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straighttohellbuddy · 2 years

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YOUR TECHNO COSPLAY I AM SCREAMING. SO VERY FERAL. ITS SO GOOD!!!! -🐈‍⬛

HELLO FRIEND IT IS MY PRIDE AND ABSOLUTE FUCKING JOY!!!! IM FINALLY SO PLEASED WITH HOW IT TURNED OUT!!! IM SO SORRY ABOUT HOW VAIN IM ABOUT TO BE BUT IVE BEEN WANTING TO TALK ABOUT THE DETAILS FOR AGES

now i was going to put this further down but i really want to explain what im pretty sure is my biggest unique design choice and why i am FERAL about it, and it's the crown, the literal Bejewelled, Gilded, Crown of Thorns

Description pulled straight from wikipedia: 'The image of the crown of thorns is often used symbolically to contrast with earthly monarchical crowns.' and in explaining how it was used against Jesus 'to cause him pain and to mock his claim of authority'

So obviously techno's minecraft skin has a crown and that's the basis for it; my cosplay had to have a crown, but in the SMP he's a chaotic anarchist, it's his core ideal!

so it's a REMINDER, to himself and to all those who see it; no kings, no government, no one person should reasonably claim authority over a land. no matter how pretty it looks its always a crown of thorns.

IM FERAL AND I WILL NOT ACCEPT CRITICISM ON THIS DESIGN CHOICE

ANYWAYS NOW I HAVE TO FINALLY PROPERLY THANK THE ARTISTS WHO ARE THE REASON THIS COSPLAY LOOKS AS GOOD AS IT DOES

TOP OF THE LIST BAYBEEE @wolfythewitch 's Techno design which was the one that I initially saw and felt the need to cosplay, and their redesign too!!

Things from their design I want to point out in my cosplay that are SPECIFIC homages:

THE BOOTS THE BOOTS THE BOOTS I LITERALLY WOVE MY GOLD EMBROIDERY THREAD INTO SUITABLE LACES THIS YEAR BECAUSE THE OLD ONES WERE TOO YELLOW AND I LOVE THE RICH GOLD MORE

their design is specifically why i use the sclera contacts!!! i feel like its such a striking and unique design detail i knew that my techno cosplay had to have them!! (should also note that it was incredibly difficult to see out of but I still say it's worth it)

the shirt and the red jewelled bolo tie!! love it!!

and the other piece of art that heavily influenced my cosplay was @that-sweet-jester 's FLUFFY HAIR POG piece specifically, like you can see in my version from last year how flat my wig was, but this piece had my whole entire heart and I knew i needed to replicate the volume and style, so i spent HOURS steaming and combing and i put the whole wig in rollers and steamed it with the help of a drag tutorial and fluffed it and it took SO MUCH EFFORT but im SO PLEASED with how it turned out!!! Also their techno has a plethora of gold piercings and pointy ears and as someone with a ton of piercings I LOVED that and so when I put on my prosthetic ears, several of the piercings go through several of my own piercing holes to anchor the prosthetic, including my stretched lobe, which i don't think you really see a lot of :)

but ahhhh let me just ramble about the details for a little bit because the devil was SO in the details and I finally got it to look the way I wanted to!!!

the vibe of the outfit was very much backed on SAD-ist's Hog Hunt animation which gives me chills every time I watch it, and i just want to give off the same vibes as Hog Hunt with my cosplay, and a lot of the little details literally allude to my techno being specifically from when he was being hunted by the Butcher Army:

POTIONS; splash potions of strength, invisibility, and regeneration. i screenshotted from techno's butcher army vod to make sure i had the correct ones. i think i'm going to do proper labels for them so they also say the specific effect. but im happy as fuck with them for now!! Notes: they are remote control light up, and have chameleon powder in them that doesn't disolve in water, which means they look good when I'm still and the powder is settled at the bottle and the light shines through the coloured water, and they look good when I'm walking and not lit up because when they're shaken-

TOTEM OF UNDYING; gold leaf added around the eyes and his little hands, he used to light up but his batteries are unfortunately dead and there's literally no way for me to replace them but he looks good anyways. SO MUCH HOT GLUE

CAPE it used to have a hood but I removed it and kept the fur trim, I also removed the tie that kept it on and added some thin, curved, sturdy wood into the collar so it would keep its shape and not fall off. I bought the cape itself on aliexpress and it came with the gold beading which is an homage to the gold OF on his mc skin without adding an OF... tho I might for next year. And I definitely want to make the trim thicker and neater for next time

The gold chain fastners/ornaments on the cloak near the collar are little tridents !!

the other creator I have to pay respect to is @poodwattle (yes the one who creates all the sick as hell DSMP weapons) as his Orphan Obliterator from last year is the reason I used chameleon powder to make my own look enchanted!! the only part of the sword that i am not responsible for is the base of the blade, but the handle is 100% my creation, as is the handle and pommel, as well as the painting and detailing. each of the sigils on the sword is a real sigil that i found on witchblr but have unfortunately lost the originators of, but i wanna explain the sigils and their connections to the enchantments on the sword:

Fire Aspect II (sets target on fire) - SIGIL: I am connected to the element of fire.

Sharpness V (increases attack damage dealt to mobs) - SIGIL: Destruction & Revenge

Sweeping Edge III (increases damage of sweep attack) - SIGIL: Radiate Power

Unbreaking III (increases durability of item, in effect, by decreasing the chance of the tool, weapon, or armor taking durability damage when used) - SIGIL: I am Unbreakable.

time is the only reason i didn't add Mending and Looting III but i think im going to try and add them before my next outing, as well as a few modifications to the handle itself, but overall i'm so fucking pleased. the blood was probably the hardest part about it and im so glad it looks the way it does!!

the blue holds a very special place in my heart as i didn't actually make it, but in fact, my darling friend @vxidpxnk made it and gave it to me as ender's working on a ghostbur cosplay and im sentimental

other detail-y bits i want to mention

thigh bag - i literally had this laying around the house before i even wanted to cosplay techno but i think it works so well

finger armour and rings!! i just love the vibe, so the finger armour on my non-sword hand and rings on the sword hand :)

TEEF!!!! made from thermal plastic i realised it was fucking difficult to use the hot water method to change and mold the shape once i was happy with how it fit on my tooth so once i got a general idea and a good tooth fit i let it cool outside of my mouth and literally carved it to the final desired shape with a heated scalpel and im SO PLEASED!! do you know how hard it is to make protruding bottom tusks when you have an overbite? BECAUSE I DO

i want to make a stylised pickaxe for if i ever take this cosplay out again, but in the meantime im finishing beekeeper tubbo and designing my HUGE FUCK OFF DREAMXD cosplay that is going to be more work than techno was and already im both exhausted and excited.

ANYWAYS thank you if you made it this far, ive just put so much time and effort in and have been wanting to tell people able the details and inspiration for a very long time,,,,,,

#techno cosplay #technoblade cosplay #technoblade #c!technoblade cosplay #dsmp cosplay #shut ur pretty mouth #black cat anon #villain mutual

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tomatograter · 3 years

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What are your Thots on jake’s pq route?

I already wrote some about it in this post where I discuss the problem with taking dirkjake as a literal parallel to tavris (Mainly, that it’s inaccurate to both situations and misrepresents the dynamics at play) but it’s been long enough since release that I feel like I can talk about it without that criticism being taken as a personal witch hunt. TL;DR: As a general rule of thumb I don’t cite Jake’s PQ as part of his characterization, and I think basing your Jakewriting on it will only lead you astray.

I liked a lot of the Pesterquest routes and the alphas were among some of my favorites, but I think when you play the four of them in sequence Jake’s really... stands as the odd one out. It’s almost as if he’s afforded way less sympathy from the get go for some indiscernible reason, or like MSPAR took a day to say ‘I can’t stand this kid in particular’ after dealing with waaaaaaaay more mindboggling troll customs or stupid dangerous situations that tested their patience and their limits. When it comes down to it, it’s mostly an issue of framing.

Let’s go with the “Just the Alpha routes” example, because I think that makes the overall context clearer and the response/reactions it gathered (or the lack thereof) easier to understand. The alpha kids were the last 4 Pesterquest episodes. They were also afforded entire volumes just for themselves, which cemented our expectations on “oh, they’re going to really dig into unexplored territory!” and for the most part, that’s what we got! It was really nice to see the internal mechanics of Jane as someone raised within a corporate echochamber, Roxy as a grieving, isolated kid, deprived of all human contact, and Dirk as a nerdy doomsday prepper haunted by private flashes of himself as a supervillain. It all works! Those are things the alpha kids were dealing with on the background of the broader Homestuck story, things we were only hinted at as the *larger* problems played out. It makes you understand their point of view. Except on Jake's route, where nothing about his life seems to be relevant at all?

With Jane we get discussions about HIC and her family, with Roxy beautiful passages about a mother they never met and growing up alone— Same for Dirk, who gets a whole brother zapped from an alternate timeline. But on Jake's route there's not even an expansive dialogue path dedicated to Grandma English, Skaianet, the rebellion, or the giant red ship that came and murdered her in the night and then bombed his house, leaving him trapped inside his only surviving tower. No understanding passage realizing that this kid has had to fend for himself in an island full of Actual Giant Alien Monsters trying to eat him alive, or that he cremated his guardian specifically to avoid attracting predators to the scent of fresh blood drying on her mutilated corpse at the age of an actual toddler. The text refuses to dig into any of the psychological implications or impact an environment like this could have on a kid, which is even weirder when you consider MSPAR has met and helped Vriska get out of a similar situation. The whole thing with Jane in the previous volume has just happened, even, while Jake's particularities go unremarked. He was just supposed to deal with it. And that's because a choice was made to portray all of Jake's problems in this route as sort of... single handedly Dirk's fault? Something he should have Just Dealt with?

There's not even a hint that Jake knows Hal exists. Which is important! Jake can pick out Hal from Dirk based on *verbal cues*, and the fact that he considers Hal a barrier between him and his "real friend" getting to communicate with one another is a whole point of contention (and even comedy) in the story proper. Instead of examining Jake's isolation, or grief, or how he literally locks himself in his room and plasters it with cinematic posters to pretend he's just the main lead of a wacky adventure movie in the face of the immense shitshow outside, we get brobot acting nonsensically and threatening to break into Jake's room to beat him up.

A general reminder on brobot: He was programmed to scout the jungle and deal with predators so Jake could a) Be allowed to safely leave his room (something he simply didn't do before age 13 out of sheer terror, and we know this because dirk and jake talk about it on his birthday conversation, when he first gets brobot) and

b) Learn how to defend himself in the case of a surprise attack, with different combat settings adjusted to his level. The brobot has a novice mode Jake feels patronized by, but pushes him up levels quickly enough. In Homestuck proper, the brobot only enters "stalking mode" after Hal gets pissy with Jake for finding him out, and forcefully switches the setting on to make Jake work for the Uranium inside it. When you take Hal out of the picture, this plotline makes no sense! Jake's route is set way before the Alphas even think of entering the game, so this particular event hasn't even happened. Jake goes on to text Roxy and she turns the stalking setting off remotely anyways, so even if brobot was programmed to murder Jake in his sleep, or jump him inside the safe zone of his room (he's not) he has literally no reason to be acting like that when he's been set to Baby Buff Up Mode.

(Brobot does end up spontaneously pulling himself apart to give Jake his reward after this)

Which brings me to my other problem with the general framing of this volume; the alpha kids don't feel present in Jake's life as friends at all. It's all "romantic options" and "shipping discourse" and MSPAR making these silly logic jumps to justify insisting on this line of query, and all it does is completely flatten out anything of interest having to do with Jake as a Person, to build up an image of Dirk as being suspicious and shady for his volume and more or less come to the conclusion that Jake sucks because he just Cant Choose Who To Date Between All His Friends! And that's why jake is just like tavros… and dirk is just like vriska! Or something.

And just as a reminder, here's Jake talking with Roxy so I don't have to explain why that feels like a weird choice to me. (click to zoom)

And then there's the endings. On the vriska ending, MSPAR just ends up weirdly angry at jake for being such a piss baby and not getting that he's tavros and dirk is vriska so he had to… uh… take all his anger out on this 13 year old alien girl he has never met and teach her a lesson to prepare to do the same on dirk, or something. And on the other ending Jake mentions his pen pal, is zapped to meet jade, they have some non-committal greetings and then a cosplay party where Jake insists that he totally likes Lara croft not because she's a femme fatale and he relates to that, because he's never ever in his life thought of anyone being interested on him. Or Something. He likes Lara croft for normal reasons only. He wears really tiny shorts and does sexy poses because he's not aware at all of how other people find him attractive. He's just too dumb to get this, or the shipping thing, or that he's tavros and Dirk is vriska (who the hell are these people?).

Jake feels like an afterthought in the grand scope of events. Sidelined on his own episode. This volume is busy with rehashing age old fandom arguments that have little to do with his character, because said arguments were started and maintained by bored teens engrossed on fighting online instead of analyzing Homestuck; we introduce vriska for no interesting reason at all (thank god at least Jake has enough decency to say he's not into hitting on 13-year-olds, because that would have been particularly rancid.) And aside from catchphrases and old slang sprinkled liberally into his dialogue like a fog making machine, none of the motivation for the character is there. What does he want? What does he fear? Why does he act like the way he does? What would accommodating him look like? What would helping him look like? We get this on Jane's volume, Roxy's volume, and Dirk's volume. To really heart-wrenching and dramatic results, too. You get to know who they are, where they live, what they want, what they fear, what might help them get better, but Jake is just sort of There. He's a burden. MSPAR either ends this volume berating him for not doing what they want or finding him weird and confusing and like they don't know each other at all, and the fact both of those were marked as dubiously bad ends in the game files speaks for itself, I think.

#jake english #pesterquest #vriska serket #jane crocker #roxy lalonde #dirk strider #meta

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linkspooky · 3 years

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This is kinda random, but what is your top 10 favorite otps?

Sure.

#1 of All Time SPUFFY

Spuffy, it wrote the book on both beauty and the beast archetypes, and enemies to lovers. For me the most important thing in a ship is the character development it brings about. Spike's redemption doesn't work without Buffy, because it's meeting the one person who expects better than him and won't put up with his selfish crap, that forces his character arc. Buffy's development is also nothing without Spike, it's meeting Spike that makes Buffy confront her dark side, and realize that being a good person isn't something you are, but something you work towards for the sake of your loved ones. The ideal ship should inspire this permanent character development and chane (Unless it ends tragically), they should be an inseperable part of each other's character arcs.

#2 Kumagawa / Ajimu

This is what I was talking about when I said "unless it ends tragically". Sometimes you ship two people who should never end up together, because they probably won't accept their differences. However, even in a failed relationship, two people can be important to each other. There's not really a hapyp ending for Ajimu and Kumagawa, despite their similiarities when they're together they just seem to make each other worse. In Medaka Box they are the anti-Zenkichi and Medaka. However, for Ajimu Kumagawa represents her only human connection, and for Kumagawa Ajimu represents the first person to be "good" to him even though their relationship soured at one point. Therefore I find the ship interesting because despite the fact that they are permanently separated they are still an incredibly important part of each other's identities and who they are now.

# 3 Matsuda / Junko

Basically for the same reason as what I said above. There is no universe where Junko and Matsuda end up in a happy relationship, as long as Junko is still Junko. However, Matsuda and DanganRonpa Zero as a whole add so much to Junko as a character. As long as Matsuda exists, Junko's more than just a black hole that only cares about despair, and I think together the side materials like IF and Zero show that Junko actually is capable of caring for people outside of her natural tendency to want to throw everything into despair, however, humanizing Junko in this manner doesn't actually make her a better person. She can have feelings like romantic, and familial love, and she still chooses to destroy those things and the people in her life. It just adds so much to Junko as a character, which is what I like ships as, an extension of characterization through character interaction.

#5 UIHAI

I love Ui and Hairu because it's like a broken fairy tale. It was a love that could have saved Hairu, but it didn't, because for Ui he always realized his feelings too late to save anyone. Hairu was obsessively chasing after Arima for the smallest amount of approval, when Ui was right there, and already in love with her. They seem like the perfect couple that could never get together, because Hairu is too fixated on Arima, and Ui is too fixated on his job. They are perfectly suited to giving each other what they wanted, and even in lots of side materials and sketches they seem like a pair, or Ui's feelings for Hairu come across as pretty clear but it never came to be in canon.

#6 ZACK / AERITH

Once again for the same reasons as above, it seems like a fairy tale romance of a knight, and a girl he wants to protect, but it fails completely to live up to that story. Zack and Aerith is a tragic story of first love for both of them, and it's also really formative for who Aerith is now as a character. Zack tried to be there for her, and he tried to be a hero to Aerith, only to very consistently not be there for her, and then disappear from her life all together. Much later on, Aerith is incredibly isilated, unable to fall in love with the real cloud without projecting Zack onto him. It's a relationship where in a better world they could have been there for each other, but also the failure of the relationship develops them as much as characters as them getting together might have. Zack and Aerith are one of those relationships that seems ideal on the surface but they are very different people with different wants, Zack wants to be a hero, Aerith just wants to be a person first.

#7 LINK / MIDNA

The best zelda ship period. Once again the most important part of a ship interaction is the change that both characters inspire in each other. Midna begins not caring about Link at all, never referring to him by name, only seeing him as an object, an old legend, a hero to be used instead of a person. Midna's a manipulative freak, and Link breaks through to her because he actually isn't interested in being the hero of legend, he just wants to save the people closest to him at the village because he feels indebted to them, and Midna inevitably becomes one of those people. Link and Midna's partneship makes the game, because it's Midna who pushes him and makes him into a hero, but it's Link through his unfledging acceptance of her who inspires her to be a person once more, and not just the twilight priness.

#8 Morrigan / Warden from DRAGON AGE ORIGINS

This and Spuffy are like the only two on this list who actually end up together, so let me just have this. Once again my favorite aspect of a ship is the transformation the relationship brings baout in a character. The warden is a non-character, but for Morrigan herself, her relationship with the warden is what allows her to escape an abusive household, and beyond that decide not to repeat the cycle of abuse with her new family. What made this ship an all time fave was in witch hunt when the Warden gets to ask her what she wants, and she's just completely confused. Even with her mother dead, Morrigan is still a tool of her mother's ambitions, it's still all about her mother wants. It's her love with the warden, either through friendship or romance that awakens Morrigan to the fact she's allowed to exist as a person with wants and needs outside of what her mother wants her to be.

#9 Kaine / Nier

It's the Most Humanizing Ship Ever Between Two Mass Murderers. As a story, I think Nier is about finding the life, and love, in a story that is ultimately, fatally doomed. Nier only worse and worse as the game goes on but that doesn't mean there was never any love in his life. For every bad thing Nier does, he was not bad to every single person, specifically Kaine, it was Nier's love and belief in her that allows the wounds in her heart to start to heal. As Nier and Nier gets worse, Kaine's own shadow self says, that her feelings in her heart are no longer hatred, or even revenge, there's just a pure white light of love left. In a game where everything only rots, Kaine has healed to the point where she can love again when she never thought it was possible. It's why I like ending D the best, because it's Nier knowing he can never escape his own sins, but he can use his last action to heal Kaine fully all the way and allow her to live on a few more years.

#10 SATOSUGU

Once again, there's no universe where they end up together, and yet still on opposite sides of a conflict they remain each other's closest friends. The most important thing about a ship is the character development it leads to and Gojo would not be who he is today without Suguru. I generally get the sense that Gojo's idea of a good person isn't himself, but rather who Geto used to be before he broke. Gojo actually relied on on Geto for a lot more than he realized, considering it was the one connection he had that seemed to humanize him. Geto provided the chosen one who can do literally anything in the world with his powers, support and guidance. He was the jade, and the foundation of their two person friendship, and then the jade broke.

Gojo and Geto's broken relationship is not only the most emotional thing in the series to me, it's also an incredible part of who they are ten years after the fact. Gojo straight up didn't bother to make friends for ten years later after the fact even though he could have, Geto still told his daughters that Gojo and him were best friends, they just had a fight. He couldn't comperehend in Volume Zero that Gojo would still regard him as a friend after everything that they had done.

It's like one of those "Can't live with them, can't live without them" pairs. They want to be each other's one and only but it just won't work because they don't understand each other, and neither of them is willing to compromise. They are also each other's perfect yin / yang complement. Gojo is the opposite of Geto, and still carries a part of Geto within him, and Geto even after becoming the enemy of the sorcery world while Gojo is the savior, still carries that friendship with Gojo inside of him as well. While their relationship is a failed one, it's also a past I hope that the next generation Megumi and Itadori both learn from, even if Geto never truly comes back.

#spooky speaks #top ten ships #shipping #askspookies

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danny-chase · 3 years

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Comics I’ve read, so I can actually keep track of things, don’t assume it’s good if it’s on here - aka this isn’t a list of recommendations, but do feel free to ask about any of the titles on here

Edit: A lot of these need warnings before you read if you don’t want to be surprised by racism, sexism, rape, child abuse, suicidal ideation, etc., etc. before reading, i didn’t include specific warnings in this, because it’s been a while since i read many of them, please ask before reading things you’re unsure about 💀, i’ll start adding warnings from what i remember

Team Books:

- JLA/Titans (1998)

- New Teen Titans (1980)

----pedophilia (not addressed as such), Gar sexually harasses woman sm, Terry Long - my detested (prof dating a student), racism and so much more

- The New Titans (1984) (until Dick left the team)

----rape (which isn’t addressed as such) and slut shaming, to avoid skip over issues with mirage, multiple major character deaths, there’s also bad dad Bruce kicking Dick out a few times, Terry Long - my detested

- Young Justice (1998)

----the writing around Anita is racist

- The Titans (1999)

---- a weird arc where they thought a character was autistic but turns out there was a man in her head idk what to even tag that as

- JLA: The Obsidian Age (2002)

----been too long for me to remember but i think someone said it’s racist

- Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day (2003)

---- major character deaths

- Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files (2003)

- Teen Titans: Year One (2008)

- Outsiders (2003)

- The Return of Donna Troy

---- brainwashed mentors hitting their sidekicks

- Titans (2008) (until Dick left the team)

- Young Justice (2011) - have also watched the show (all 3 seasons)

- Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011)

---- Roy and Kory’s characterizations are obliterated by new 52

- Convergence: The Titans (2015)

- Convergence: The New Teen Titans (2015)

- Titans Hunt New 52 (2015)

----ugly as heck art

- Titans Rebirth (2016)

- Batman & The Outsiders (2018)

- Titans: Titans Together (2020)

- Titans: Titans United (2021) (ongoing)

Nightwing Titles:

- Nightwing (1995)

- Nightwing (1996)

----rape (again not being addressed as such) to avoid skip over issues with Tarantula and Liu, and copoganda (Dixon’s run it’s been a while but prolly has more bad takes), Bruce hits Dick in the Officer Down crossover, also uh Devin destroys Dick’s life, mischaracterizes Babs, and his entire city is nuked (i’m literally not exaggerating), passive suicide attempt, Bruce’s F- parenting

- Nightwing: The Target (2001)

- Nightwing (2011)

----domestic abuse (Bruce to Dick), skip Nightwing #30

- Grayson (2014)

----old lady being a creeper, Dick being examined naked, girls thirsting after him, Bruce’s F+ parenting (leaves Dick stranded in the middle of the mission), sibling on sibling violence

- Nightwing (2016) (up to Ric sorry i can’t do it guys, i do check in on tt stuff to rag on it)

Robin Titles:

----warnings for Dixon’s weird beliefs of how the world works (Steph’s pregnancy arc, Tim yells at an alcoholic roommate an he’s cured, ‘boys will look’, girls kissing Tim without permission is fine apparently), major character death, sexism everywhere, Tim's personality taking a 180 after the one year later event

- Robin (1991) Volumes I and II

- Robin (1993)

- Robin: Year One (2000)

----Neglectful Bruce, enabler Alfred RIP Dick Grayson’s childhood

- Batman and Robin (2009)

----obliterates Talia’s characterization

- Red Robin (ongoing)

----I've read the first four issues ngl it kinda sucks imo

- Batman and Robin (2011)

----Bruce is literally a terrible parent for the first part of the run, regresses Damian’s character development from the 2009 run, sibling on sibling violence

- Batman & Robin Eternal (2015)

----obliterates Cass's character

- Super Sons (2017)

Batgirl Titles:

- Batgirl (2000)

----disability is magically cured, Bruce is a shotgun dad, gets Cass high to fight him to “talk to her in a way she can understand” i classify it as abuse, but absolutely a must-read despite this, made me love Cass

- Batgirl (2009)

----pushes Cass out of the role for *checks note* absolutely no reason, but is enjoyable all the same and made me really like Steph

- Batgirls (2021)

----I read the first issue and will not be continuing because it sucks ass

Birds of Prey

- Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey (1995) #1

- Birds of Prey: Revolution (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: Wolves (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: Batgirl (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: The Ravens (1998) #1

- Birds of Prey (1998) - ongoing

Batman Titles:

- Birds of Prey: Batgirl (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: Ravens (1998) #1

- Batman: A Death in the Family (1988)

----major character death

- Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (1989)

- The Long Halloween (1996)

- Dark Victory (2011)

- Batman: Legacy (1996)

- Bruce Wayne Murderer/Fugitive (2002)

----Bruce Wayne C+ parenting, physical fight between Bruce and Dick

- Batman: War Games (2004)

----major character death, sexism

- All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (2005)

----terrible, child abuse, r-word used, don’t read

- Batman: Battle for the Cowl (2009)

----Jason as a villain idk skip if you don't like him being an antagonist, sibling on sibling violence

- Batman: Streets of Gotham (2009) (up to #12)

- Batman: Batman & Son (2010)

----probably also obliterates Talia (haven't read it in forever), siblings on sibling violence

- The Black Mirror (2010)

- Batman: Gates of Gotham (2011)

- Batman (1940) #687-707 (aka Dick!bats era)

- Batman (2011) #1-17

----Bruce punches Dick in the face in one of the first issues

- Batman Eternal (2014)

----Barbara x Jason, i hate that pairing (idk for sure it's been a while)

- Detective Comics Rebirth (2016) #934-981 (plus Night of the Monster Men crossover) and #983-987

- All-Star Batman Rebirth (2016)

- Batman & The Signal (2018)

Assorted:

- Joker’s Last Laugh (2001)

----hee hee major character death but it’s a good thing <3

- Heroes in Crisis (2018)

----tries to de-stigmatize mental health by making a depressed person a killer, basically don’t read this it was horrid, i hate it, it’s stupid and bad

- Impulse (1995) - literally just the first 3 issues but it’s great

- Tempest (1996)

----sad, made me sad, but also you should read it because Garth <3

- Future State: Wonder Woman (2021) - just the first issue so far

- Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang. Kill Tour (2021) - just the first issue, have watched the show

- Some Dark Nights Metal stuff that i don’t really understand what was happening uh Bat is door 👍 very cool 👍

- Scooby-Doo Team-Up (ongoing)

- Huntress: Cry for Blood

#if you got recs let me know i'll work on it but there's like 3 other things i'm trying to get through *sobs*#i may have a pattern of setting down a comic when i know something i don't like is coming up and moving to another run...#it uhhh has been a while since i read a lot of these and i don't remember everything so if you wanna talk about one i may need to reread #so it might take some time XD #and fanon has warped my perception of characters as well so if i say something wrong call me out #LMAO If you look at something and go WHY TF WOULD YOU READ IT - it's because i don't usually look for recommendations before reading #and wasn't really part of fanon until after i read some stuff #so uh. whoops.#and yes before anyone asks i am in fact obsessed with reading Dick Grayson content and i will put down a book if he leaves #i'm working on it OKAY #aghhhh i need to get back to impulse but my desire to read all things batfam is too strong

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

Note

[1] Hi! I hope you don't mind, but can I ask a sorta uncomfortable question? I wanna ship cloqwork because I like their character dynamic, but at the same time I get uncomfortable because when Qrow enrolled at Beacon (at "the right age," as specified by Raven) he would've been 17 - legally not an adult. Ozpin would've had a disproportionate amount of power over him, both as a legal adult and as his teacher.

Hi, Anon!

I apologize in advance that this response is probably going to be all over the place. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this and very little ability right now to put them into a cohesive order. So we’re just chucking it all out lol.

First, there’s absolutely no need to apologize for being on anon. That’s what it’s there for! I think tumblr has developed a view of the anonymous option that, on the whole, isn’t particularly useful. In our efforts to call out those who are sending flames/hate under the comfort of anonymity (which you obviously are not), there’s no need for anyone to “prove” themselves by going off of it. You’re using anon because you (justifiably) fear how the fandom might react to these questions. I often use anon because I abandoned my “main” account years ago and dislike sending messages from it. There’s a huge range of reasons why someone might want to be on anon and ultimately it doesn’t matter why we use the tool that’s been provided to us. It’s there, so never feel bad about going anon for any reason :)

Onto the ozqrow! Or yes, onto the cloqwork. I learned “ozqrow” first so it’s pretty embedded in my head, but I agree that “cloqwork” is the more sophisticated of the two ;) Anyway, yes. There are potentially ways that we can view the relationship as unhealthy… with the key word there being potentially. AKA, as headcanons. No, Qrow wouldn’t have been an adult when he entered Beacon, but who’s to say a relationship began then? Some fans might like to imagine that despite the real world issues attached. Others—like you and me—would not. The important thing is that we both have the space to achieve whatever interpretation of the relationship we please. Far as I can tell, Qrow is 37 at the youngest. Four years at Beacon (17-20), 15 years after Summer’s death (35), and then roughly 2 years of in-canon present time (37). Realistically, he’s probably older than that. Based on the relationship dynamics it seems that Tai didn’t date Summer until he broke up with Raven and given Yang’s age compared to Ruby’s, that adds two years. So Qrow is probably around 39. Even that’s assuming that Raven had Yang right after Beacon. If she didn’t we could push the timeline another year or two, putting Qrow in his early 40’s. I lay all this out to demonstrate that… that’s a lot of time. How old “should” Qrow be before he enters a relationship with someone? Obviously that answer differs from individual to individual, but let’s say for the sake of argument that he should be at least 25. That puts him 5 years out of Beacon, potentially older than when Raven had Yang, and roughly 6 years older than most of our main ships right now (Blake/Yang, Jaune/Pyrrha, Ren/Nora etc.) where fans argue very strongly that at 19 they’re already adults and are able to make informed decisions, be it about relationships or world-shattering secrets. So we’re already holding Qrow to stricter standards than other characters and that still leaves roughly 15 years for him and Ozpin to start something, all of which is time that takes place outside of the Teacher/Student dynamic. It’s a choice to prioritize “But he was his headmaster for 4 years” over “But they were equals for 2 decades.”

Now granted, there’s more to this relationship than just Qrow’s own age. I’ve also seen people bring up the age gap and, more recently, Ozpin’s “manipulation” of Qrow. In regards to the former, we simply have to acknowledge that Ozpin is screwed in that regard. Everyone is younger than him. Almost the entire cast. At some point nearly everyone we meet will have, at some point, been a child while Ozpin is an adult simply by virtue of Ozpin being a reincarnating wizard who has already lived at least a thousand years. The only exceptions to this are Salem, the Gods, or Jinn, all of which are more “problematic” partners to my mind. Which again, isn’t to say no one can ship them together, just that it seems ridiculous to me that—if we’re really going to “justify” an in-canon relationship—we’d prioritize “Salem and Ozpin are the same age that’s so much healthier!” over “Salem abused Ozpin, killed their kids, and has hunted him for years on end. That’s... kind of not great!” It’s a matter of what parts of each relationship we choose to emphasize. And ozqrow is far from the only ship to grapple with this. In the witcher fandom I adore both Geralt/Jaskier and Geralt/Regis. Both of those ships have “issues” in regards to age. Is Jaskier not allowed to be with Geralt because he’s in his 30s and Geralt is in his 80s? Is Geralt not allowed to be with Regis because he’s in his 80s and Regis is in his 400s? When we talk about fantasy series we’re talking about species/races/abilities that are, obviously, fantastic. They don’t exist. Which means that real world concerns can’t perfectly map onto these scenarios. The question is not “Is a 1,000 year age gap problematic?” but rather “Are these both consenting adults who are in a position to make their own informed, romantic decisions?” To which we answer for ozqrow: yes. Unless we specifically imagine that the relationship began when Qrow was just a student but again, that’s purely headcanon. Emphasizing that non-canonical imagining of how a relationship might have started over the canonical years of working together as equal peers makes no more sense than going, “Yeah but there was a time when Regis was an adult and Geralt was just a kid, so if they’d met then it would have been super unhealthy so you shouldn’t ship them :/” They didn’t meet when Geralt was a kid. In the same way, Ozpin and Qrow didn’t start a relationship when Qrow was a kid for the simple reason that they have no canonical romance at all. That puts the power entirely in the viewers’ hands to imagine when/how such a relationship occurs.

Which leaves us with second issue mentioned: power dynamics and Ozpin’s “manipulation.” Take everything said above and apply it to this point too. That power dynamic only exists if we imagine a relationship while they’re headmaster and student. Which you can! Plenty of people want to write/read about such “problematic” stuff. That’s partly what fandom is for. But again, if that’s not your cup of tea there’s no reason to prioritize those 4 years over the 20 years we get later. I have heard some people say that the relationship is indefinitely imbalanced because of Ozpin’s age/power/leadership/whatever but… that simply makes no sense to me. Or rather, it seems hypocritical. Does that mean it’s “problematic” for Weiss to be with Ruby? After all, Ruby is the leader of their team and calls all the shots. What if Weiss feels like she can’t say no to her?? It’s terribly unhealthy. Does that mean Weiss can’t be with Blake? She was racist, after all, and comes from such a place of privilege. I’m not sure Blake is educated enough to hold her own with Weiss. Does this mean Blake can’t be with Yang? Blake comes from a very rich and powerful family whereas Yang is just a country girl… what if Blake uses that power against her somehow? Does that mean that Nora can’t be with Ruby? Or again, Weiss with Ruby? I mean, Nora is homeless and Weiss has been cut off from the Schnee line, so they might stay in a relationship purely out of fear of being abandoned--super unhealthy. These are all revised versions of things I’ve heard applied to ozqrow: Qrow shouldn’t be with Ozpin because Ozpin is his leader (Ruby/Weiss), because Qrow grew up in an “uneducated” tribe whereas Ozpin is clearly so sophisticated (Blake/Weiss), because Ozpin has power and connections that Qrow could never match (Blake/Yang), because Ozpin is tied to the life Qrow has built and breaking up supposedly threatens that. Which means he can’t ever break up. Which means Qrow is trapped. Which means it’s unhealthy (Nora/Ruby or Ruby/Weiss). They’re all warped, assumption based arguments that are only taken seriously when they’re applied to a ship that people are already inclined to dislike. The takeaway is that every relationship has power dynamics and every relationship has the potential to be “problematic.” Literally everyone. Give me any two people and I can spin some yarn about how one holds too much power over the other for the relationship to be healthy. Which isn’t to say that real power dynamics don’t exist that should be avoided (like a teacher/student relationship as you point out), only that fans are inclined to extend that past the point of logic in an effort demonize ships they don’t like. Someone having trauma in their past (which, again, is everyone at this point in the series) is not the same “power dynamic” as an adult grooming a child (which, again again, Ozpin didn’t do). So when we’re left with the acknowledgement that any relationship has the potential to be unhealthy, we have to ask… is it? And the answer is no. As you say, “We all know that canonically Ozpin ISN’T that kind of person.” That’s what trumps every headcanon and negative assumption. I could headcanon/assume that a Weiss/Blake relationship would be horrific because Weiss would be a racist ass to Blake and Blake would only stay with her because she’s determined not to “run away” from something again… but we don’t see evidence for that on screen and it literally never happens. In the same way, some fans like to headcannon/assume that a Qrow/Ozpin relationship would be horrific because Ozpin would use his power over Qrow in various ways… but we don’t see evidence for that on screen and it literally doesn’t happen.

If anything, post-Volume 6 I’d say there’s more of a potential problem with Qrow being with Ozpin. Meaning yes, as you point out Qrow has a lot of stuff in his past that makes him potentially vulnerable—toxic family environment, drinking problem, etc.—but we learn irrevocably in Volume 6 that so does Ozpin. He was manipulated by the Gods into accepting this “impossible” task. He was in an abusive relationship with Salem and, quite literally, didn’t survive it. He’s lived a thousand years of unimaginable trauma. He arguably was also an alcoholic at one point given the drinking we saw in Jinn’s flashback. He’s been betrayed time and time again by his allies… of which Qrow is a part. Arguably Ozpin has even more vulnerabilities than Qrow but both characters are in a position to hurt one another with those vulnerabilities: Ozpin could play on Qrow’s desire for family and Qrow could play on Ozpin’s need for support. That “could” is, again, important because it’s mostly headcanon speculation that chooses to see the relationship as inevitably negative… with the exception that canonically Qrow is the only one who we see using these vulnerabilities against Ozpin. The fandom likes to assume that Ozpin “manipulated” Qrow all these years but we simply never see that happening. In true RWBY fashion, RT gave Qrow a very damning sounding line—I gave up my life for you—and then let the fandom assume really negative connotations. In reality though what that line translated to was, “You trusted me despite the fact that I entered your school to learn how to kill you and your allies, then taught me how to be a better person and gave me a purpose in life: to help others, even if I’ve now learned I can’t fix it all in one lifetime.” Like yeah, what kind of horrible “manipulation”?? Ozpin’s supposed power over Qrow has only helped and benefited Qrow, despite how Volume 6 tried to paint that relationship as suddenly negative. What is said doesn’t align with what we’ve seen. In contrast, we do see Qrow using Ozpin’s vulnerabilities against him. He does betray him. He does punch him into a tree. He does help perpetuate those same lies to Ironwood. He does absolve Ruby without offering the same to Ozpin. He does then plant the seed—with absolutely no evidence—that he had a hand in Summer’s death. To be frank, Qrow has treated Ozpin like shit lately and it’s one of the (many) reasons why I hate Volume 6 and 7. Ozpin is coded as the perpetrator, but we never see him taking advantage of Qrow. Meanwhile, Qrow is coded as the victim, but we do see him taking advantage of Ozpin’s vulnerability. One character has helped the other flourish, the other has abandoned him in his greatest time of need. Right now I’d argue that the in-canon ship potential is “problematic” due to Qrow… but that doesn’t mean any of that has to impact fandom shipping. For me personally, I prefer to keep to Volume 1-5 material or AUs up until Qrow (hopefully) apologizes for his actions. Then I might feel inclined to write canon-based ozqrow content for Volume 8, or whenever we re-establish that respect (with AU elements involving giving Ozpin his own body. The Oscar situation is a whole other thing I’m not going to delve into here. Suffice to say, I’m considering Qrow and Ozpin as separate people right now). But even if they never make up, even if Qrow, or Ozpin, or both of them end up being completely toxic for one another, that doesn’t stop anyone from imagining something better for them in fandom. Fandom is transformative for a reason.

All of which isn’t to say that people have to like the ship (obviously) only that in the same vein it means that no one has to justify liking the ship either. Again, for me personally, I usually need some in-canon, healthy dynamic to work with in order to enjoy a ship. It’s why I love ozqrow because we did see that for 5 volumes and may indeed see it again. In contrast, it’s why I don’t love pairings like Yen/Geralt or Bakugo/Izuku because I don’t feel like I have a healthy foundation to work from and, for me, a healthy foundation is usually necessary (with some exceptions like my childhood love of Erik/Christine). But all those are preferences. They don’t—and shouldn’t—dictate anyone else’s enjoyment. Which is the problem when people don’t just assume that ozqrow is inherently unhealthy (which I hope I’ve somewhat helped to disprove here) but likewise assume that that’s necessary for anyone else to ship them. For you that potential coding of teacher/student and power dynamics might outweigh otherwise liking their dynamic and that’s fine! That’s a preference! But a preference doesn’t give anyone the right to throw shade at others for enjoying something different.

Which finally brings me back to the hypocrisy in all this. Ozqrow (and Blake/Yang) are the only ships I’ve come across in this fandom where the fans have to continually “prove” why their ships are valid. Not as potentially canonical relationships, but just as fandom-based ships. Just as fictional preferences we enjoy as a hobby. It says something about the fandom’s bias that we can watch Ilia, on screen, be one of the bad guys, kidnap Blake, try to murder her parents, try to ship her off to her abuser… and despite all this the fandom went, “Oh yeah. I could see them together.” But Ozpin and Qrow, who have supported one another for the vast majority of the series, suddenly need to provide receipts for how healthy their relationship is and if you don’t do a good enough job proving that, it’s cancelled. That’s messed up. None of these ships are “bad.” Ilia/Blake shippers should go wild with that potential! It’s just an issue of comparison and applying different, rigged standards to certain ships. This is a fandom where people ship the heroes with the likes of Cinder, Roman, Raven, Ilia, Salem, Tyrian… tons of killers and would-be killers, characters who have done objectively horrifying things. But it’s when two loving adult men might get together that it’s suddenly too “problematic”? That says more about that bias than it does the ship. For you, anon, if I’ve failed to alleviate those concerns and that coding means ozqrow isn’t really your thing? Great! You can drop the ship, involve yourself only in AUs, or anything in between. That’s how fandom should work. The problem lies not in asking polite questions about how we might interpret a relationship in canon (which as said in the original reblog I greatly enjoy doing!) but rather in some fans’ tendency to demand a moral standard from a ship that none other is held to and then when fans inevitably fail to meet that standard, they’re criticized for daring to like the ship in the first place. Ultimately whether you end up shipping/liking ozqrow is up to you—which is precisely where the power should be. In your hands, not the hands of someone on tumblr trying to make others feel guilty.

#rwby #ozqrow #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 4 years

Text

Chapter 50: Insecurity Abounds

Becoming The Mask

Why wasn't it working?!

Jim ducked the fire jets and somersaulted out of their path.

The Forge floor tilted, sending him sliding back to where he’d started from. He braced his feet against the pop-up turret that spewed fire and launched himself up to grab the next turret, the one that shot darts. He used the higher turret to swing himself back to level ground. Jim blocked the darts that followed him with his sword.

Gunmar’s Eye hadn’t had any noticeable effect on the Amulet yet.

Jim wove through and around the pendulum axes.

When he’d put the Heartstone chip in the Amulet, he’d been able to summon a knife in minutes.

He threw several knives at a target and used his sword to cut another in half.

Of course, he’d been actively hoping for a knife when he’d cleaved that stone, and he didn’t have any solid idea what this new one was supposed to do.

Jim made it to the Soothscryer and inserted his hand.

The Forge’s mechanisms shut down. The past Trollhunters did not draw him into the Void to advise him on how to find out the properties of a newly cleaved stone.

“Okay, let’s break down the possibilities,” Jim said out loud, in case the Ghost Council decided to chime in after all. He paced around the Soothscryer. “It’s supposed to help defeat Gunmar. It’s an eye, so … insight to his strategies? Can I spy on him through it somehow?”

Except, hadn’t Vendel said there was a stone for that already? A glimpse into your enemy’s mind …

Well, a backup would be helpful to have if it turned out they did the same thing.

“Or is it like those old superstitions where you can use a piece of somebody to harm them remotely?”

Some human cultures advised caution in disposing of one’s shed hair and nail clippings for that reason. Jim didn’t know if any other trolls had analogous beliefs, but since stone flesh was literally magical it did come up among Changelings sometimes.

“Or like magnets. Can he not touch me if I armour up with the Eye in the Amulet? Not like I can test that, or like it’ll be any use in letting me kill him.” And the Triumbric Stones were supposed to be key to defeating Gunmar, not having a stalemate with Gunmar.

“Or is the legend just inaccurate?”

Not the most appealing thought, but now that it had occurred to him it would be stressing Jim out. What if they put all that time and energy into tracking down and cleaving the Triumbric Stones and they didn’t even turn out to do anything?

“Any time you guys wanna weigh in on this,” he hinted at the previous Trollhunters.

Jim sat on the Forge floor, leaned back against the Soothscryer, and closed his eyes. The Soothscryer dropped into the floor, sending Jim sprawling back with a yelp.

“… Very funny.”

“Jim?” AAARRRGGHH entered the Forge. His steps were slow at first, and then Jim heard him hurrying across the bridge. “Jim okay?”

“Yeah, just, aggravated.” He knocked on his breastplate beside the Amulet. “Stricklander got Gunmar’s Eye for me, and Vendel taught me how to cleave it, but I – I can’t figure out what it does. I thought it would – would make me stronger, or tougher, or give me a new weapon, but – nothing! I’ve been training for hours and, and I haven’t been able to do anything I couldn’t before, and apparently the Ghost Council wants me to figure this out on my own, so they’re no help.”

“AAARRRGGHH help,” said the bigger troll decisively. He picked up the human-shaped Changeling and plopped him on his shoulders. “Jim tired. Sore. Anger-vated. Hard to think. Need rest.”

And he started carrying Jim out of the Forge.

“… Where are we going?”

“Library. Quiet there.”

AAARRRGGHH was tall, and his fur was thick. Jim was mostly hidden by it. He wasn’t sure anyone noticed him as AAARRRGGHH walked through Trollmarket.

Why was AAARRRGGHH carrying him? Jim had been sure AAARRRGGHH no longer trusted him that much, but here he was, giving Jim easy access to his scruff, his neck, all the vulnerable spots on his back …

Inside the library, AAARRRGGHH did not shrug Jim off. He simply settled into his usual corner – a space relatively clear of shelves, so AAARRRGGHH wouldn’t block access to anything important if he dozed off – and opened one of the larger, less delicate books to where it was bookmarked.

“Rest,” he said. “Talk when ready.”

It was always sort of comical to see AAARRRGGHH reading. Even the tallest and widest volumes, books that the humans had to leave on tables and turn pages of both-handed, looked small in his hands.

Jim climbed further up AAARRRGGHH’s back to read over his shoulder. AAARRRGGHH noticed, and repositioned the book so they could both see it better.

It was one that Blinky had written. Possibly one he’d written for AAARRRGGHH, considering the dimensions. It was about Blinky’s observations of human culture. The current chapter was about different gardens Blinky had seen around human homes, identifying some plants that were beneficial or harmful to trolls, and speculating on the purpose of the others.

They read in silence for a while.

“It’s just,” said Jim, when they reached the end of the chapter, “I can’t afford to mess this up.”

AAARRRGGHH moved the flattened strip of braided leather to its new place and closed the book.

“I can’t take Gunmar in a straight fight, which leaves assassination. So if there’s a specific weapon I need to kill him for real, and nothing else is gonna work, then I have to know how to use it. And I have to get it right the first time, because I probably won’t get a second shot.”

And because, if Jim failed and Gunmar realized a Changeling was behind the assassination attempt, then all the other Changelings still trapped in the Darklands were as good as dead.

“And … and if I can’t unlock the first Triumbric Stone, what does that say about my chances with the other two? And what if I messed up cleaving the Eye, so now I can’t unlock that stone, and Gunmar’s gonna live forever and it’s my fault?”

“He won’t,” said AAARRRGGHH. “Wizards live long, age slow, but can die.”

“… I don’t suppose you know any weaknesses of his?”

“Hm … Not good at trusting, so won’t have guards to sleep.”

“Huh. You know, I honestly never realized he slept? Like, logically he has to, but I’d never thought about it. I’ve only ever seen him on his throne or leading hunting parties. If the stones really do give me a new weapon, that would probably be my best shot at him.” Jim sighed and sagged. “If.”

“Maybe stones only work with all three,” AAARRRGGHH suggested.

“That could be it. I hope so.” Jim drummed his fingers against the Amulet. “I’m going to take the Eye out and train some more without it. Just in case it’s messing with my head. Would you hold onto it for me?”

“I help.” AAARRRGGHH shrugged. Jim nearly fell off his shoulder. “But Eye very small. Might leave with Blinky instead.”

“Where is Blinky, anyway?”

“Doing errands,” said AAARRRGGHH in trollish. “Haggling takes time.”

+=+

Tobias Domzalski, ‘Toby’, age 16, sophomore student at Arcadia Oaks Public High School. Orphaned age two, raised by paternal grandmother Nancy.

Closest friend, boy from across the street, Jim Lake; no close friends besides that, though occasional mentions of friendly acquaintanceship with classmate Eli Pepperjack.

Fond of geology, video games, stage magic. Natural predisposition to showmanship.

Family history of clinical depression. Personal history of emotional eating, being mocked by peers for braces and weight. Probable fear of rejection/abandonment.

Next appointment rescheduled to earlier date for unclarified reasons, severe enough for guardian to call in at 5:30 in the morning but not severe enough for guardian to feel immediate emergency response was needed.

“Good afternoon, Toby. Come on in.”

“Hi, Doctor A.”

He wandered over to the window first. There was a tree between the building and the parking lot. She wasn’t sure which, if either, he looked at. He sat in the squashy armchair.

Dr Tiffany Archenn had three chairs in her office besides her desk chair, with various degrees of softness. There was a well-stuffed armchair that the sitter noticeably sank into, a stiffer but still upholstered one, and a sturdy wooden armchair that patients with joint problems invariably chose because it was the easiest to get up from.

“Anything in particular you’d like to start with today?” she asked, in her cultivated gentle tone.

“Well, I’ve made some new friends.” He smiled, showing a glint of metal. “Some girls from school decided to start hanging out with me and Jimbo. One of them, Claire, had a crush on him at first, but they kept having lunch with us after he turned her down. They’re a lot of fun.”

Tiffany nodded. After centuries of practice, writing notes was like knitting for her; she no longer needed to look at what she was doing, though sometimes she did anyway if a patient was bothered by prolonged eye contact.

“What sorts of things have you been doing together?”

“Well, lunch, like I said, and Darci and I have been playing Mobile Go-Go Sushi. Sometimes we all go out and explore – uh, the trails around town, or the museum, or, like, little stores we’ve never been in before. And we’ve been … LARPing. That’s ‘live-action role play’.”

She knew that already, but she just nodded.

“It’s a fantasy game. Jim’s the most into it. He was actually doing it solo for a while before we found out, but now we’re all involved.”

‘Before we found out’. Not ‘before he told us’ or ‘invited us’. Now that was interesting.

How was Toby handling his closest friend having done something alone instead of sharing it with him, until Toby and the new additions to their social circle became involved all at once? How was he handling suddenly having to share his friend?

“Are you enjoying this game?” she asked leadingly.

“… Mostly. It can get pretty intense sometimes.”

“How do you mean?”

Toby twisted his hands in his lap. There were some fidgets on the windowsill and the side of the desk her patients sat on, but he didn’t use them often anymore.

“A couple weeks ago, we had a school play,�� he said. “Claire and Mary were in it. Claire’s character died. Seeing that was like – like the stakes of, of the game, just got real. I had a nightmare that she died for real. It shook me up a lot. That’s when Nana called you.”

“I can see why that would be distressing.”

Emotional conflation was different from delusion, so this was probably not a sign that Toby was beginning to struggle with telling fiction from reality. Fearing for a friend’s wellbeing in a play or game and having that spill over into genuine concern for that friend’s safety was more likely related to Toby’s fear of abandonment.

She was surprised the fear was centred around one of the new friends rather than around his friend of longest standing, but it sounded like the death scene in the play had been the tipping point.

“Has this changed how you’ve been acting in your game?” Dr Archenn asked. “Or how you’ve interacted with your friends in general?”

“I’ve been more careful. Taken my training more seriously. I switched weapons – picked one I could actually use now instead of just the one I thought was coolest.”

“Has that helped?”

“A little.”

“Would you prefer a different game?”

“I couldn’t!” He shook his head. “Jimbo’s gonna do this with or without us – I can’t just leave him.”

Okay, now Tiffany was wondering if ‘LARPing’ was really a cover for some illegal activity these kids had stumbled into. Stupid Walter, leaving town right before she needed intel on some of his students.

“You don’t feel able to change overall aspects of this … game, only how you play?”

“… Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

“And you’re confident that your friends wouldn’t” – or can’t – “drop it to play something else?”

“Jim’s committed.” Tobias’ eyes widened at his own words. “I mean, he’s like, really emotionally invested in this fantasy world, you know? He’d feel really bad about giving it up. I can’t ask him to do that.”

Okay, so clearly Tobias’ friend Jim was the key to all of this. Considering the boys had been each other’s only friend for ten years, it was unlikely Tobias would be easily convinced to let go to save himself. He’d said twice in five minutes that he could not abandon Jim to whatever they were really doing, nor extract Jim from it.

She might be reading too much into this, Tiffany reminded herself. Toby might be being entirely literal, especially since he’d already volunteered so much information with so little prompting.

“Tell me some more about this game you’ve been playing.”

“Uh … well … it kind of started as Jim trying to write a fantasy novel, I think. He’s, like, this destined hero, a magical knight chosen to defeat an evil troll king. The rest of us are, um, fellow questers who’ve joined up with him. He wants to protect us by fighting alone, but …” he trailed off.

But you don’t want to be left behind by being cut out of something your friend is investing time in? Tiffany did not suggest. It would distort the accuracy of her analysis if she put words in her patient’s mouth.

“But none of us want to give it up,” Toby settled on.

He didn’t say more. Maybe the tension between Jim and Toby was because Jim had wanted to write this story alone and resented his friends inserting themselves into the narrative? Tiffany set out another prompt.

“You mentioned you chose a new weapon recently. Do you all have weapons?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a warhammer. I had one to start with, I just, switched to a lighter one. Because, um, my character stats meant I couldn’t lift the first one yet. Jim and Mary both have swords, Claire’s got a spear, Darci has a crossbow.”

“No spellcasters in your party?”

Toby laughed nervously. “Sometimes there’s magic artifacts, but, no, no spellcasters.”

+=+

Claire got her bleach and developer out of the cupboard, adding them to the rest of her materials.

“Whatcha doin’?” Not Enrique asked her.

“Seriously? Do you have no concept of privacy? I’m in the bathroom right now!”

“You didn’t shut the door.” He tapped the join between the hardwood floor he was standing on and the bathroom tiles.

Okay, fair point, not that she’d being saying so to him.

“I’m touching up my roots.”

“I got no idea what that means.” He stood up on his back legs (or just ‘legs’? He went on all fours most of the time, like AAARRRGGHH, but most trolls Claire had seen were bipeds) and squinted past her. “You got a plant in there?”

“No, I mean my hair.” She crouched on the floor and tugged her blue streak. “It’s growing out, so I have to dye the parts that don’t have colour yet.”

Not Enrique just blinked at her. “You … kill your hair to change its colour? But, Ma and Pa take me with ’em to the hairdressers sometimes, and none of the stuff on the floor turns different colours.”

Claire grit her teeth at hearing him refer to her and Enrique’s parents like they were his too.

“It’s not that kind of dye. Dee-why-ee, not dee-eye-ee. It’s like a paint.” She sighed. “Look, I’ll show you.”

She pulled on her rubber gloves and separated her dyed streak from the rest of her hair with foil.

“I’m just bleaching it today. I have to do that a couple of days in a row, because it takes a while to get it light enough for the colour to show up.”

She mixed the bleach with the developer, which helped bleach to penetrate hair, and some red-gold corrector, which made it more effective on dark hair. Claire carefully painted the goop into her hair.

“In about half an hour, I’ll wash this off, and the hair it was in will be lighter brown instead of black.”

“Wild.”

“So, what, did you think some of my hair was just naturally blue?”

“Yeah? I’ve seen lots of humans around with more than one hair colour.”

“… Fair point,” she admitted. Between the people with hair streaks like her, and anyone starting to go grey, and people with fully-dyed hair whose roots were showing, not to mention how technicolour troll hair could be, he’d have no reason to suspect some human hair colours or patterns were unnatural.

Claire folded the foil around her hair and carefully clipped it so it wouldn’t slip off. She wiped out the bowl she’d mixed the bleach in using paper towels and wrapped them in a bag to throw in the trash, rather than dumping bleach down the drain. It wasn’t good for the local water table. Claire took off her gloves and tidied everything else away. She set her phone timer so she wouldn’t damage her hair by leaving the bleach in for too long.

“What was that you were saying earlier?” asked Not Enrique. “Bout the different kinds of die. Dee-why-dee-eye?”

“They’re spelled differently,” said Claire. “So if you see it written down, you can tell which kind somebody means. It’s called a homophone when a word’s like that,” she remembered from an elementary school grammar class on the different kinds of words.

Claire left the bathroom. “Come on.” She went to their – her – mother’s home office, and took a sheet of paper and a pen. She wrote ‘die’ and ‘dye’ on the paper and handed it to Not Enrique, who held the page upside down. “Other way up. See the difference?”

He flipped the page. “Which one’s for hair and which is for killing?”

“D-Y-E is for recolouring stuff. It’s not just hair, you can do with cloth too.”

He pointed at the correct word. “That one’s the Y? Like in the alphabet videos.”

“Yeah. You know what?” Claire decided. “I’m gonna teach you to read. I know, I know, you’re picking it up,” seeing his insulted look, “but you’ll learn faster with a teacher.”

“You just wanna use me to spell-check the trollish homework Blinkous gives you.”

“Like you’d be useful for that when I’m the one teaching you.”

+=+

Previous Chapter (Jim gets and cleaves the Eye of Gunmar)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Visiting the Quagawumps to ask for the Killstone)

I learned how to dye hair streaks for this chapter! I’ve been thinking about doing them in my hair for a long time but never bothered because my hair’s really dark brown and all the bleaching sounded like a nuisance. Now that I’ve looked into how it’s done, it still sounds like a nuisance, but I might try it.

Dr Archenn does not suspect Toby knows about real trolls yet, because ‘fighting an evil troll’ is pretty standard fantasy fodder. Even if he’d mentioned Jim being ‘the Trollhunter’, that sounds like a generic term, so she wouldn’t get truly suspicious without further evidence. If he’d mentioned Gunmar by name, on the other hand, that would have been enough for her to call in some favours and put this kid under surveillance.

So, how about Wizards, huh? Deya’s portrayal gave me a bunch of ideas for her portrayal in this fic! Since I am not going with the idea of her being the first Trollhunter, I’ve also developed a whole bunch of backstory that will be revealed later about the Trollhunter job’s origins in this timeline. I’ll be sticking with some plans I already had as to the timing and motives of Morgana inventing Changelings.

#Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Becoming The Mask chapters #Changeling Jim #Amulet of Daylight #AAARRRGGHH #rocks minerals crystals and gemstones #Tobias Domzalski #Changelings #original character #role-playing game #lies #Claire Nuñez #Not Enrique #Hair #colours #My Fanfiction #Monday is fanfic day!

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pakseoexpert01 · 4 years

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makeste · 5 years

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BnHA Chapter 163: Reunions and Provisional License Training

Previously on BnHA: Gran Torino and Naomasa cornered Kurogiri in the middle of the woods somewhere. It looked like they were about to capture him, but then this big Goron-looking dude stomped in out of nowhere and we cut away from the scene, so who even knows what’s going on with that. Back at the hospital, Deku had a chat with Mirio, who was amazingly cheerful -- the last thing Nighteye said to him was to keep smiling, and he intends to follow through with that. Deku had a moment of guilt-stricken weakness because Mirio had been so amazing while he himself had needed help from everyone. He started to offer Mirio One for All, but Mirio cut him off and said that even if it was “hypothetically possible” for Deku to give him his quirk, he wouldn’t accept because that would only leave Deku in the same situation that he’s in right now. He also said that Aizawa told him they would be working hard to figure out a way to restore his quirk. And Nighteye’s last prediction was that he would be an outstanding hero, and he believes in him. Having been successfully cheered up, Deku returned to school with the other kids. The next day, BAKUGOU AND TODOROKI HEADED OFF TO THEIR PROVISIONAL LICENSE COURSE. YOU GUYS. THEY’RE BACK.

Today on BnHA: The internship kids return to their classmates who have been WORRIED SICK and don’t hesitate to inform them of this. Ochako and Kirishima have quiet moments of reflection about why they want to become heroes and how far they have to go, respectively. The next morning, Bakugou and Todoroki head off to their supplemental training course, chaperoned by All Might and Present Mic. We learn from All Might that Gran Torino and Naomasa managed to capture Kurogiri, but were in pretty bad shape after their confrontation with the Giganto dude, who apparently leveled half the mountainside during their battle. Over at the license exam training course place, Endeavor makes an appearance, having come to watch Shouto train. He also says he wants to have a chat with All Might. Meanwhile Shouto is greeted by his new best friend Yoarashi Inasa (who is still my favorite), as well as For Reals Camie, who we’re meeting for the very first time. Also Seiji of meatball quirk fame is here as well just for laughs. The chapter ends fairly abruptly, but it’s all good because this is going to be a good arc full of fun times you guys.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’ve read up through chapter 187 now, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

(ETA: apparently the 3rd popularity poll results were released with this chapter! I had to go hunt down the color page and the full results because they weren’t included with the scanlation I read. so I’m adding in this ETA as of finishing volume 18 and belatedly realizing there were supposed to be poll results somewhere in there lol

Bakugou in the number one spot once more! that post-Kamino character development was so good that his popularity managed to withstand 40 straight chapters of being completely absent from the plot. pretty impressive

there is literally only ONE vote separating Shouto and Deku, oh snap. Shouto’s popularity also held up pretty damn well during the Internship arc. absence truly does make the heart grow fonder

Kirishima has moved up a spot! fucking superb you funky little rock man

and a surprise guest breaking into that no. 5 spot, Iida fucking Tenya! wow! beat out Aizawa by a good 400 votes. in this post-ponytail world, that is truly shocking to me. once again I will chock it up to his being absent for so long and making us realize how much we truly loved him. although a more likely explanation is that the anime had just finished up the Hero Killer arc right around when this poll was being conducted in the tail end of 2017

I’m delighted to see Kaminari here at number 8, even before his Kacchan moment which is coming up in this very chapter! I love him so much

Shinsou’s got himself some dedicated fans, let me tell you. they are doing the lord’s work, using this poll as a way of not-too-subtly hinting at Horikoshi to drop Mineta from 1-A and replace him with this kid instead. we’ll keep holding out hope

so that’s it for the top ten (with shoutouts to Aizawa, All Might, and Ochako because I didn’t mention them specifically but OBVIOUSLY I LOVE THEM TOO OF COURSE). I think the full list is in one of the omakes, so I’ll cover that at the end of this chapter.)

[mario voice] here we GOOOOOOO

so we’re back at the fanfic dorms (I MISSED THESE TOO), and the internship kids have finally made it back after going through all sorts of “inquiries and processes”

Mineta’s screaming “THEY’RE BAAAAAAACK” and honestly it’s one of the few times I’ve empathized with him so strongly

are you kidding me. you fit 18 fucking kids into this panel but you couldn’t fit Bakugou fucking Katsuki

also I always die any time Shouji is wearing one of his legendary ponchos. lmao

honestly, even without Bakugou (and who else is missing, though? ... oh shit, Tokoyami), this one panel still feels more like BnHA than the series has in ages. I missed this

(ETA: wait a sec, was Tokoyami out on his own internship while this was all taking place? is that why he’s not here? do I need to stop dragging my feet and force my ADD brain to sit still for five goddamn minutes so I can finish the arc I’m currently on?)

Kaminari’s shouting that Kirishima and Deku (a.k.a. the two who were also involved in Rescue Squad Jr.) are always getting mixed up in crazy shit and they need to stop scaring them

they were scared, then. of course. that’s fine, it was only to be expected. it’s not like I’m tempted to stop reading right this second and go look up post-Internship Arc class 1-A genfics on AO3

but like, I really did want to for a minute, and y’all know how badly I want to see Bakugou again, so please understand that I’m loving this scene just that much

Hagakure’s hugging Tsuyu and Ochako awww

what’s this

Shouto got a mysterious text? Shouto is always on his fucking phone I s2g. get off social media for two seconds and say hi to your friends

(ETA: this seems like a good place to share my headcanon that Endeavor texts like Captain Holt from B99 and composes all of his texts like formal business letters with perfect grammar and begins them all with “Dear Shouto” and signs them all with “Sincerely, Endeavor.” yes he signs them as “Endeavor” and not “dad” or even “your father” because he’s just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really bad at being a dad. you guys.)

Iida is divebombing in front of the returning kids and screaming at everyone to calm down

;_________;

IIDA BRINGING THOSE CLASS 1-A FEELS. THAT’S OUR CLASS PREZ

but Deku’s waving a hand at him and thanking him for being considerate, “but”

oh my god

loooooool

“ARE YOU SURE, MIDORIYA. BECAUSE I JUST MADE A PRETTY BIG FUCKING SCENE RIGHT NOW, YOU KNOW”

LOOOOOOOOOL, BUT NOW THAT HE HAS THE GO AHEAD...

IIDA FUCKING TENYA I MISSED YOU TOO YOU BIG GOOBER

Momo is running off to make some tea for them

and Satou is literally shoving cake into Deku’s face now

for some reason Ochako is being very quiet though

oh. oh no

honey it’s not your fault!

shit. this is the first job-related death they’ve experienced, though. of course they’re all going to be traumatized by it to some degree. no wonder the staff wanted to brief them thoroughly

I hope they offered counseling. they fucked up with Bakugou and they need to not do that again. class 1-A keeps accumulating various traumas and if these kids don’t get mental health support they’re all going to be a hot mess by the time they graduate

in the meantime we at least have Aizawa “Mom of the Year” Shouta on the job

is it just me or does Aizawa not even pretend anymore these days. he’s so fucking maternal. he loves them all so much, and he’s not even mad about it. they’re good kids

so Ochako is having what we call a Deku Moment

staring at the hands and everything

is this the first time she’s said this? remember, previously her goal was to become a hero so that she could provide for her mom and dad. very selfless, but she was still in it for the money rather than the whole “rescuing people” thing. so I think this is the first time we’ve heard her voice this particular sentiment out loud. and it’s great

Kirishima’s looking at her with a quiet expression that suggests that his own angst is brewing beneath the surface omg

and Sero’s slinging an arm around him aggressively

this is nice! he needs this!

aww! Mina too!

NO NOT REALLY

KIRISHIMA ;_____;

WHERE IS BAKUGOU GODDAMMIT

GASPPPP

ever the antisocial one

HERE HE IS IN HIS OWN PANEL FINALLY OMGGGGGG

omg

so he’s listening in with his resting bitch face, because of course he was worried just like all the rest of them, but like hell you’ll catch him joining in with the obnoxious crowd of people swarming them all at once

but this way he can still see that they’re all right. and maybe he can talk to Kirishima later. and maybe nod at Deku or make awkward eye contact for two seconds and then pretend like nothing happened. you know how they do

LOOK WHO’S HOPPING OVER AND MAKING THE SAME OBSERVATIONS OMG

excuse me WHAT DID YOU CALL HIM JUST NOW? AHEM??

(ETA: this is disturbingly high on my list of all-time favorite BnHA moments)

is he allowed? is this allowed?? what is this. this is the childhood nickname that only one person has ever been allowed to use. (and that one person has apparently never been told to stop using it, either, because you know he would have if Kacchan had actually asked. or demanded. and yet he still uses it, exclusively. and somehow I’ve never essayed about this? what have I even been doing with my life. but now is not the time. maybe in an ETA when I’m not so fucking hyped)

(ETA: so I did in fact write a whole big essay about this, and it got so long that I ended up removing it from this already-lengthy post and putting it up as its own separate thing. because it’s definitely something I’ve been meaning to talk about, but it was pretty off-topic.

but anyways, I just wanted to say that if me writing a 1200 word BakuDeku essay out of fucking nowhere doesn’t perfectly sum up my reaction to him being back in the manga, then I don’t know what does. lol)

I don’t know what to get excited about first. the fact that he noticed Kacchan was in fact sulking in the corner being worried but pretending like he wasn’t. the fact that he came over to bother him. or the fact that he just casually called him the nickname, again most likely to bother him, but he didn’t get blasted into oblivion for it so oh my god. does Kacchan even realize that’s just giving him the green light to do it again later

anyway so Bakugou is making a classic grumpy retreat now

YES

and also he has his provisional license course tomorrow too!

Ojiro’s asking if he’s really just going to skulk off without even saying a word to their returning traumatized friends. Ojiro have you even met Kacchan before

and actually Todoroki is now bidding everyone good night as well

and getting the exact same “what are you a grandpa” response from Kaminari to boot. Kaminari is on fucking fire tonight

oh man. this is going to be one of those chapters where I just post and comment about every single panel, huh

you see, I have to post this one because (1) bunny! and (2) Tsuyu isn’t even surprised about Bakugou. they’re all used to him going to bed this early. see, this is exactly the kind of shit I need to make a note of for when I inevitably start to write fic. this kid is early to bed early to rise

it’s literally 8:30 and Kacchan’s in bed, lights off, glaring at the ceiling

and Shouto is glaring at his phone

I swear I wasn’t originally going to post both of those panels. but I just wanted to comment that (a) Bakugou has an OtterBox-style case for his phone (which makes perfect sense, because he probably abuses the poor thing every day and throws it when he gets frustrated and tries to blow it up at times, and honestly he’s probably managed to destroy it once or twice even WITH the case. and I bet he has the special warranty that includes quirk damage. and I bet they regret ever giving it to him), and (b) I’m getting an inkling that whatever reason Shouto had for retiring to his room early, it didn’t actually have anything to do with the next day’s training

someone on tumblr told me that we would be getting Todoroki Family Drama at some point. but I’m pretty sure that’s still like 20 chapters off. but maybe this is early set-up for it? hmmmm

and now panels of the four intern kids lying in bed wide awake thinking angsty thoughts

FYI, that’s Satou’s bedroom with the light still on in the middle of the 5th floor. and below that, on the fourth floor, that room is supposed to be unoccupied lmao. so that is presumably a ghost right there. next to Bakugou’s bedroom

here, I’ll post the layout so you can see

so I’m not sure if Horikoshi maybe just spaced out and moved everyone’s rooms down one from where they’re actually supposed to be, and this is supposed to be Bakugou and Todoroki’s rooms with the lights on. but if we go by our canon reference, Satou is doing some midnight baking and the fourth floor is in fact haunted

anyway, we’re now cutting to the next day and Bakugou and Todoroki are walking to the train station

every sentence Todoroki says ends with dots

is this the arc that’s going to make me ship TodoBaku. it is isn’t it. it’s already happened for Deku, Ochako, and Kirishima, it was only a matter of time before Strawberry Shortcake got in on this too

(ETA: we’re at a solid “I’ll read it if it’s there and the summary intrigues me” level, FYI)

oh my

first of all, I highly doubt that. Bakugou strikes me as being way too much of a type A to ever be late for anything, and Todoroki also has an air of impeccable punctuality about him

and second of all, OH MY GOD

All Might looking spiffy as hell in that tailored suit with his manly satchel. and Present Mic’s out here trying to poke Kacchan in the fucking eye

so Aizawa was leading the course previously, then? he’s the one who supervised whatever insanity led to Shouto’s nose getting broken and the two of them basically looking like they’d been hit by small cars? I guess he’s only a mom when he feels like it huh

(ETA: so when All Might says “leading the group”, what he really means is “accompanying the two kids to and from their lessons for safety purposes.” which makes more sense. and means that contrary to what I just said, not only does Aizawa continue to be a mom, he’s now a goddamn soccer mom on top of everything else.)

OH SHIT I’M BEING BOMBARDED WITH SO MUCH INFORMATION AT ONCE. THIS IS GREAT. I CAN HARDLY KEEP UP

so apparently they needed Aizawa to help with Eri’s quirk! so this presumably means she’s awake? hopefully he’ll be able to help her

and Aizawa made Mic come along to protect All Might, because he cares! that’s right!

(ETA: and also, maybe not a good idea to send two of the League’s known targets and the son of the current number one hero out into the world all nicely grouped together without any backup. yeah, good call Aizawa.)

and Kurogiri was indeed captured!

but Gran’s team suffered some “serious blows” apparently

!! “there was another individual we couldn’t do anything about”

yessss tell us more about this!

oh shit he done fucked them up proper

he was that bad? bad enough that you weren’t sure whether Kurogiri was worth letting him escape? holy shit

oh snap

was this like. an entire mountain that he fucking leveled here? good lord

anyway, so All Might’s telling them to board the bus

Todoroki is acting weeeeeeird you guys

what the fuck is this kid hiding all of a sudden

so now they’re at some building and the kids’ crazy uncles are dropping them off and waving

this is the cutest fucking shit. the boys look so tiny. All Might looks like he just dropped them off at pre-k

OH SHIT

WELL WELL, IF IT ISN’T THE CURRENT NUMBER ONE PIECE OF SHIT

“I wanted to have a proper chat with you” he says, the veins in his eyeballs reaching critical levels

why does he always do this. can’t you ever just have a normal conversation without dramatically cornering someone in a random hallway

Present Mic is all “I’m going to fuck off now, so good luck”

“I’ma go buy some coffee. it’ll probably take about five hours. just to be safe. see you later”

so apparently the text that Shouto got was just his dad telling him he’d be coming to watch his training the next morning

“I hope he doesn’t bump into All Might,” he thinks. Shouto, does that sound like the kind of thing that’s likely to happen. think about you and your life and how it’s generally gone up until this point. exactly

EYYYYYYYYYYYYY

IT’S MUH BOIIIIIIIIIII

OH HUSH. HERE I THOUGHT KATSUKI WAS GOING TO BE THE GRUMPY GRUMP. COME ON NOW

(ETA: and also there are like, eight people in the whole damn class. how exactly were you planning on avoiding him)

and who’s this?

!!!!

HOLY SHIT IS THIS THE REAL CAMIE

holy shit?!

so this means she’s not dead or kidnapped or whatever! well that’s obviously good!

but just. I have so many questions all of a sudden omg. I should just keep reading

apparently she’s never seen Baku and Todo before? wouldn’t she have seen them at one of the previous courses though? I guess maybe they split up into different groups in the previous sessions?

oh hey look at Kacchan asking these important questions for me

oh my god

right, he was in the character page for this volume

but he didn’t make it past the first round! what gives!!

is that why Camie’s here too, though? were they not invited to attend previously, but then the examiners had a change of heart?

once again Kacchan is acting as my proxy here

at this rate we’re going to have more people observing than actually taking the course

I wonder what Actual Camie’s quirk is? and is she also observing or are they allowing her to take the course with them?

do they even realize it wasn’t her who passed the first half? I mean obviously her teachers and classmates must know, but are they just playing along to help her get her license now?

well at any rate, it looks like these kids are ready to throw down

WE SHALL

BONUS:

people who are too low on this poll: Mina, Mr. Compress, Nighteye, Jirou, Tsuyu, and FUCKING MIRIO, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME THOUGH

for real?? 41st place? beaten out by Stain, Overhaul, Endeavor, Seiji, and fucking Mineta??!

I’m sorry, I was going to do more commentary on this, but honestly my brain just kind of quit in outrage. honestly this poll should be ashamed of itself. the best fucking character in the manga and he didn’t even crack the top 40. for fuck’s sake

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 5 years

Text

Credence is NOT a bad person

(an indirect sequel to my post, ‘Leta Lestrange is NOT a bad person’)

Okay, so I kind of agree that Credence wasn’t given a huge amount in CoG, given that this film was supposedly him searching for who he is but I’m blaming that on David Yates - the man fucked up the last 4 Potters and cut a LOT of great scenes from CoG: Tina/Leta protecting Newt/his case, scenes of Queenie and Grindelwald, and of course the scene where Credence and Nagini are on the rooftop of a building. We’ve seen the latter scene in trailers, and according to a few of the making-of books, it was supposedly a scene where Nagini and Credence discussed a) her condition and her wanting to remain human for as long as possible, and b) Credence’s obscurial power/him being able to control his obscurus.

(You fucked up Yates)

Anyway, I respect that a lot of people don’t like Credence, that’s all personal taste and I can see what people mean when they say he hasn’t been given a lot to do yet because he hasn’t - hopefully the other films will explore his full potential as a wizard. However, I’ve seen a few people flat out despise him because he’s ‘a bad person’/’selfish’ etc. etc., which I personally don’t agree with.

As always, this is all my own personal opinion - I’m not trying to force people to change their minds, I just want to offer my own take on things.

Credence was raised in an abusive household from the time he was a baby - we know this because Irma says she took him to Mary Lou when he was a baby/the baby swapping etc. His birth date is a little tricky to place since the screenplay says 1901 for the boat scene, but the MinaLima adoption certificate says Corvus (who must be roughly the same age, given that they were swapped with no one noticing) was born in 1904 or 1905 (I can’t remember which). So that puts Credence at 21-25 in the first Beasts (18-25 if you include Ezra saying he was told Credence was 18 in the first film) - meaning Credence experienced about 17-24 years of abuse, give or take and depending on what year is actually canon.

That’s approximately two decades of beatings and emotional torment, of being forced to repress his powers, of having no love or friends save perhaps Modesty later on, and then ‘Graves’ (who’s really Grindelwald). Arguably, Graves doesn’t count as a friend since he was a) actually Grindelwald and b) Grindel!Graves was manipulating Credence the whole time. Then there’s Tina, who’s described in the screenplay as “the only person to show him an uncomplicated act of kindness” - but she’s soon demoted and not allowed to interact with him or help him.

So, again, he’s alone and suffering inside because of the abuse he’s been suffering since he was a baby. That seriously messed him up, there’s no doubt about it: he can barely hand out flyers without his hands shaking, he hunches over, he develops an obscurus and it lashes out when he’s angry/hurt/upset. The guy is seriously messed up and needs love/affection desperately.

In FBAWTFT, Mary Lou says, “Your mother was a wicked, unnatural woman” - implying she knew his mother was a witch, that he was magical. Did Mary Lou know that? Or was she told something else perhaps? Did she think Irma was his birth mother? However you look at it, it outright implies she knows about who he really is, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what made Credence want to seek out his real mother - he feels if he knows who she really is, then maybe he’ll know who he is too.

We need to remember that at this point (pre-CoG), all Credence really knows about himself is a) he’s adopted, b) his mother was supposedly like him (i.e. magical), c) MACUSA want him dead because he’s dangerous, and d) he possesses magical powers. MAYBE he knows his actual birthday/birth date too, maybe not. But he doesn’t know his family history, who his parents are, who he is. After escaping Mary Lou’s abuse, it’s not surprising that he wants to carve a new identity for himself - something other than “abused Second Salem freak” or “dangerous monster”. He wants to reclaim his old/true identity - why would he want to continue living as Credence Barebone, the abused and lost ‘freak’? Why would he want to continue using his abusive adoptive mother’s surname?

Which then leads to CoG; sometime between the movies, Credence joins the circus and meets Nagini. They form a friendship and she becomes his only friend; we don’t know the specifics on how they became close or anything, but we do know they’re close. Perhaps because they both understand what it’s like to be considered a ‘freak’, a ‘monster’ - Nagini is slowly losing control over her ability to go between human and snake (and she knows one day she will be trapped as a snake forever), whereas Credence seems to be slowly gaining control over his Obscurus power. I’m pretty sure I read in one of the making of books that she encourages him to use/gain control of his powers instead of hiding them (in the deleted rooftop scene, I’m assuming).

There are different interpretations to the dynamic between Credence and Nagini; close friends, romance - or even a somewhat motherly/son bond. This is ALL speculation at this point, but we know that later Nagini is key in helping Voldemort be nursed back to full health (because of her venom being used in a potion or something). The Maledictus curse is passed from mother to daughter - for this reason, perhaps Nagini doesn’t want children because of the risk of passing it on to a female child (again, I’m speculating). In CoG, she seems to comfort Credence (eg. Irma’s death) by holding him and letting him cry into her shoulder, and she even attempts to protect him when Kama threatens to kill him (in the screenplay, she’s in her snake form and trying to protect him whereas in the film she’s merely just in front of him as a human). Of course, this could just be a protective friendship, but it makes me wonder a bit since Credence is so desperate for a mother in this film.

The thing that people are bringing up in their anti-Credence posts is the ending, where he joins Grindelwald and ‘abandons’ Nagini. Look, I agree, Nagini is vulnerable and needs a friend/support as she has literally no one else, and I personally was a little disappointed he just left her to basically die there given that she’s his only friend, but the more I think about it, the more I think it makes sense.

Here’s the thing: CoG is about CHOICES. It’s literally the central theme/decision for the characters: the time’s coming where everyone must pick a side. Everyone in this film makes their own choice.

Credence made his: he believed Grindelwald could tell him who he really is - there’s no indication he’s really in it because “all muggles are vermin” or anything, his reasoning is “he knows who I am”. We know that Credence is desperate to know who he is, where he came from, his true identity and history. At the end of the film, he’s even debating/unsure as to whether he made the right or wrong choice - which speaks volumes to me about how confused he is. Even wanting desperately to know who he really is, he’s still uncertain as to whether he made the right choice. Grindelwald knows that he’s vulnerable/confused, and is using that for his own cause. But the point remains that Credence made a choice.

Nagini made a choice too, even if it’s not focused on: given that she’s on Voldemort’s side later, its somewhat surprising that she does NOT join Grindelwald. She could have decided to go because she wanted to remain with Credence, but she didn’t - she knew that she had no other options when it came to getting out. Nagini a) has no wand and perhaps is not magical in a wizard/witch sense like the others (IDK, it’s debatable but she doesn’t use any magic in the film) and b) she knows the fire is killing anyone attempting to flee. Yet she doesn’t join Grindelwald; perhaps this is because she’s not a witch (debatable), perhaps because she mentions people like his followers (i.e. pure-bloods) hunt people like her “for sport”.

Credence and Nagini made their own individual choices, whether for the better or the worst. Neither of them are bad people because they both had their reasons for choosing the sides they did.

Personally, Credence is one of my favourite characters; I’m intrigued as to who he is, how he fits into the story - apparently he’s going to be a ‘huge’ character in this franchise, someone important to the story. To add, Ezra Miller is absolutely amazing (yes, I’m biased) and does a wonderful job portraying Credence’s vulnerability and struggles; even with little material, he manages to have a stand-out performance. Honestly, I think Ezra’s performance is part of the reason Credence is so compelling to watch, so intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes in the series (I have a nasty feeling it won’t end well for him though...)

#credence barebone #fantastic beasts and where to find them #fantastic beasts: the crimes of grindelwald #nagini #ezra miller #mary lou barebone #aurelius dumbledore

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scyllua · 5 years

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As chap.204 would be more of an interlude chapter (a breather after the events of Thursday the 13th and a very intense fanart-sharing moment between amateur artists), the Japanese fandom's reaction to it hasn't been noteworthy. (Bad joke: but it's been a boost nonetheless in comparison to last week! If only because the manga was in hiatus last week and therefore, there was no chapter to speak of! I thought of mentioning this because I noticed my blog at my personal domain had many more visitors last Thursday, I'm assuming, because fans were searching online for the weekly GK chapter and most likely, wondering why they couldn't find it.)

That doesn't mean there aren't highlights in this chapter, though. I'd say chap.204 feels oddly subdued in tone and pacing -in spite of a Wild Wolverine Attack! in the latter half-, but that'd be mostly because the previous three have been rather action-packed. I wrote chap.201-203 would serve as the introduction to the arc to unfold in this volume (which would encompass chap.201-210), and while we've been given more than enough hints about what to expect in the near future (the still ongoing plot with the Partisans and the reappearance of a certain one-eyed sniper), this chapter seems to introduce more subplots while still pointing in the same direction. My usual warnings about mistakes and mistranslations applying as usual, onto CHAP.204! EMPHATICALLY APPALLING!! JUST AS SUGIMOTO AND ASIRPA SHOW US IN THE PANEL AT THE TOP OF THIS POST!!!

In short, Tsukishima gets a telegraph message from Tsurumi informing him that the business he had in Noboribetsu has been taken care of and he'll be heading to Karafuto then. As Tsurumi will rendezvous with them in Oodomari (the same port town in southern Karafuto they arrived in back in vol.14) in two weeks time, he tells the group to stay in Toyohara until then. Koito comments they're to stay in Toyohara because it's a large town with better lodgings, and since there's nothing else for them to do until then, they should just take things easy. While in the town outskirts, Cikapasi and Tanigaki meet a couple of Ainu men who question the boy about where he comes from and who that big guy standing over there is. Cikapasi explains they come from beyond the southern sea, and introduces Tanigaki as his uncle. The Matagi then comments about the extra marginally important information Cikapasi gave the Ainu men about how much endowed he is, and tells the boy how useful and supportive he's been through their journey in Karafuto. As both ponder about Inkarmat in Hokkaido, Enonoko approaches them and asks Cikapasi if he's going back already. In the nearby forest and as Asirpa and Sugimoto get ready to hunt a kuzuri (a wolverine), Tsukishima tells Vasily (who's still following them) to go back to Russia. The wolverine hunt is interrupted by a couple of photographers who seem to have an interest in Asirpa, but just in cue, the little and irascible animal attacks one of the men. After they take care of the wolverines -in a moment vaguely reminiscing of vol.7 and the adventure in the cabin in the woods, there were two of them- and Asirpa cooks them (the very reason she wanted to catch one), the photographers explain the device they're carrying is a cinematograph, and that they're interested in documenting about the Ainu culture.

The chapter's title is 残したいもの (nokoshitaimono), a term I'm having some trouble with. Since the term 残す means "to leave behind", "to save" or "to reserve", and given the group's current activities, I'm understanding the title in the sense of "things we're doing to cherish later" (it literally translates to "things I want to save/leave behind"). Remember how in manga and anime the characters will sometimes state they want to try doing things as to have good memories of them? Asirpa says so in this chapter as she spots wolverine's tracks and decides to catch one... to eat it, of course (and cherish its taste for ages to come, that's it). They're in Karafuto, so they won't be going back to Hokkaido without having a bite of everything that is to munch on in that island! Some random fan comment here: While I understand the social and cultural importance of food in Japan (similar to the culinary traditions we have in my country), I can't but frown a little at just how this girl is in her way to try every possible edible animal that pops up in the story. At the very least, I think I can feel sorry even for the little demonic wolverines they eat in this chapter.

...but starting from the beginning! Plotwise, an important highlight of this chapter would be the piece of information regarding Tsurumi; specifically, that he's making his way to rendezvous with the group in Karafuto. Since he sends word to Tsukishima that the business in Noboritsu has been taken care of, I think that'd be our confirmation that all events in the manga occur in a chronological order; that's it, in the order and within the same timeline as we're shown in the story. I'm mentioning this because I was wondering whether Kikuta's showdown with Toni Anji's group in Noboribetsu (chap.190-195, to be compiled in vol.20) was taking place at the same time as Sugimoto's entourage lost sight of their sniper in northern Karafuto: this indeed seems to be the case. Back then, I also pondered how author Noda would then "speed up" things, for the manga had taken 7 volumes to depict Sugimoto and Kiroranke's groups' journey through Karafuto: either he used an ellipsis, or fast-paced the narration as not to spend other 70 chapters to show us how they went back to Hokkaido. In my previous chapter summary entry as well, I wrote I thought the current arc could wrap up while in Karafuto before all plotlines seemed to be aligning in that direction: Sugimoto's group is still in that island, Vasily is following them (providing us with a good excuse expedited reason for Ogata to make a comeback and have another duel with the Russian sniper), Sofia is making her way back to Hokkaido (via Karafuto? We don't know yet, but that could be a possibility - and a viable reason for her to cross paths with the protagonist cast)... and now Tsurumi is traveling to the northern island as well. I must say I hadn't thought of this scenario (as I'd assumed Noda would favor Hokkaido as the setting for most if not all future and pivotal events), but it'd certainly pace up the plot forward quite considerably.

Some fan pondering here: So, what do you think Tsurumi's arrival in Karafuto will be like? Because of the way the original text is phrased and of just how Japanese grammar is, it isn't that explicitly stated that Tsurumi will be personally going to rendezvous with the group, but that can be implied from the sentence. ...Now, let us remember he hasn't made an appearance in the flesh -and outside a flashback- since chap.171 (vol.18); there's no need for him to show up in a grand and remarkable way with an equally large entourage at the time (but it's Tsurumi: one can never know for sure with this man), though I'm looking forward to seeing him flanked by some of his trusted and skilled men a the very least. Random pondering #2: Since everything turned out just well in Noboritsu -for everyone involved... save Toni Anji's group, that's it-, I'm assuming Usami didn't get that scolding in the end. Good for him. Random hopeful thought: It'd be pretty nice if we could get some more of Kikuta and Ariko then.

A small caption for the chapter reads, "it's golden time!" The term is given in English (and it's an actual expression used in education in this language), but the connotation it has in Japanese, if I'm not wrong, would refer to time spent in leisure or pleasant activities that are meant to be enjoyed and cherished: the accompanying kanji precisely read, 自由時間 (jiyuu jikan, lit. "free time"). And, of course, the term would also serve as a pun for the manga's title for including the word "golden" on it. Well, that's just what our protagonist group will do for the time being.

...starting with Tanigaki and Cikapasi, who meet a couple of Ainu men. When the men question the boy about where he comes from and who the big guy over there is (my phrasing, by the way: they simply ask about "that man"), Cikapasi tells them they come from beyond the southern sea, and refers to Tanigaki as his ojisan. Note that this term in Japanese means "uncle", but it's also a colloquial way to refer to any older man, akin to saying "an old man" or "a mister". I'm going with Cikapasi as literally introducing Tanigaki as his uncle, though, because the word he uses in Ainu is achapo: my knowledge of Ainu being so obviously zero, I do remember acha meaning "father" in this language. Hence, I think the boy is genuinely referring to Tanigaki as an uncle: probably not in the strictest sense, but as a person close to him and with a family-like tie. Explanations over, Cikapasi then adds Tanigaki has... big balls, er, yes. I'm going to take his word for that, as the only adult male character who's gotten clear and full frontal shots in this manga so far has been Shiraishi: we wouldn't know for sure about the rest. He says 金玉, a colloquial term literally translating to "golden ball" and meaning "testicles". Speaking of another Jump-serialized manga and being the irreverent author he is, Sorachi Hideaki titled his best-known story 銀魂 (Gintama, lit. "Silver Soul") as a play-on-words with precisely this term, kintama; given the franchise became so popular as to encompass the manga, several anime series, live-action movies, and a ton of merchandise that was referenced to even in the story canon, it's probable nobody will raise an eyebrow at Gintama's title now, but at the beginning of its serialization some did have a thing or two to say in Japan. Guess Sorachi got away with it in the end... and his detractors had no idea as to what the manga would give them through its publication.

Tanigaki and Cikapasi then have a moment to reflect on their journey in Karafuto. As the boy's (and our loyal Shiba dog, ie. Ryuu) presence has been both useful and supportive through their adventure, Tanigaki is glad they didn't send them back as soon as they were found out as stowaways; Cikapasi thinks back of his family in Hokkaido and in quite the high spirits, wonders about Inkarmat (or more specifically, would think of her, as he refers to Tanigaki, Inkarmat and himself as a family). In equally a good mood, Tanigaki says he's sure Inkarmat recovered and is doing well, and that they should go back to see her. However, a sad moment arises when Enonoka, upon overhearing them, asks Cikapasi if he's really going back now.

Cut to Asirpa calling out to Sugimoto to take a look at something she's just found. But fear not, it's not some more excrement (because even Sugimoto assumed so), but wolverine's tracks. Asirpa hasn't seen one yet, so she asks Sugimoto about the tracks (as he told her he'd meet one of the little diabolical things before); upon the immortal's confirmation that they belong to a wolverine and the animal is worse than a wild bear in some aspects, she decides to hunt it. Well, they're in Karafuto already, so why not catching one and eat it? Another random comment here: we Peruvians have an expression stating that "someone got all the stickers in their album" in reference to completing a trade card album, still a popular activity in our country among adults and children alike. As an expression, it broadly means that someone has done everything in a list, or have completed a collection; in a very negative example, the last person I remember using it was a journalist talking about how a government official was found to have committed a long list of crimes related to corruption. That's to say, the corrupt official had all the stickers in his album, from perjury and malpractice to bribery and running away from the country when he was issued an arrest warrant. Okay, for my Golden Kamuy example, I won't obviously talk about politics here, only how Asirpa has a figurative edible flora-and-fauna album ("Everything You Can Hunt Down Or Find... And Have A Taste Of!") she must have 3/4 full at the very least by now, counting her gourmet experiences in both Hokkaido and Karafuto.

(As it's customary and part of the narration in Golden Kamuy, there's a passage detailing Ainu traditions in this chapter, but... Sorry, I'm skipping all the cultural references as not to incur in any translation inaccuracies.) As Tsukishima is presumably scouting and watching the surroundings (and I'm going to fan-assume here Koito is off somewhere trying to find more reindeers... or any equally cute small wild animals), he finds Vasily doing, well, pretty much the same, it seems. Tsukishima curtly tells him to go back to Russia... and I'm afraid I do have several fan comments to make.

First off, let's take another look at the panel of Vasily turning to face Tsukishima. The small sign by his head (at the left side of the panel) is meant to show he's surprised or just caught on something -in this case, it'd be Tsukishima looking at him-... but taken out of context, and as RavenTears pointed out, it makes him look as though he's shining. Dazzling Russian snipers, indeed. On a personal note, Vasily looks to me as though he somehow aged 10 years or so in the interlude from the previous chapter to this, as he has a slightly more mature appearance now (but not as old-looking as he was in vol.17). Until the next chapter is out and we can hopefully get more panel shots of (and some more interaction with) him, I'm just going to fan-assume the excited moment of fanarts-sharing with Sugimoto in chap.203 had some sort of age-regression effect on both him (physically speaking) and the immortal (mentally emotionally speaking in his case, something not that surprising at all given the hard life Sugimoto has led until now).

Also... is nobody really keeping track of the Russian that's following the group? Since people in this manga have never seen too keen on holding grudges for the most part (as I could argue that Tanigaki, for example, invoked retribution against Kiroranke instead of exacting revenge), I can understand the group isn't worried about a sniper who already targeted them twice and is currently tailing them. Said sniper also merits a mention for tailing them under the same circumstances, ie. apparently not concerning himself with the possibility of a member of the group deciding to be proactive and taking him down as not to risk being targeted by the same marksman for a third time. But Tsukishima's startlement at finding Vasily by his side makes me think they might not be that watchful as one could expect or wish. That said, if a silent Russian sniper can stand by their side without being too much conspicuous or alerting them, I won't be much surprised if the group ends up being ambushed by a Japanese one-eyed sniper making a comeback in the near future. I'll be actually looking forward to it. I mean the sniper's comeback, of course; not the characters being ambushed and targeted and shot down all over again.

And lastly... Tsukishima's line written horizontally in his speech bubble instead of vertically would indicate he's speaking in Russian, which would be relevant in a metalevel (because it makes perfect sense that he's speaking in this language to Vasily). Japanese is traditionally written top-to-bottom and right-to-left, but it can also be written in a horizontal orientation and left-to-right. Until World War II, if I'm not wrong, Japanese was written horizontally for small portions of text (such as in signs or newspapers headers), but from right-to-left. One example in GK would be the Yamamoto Barbershop in the Barato arc (vol.6) which, by the way, it's based on an actual building with the same name preserved for historical reasons:

The sign reads 山本理髪店 (Yamamoto Rihatsuten), but you'll notice the kanji are oriented right-to-left instead: 店髪理本山. Nowadays, horizontally-written Japanese follows the left-to-right orientation, and it's mainly used for aesthetically or design-related reasons (such as in printed matter or ads), but also for practicality (eg. movie subtitles placed at the bottom of the screen or, as a standard, in traffic signs and similar). In manga, however, horizontally written Japanese is usually used to indicate the lines are spoken in another language, such as with Tsukishima's in the above panel. In the Golden Kamuy manga, dialog spoken in Russian is usually given a Japanese translation in the same speech bubble, but written in a horizontal orientation because of space issues. (Ainu is written using the katakana syllabary with a top-to-bottom orientation, just as in Japanese). In several instances, though, no Russian text is written, and only the Japanese "translation" is given, such as Tsukishima and Svetlana's exchange in chap.185: we know they're speaking in Russian, though, because the lines are still oriented horizontally, and that's the importance of this detail.

I can only speculate, but I'm assuming those dialogs aren't always translated into Russian probably because of problems related to time issues or the availability of the consultant/translator at the time of the publication of the chapter. In some other instances, I suppose the text is so short (...such as Tsukishima "go back to Russia" line), it's not deemed necessary to translate them for the sake of the manga's sense of realism: after all, we can watch an English-spoken movie based on feudal Japan and won't be bothered by the fact that they aren't speaking in the intended language. Also, one might argue that they could always use an automated translation for such small lines... but I personally prefer those lines to be left as is, in Japanese and using visual or narrative devices (as the orientation of the text) to indicate readers the text is meant to be in another language: details such as those don't detract from the plot or the feeling of the manga and, most importantly, they might also prevent the manga from making very glaring translation mistakes. Trust me, I've seen enough terribly rendered lines in Spanish in American comics to insist authors and editors better get an actual translator, or not dare use Google Translate at all. Speaking of comics and Russian! A comic I remember where a similar visual device was used is one of Marvel's Winter Soldier series (the original run by author Brubaker, if I remember correctly). The one difference was that many lines in this comic had an asterisk at the end which led to a footnote stating that... they were being spoken in Russian. At the opposite end of the example, I also remember a Vampirella comic that featured some lines written in such a mangled Spanish, it took a couple of rereadings (even for a native speaker such as myself) to make sense of them. And in not-so-awful but still rather bad example, there was the Witchblade comic in which I vaguely remember at least a character having a name in Japanese... written in incorrect Japanese, most likely because the author seemed to have just looked up the terms in a dictionary to put them together without checking even for grammar.

Getting back to the chapter: a couple of men make an appearance and one of them asks for Asirpa to repeat what she was doing from the beginning. Just as they identify themselves as photographers, or more specifically, cinematographers, the wolverine attacks.

Sugimoto gets it off the man it attacks, but as another wolverine appears, Asirpa takes it down with an arrow as he shoots the first one, though he doesn't instantly kill it. It's again Asirpa the one who must finish it with another of her arrows, all of this as the man carrying a curious-looking device keeps revolving a crank on it (or you'd better say, an old-fashioned device... only that in the Meiji era it wasn't old, naturally, but rather pretty innovative).

Fast-forwarding a bit, we now have the leading-and-now-reunited protagonists eating the poor devils -I mean the wolverines, of course- while asking the men about their business in the vicinity.

They explain the device they're carrying is called a cinematograph (the model would suggest it's the one created and patented by the Lumière brothers in the last decade of the 19th century, as there were other similar devices patented before theirs); after detailing how it works, they add they're interested in documenting about the Ainu culture. End of the chapter!

My first fan-comment here about this passage would have to do with my taking back some of my fan-comments here, specifically those making fun of Sugimoto's poor aiming. I was obviously exaggerating when stating he never hits anything, as we've seen how he's shot several animals when hunting through the manga, and chap.204 would be another example. Still, my comments had to do with him primarily using his rifle to strike or stab instead of actually shooting it whenever it came to attack a human target, so to speak; given he's a melee hand-to-hand fighter, this comes as no surprise (and snipers all around the globe in the Meiji era dread nightmares with the looming figure of the Immortal Slayer Of Any Unfortunately Soul That Dares Attack Him In Vain And So Obviously Fails, Otherwise He Wouldn't Be Immortal, be it on a Thursday the 13th or any other day of the year, actually). But it just turns out Sugimoto does shoot his rifle, and does accurately hits his target one summary entry after I wrote I wouldn't stop making fun of him until he managed to do so, meaning... I've been proved wrong by the immortal in quite the expedited way. ...since I still believe his aiming is awful when it comes to human targets, I'll keep making fun of him, just... not that much. As a counterargument to Sugi's aiming and intended use of his rifle in this chapter, please let us remember that, in his first encounter with Ogata, he almost indirectly kills the wildcat when knocking him unconscious after hitting him in the head with the butt of the rifle; in their latest encounter, Sugimoto almost kills him (oh, again) when he nearly hits him when trying to shoot down the horse he was riding instead. Well, yes, come to think of it, it might also be that I'm very biased against Sugimoto's use of his rifle because of the levels of violence he's shown towards a certain wildcat.

My last general fan comments about the chapter have to do with the introduction of the cinematographers. Their appearance made me think of Hijikata looking for journalists all the way back to vol.13, if I remember correctly (really, it might be time to go back and properly reread the whole manga by now), because he was looking forward to using the media for propaganda purposes in his goal of declaring a second Republic of Ezo. Well, while the cinematographers don't seem to have any propagandist intentions, their interest in filming about the Ainu culture is making me think of them as the equivalent of early National Geographic writers (the first issue of the famous magazine dates back to 1888, after all): the manga's very National Hokkaido Graphic documentary filmmakers, in any case. At this point in the plot I couldn't say for sure if they're going to have a more relevant role to play, but since they've filmed Asirpa and Sugimoto killing the wolverines already, it does seem to me they could stick with the group a little longer to register some of their activities, sort of a Golden Kamuy documentary within the Golden Kamuy manga. Such material would have cultural and historical importance in the plot since, for starters, Sugimoto's group is a good example of multiethnic cooperation and coexistence, featuring Japanese, Ainu, Hayato, Matagi and even a Russian traveling and working together at the time just fine.

...plotwise and theoretically at the very least, the cinematographers have two weeks to follow the lead of a certain Russian sniper and stick to our multiethnic and multicultural group. We know already anything and everything is bound to happen in very short periods of time in this manga (Koito's rescue mission in chap.199-200 began with horses refusing to gallop down a steep path, continue with a drift race in the streets of Hakodate, featured a couple of gentlemen losing some clothing due to an unfortunate transit accident, and included a homage to Freddy Mercury near the conclusion, if you'd remember), so I'm sort of suspecting the days until Tsurumi's intended rendezvous with the group might be... full of eventualities. From more cultural moments to possible ambushes by snipers with hidden agendas -or probably, no agendas at all- and face-offs with Partisans, I wouldn't discard even the idea of the cinematographers filming the first Meiji-era Japanese cam movie, if anything of the aforementioned actually takes place and they happen to still be around to record it.

#golden kamuy #fan talk

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 5 years

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Episode 94: Greg the Babysitter

“We all gotta grow up sometime, right?”

Right off the bat, this episode’s greatest weakness is that we don’t see Baby Buck and the Baby Pizza Twins as we do in Lamar Abrams’s promo art. How dare we not have more baby teens?

Lack of infant variety notwithstanding, this is a great episode, if not a subtle one. Greg is no stranger to hammering out the lesson of a story, but here it’s made so explicit so often that it threatens to weaken the actual plot. Fortunately the plot does a good enough job of showing that it makes up for all the telling, but still, it’s so on the nose that Vidalia calls Greg out when he belatedly repeats the moral it in response to an unrelated statement.

(But to be clear, this is a story about growing up. Growing up is what this episode about. Gaining maturity is valuable. Emotional development is important. Taking responsibility as you age: good. Staying a kid forever: bad!)

As with Annoying Steven early in the series, this lesson is achieved by presenting us with Douchebag Greg. Douchebag Greg slums around and mooches off a single working mother, depriving her of her own food and taunting her for working to feed her child. When tasked with babysitting, he does what he wants instead of focusing on what a baby might need, and when the kid goes missing, his search includes a pit stop to the arcade to play video games.

This is the second episode where Greg is awful for the bulk of the runtime, and the first, House Guest, was so bad that it earned my inaugural “No Thanks!” rating (a brutal assessment, I know). By that metric you might think I’d dislike Greg the Babysitter as well, because boy oh boy is Douchebag Greg unlikable. But the key difference is the level of intent: even looking past the age and maturity gap between these two Gregs, the Greg of House Guest chooses to lie to his son despite seeing how hard Steven takes it, while Douchebag Greg’s actions stem from sincere cluelessness. Neither is great, and younger Greg is still old enough to know better, but ignorance is far more digestible than purposeful shadiness from this character.

Both House Guest and Greg the Babysitter stay somewhat true to Regular Greg by making him driven by love, whether it’s paternal or romantic. The problem of House Guest is that this emotional core is tainted by him wronging Steven in a way we’ve never seen before or since (compare his feigning of an injury to his negligence in Maximum Capacity, where he instead makes a mistake and is immediately regretful). Nothing in Greg the Babysitter diminishes any sense of authenticity about Greg’s feelings for Rose, because for all his flaws, he doesn’t take advantage of Rose or their relationship.

Moreover, I appreciate that his flaws come from the same character traits that kicked off this relationship, which so far has dominated his flashbacks: Greg is a dreamer and a romantic, which works great in Story for Steven, and he takes the relationship seriously, so he matures on that front in We Need to Talk, but now we see that he’s so focused on Rose that he’s ignoring every other element of life as a functioning adult.

This episode works because Greg is realistically irresponsible. His head has always been in the clouds, and now he’s in a relationship with someone that’s literally magic, so he has no incentive to reflect on himself barring a dire situation. But this episode excels because Greg’s decision to grow up has nothing to do with Steven. We get the groundwork for Rose wanting a kid, but Greg getting his act together is something he does for himself. It would’ve been so easy for this shift to be prompted by impending fatherhood, but it’s far more satisfying to see a character improve himself because he wants to, rather than out of obligation to others. It allows the moment he takes agency to be triumphant without being mixed up in a sense of begrudging acceptance of his duties.

Finally, while I still think it’s ridiculous that the Crystal Gems treat him like a total flake in Laser Light Cannon given his clear improvement since the Douchebag Greg days, it does make a little sense that beings unaccustomed to change would have a hard time getting past this first impression. If you go back and watch the second season of the series after Greg the Babysitter, it’s not hard to imagine which Greg they’re talking about. It’s a stretch, because they’ve seen plenty of evidence to contradict this impression, but if you’re looking to explain their behavior then it’s the best reason I’ve got.

Greg the Babysitter marks an unspoken milestone in the series: this is the last time we’ll ever see Rose Quartz before her web of duplicity begins to unravel. In just four episodes, we’ll learn that she bubbled Bismuth away and lied about it to everyone. In another three, we’ll hear that she shattered Pink Diamond. The veracity of that second part is irrelevant, because the truth only further proves her capacity for deceit. We’ve seen already that Rose wasn’t perfect, but this is her final appearance before the dominoes begin to fall. One last happy memory that directly leads to the creation of our show’s title character, in an episode that emphasizes how dreaming is nice, but reality will always force people to make a change.

We see way more of Rose in this swan song than we did in Story for Steven or We Need to Talk, and like Greg, her mistakes here can be attributed to cluelessness. She admits how confusing humans can be for her, particularly babies, so it’s hard to blame her for not taking good care of Sour Cream. It’s especially hard to blame her considering how excited she is for him to exhibit independence. And it’s impossible to blame her, at least for me, when she references one of my favorite dumb Simpsons jokes in regards to watching him.

The Pink Diamond revelation adds new layers to her explanation that Gems are made for specific purposes, but the funny thing is, it doesn’t add that many new layers: even before learning just how high up Rose was, we still knew she was rebelling against what she was made to do. I think the more interesting aspect of her speech is how it lines up with Bismuth’s repetition of her insistence that Gems could break away from their intended roles. Seeing Rose talk about it here, less than twenty years ago, is made fascinating by knowing she was saying the same thing thousands of years ago. For a Gem that’s interested in change, she hasn’t really changed that much. It’s one thing for her to know that and talk about it, but it’s another for us to see it in action.

I love how an episode that’s this unsubtle (about being a story about growing up, in case you didn’t catch it) manages to quietly explain why Steven exists. We see a baby, and we see Rose loves babies, and we see Rose admires the human capacity to change, and we’ll soon see that Rose herself stagnated there a little bit, but we leave it at that. Judging by the age difference between Sour Cream and Steven, it’s a few years until she and Greg make an actual decision, so it makes sense to not reference it too explicitly this early, but it’s still a direction the episode could’ve taken and I’m very glad it didn’t.

I’ve made no secret about how much I love Brian Posehn voicing Sour Cream with his regular grown man voice, so obviously the best part of this episode is his further use of that voice for Baby Cream. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and by itself ensures that Greg’s dickishness can’t pull the episode too far down. As with Onion Friend, the strange connection between Sour Cream and Steven is left unspoken, but it’s wild to consider that this side character is a big reason why our protagonist exists. While I’d be fine with this continuing to be a quiet part of the backstory, I can’t say I wouldn’t be interested in seeing Steven and Sour Cream talk about it one day, even as a small gag.

Onion Friend was also the last time we spent any meaningful amount of time with Vidalia, and it’s neat to fill in some gaps between her debut cameo in Story for Steven and her modern iteration. Marty’s flakiness is further proven by her being a single mother from the start, but she’s clearly risen to the occasion and loves the hell out of her kid. Her patience with Greg is tested by his awfulness (and honestly makes said awfulness hard to watch, given how much is on her plate), but it speaks volumes that she’s so welcoming to the ex-friend of her ex. She’s probably the only human Greg knows in Beach City at this point, and I honestly wish we saw more of their modern relationship when we have such a vivid image of their history.

I Think I Need a Little Change might not reach the rocking heights of Comet or What Can I Do For You, but it’s catchier than either and has that wonderful twist on the double meaning of “change.” The wordplay speaks for itself, but it’s a cool trick to reveal that this musical montage is as diegetic as the other two songs: this is something he’s actually singing to people. We get a hefty break from songs after Mr. Greg, so that might be meddling with my opinions, but I think this is my favorite of the three. Puns beat electric guitar, and the song crystalizes Greg’s similarity to Steven come Change Your Mind.

And so we end Season 3, Act 2. We’ve had the aftermath of the Cluster, and we’ve had a series of slice of life episodes from this particularly magical life, but we’ll soon be back to the high-octane plotting of the Cluster Arc. It’s a bit strange that Greg the Babysitter comes between Alone at Sea and Gem Hunt, considering the Jasper of it all, but it’s nice to have this respite before we barrel towards the pivotal moment of Steven’s series-wide arc, especially when this respite tells us a lesson that’s about to become a lot more obvious in the coming storm:

Steven Universe is a story about growing up.

Future Vision!

Good thing nothing bad happened to Sour Cream, or else Greg would’ve had to pray that his space goddess's magic could bring people back from the dead. That would be a ridiculous power!

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

Vidalia got this top from the T-Shirt Shop where she works. This top has a collar. T-shirts do not have collars. It’s unresearched nonsense like this that makes Cartoon Network put this show on hiatus so often, come on people.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

While I do enjoy this episode and stand by it being great, I don’t necessarily love things that I critically find great. Greg the Babysitter doesn’t do quite enough on the emotional level to make me truly love it, considering how much time we have to spend with Douchebag Greg. I appreciate the importance of his douchebaggery, and the importance of this episode as a whole, but this isn’t an something I go out of my way to rewatch. Sorry, Baby Cream. I still like it!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

No Thanks!

5. Horror Club 4. Fusion Cuisine 3. House Guest 2. Sadie’s Song 1. Island Adventure

#greg the babysitter #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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eorzean-tale · 5 years

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Prompt #16 Bond

This is part 2 of my lore series, where I try and analyze some of the tidbits of info we got from Encyclopaedia Eorzea, volume II. This series only focuses on the Seeker of the Sun M-tribe lore, particularly four of its characters that were highlighted in the book and shared in the BRPN Discord. For this part, I’m going to look at the bond between a nunh and his tribe.There will be spoilers from the lorebook below the cut, so be warned.

Part 2 M’rahz Nunh

From Encyclopaedia Eorzea, volume II:

“There was a time when I was the weakest of the males in the M Tribe. It wasn’t easy, but through rigorous training, I eventually grew to become the man you see before you.” M’rahz was only three and twenty when he bested his predecessor in a duel and replaced him as nunh, a breeding male. While that was an impressive feat in its own right, the Seeker of the Sun would be the first to acknowledge that the harder part was still to come. In the early days, it seemed as though he could please none of the womenfolk, but pain proved an effective teacher and he quickly honed his sensitivity to the needs of others. Over the next twenty-seven years, he has protected his people as both a husband and a father. A challenging task at the best of times, it was only made more difficult when the Empire invaded two decades ago. With their hunting grounds shrinking and food growing scarcer by the season, many hard decisions had to be made. And the hardest one of all was that which saw his dear friend and fellow nunh, M’aht, leave the village behind. Owing to their history, he harbors a fondness for M’zhet, M’aht’s spirited son.

Let’s talk about his quote first. It seems that Rahz refers refers to his own people as ‘the M Tribe’ and not the Marmot Tribe. The use of the word ‘tribe’ also suggests that they are the only group of Marmots out there. In RP, we often speak of septs, sects, pacts, or whatever else, to indicate that there isn’t just one group of that tribe and everyone can play their Seeker Miqo’te as they like, even if they share the same tribal letter. As this is not done here, one might wonder if all M Tribe Miqo’te can only be from this particular group.

I personally do not think that is the case, and that they used these terms to not confuse people. Not everyone might know that the M stands for the Marmot totem, and not everyone will realize that tribes might have split off into different groups at some point in their history. I would like to see more acknowledgement of these different groups of the same tribe at some point, but I suppose we should be happy about getting any kind of lore about Seekers at this point :P

Note that he also uses the terms ‘males’ and ‘man’, indicating that, yes, some Seekers will refer to men as males. It’s an easy term to pick up if you want to give your character that extra bit of ‘tribal flavour’.

Next: becoming nunh

They then focus on him beating his predecessor in a duel at the tender age of 23 and that that was a pretty impressive feat. So the weakest male managed to climb to the top of the combat ranks at the tender age of 23… That training must have been really rigorous indeed.

It makes me wonder how the runt became the master in such a relatively short amount of time, and if the other tia didn’t train just as hard. It doesn’t seem to be normal to be able to defeat a nunh so early on, as they make a point out of calling it an impressive feat. I suppose they want to show how hard he had to work for it, but personally I wouldn’t have minded it if they had made him a little older.

It’s followed up by this quote:

In the early days, it seemed as though he could please none of the womenfolk, but pain proved an effective teacher and he quickly honed his sensitivity to the needs of others.

Uh, pain? As in.. physical? Did they beat him up? Or did he hurt a lot of the women by just being an insensitive dick? Or did they hurt him? While I like that they emphasize the need for a nunh to be sensitive to the needs of others with this quote, it has some weird implications when you think about it more. Mostly, that apparently the tia of the Marmot tribe don’t receive any sort of training on what is expected of you once you do become nunh. They only focus on training to defeat the current nunh, and supposedly learn the duties that come with it after that. So what happens when a nunh doesn’t learn? It just seems odder and odder to me, the longer I think about it. Like having an archery competition to determine the best huntress of your tribe, and once someone wins, they’ll go on their first actual hunt. The M Tribe could have used a ‘Nunh for dummies’ book back in Rahz’s day.

Luckily for the M Tribe, Rahz learned well:

Over the next twenty-seven years, he has protected his people as both a husband and a father.

Personally, I hate the use of the word husband in this sentence. It’s very confusing as to what it means. I think they might mean in a general sense, as ‘husband to his people’ and not one woman like the term suggests to the average western reader, but that might just be wishful thinking on my part, as that is the better out of two unpleasant options for me. Let me explain.

Husband to one (or multiple) women

If he is literally married to one woman of his tribe, or even several, it would mean he values this person above the others. Even if the marriage is political or symbolic, it means this woman is favoured by this nunh for whatever reason. This level of favouritism might be very difficult in a culture where he literally has to father all the children of the tribe and raises a lot of questions:

Does he live with his wife, or wives?

If not, what is the point of the bonding?

Does that mean he favours his children by this woman?

Do other huntresses or his other children never get jealous?

Of course they would, so how do they deal with that?

Why specifically the term husband, and not something a bit less city-folk-like such as mate for example?

Can tia get married as well?

Can women to other women?

You have to keep in mind that female Miqo’te vastly outnumber the males, so what then happens to the women who are, for lack of a better term, leftover and not inclined towards other women?

Who is his wife, or wives?

What is the ceremony like?

So many questions, and we probably won’t get any answers from SE, so we have to decide for our own tribes. I just hope people do ask themselves these questions, when they next write love-stories for their nunh characters.

What I truly despise about this option though, is that his wife, or wives, aren’t named. It reminds me of DBZ or old Disney, where the spouses were often so ‘background’ that they weren’t even given a name. The huntresses deserve their spotlight as well, dammit :P

Husband to the tribe

I like this option better, but once I started writing down why, I realized it has its fair share of flaws as well. If he is a husband to the tribe, how does that work when he’s defeated by a tia? Is defeating and becoming nunh quite literally tearing a family apart and inserting yourself into it? If that’s the case, then I understand why he had trouble pleasing the women of his tribe at first, as that sounds rather traumatic.

For me, personally, it’s still the better option though. I hope they meant he does husband-like duties, just like he does fatherly duties as mentioned in the same sentence, without him literally being someone's husband. It also makes me wonder what counts as husband-like in Japan, and I even tried to look up if ‘husband’ could mean different things in Japanese, depending on context. The only thing I could find, is that the most common character for husband in Japanese is the same as ‘owner’, or ‘master’. Yikes.

Anyway, enough about this one word, as this wall of text is getting quite long as it is. It’s just interesting to speculate about. The rest of the description talks about difficulties stemming from the invasion of the Empire 20 years ago, with hunting grounds shrinking because of it. I’ll talk about Aht and Zhet in their own posts, so that’s it for me, for now.

If you made it all the way down here, then thank you for reading! If you have your own ideas and speculations about this bit of lore, let me know in the comments below. I’m always eager to discuss people’s interpretations.

#FFxivWrite2018 #ffxiv balmung #final fantasy 14 #ffxiv #seeker of the sun #tribal seeker of the sun #seeker lore #ffxiv lore

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bloody-fabre · 6 years

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The Head Jailer of Abashiri has a part of the tattooed map – An essay.

Let me go straight to the topic. I believe there are more than 24 coded tattoos. And the convicts are not aware of the extra owners. So far, we have seen 17 parts of the coded map, and three of them belong to characters that we didn´t get to meet in the canon (Tsuyama, skin from Barato, Yubari miner). Add to that the details given by the first prisoner caught by Sugimoto and Asirpa, and we get that a few, probably one or two, were killed by the others right then and there. That leaves us with 6-5 skins left as of now. (latest released chapter was 153) With the -convict of the week- lasting less and less as chapters pass by, we can easily infer all the 24 parts will be acquired in no time. But I strongly believe this is not the end of the road. And not only because of the fake skins that were introduced by Tsurumi, or the key that Asirpa will awaken in due time. My guess is that there are more, authentic, pieces of the map being carried onto certain individuals, and these ones don´t happen to be convicts. Yet, they were at the same place, at the same time. Below, I will elaborate on my theory for this, and put most of my focus on one specific person, who, as unlikely as it may seem at first sight, I now believe is quite possible the (non) proud owner of another part of the tattooed map. And this man is Kadokura, the (ex) head jailer of Abashiri Prison.

As we know, some 5 years or so ago, Noppera-bou was sent to Abashiri prison, and once there, developed a plan to reveal the location of the gold. During his time at the prison, he tattooed 24 prisoners with parts of a complicated map, which made no sense until put together. At some indefinite point, probably a couple months prior to the current time, the prisoners managed to escape as they were being transported elsewhere. Among them, acting as the de-facto leader, was Hijikata Toshizou. He instructed the surviving convicts to "Head to Otaru."

This is what we know, from Hijikata himself. But I have my doubts. Hijikata did not know all the details about the plan. He didn´t know Noppera-bou´s true identity, nor Asirpa´s ainu name.

Because of this, I believe there must be more things that Hijikata didn´t know, about the plan, and one of these was the following: There are more than 24 parts for the tattooed map. Or so Noppera-bou hoped. Hijikata knew about a 25th part. An ally he had within the walls of Abashiri Prison for a long, long time.

Ever since day 1 I wondered: How did Noppera-bou, someone who was MOST DEFINITELY on solitary confinement, manage to tattoo 24 well known inhabitants of the prison without being found out? The answer might be simple: EVERYONE wanted that gold, even the guards. It would´ve been easy for them to provide Noppera-bou with people to carry the clues to the gold, and then, as it happened, take them all elsewhere to gather all the leads. For this very reason, I believe it would´ve been very simple for Kadokura to get his very own tattoo as well. But why? Because I believe Kadokura had been plotting with Hijikata. I will elaborate on the reasons further below.

He´d convince some other guards to make it easy for the prisoners to release themselves while being escorted, getting a promise to share part of the gold in return. But, unbeknownst to everyone, he would be getting a tattoo of his own as well, so the puzzle would be unsolvable without his part.

"" That´s one big fat can of worms he opened there ""

Let´s begin tackling the points I discerned as clues of him being part of the tattoo puzzle.

The first of them being: He´s been succesfully hiding things from Inudou, most likely from day 1. Kadokura had been constantly acting behind Inudou´s back. Whether getting salmon bribes, lying about killing spies, or, you know, getting people from the outside into Abashiri to get Noppera-bou...

And yet, Inudou didn´t kick him out like he did with the other guards, who had been here for as long as him, if not longer. Because he completely bought the act of Kadokura being a "worthless, pathetic tanuki". *A small note: Volume 1 implies soldiers/police were in charge of the escort, as they also had the goal of finding out about the gold. However, on chapter 128 Kadokura himself claims the guards were blamed for the mass escape. As these two pieces of trivia contradict each other, I´ll proceed with the most recent one. Kadokura had been a guard in Abashiri Prison for seven long years. This is two years prior to the time Noppera-bou was taken prisoner.

"Any guard suspected of playing a part was kicked out. The only reason that I wasn´t was because I played the part of a useless, dumb, apathetic old tanuki." "Any guard SUSPECTED---THE ONLY REASON that I wasn´t--- BECAUSE I PLAYED THE PART---" In other words: Kadokura was involved in the escape of the convicts. And managed to keep his job by playing dumb. And he NEEDED the convicts out of Abashiri. For one, they were a danger, even behind bars. And even if a single one of them discovered he was tattooed as well, it was over. They would break him like a toothpick. Kadokura is weak. He´s old. He´s FRAGILE. Just a little smack of Sugimoto gets him to rub his hand. A non lethal shot on the shoulder from Usami gets him looking like he´s about to pass onto the next life.

"" He even gets his ass kicked in flashbacks unrelated to him ""

Imagine being on your own when the 24 criminals started killing each other then and there. The best option was to stay well away from all that chaos. Right now Abashiri was the safest place, as why would a prisoner that just escaped prison return right away just to murder a random guard that managed to escape from that carnage?? And two, if they were away, unprotected by the fortress, they would be hunted down. As EVERYONE wants to find that gold. A battle royale was bound to happen that very day. To summarize: Guards were blamed for the mass escape, and rightfully so. The convicts were a risk, especially if they figured out there were more tattoos. The guards needed them out. Preferably dead. But why would Kadokura go to such lenghts? Why risk himself like that? He´s Head Jailer. He´s got his own quarters, and even if he gets verbally bullied by his boss, this is quite the decent job, especially now that most of the crazy criminals are outside of the walls and not at arm reach. The answer is "because of the new government". Kadokura resents it, and all that implies, including Inudou and the previous wardens.

"Ever since the old days, most of the guards have had more in common with the prisoners than they do with the wardens." (I happen to consider this very line another item for my theory, in a literal sense, as if my theory is correct, he now has something in common with 24 of the former prisoners.)

The way he talked about his late father implies he was proud of him, and that he undoubtedly supports Hijikata´s goal and ideals. And wishes to join him once he gets what he came to Abashiri for (Noppera-bou, or, in worst case scenario, information about the gold) This leads me to think Kadokura might desire to help Hijikata find the gold, and with it, make true the wishes of the old soldier. And he´s been helping him from the very start of the gold business. And there is another reason. Kadokura might pretend to be a "worthless, pathetic tanuki". But there´s something he genuinely cannot hide. He´s a fucking coward.

"My philosophy is not to pick any fight I cannot win".

At this point in time most of the tattooed convicts are dead. And one of them, one he can actually trust in, has returned. Kadokura is ready to continue helping him in all the ways he can, even if he loses the relative safety of the Abashiri Prison in the process. After all, how would you feel if you had Hijikata Motherfucking Toshizou guarding your back 24/7? Pretty good I guess, he´s arguably one of the strongest characters in the canon.

While all this is nice and all, it has yet to explain why Kadokura, of all people, would have a tattoo. Right? I want you to consider this point, which I deem the most important despite it may sound outright silly. HE´S STILL ALIVE. This man is weak, unskilled, a coward, someone who gave up at the ripe age of (circa) 50. What purpose could he possibly serve after Abashiri Prison is no more? Do we need a Kantarou senior? Coming from a manga that is not afraid to kill its characters once they served their purpose: Why is Kadokura alive? To be further tormented by Usami? Hilarious, yet, not enough.

And since we entered Usami territory... -a cursed area on its own right, but that´s an essay for another day- I wish to point out that Kadokura is (rightfully) frightened of the Hokuchin Unit coming here and have a nice little chat with our good friend Noppera-bou. Is it because he knows most of them, if not all, are batshit insane and will shoot at the slightest provocation? Definitely, but... Is it enough? Would they kill a guard that willingly shows them the way to Noppera-bou? This good old man doesn´t seem to think so.

"" RIP good old man. "" Kadokura was wise enough to freak the absolute fuck out. But is getting out of the way/hiding in a corner enough to be spared by the Hokuchin Unit? Maybe (no, not really). But Kadokura is definitely not going to take that risk. And it wasn´t enough that he managed to escape. He wanted to make sure the Hokuchin Unit wouldn´t get out of Abashiri alive.

A good move. Because escaping alone won´t help keep Noppera-bou alive at all. And without Noppera-bou, there is no key to the gold. (or so would think most people) I´m not saying this particular tidbit was especially intentional, but instead of just escaping (he was shot in the shoulder, not his leg), he made a counterattack to get rid of the Hokuchin Unit, thus, protecting Noppera-bou (even at the expense of literally all the other prisoners), wherever he´s being hidden by Inudou. No man who calls himself a coward would give up on escaping just to protect one man completely unrelated to him or his goals

"I´ve got no real attachment to this job" This line right here contradicts his "playing dumb" act to keep his job back in the day. Sure, it can mean he wanted to keep putting bread on the table, but also that he knew where was the place to be as long as it meant a safe haven. And as long as Noppera-bou was still there, holding the information they needed.

A little something more, to finish my leads, as ambigous as it may be: Even after being in a -currenty- safe, well hidden place, and surrounded with trustworthy partners, he seems to be holding his pain instead of tending to his wound.

He´s still completely covered up to his neck with his shirt, which, as little a detail as it may seem, might imply he has his reasons not to treat the wound with people around. He does, however, seems to be wearing a makeshift sling to support the injured arm. The fact that he, as the Head Jailer, had his own quarters, would also provide a chance to keep a tattoo as big as the coded map hidden from everyone for as long as he needed.

I still can´t find a way on which he communicated with Hijikata before his group (plus Sugimoto´s) came to get Noppera-bou, but my guess is that they´ve been secretly in cahoots for a long, long time. Ever since Noppera-bou´s tattoo plan was put into motion. Kadokura, as everyone, was well aware of Inudou´s obsessive hatred for Hijikata, so he would´ve been an excellent ally, both against the Warden, and any other danger, if it came to that. And for that, he risked a lot, even as the coward he claims to be. And luckily for him, he survived this trial.

Below is a short summary of all the aforementioned hints. Which, I hope, helped convey the conclusion I reached, that there´s more to this Tanuki that he let us know.

-Literally the first thing we see him doing, is telling the new guy "Don´t get involved with Noppera-bou.” And boy, he should know about that by now. -Noppera-bou kept details away from Hijikata, why extra tattoos wouldn´t be part of it? -He´s definitely been in contact with Hijikata for a long, long time. -EVERYONE wanted that gold. Carrying a secret extra part of the map with no one else knowing was an advantage. If he/his allies ever manage to gather the rest. -Constantly hid things from Inudou, acting behind his back, being in cahoots with his ultimate enemy. -Was here before Noppera-bou arrived. Met him personally. -implied to be considered suspected in the mass escape, played dumb to keep his job and to constantly avoid suspicions from Inudou. -Resents the current government. -"i have more in common with the prisoners than the wardens" -Wants to help Hijikata in any way he can -he has literally no reason to be alive. We know what happens to GK characters when they fulfill their purpose. -Unlike the rest of the (unwise) guards, he was terrified of the Hokuchin coming here. -Stopped escaping to attack the Hokuchin. Kadokura, the self-proclaimed coward. -Not minding losing the job he played dumb to keep, once Hijikata manages to meet with Noppera-bou -Seems to be concealing unnatended wound despite being notably affected by it. -Had a place all for himself, the best when you need to hide something, like a big torso tattoo. -Might take the chance to add an extra item: I do not believe Inudou trusts him entirely, as Kadokura not only did not know where Noppera-bou was. He didn´t even know about the secret basement, after all this time.

This may seem far-fetched at times, because of his little exposition so far. I´m not going to deny I grasped at straws at some point. But if, in the end I managed to get some people to think "hey, it DOES sound plausible!" then I´ll happily call it a job well done.

*All the manga panels used for this essay are scanlations from EverydayHeroes Scans. Thanks to them I´m able to enjoy this manga over and over as I wait for the english volumes to be released and delivered to me :D

#kadokura #kinkamu #golden kamui #hijikata toshizo #inudou shirosuke

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davidmann95 · 7 years

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Batman Starter Pack

I’ve been through this routine once before (including the preface that I recognize there are a million other lists exactly like this on every comics-related site out there) but after having shared some starting points for Superman on Miracle Monday, I figure my second-favorite guy with his own personalized set of crime-fighting pajamas merits the same treatment on his own special day.

Assuming you’re forgoing a more traditional celebration of DC’s Batman Day - either having your parents brutally shot to death in front of your terrified, uncomprehending young eyes, or finishing your criminology degree and engaging in anonymous back-alley karate fights with circus clowns in response to the same - looking into some solid starting points for the character is a respectable alternative. Especially given some of his most classic adventures have recently come under some degree of critical reevaluation, while the likes of The Lego Batman Movie, the much-missed Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and the resurgence of the 1960s Batman TV show alongside contemporary developments in the comics have done a great deal to change the general perception of the character. So once again, here’s ten stories in a recommended - but by no means strict - order that should, as a whole, give you a pretty decent idea of what Batman’s deal is and why you should care, all of which you should be able to find pretty easily on Comixology or a local bookstore/comic book shop.

1. Batman: Zero Year

What it’s about: The current ‘canon’ take on his origin, it’s a pretty straightforward take on Bruce Wayne’s return to Gotham, early forays into crimefighting against the Red Hood Gang, and assumption of his familiar mantle...until the Riddler, a city-wrecking superstorm, and a literal bone monster get involved, culminating in a final act that has a sleeveless, dirtbike-riding Batman trying to save a post-apocalyptic Gotham whose citizens have become hopeless slaves of Edward Nygma’s merciless totalitarian riddle kingdom.

Why you should read it: This comic is bonkers, in absolutely the best way. Writer Scott Snyder has repeatedly said that since the previous major take on Batman’s origin in Year One was so iconic - to the point that, unlike Superman’s regularly refreshed history, it remained solidly in continuity for 25 years - no attempt at hitting the reset button could feasibly follow in its footsteps, and so the only way to make it work was to go as far in the opposite direction as possible, hence Dirtbike Batman and a Gotham of neon pink skies. And for all that, it works remarkably: it’s perhaps the least subtle Batman comic of all time, but it’s a solid look into what drives him, why he does what he does in the way he does it, and the beginnings of his relationships with some of his closest friends and enemies in the context of a mad, blockbuster story ranging from scraps with cops and gangsters to a race against time to literally save a city from death by fire. It is in many ways perhaps the most proudly and bluntly Batmaney Batman story of all time, the core of his world as screamed through a megaphone.

Further recommendations if you liked it: While maybe the most iconic work from their time together, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo worked together on the main Batman title for 5 years and almost 50 issues, in arguably the most acclaimed run of Batman comics of the 21st century; I’d primarily suggest checking out Court of Owls, their first and for me best collaboration, but their entire tenure is worth your time, collected across 10 volumes. If you specifically want to indulge the off-kilter “wait, Batman’s doing what?” sensibility of Zero Year further, after his time on Batman proper Snyder wrote All-Star Batman, working with a number of iconic artists on some of his weirdest Batman comics; his later The Batman Who Laughs operates in much the same mode. If you’re mainly interested in the sort of Big Batman Event Story this and Court of Owls wrote the modern template for, Steve Orlando and companies’ Night of the Monster Men is maybe the most thoroughly entertaining example. And as a respectable recap of Batman’s life since his origins, while many longtime fans are ambivalent at best on it, Batman: Hush is an effective sampler platter of Batman’s history and relationships that’s proven enduringly popular among new readers.

2. Gotham Central

What: Set from the perspective of the grunts of the GCPD, Gotham Central shows what it means to be a cop in a city where you’re a pawn of the Bat at best, corrupt or a casualty if you’re not so lucky.

Why: Certainly the most acclaimed Batman-related ongoing ever published, there’s no book that better sells the ‘street level’ take on his world that so many want; Batman himself is largely a background presence, feared and resented by our actual leads as they go up against the incidental fallout of Gotham’s particular brand of horror. And all that’s before you even get to the Joker story that directly inspired The Dark Knight. While Gotham’s more traditional heroes may rarely show up, there’s no story that better explains why they’re needed, and what it means to live in their wake. And it’s Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka and Michael Lark doing a cop book, so even Batman aside it’s worth your money ten times over.

Recommendations: Gotham Central may be a cop comic, but the cities’ most iconic officer in Commissioner Gordon only makes one or two appearances since he had retired at the time (an obviously temporary condition). If you really want to see him in action, you’re looking for Batman: Year One. Typically cited as one of the all-time great Batman stories - and it absolutely has some of his definitive moments and iconography - at heart it’s Lieutenant Jim Gordon’s year of figuring out how to make it in Gotham without losing his soul in the process, and it was that infusion of grim crime noir into the world of Gotham that defined the aesthetic Gotham Central operates under. If you’d like to pursue that particular line further, Batman: Turning Points is also worth hunting down, showing Batman and Gordon’s relationship develop over the years in reference to major upheavals in Batman’s world, and Batman: The Black Mirror, operating under a similar tone and showing Dick Grayson working with Gordon during the former’s own time in the cape and cowl, in a mystery connecting to both Batman: Year One and my next recommendation. Additionally, Kurt Busiek and John Paul Leon’s Batman: Creature of the Night provides an entirely different and disturbing type of ‘street-level’, ‘realistic’ view of Batman.

3. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

What: A decade after his retirement, an unprecedented Gotham crime wave forces a middle-aged Bruce Wayne out of retirement as he proves unable to resist the call of his demons. But even as he fights back the Mutant gang and recruits a new Robin, his resurgence has caught the attention of familiar enemies, and the political shockwaves of his vigilantism will ultimately bring him face-to-face with his oldest ally in a fight he simply can’t win.

Why: Commonly held up alongside Watchmen, which is a...touch of an overstatement in hindsight, while aspects of its politics and portrayal of the Dark Knight in question have aged somewhat questionably it’s regardless a justified classic by a one-time master of the medium at the top of his form, packed from top to bottom with brilliant storytelling, jaw-dropping moments, and a redefinition of the character that not only shapes him to this day, but the superhero genre as a whole. Definitely and very reasonably not for everyone, but essential to Batman as he exists today.

Recommendations: Frank Miller’s presented numerous followups to The Dark Knight Returns, and while The Dark Knight Strikes Back and All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder are hardly lacking in lively experimental flavor or gonzo charm, they’re an acquired taste at best: if you want to see more of this version of Batman’s world, you’re safest going for The Dark Knight Returns: The Last Crusade, a one-shot portraying the events leading up to Batman’s retirement a decade before DKR. For other seminal Batman stories that either don’t quite live up to the hype or have aged questionably but are all-in-all still probably worth looking into, check Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth, Batman: The Long Halloween (followed up by Batman: Dark Victory) and possibly The Killing Joke.

4. Batman: Ego and other Tails

What: Before he was widely lauded for DC: The New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke was a storyboard artist for what we now know as the DCAU family of cartoons; his pitch for the job included a 14-page Batman story that years later would be edited and expanded upon to become Batman: Ego, where a catastrophic series of events leads Bruce to consider leaving his mission behind, forcing him to confront his demons more literally than ever before.

Why: Stories that question Batman’s sanity and his place in the world are a dime a dozen, but none like this, probably the deepest individual dive of all time into what exactly makes Batman tick. To say much more would spoil the amazing central conceit, but from his moral code to what he does or doesn’t give up by forgoing his life as Bruce Wayne, there are few aspects of his world this doesn’t touch on one way or another. Plus, while Ego may be the lead, the modern collection is stuffed full of other excellent Batman comics Darwyn Cooke had a hand in one way or another.

Recommendations: Most significantly, the collection also contains Selina’s Big Score, a Catwoman heist comic that leads into Ed Brubaker’s seminal run on the character, which are spread out over three trades that are absolutely worth picking up. If you’re interested in another story in the DCAU style and tone that goes into darker territory than the cartoons would typically dare, try Mad Love, the definitive Harley Quinn story. And if you want another headtrippy Batman comic that delves into his psychology, you’re looking for Death and the Maidens, intended at the time to be Batman’s final confrontation with Ra’s Al Ghul and featuring a conversation 65 years in the making.

5. Matt Wagner’s Dark Moon Rising titles

What: Eventually branded under the title of Dark Moon Rising, this series is actually made up of two six-part tales: Batman and the Monster Men and Batman and the Mad Monk, each Matt Wagner’s retelling of a classic Golden Age Batman story, from an era where the supernatural was not quite so distanced from Batman’s usual world.

Why: On a simple level, these are just some real good Batman comics; Matt Wagner’s a phenomenal fit for the character, these are nice and standalone, and Batman has to escape some deathtraps, which is always a treat. But the introduction of the truly bizarre to Batman’s world - by a standard that allows for coin-flipping disfigured District Attorneys and maladjusted widowers with freeze-rays as all part of the regular scenery, anyway - can be something of a hurdle, especially for new readers. In that regard this is a perfect introduction to the more outré side of Batman’s job, cushioning the transition with wild pulp adventure and thrilling horror in a series that feels entirely of the same world seen in the likes of Year One, even as Batman fights a vampire who is also a werewolf.

Recommendations: If you enjoyed the look at a Batman who’s still somewhat figuring out his limits and the parameters of his operation, you’re in luck, as Year One-era Batman stories formed their own effective subgenre for the character for awhile, primarily in the series Legends of the Dark Knight, which had one of the better hit-to-miss ratios for Batman ongoing titles, and Batman: The Man Who Laughs, Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke’s take on his first encounter with the Clown Prince of Crime. If the pulpy noir approach is what appealed, I’d say you might be in the market for Batman: Strange Apparitions, the collection of Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’ highly influential 1977-1978 tenure on Detective Comics (plus a preceding couple issues by Englehart drawn by Walter Simonson, and a couple issues by Rogers without Englehart), a major step on the road to Batman as he exists today which also featured the - at the time - unexpected return of one of the Golden Age villains Wagner features.

6. Nightwing: Better Than Batman

What: Under the thumb of the Parliament of Owls, the Courts’ international equivalent - if with more up his sleeve than they expect - Nightwing finds himself in deeper than he ever could have imagined as he falls under the ‘mentorship’ of the mercenary Raptor, who not only leaves Dick questioning lessons he had previously taken as gospel, but tumbling down a rabbit hole through his own past that threatens to destroy the life he’s built for himself in the present.

Why: There’s no comprehensive look at Batman that doesn’t involve the family he’s built for himself, and this in my mind is the definitive story of the original Robin. Touching on his heritage, his early days as the Boy Wonder, his modern MO as a dashing international superhero with a pinch of espionage, and his connections with the rest of his crime-fighting family, the heart of the story is his relationship with Bruce: their days as Batman and Robin, their differing methods and ideologies, the complications stemming from their distinct backgrounds, and how their brotherhood ultimately saved them both. More than any other single book it underlines the foundation of what makes Dick Grayson work, and by extension the entire concept of the Batman Family.

Recommendations: Better Than Batman is the most compact and satisfying example of what defines Robin and the Batman Family as a whole, but if you’d prefer something more expansive in scope, Batman and Robin Eternal touches on many of the some ideas. For both a solid look back at Dick’s career back when wearing pixie boots, as well as the origin of one of the other two major templates for Batman’s sidekicks, Robin/Batgirl: Year One collects a pair of cult classic stories, Batgirl in particular being the one to check out. As for the third, while Jason Todd’s most iconic story is unquestionably Death in the Family, its actual quality hardly lives up to its enduring imagery and impact; you’ll be best served looking at his return from the grave in Batman: Under The Hood. Alfred’s the other major foundation of the family, and for him I’d probably recommend the soon-to-conclude All-Star Batman arc The First Ally. As for the rest of the family, for hitting the most members in one package I’d recommend James Tynion IV’s run on Detective Comics - beginning with the trade Rise of the Batmen - which returns or recontextualizes a number of fan-favorite characters under an umbrella of incredibly solid Batman Family adventure stories.

7. Paul Dini’s Detective Comics

What: Collected across Batman: Detective, Batman: Death and the City, Batman: Private Casebook, and Batman: Heart of Hush, Paul Dini - one of the main architects of Batman: The Animated Series, and much of the later DCAU as well - serves up a run of almost uniformly excellent, largely done-in-one Batman adventure stories.

Why: Iconic storylines may draw attention to a character, but the brick and mortar of the greats is laid on a foundation of just plain good comics, month-in and month-out, and there are few better examples for Batman than with Dini’s tenure on Detective Comics, especially with the likes of J.H. Williams, Don Kramer and Dustin Nguyen in tow. They may not be stories that redefined the character for a new generation, but they’re simply and unassailably Quality Comics of a sort rarely achieved.

Recommendations: For a more old-school example of the same principle, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ classic tenure on the character is as good as it gets, featuring the likes of The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge - the first comic since his earliest appearances in the 1940s to portray him as the killer clown we know today - and the first appearance of Ra’s Al Ghul. The multiple spinoff comics of Batman: The Animated Series such as the multiple iterations of Batman Adventures and Batman: Gotham Adventures also have a solid hit-to-miss ratio in that regard. And if you’re interested in more of Paul Dini’s Batman comics, Batman: City of Crime with Alex Ross is one of the characters’ all-time great stories, and Dark Night: A True Batman Story with Eduardo Risso is a powerful autobiographical piece on how Dini’s life and work collided in his darkest hour.

8. The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told

What: Exactly what it sounds like, this trade collects standout Batman stories from across the first 50 years of his history.

Why: The trouble with comics is that not all of a characters’ best material is necessarily in individual trades, or single runs - just stick to those and you’ll miss out on some stone-cold classics. There have been plenty of collections attempting to gather up the ‘best of the rest’ to rectify that though, and of those I’d particularly recommend the edition above, filled from top-to-bottom with not only delightful artifacts like The Batman Nobody Knows! and A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman at Bay!, but definitive stories such as The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne! and Death Strikes at Midnight and Three.

Recommendations: For a similarly charming - though I believe far more difficult to track down - retrospective, Batman from the 30′s to the 70′s is certainly worth picking up if you ever happen to see it around. If you find older Batman stories appeal, it’s worth checking out both The Batman Chronicles, collecting his earliest appearances in the 30s and 40s, as well as Showcase Presents: Batman with his 60s adventures, and perhaps the more recent run Batman ‘66, a direct continuation of the Adam West/Burt Ward TV series. You might also be interested in The Brave and the Bold #200, featuring a 'teamup' of sorts between the Batmen of two eras. If what mainly appeals to you is the thrill and comic value of seeing Batman in bizarre situations you’d never see now, Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold might be your speed, containing Bob Haney and Jim Aparo’s madcap tenure, as well as Neal Adams’ relatively recent lunatic masterpiece Batman: Odyssey.

9. Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth

EDIT: This list was written prior to allegations made against Warren Ellis. It’s your money, but while I’d still recommend checking the book out of the library - the quality of the work isn’t going to change now that it’s out there in the universe - if you’re looking to pad your bookshelf I might recommend skipping to some of the books suggested below in its place.

What: “Mystery archaeologists” Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow and The Drummer are a group of superhumans investigating beneath the skin of the Wildstorm universe to uncover the wonders and terrors lurking in its darkest corners. On a trip to Gotham City to apprehend serial killer John Black, his own abilities trigger when cornered to rotate them all through different realities...and in other versions of Gotham, they find they’re not the only ones looking to bring Black to justice.

Why: Planetary built itself on distilling artifacts of 19th and 20th century pop culture (typically by proxy) down to their most essential ideas and iconic values as mysteries to be unveiled, whether 1920s pulp heroes, Godzilla, Sherlock Holmes, 80s and 90s Vertigo comics, James Bond, John Woo revenge flicks, or any of a dozen others. While the other two Planetary crossovers break with formula, this applies it to the biggest modern 20th century icon of all, as a group of hardened Warren Ellis-y superbeings entirely unfamiliar with the concept of ‘Batman’ are forced to run a gauntlet of over 60 years of his most iconic takes when their versions of justice collide. As far as I can tell regarded as a footnote in Batman’s own history, it’s regardless one of his all-time greatest stories, extrapolating him in every direction at once to find the core that unites them all, topping it off with the no-shit best Batman moment of all time.

Recommendations: Most obviously, soon as of the time of this writing Warren Ellis will be tackling a full-scale Batman project alongside longtime collaborator Bryan Hitch, The Batman’s Grave, which I couldn’t be more excited for and obviously recommend checking out. For other stories taking a particularly off-kilter look at Batman and his world, whether through unusual styles or with versions of the character entirely unlike anything ever known, you’ll want to check out the trades of Batman: Black and White, an anthology running as a backup through numerous Batman titles eventually collected in trade, showing a gauntlet of top creators doing their own brief takes on Batman and his world, kicking off no less with another Ellis-written Batman story that powerfully sums up his drive. If you’re looking for something more specifically in the vein of Night on Earth though - a stripped-down, iconic Batman that acknowledges the odder parts of his history and confronts deep emotional truths about himself amidst high-action spectacle - then the current run on Batman proper by Tom King and company is something I’d certainly recommend checking out on the understanding it comes with ups and downs.

10. Batman: The Black Glove

What: From his great lost love to family he’s never known, from the basement of the GCPD to the bowls of Arkham, from the secrets of the past to the horrors of the future, from the ends of the Earth to the inside of his mind, the grip of Batman’s greatest enemy reaches wherever his shadow falls. Collected variously as Batman and Son and Batman: The Black Glove, Bruce Wayne finds himself matched against a seemingly disconnected series of challenges ultimately pointing towards the machinations of a greater threat; one that has constructed his downfall across decades, weaponizing his own mind and history against him as they build towards breaking the Batman once and for all.

Why: These issues are the start of the best Batman comics of all time. They’re absolutely fantastic all on their own, make no mistake; the first arc introduces one of the most significant Bat-family characters of all time, The Clown At Midnight is a criminally underrated classic, and Club of Heroes has J.H. Williams III drawing what amounts to 7 Batmen and 3 Robins being trapped in the plot of And Then There Were None. But more than that, these issues lay the foundation of a 7-year run by Grant Morrison built around mysteries that reach across every facet of Batman’s world, which not only reinvents him as a character, but is frankly and simply the best sustained run on a major superhero of all time. This should by no means be the first Batman comic you ever read, but make no mistake: everything leads to this.

Recommendations: Well, for one thing there’s the rest of the run. Before moving on, you may if possible want to check out Batman: The Black Casebook, a collection of numerous Golden and Silver Age comics that Morrison drew on significant plot and thematic elements of for his work, and Dark Knight Dark City, a supernatural thriller and one of the best Batman-as-detective comics out there which ends up forming much of the spine of some of Morrison’s biggest developments. From there, the rest of his run is collected across Batman R.I.P. > Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn > Time and the Batman > Batman vs. Robin > Return of Bruce Wayne > Batman and Robin Must Die! > Batman Incorporated > Batman Incorporated: Demon Star > Batman Incorporated: Gotham’s Most Wanted.

While much of the impact of the run was immediately dismantled (in large part by Morrison himself, who’s had similar experiences in the past and wanted to show the ideas he introduced off on his own terms here), slowly but surely creators are coming around to what he was doing and have followed up accordingly. Grayson - one of the most beloved DC titles of the last several years - follows the original Robin as he infiltrates the superspy agency Spyral introduced in Batman Incorporated, and leads directly into the previously mentioned current excellent run on Nightwing, which itself has a direct sequel to Morrison’s Bat-tenure in the arc Nightwing Must Die! The major DC event book Dark Nights: Metal by the team behind Batman: Zero Year is itself a direct sequel to several of Morrison’s biggest DC stories, his Batman run most of all. Morrison himself at one point announced plans for Arkham Asylum 2, which rather than following up on his graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth is apparently a direct sequel to his Batman epic starring Damian Wayne as the Dark Knight; hopefully it will one day see fruition. Finally, if you’re simply looking for something on a similar wavelength of bizarre, lurid international pulp mystery mixed with wild fist-pumping superhero action and character moments, the ongoing crossover Batman/The Shadow - soon to end and be directly followed-up by The Shadow/Batman with the same writer - is easily one of the best of its kind of cross-company team up and absolutely a descendant of the type of Batman comics Morrison’s tenure produced.

#Batman #Opinion

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