful as to deny these vile wastes of flesh something good to look at in their brief and miserable lives.

[uhlikzsuzsanna]

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read if you haven’t seen all of Season 1 of “Loki,” currently streaming on Disney Plus.

Ever since “Loki” first premiered in June, Kate Herron, who directed all six episodes of the Marvel Studios series, has had to pretend like she knew far less than she really does. For one, she couldn’t acknowledge that the homages to sci-fi classics like “Blade Runner” and “Brazil” that she’d baked into the elaborate sets for the Time Variance Authority — the cosmic bureaucracy tasked with maintaining the sacred timeline — were “meant to be sinister” rather than just “playful and quirky.”

For another, Herron was delighted to see fans theorizing after the very first episode that Kang the Conqueror — a character already set to appear in the Marvel Studios feature “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” as played by Jonathan Majors — was really pulling the strings of the TVA. But until the finale streamed last Wednesday, she couldn’t even hint that those fans were only half right: Majors does play the mastermind of the TVA, but he’s a variant of Kang referred to as He Who Remains. It’s only after He Who Remains encounters Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his female variant counterpart Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and Sylvie plunges a blade into his heart, that the multiverse is reborn, creating the possibility for Kang the Conqueror to emerge.

Again, though: Herron couldn’t acknowledge any of that, even to those closest to her.

“Nothing has prepared me better for working with Marvel than playing tabletop games with my friends,” she says with a laugh. “It definitely taught me how to have a good poker face. You have to hide your hand — and sometimes lie.”

Now, thankfully, all of that is behind her — as is “Loki” itself. Despite receiving widespread acclaim for her assured, ambitious, and visually sumptuous work directing the show, Herron says she has decided not to return for Season 2 of the series.

“I gave it everything — in my soul, in my heart, everything,” she says. “I feel so proud of the work we’ve done. And yeah, I’ll be enjoying Season 2 as a fan.”

She’s quick to sing the praises of everyone she worked with at Marvel, and she says she’s “sure” she’ll work again with the studio. For now, however, she’s ready to take a holiday, and then turn to a project she’s writing herself “that’s really close to my heart that I really want to make.”

“It’s my own decision, but I just feel like my part with ‘Loki’ is finished now and I’m just excited to see where his story goes,” she says.

Before she parts ways for good, however, Herron spoke with Variety about bringing Jonathan Majors into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what she thought of the shocking revelation about infinity stones and what she would like to see happen in Season 2.

She always knew “Loki” would introduce Kang and the Multiverse…

From the very start, Herron says, she and head writer Michael Waldron knew that their six-episode run of “Loki” would always end with Loki and Sylvie meeting He Who Remains at his citadel, the result of which would cause the creation of the multiverse.

As Episode 6 makes clear, both of these events were massive turning points for the future of the MCU — and Herron still can’t quite believe she got to be the one to make them a reality.

“We were just, like, waiting to be told, ‘Actually, guys, we’ve had a change [of heart],'” Herron says. Instead, Herron says she and “Quantumania” director Peyton Reed participated in casting Majors in the role.

“I was just like, pinch me,” she says. “I can’t believe I was at the table for that, because I know it was such a big decision for them all.”

Herron also decided to have Majors provide the voices for all three “Timekeepers” who are supposedly at the head of the TVA, but are revealed by Sylvie to be nothing more than “mindless androids.”

“We didn’t have someone cast for those voices,” she says. “I remember thinking, well, ‘Wizard of Oz’ is clearly a reference for us. We should have the wizard. It’d be great if it’s Jonathan. So we sent him all the art of the timekeepers. And he just kind of came up with these incredible voices for each of them.”

…but not with a cliffhanger.

The most significant decision of the season, though, may be that it ends with a giant cliffhanger, when Loki discovers he’s in a brand new reality for the TVA in which Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) don’t even recognize him. But while Herron knew how this season of “Loki” would end, at first, she did not know that there would be any more seasons after it.

“When I started, there wasn’t a discussion of Season 2, exactly,” she says. “It was just that season of ‘Loki.’ As we got deeper into production, everyone was very happy, and obviously there’s so much to explore with Loki. It felt like we should continue the story. So I think the cliffhanger ending came in later in the process.”

Herron says she sprinkled in some hints to viewers that Loki is in a new timeline, like redressing sets to look slightly off, and recasting Eugene Cordero’s TVA receptionist Casey as a hunter headed to the armory in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. But her favorite bit is that the final line — said by Mobius to Loki — is the same as the first line spoken in the show, by a woman in the Gobi desert, also to Loki: “Who are you?”

“That was kind of the question of the whole first season,” Herron says.

She was just as shocked about the Infinity Stones as everyone else.

In the first episode, Loki discovers to his horror that not only does his magic not work inside the TVA, but Infinity Stones — heretofore believed to be the most powerful objects in the known universe — are just inert rocks there. The revelation sent shockwaves across the Marvel fandom; Herron was right there with them.

“That was in Michael’s script when I first got it to pitch [for the directing job],” she says. “I remember being like, ‘WHAT?! You put me through so much!’ But then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s kind of genius, because it shows how powerful the TVA are. Who are these people? What is this place?'”

Herron especially appreciated how her shock — and the audience’s — mirrored Loki’s own as the rug gets pulled out from under him. “I was quite excited by it,” she says. “It really shows you that there’s a new power in the MCU — and it’s not what we we spent the last decade dedicating our lives to.”

She told Kevin Feige she wanted gender parity among her crew.

Prior to “Loki,” Herron’s most high profile job was directing the second half of the first season of the Netflix dramedy “Sex Education.” She got the “Loki” job thanks to a 60-page pitch memo that filled out just about every detail of the world of the show. After hiring her, she says Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige asked her, “What are your terms?”

“This was the first time I was gonna get to hire my heads of department on a television show I worked on,” she says. “I was like, I’d really love [the crew] to be 50/50 across gender.”

Herron says she wasn’t out to fill any jobs on the film with a specific gender. But, she says, “There aren’t enough women in these roles. They’re out there. It’s a lack of opportunity. It’s not a lack of interest.”

She did end up hiring two women for critical roles that are still rarely occupied by women: cinematographer Autumn Durald (“The Sun Is Also a Star”) and composer Natalie Holt (History’s “Knightfall”).

“I felt like she was inside my mind,” Herron says of Durald. “We have the same taste. And I love the way that she talks about light as a character.”

Herron hired Holt unusually early for a composer, after she’d completed editing the first episode during the pandemic shutdown. She knew that the particular sci-fi film noir look of the show that she was developing with Durald needed similarly unique music, and she liked that part of Holt’s pitch was focusing on Loki’s identity as a character.

“Her music then started to inspire how I wanted to shoot other scenes,” Herron says. She’s especially enamored of Holt’s vision for her dynamic and foreboding theme for the TVA.

“She was like, ‘Oh, let’s have that theme be Kang’s’ — well, He Who Remains, I guess, in our show. But I hope that will go on to be Kang’s theme. That was the real fun of it is that you feel like he’s really played a hand now across the whole show, because you realize that music is his music.”

Herron, Durald, and Holt all deliver distinctive and superlative work that’s nothing like the MCU has quite seen before — and nothing quite like anything previously in their careers, either. And that’s entirely the point.

“I think for us, it was about just showing people what we could do and that we could do it at this level,” Herron says.

The episode in which Loki comes out as bisexual was inspired by Alfonso Cuarón and Richard Linklater.

Every episode of “Loki” features multiple extended scenes of two characters just talking to one another, a rarity in a comic book production. Herron says that cutting Episode 1 together during the pandemic lockdown and seeing the scenes between Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) play out so well “definitely gave us confidence” to continue that rhythm for the rest of the show.

That was especially true for Episode 3. Written by Bisha K. Ali (who went on to create the upcoming Marvel Studios series “Ms. Marvel”), the episode is essentially an extended meet-cute between Loki and Sylvie as they get to know each other on a planet doomed for total annihilation.

“Bisha’s reference was ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Children of Men,'” says Herron. “And it lit my brain on fire. It was kind of weird. It was almost like a bottle episode in the sense that we’re just with the two characters, but obviously, it’s Marvel, right? So they’re bonding in this Apocalypse, which also feels very Loki at the same time.”

That episode is best known for making Marvel Studios history, when Loki casually mentions that he’s had dalliances with both men and women. Herron says that when she first interviewed for the job, she asked if the show was going to acknowledge Loki’s sexuality, which had long been established in the comics as bisexual or pansexual.

“I think everyone wanted to acknowledge it,” she says. “It was just really about giving a care and consideration and doing it in the right way. I think everyone knew it was gonna be quite a big moment. So it was just really about doing it in a way that felt respectful. And honoring it.”

Herron also confirms what many fans had suspected, that she deliberately made the lighting scheme for the scene evoke the blue, purple and red of the bisexual flag. “We knew what we were doing with that scene,” she says with a smile.

She has a lot of ideas for what she’d like to see in Season 2.

Since Herron will be watching Season 2 of “Loki” only “as a fan,” she is also free to wildly speculate as to what she’d most like to see happen — like how, wherever Loki story leads, “we’ve opened the door” for the character to explore his sexuality with men as well as women.

Otherwise? She says she wants to know where Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) goes to when she leaves the TVA in search, she tells Mobius, of “free will.”

“I love her,” Herron says. “Gugu used to always call her an indoor girl, which made me laugh, but she is. She’s in the office, but she used to be this kick-ass Hunter. So I’m like, Okay, well, where’s her path going?”

Herron is also keen to learn more about Hunter B-15’s backstory — since she deliberately decided to hide it in the scene in Episode 4 when Sylvie shows B-15 her repressed memories as a variant.

“I was like, we shouldn’t see her memories,” Herron says. “It’s a character that thought they had power and realizes they have no power. It felt really powerful to at least give her some power in that scenario. The memories are private. They’re hers.” She pauses. “Also as a fan, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who is she?!'”

“And obviously, you know, Loki and Sylvie?” Herron continues, on a roll. “He’s in a completely different reality. What’s going to happen to him? How will he get back? Or will he get back? And where’s Sylvie? She’s still in the Citadel? And the multiverse of it all. What the hell is going to happen?!”

Herron chuckles at her own excitement. “So I think there’s so many questions to be answered, and so much more road to travel with all our characters,” she says. “You know, I’m really proud that I got to set up Loki’s story here. But there’s so many different aspects of his identity and personality that’s yet to be explored. I’m excited to see where it goes.”