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samobservessonic · 7 months

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Why do you want to read Sonic the Comic?

The short answer is because it was my intro to the Sonic series as a whole, but I haven’t reread most of it since I was a kid. But I’ll go into a little more detail about that below the readmore, as well as outlining what I will and won’t be reading for this blog

Sonic the Comic issue #80 rewired my brain and changed my life

Now, the first issue of StC that I bought as a kid was #80. I should add a disclaimer here that there was a kid I knew back then who recommended me the comics - she had issues #78 and #79, so I probably at least glimpsed those as well. But #80 was the first issue that I had for myself (and I still have my copy!), so that’s the one that gave me my first impression of Sonic

I’m sure StC fans will know why this issue was a big one and even Sonic fans who have a casual familiarity with StC will probably see Super Sonic on the cover and guess that a lot of stuff happens in this issue… and you’d be right! I’ll save the review for when I actually get to this issue in my reread, but the basic premise is that Sonic goes to visit his friend Porker Lewis on the Floating Island (later known as Angel Island in the games), where the chaos emeralds and master emerald are kept suspended above a giant… hole thing that holds their power (kid me didn’t ask questions, adult me still doesn’t). Sonic fell in this hole and got a full whack of their power, turning him into the evil Super Sonic who’s hellbent on destroying the last person who’d been on Sonic’s mind, who happened to be Amy Rose

The story ends on this cliffhanger and I can pin-point this single image as the reason I got into Sonic in the first place

…Like, look at this!! The art is so cool! What’s going to happen to Amy Rose? Why has Sonic turned into a crazy powerful being who wants to kill her? I have to know more! I have to get the next issue and maybe devote my entire life to this series! Like, Super Sonic looks so powerful and Tails looks terrified of him! But Amy still looks quite calm and collected. Maybe she’s only just noticed Super Sonic zooming into the scene or maybe she’s just composed enough to not be as fearful of him as Tails is. Obviously, even without knowing anything about the series, I could tell that Amy is Sonic’s friend and I want her to be okay. But something about seeing her reaction in this panel made it seem like the “Next Issue: Amy vs Super Sonic!” advertised at the bottom of this page wouldn’t be as one-sided as some might expect it would be And that’s how, on (roughly) 21st June 1996, an 8-year-old who’d just spent their £1.20 pocket-money had their socks blown off by a Sonic comic (Out of curiosity, I looked up where Archie Sonic was at around this time and it was… issue #37! The Knuckles spin-off comics would also be released the month after this. But I wouldn’t know about the existence of either of these until later)

Now, 80 issues into an on-going series is obviously a late point to hop on, but I can honestly say that it never hindered me reading the comics as a kid. Every two weeks I’d get to see Sonic and his friends have adventures and sometimes they’d mention established lore that I might not have known, but it was easy just to write that off as something from an earlier issue and carry on Also, after a certain point, StC started to reprint older stories. Which was both a blessing and a curse, because on one hand it meant that I could catch up with older stories I hadn’t read before, but on the other hand it deprived the issues of newer stories, until the comic would eventually become entirely reprints from issue #185. Even so, I can confidently say that there are probably stories in the first 79 issues of the series that I’ve never read, so I’m looking forward to getting to those on my read-through So, will you stop reading at issue #184? While I intend to read from #1-184, the reprints issues do feature new covers from Richard Elson

Many of which show newer takes on earlier stories, featuring the green-eyed Sonic of the modern era. So while it’s far away now, I’ll most-likely do a post about these covers to conclude my read-through. Although man, looking at #185’s cover in particular puts me right back into being there as a kid, expecting to see new stories, only to open the comic and get entirely reprints…

Will you be reading the non-Sonic stories?

Early on in its run, StC featured stories from other SEGA titles of the time, before committing to being entirely about Sonic. While not to diminish the merits of these stories, I just don’t have the same familiarity with most of their source material that I do for Sonic, so I won’t be reading them. The exceptions being probably the Ecco stories (because I did play Ecco as a kid) and Decap Attack, because Decap Attack was still running after I started reading the comic and I remember enjoying it. But I won’t be blogging about either of these in the same way that I will be the Sonic comics themselves, so you won’t have to skim past posts about loads of other series to get to the Sonic stuff

What about the Sonic spin-offs?

I will absolutely be reading these once I find or make a good reading-order that slots them into their proper place. The above summer ‘96 special was also one of my first StC issues and I remember it fondly

What about the Captain Plunder stories?

Yep! Captain Plunder exists in Sonic’s universe and I enjoyed his standalone stories as a kid, so I’ll be including him in my reread Anything else?

For a time, StC included game reviews and ofc they also had a fanmail and fan art section, like Archie and IDW. For the most part, I’ll only be including small bits of these that I find interesting or relevant, but I won’t be talking about them wholesale. Though I’m sure that a Sonic comic’s reviews of Sonic games will be worth a look at

#sonic the comic #sam observes sonic #stc blogging #sonic the hedgehog #super sonic #amy rose #captain plunder #decap attack

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genericpuff · 8 months

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What is your advice on handling criticism?

I saw your response to a critic on Lore Rekindled in the sub and it's very good and you could say, professional.

I have a big problem of people-pleasing, so if I get critcism (eventhough it's very polite), I get very sad at the fact there's fault with my work (I also suffer from perfectionism). It will drastically change how I see my work, and in the end I give it up 😭

fam i got teased tf out of for making it so wordy LOL

I totally get that struggle though, I know it probably doesn't seem it at times, but I do have the 'ole RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) due to being ADHD/autistic, so I totally relate to the whole people pleasing thing. It's hard to feel like something you made isn't making everyone happy! But that's also ultimately not what it's for. You can't make everyone happy, and your art doesn't deserve to exist any less just because some people don't find it their cup of tea.

I've definitely had to like, disconnect my work from myself over the years to get better at taking criticism. Not to the point that I get apathetic, obviously I should be invested in whatever I'm working on, but enough that when people criticize my work, it's not necessarily an attack on my own self.

And if they are clearly just out to attack me, then I dismiss the criticism, it's of no value to me.

Unless it's something that's specifically a result of my own values or biases bleeding into the work, most of the time it's people literally just saying, "I like this work, but I feel like it wasn't as strong as it could have been here and here" and that has nothing to do with me as a person, I'm just still polishing my skills and those outside opinions help to target specifically what needs improving. I think we as artists pour a lot of ourselves into our work, especially when we're just starting out, so it can be hard not to take criticism as an attack or rejection of yourself, but we have to ultimately remember that we are not 100% of our work. Even with works like LO, while some of the criticism I give of it is indicative of Rachel's values and personal preferences as a person, a lot of it is also just about the work itself and how far it's fallen beyond what I assume Rachel intended from the beginning.

I've also learned to separate helpful from unhelpful criticism. I'll use Time Gate as an example because I've gotten way more input on that series than Rekindled (just because I've actually like, intentionally sought out criticism for it). A common criticism in the past was that there weren't enough backgrounds and the story's pacing wasn't concise. It sucked to hear at the time, especially the backgrounds one, because I'd heard that one time and time again... but it was literally because I wasn't doing anything to improve them. You know what stopped those criticisms? Drawing backgrounds more LOL And I still suck at backgrounds tbh but I feel like I've definitely improved compared to the first few volumes when I was just drawing characters on top of white constantly LOL

old and busted:

new hotness:

(i think there's like a 4-5 year difference between these two pages. and the backgrounds STILL aren't perfect in those newer volumes but they still feel more finished than the older panels did)

So that was helpful criticism! My art wasn't as strong as it could be in a few specific places that people were clearly able to pinpoint, so I did what I could to improve those places and I'm still working on it.

Unhelpful criticism has just been either personal attacks (not valuable) or statements that are basically asking the comic to not be what it is, criticizing things that are features, not bugs. Things like "well I think the story is too anime-like", "it's a lot to try and read", "why don't you draw eyelashes on the girl character", etc. which are criticisms of things that I know are intentional. The story's anime-like because that's the story I want to write. It's a lot to try and read because it's intended to be a longform series for people who like reading longform series (people like me!). I don't draw eyelashes on Uzuki because she would look terrible with them LMAO (we even made a joke about that later on):

(the hilarious part is that that comment was definitely made with the idea that all women should have that makeup look, meanwhile mitsuhiro's pulling off the look so much better and he knows it LMAO

And actually, the example you're referring to where I responded to crit in the ULO subreddit, is also an example of unhelpful criticism, though the person who posted it definitely didn't mean any harm by it, but the crit was literally "why aren't Persephone's boobs big enough" which I thought was pretty funny. She still has boobs! I just don't draw them popping out of her top like Rachel does LOL I also don't give her the exaggerated pinched waist or broken spine that Rachel often gives her because that's all just to, again, emphasize her boobs, and it's often unnecessary, especially in a comic that's being marketed as a feminist piece of work, yet is often drawn completely through the male gaze. So yeah, that was definitely crit that wasn't really beneficial because it was literally just about Persephone's cup size lol

I know it's easier said than done, but when you feel that sadness coming on in response to criticism, remember that that criticism exists to help you, not hinder you. Considering you've been getting polite criticism, that means the people giving it likely have your best interests in mind and want to see your work improve. The only way to do that is to learn how to critically analyze your own work, and the only way to do that is to surround yourself with works whose quality you want to achieve, and get outside opinions. And if that criticism isn't in good spirit, then toss it aside. If it's not going to help you, then it's not of any value to you. And yes, it will take practice, there are still times I find myself getting overwhelmed, but ultimately I can't control what anyone else says or does, only what I do. So I funnel that into my work and I always keep moving forward.

Be at peace with the process of learning and improving, because you never stop having to learn, there's always something new to improve, and that shouldn't be taken all doom and gloom "I'll never be perfect", that's literally just the process and beauty of being an artist, there's always something new to learn and that's something that should be exciting!

Think about whenever you give criticism or have personal critiques of other comics. I'm willing to bet most of the time, you have those opinions with good intentions, you're not trying to attack anyone. So why not give yourself the same grace?

...holy shit, I forgot Uzuki's lipstick in the bottom right panel- （；´д｀）ゞ

#and i know i'm sounding hella hypocritical because i'm MEAN about LO lmaooo #but that's what y'all followed me here for sksksksk #i'm NOT entitled to her attention or acknowledgement #and also i genuinely don't expect or wish rachel to find my crits of LO here #i do think she needs to get better at taking criticism but at this point i'm just shitposting so that's not helpful to her LMAO #ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

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insanelyadd · 2 years

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5000 follower raffle thing!!!

God it’s been so long since I’ve done a follower raffle. Last one I did was on my old account before I accidentally deleted it, for my 4000 follower milestone. I did actually just pass 5000 followers before the Incident but I never got a chance to make the raffle post. I told myself I wouldn’t do another one until I got to where I used to be, and now that we’re here I need to try to remember how I did these back in the day.

To enter the raffle you can like, reblog, and comment on this post. You only get one entry for each and extra comments or reblogs do not count. There will be winners one through three and three runner up winners.

First Place: Up to two characters, lines, colored, and shaded, can be a ship but I reserve the right to ask you to pick different characters to ship if it’s not something I’m comfortable with

Second Place: One character limit, lines, colored, and shaded

Third place: One character, lined and colored

Three Runner Ups: One character, lines only

Seeing as October is coming up and I’ll be doing a comic page a day for my usual 31 Doodles event, you will likely not receive your prize until November, just so I can focus on getting the pages all done for the event. I’ve never not completed a year mostly on time and I want to keep it that way, hope that’s alright. :>

Thank you everyone who decided to follow me, especially you newer people who’ve only seen me be a freak about polls. XD

#follower raffle

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drawnaghht · 10 months

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@trufflemacandcheese

About the ship tags poll... Ah, sorry for not specifying ^^; I did post that the poll was about Yuichi x Rise!Leo specifically.

I actually want to do a separate one for Leosagi, but this one was specifially just for Leoichi/Leochi! (or, me using mostly my own made-up tag, YuiNardo)

TL;DR - Leosagi and Leoichi/Yuinardo are separate ships :D technically we don't have this problem with other fandoms with newer versions of characters, or even with other ships like Donsagi, but since Yuichi Usagi is a separate character from his ancestor, Miyamoto Usagi, it would make sense to have separate ship tags as well. Especially since the tags already exist anyway, so why not use them per ship? It is also more respectful to both older and newer Leosagi fans and fans of both Usagi characters. I am all of these myself, so hah, this is all silly fanstuff, but I'd just prefer the separation bc the ships are too different to share a tag + it's easier to sort and find fanart/fic later if there are separate tags. So Leosagi poll will go up later!

Longer explain: there was discussion around it a year or more ago, + posts here and there on tumblr mostly, about how technically Yuichi Usagi x Leo is a whole new ship bc Yuichi Usagi is a whole new character from the Samurai Rabbit show... and how maybe it's good to use just the one tag for it? So the oldest unique name/tag for them seems to be Leochi/Leoichi. Since Miyamoto Usagi x Leonardo is an older ship that's been around for 19 years since the '03 turtles show and Leosagi has been the tag/ship name that stuck with that, it's a separate ship. So are the tags associated with it, such as Katanashipping and older tags (which I haven't seen people use anymore.) But people saw the similiarities of the two Usagi's (family after all, lol, but I wonder if there's something else simmering under there), and started tagging the newer ship as Leosagi too, almost as an umbrella term, since we'd briefly had 12!Leosagi as a ship, and people just like the dynamic that the 03 show introduced, but people liked the new TMNT cartoon too.

ROTTMNT didn't have any Usagi eps tho, so - some Rise fans had started making their own Rise versions of Miyamoto Usagi as well, well before the Samurai Rabbit show. And this new ship clashed with that a bit, because people were either taking the character of Usagi from the show and just giving him book/2003 Usagi's personality (so continuing what Rise!Leosagi shippers were already doing, but confusing the pool of thoughts there bc it's a new character w a new name). So the fans who use tumblr and draw/write for the ship got upset that this new ship was taking over the tags and clogging the tags with just Yuichi x Leo content. There’s also the distinction that og Leosagi in 2004 is a ship where they’ve interacted in canon - Usagi exists next to the TMNT in the cartoon, and I consider 03 Usagi a whole separate version of him because they seemed to have changed his backstory a bit + made him younger to match the turtles. There’s also history of the characters interacting in the comics, because their creators Peter Laird and Stan Sakai were friends and Leo is Stan Sakai’s favourite character of the TMNT. Yuichi x Leo is a crossover ship however. so the new ship was a surprise.

Perhaps at first, it was kinda fun to see new art or fic, but then I guess people started getting annoyed for how many fans were using multiple tags and including Leosagi in their posts too, even when Miyamoto Usagi is not there. A lot of people treated the two ships as the same or made the name an umbrella tag, which I sorta did too at first bc what, it’s not like there’s guidelines pinned to the start of a tag page on tumblr, are there? So imo, it’ll just sort itself out eventually the more people start using the unique tags exclusively vs the old tag. Sliderbunny was the Miyamoto Usagi x Rise!Leo tag for a while, but that's also become mainly used for the newer ship. I’m not sure if tumblr shows the contents of tags from over a year ago anymore, but there are most likely blogs still active which jave those older posts with tagging prior to Samurai Rabbit coming out on Netflix.

I'm more annoyed personally that people also mis-tag the characters and the book/show. They are not interchangeable! So yeah, it's been a whole many-posts-long discussion over this ^^;;

I also made longer posts thinking abt these myself but I'm not gonna link them here cuz these are just general polls of curiosity. But you can find them under "ship tags" tag on my blog if you get curious. RABNerd28 on youtube made a very succinct (imo) video about this topic as well, which summarizes many of the issues the older shippers find when going online to see content for their favourite ship.

I actually have no idea where Leoichi or Leochi came from as ship tags or why there are two spellings of it (almost like "two pronunciations" lol), but so far, it's a pretty popular tag. So there seems to be no need to double-tag it with Leosagi, when it's 2 different ships. I find it also that whatever the fan content for 2003 Leosagi or just Leosagi is in general, it would be nice to just respect fans who made the ship popular at first, when TMNT03 aired their Usagi eps in 2004. I actually shipped this too back in the day and still do, so for me personally, it's nice to have separate tags just so I can find things better on my blog + so if people who don't like one ship, they can always block the tag and not see those posts from me. Or just general consideration ^^ I think we don't have this discussion around the other usagi ship tags bc well, there are a lot less posts about these other ships both on tumblr and elsewhere, maybe the fans don't have the energy to argue about this?

Another result of earlier discussions and the general tag-clogging, lots of people also dislike the show and the character of Yuichi Usagi. I as a fan of both show and comic, really don't like that, so that's one more reason why using separate tags is better - so at the least: Leosagi and Leoichi separately.

i still prefer my own made-up tag bc it's more unique + sounds fun. also reasons why I made my own unique ship tag: fans make Yuichi really OOC in their art/fic, or they haven't seen the show or the flat-out hate the show.... which is all fine, ordinary stuff even, as far as bigger fandoms and fanworks go. folks make Rise Leo OOC often too, but no one bats an eye. But hey, it's just other fans having fun with concepts and ideas. That's what fanworks are. Transformative fiction. People can change anything they want. But I personally like the show and character, and I like the Usagi Yojimbo books too. So reading/watching and making theories and in-character or just plain meme/funny stuff is how I have fun.

whatever the reasons for the tag names, for this poll I just piled all the reasonable ship tags I could find for it (i.e. used in at least 2 posts) just to see what people use the most. seems that Leoichi is winning so far, which makes sense as it is easier to pronounce.

#trufflemacandcheese #aghhtreplies #ship tags #leoichi #leochi #yuinardo #all this to say: it's just nicer when the tags are separate. that would be preferable #how many posts have i written analysing the ship tags...#texty #long post #anyway shipping is kinda silly but i do like the occasional post and fic so. tags are a must for me personally

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amazing-spiderling · 3 months

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17, 22, 34

17. Past or present tense? Why?

PAST TENSE (with a rare exception). It just... reads better to me. It feels more comfortable, more like a narrative and less like an account of events that are happening right now. I feel like present tense has its place, (I've used it on occasion) but being told that a character is doing something RIGHT NOW leaves me feeling a bit on edge. If that's what you're going for, knock yourself out- but if I'm just trying to get lost in a story, I want past tense to take me there.

22. What is it about watching the same two idiots falling in love over and over again?

Gosh, what isn't it? I don't know, I mean, I get the meme of it, of course, but I don't even really think of it like that. I suppose comic books (specifically marvel comics) have been a big part of my fandom life for decades now, and there has always been that "what if"/multiverse aspect, so it seems natural to want to imagine characters in alternate universes or different versions of a scenario where things turned out slightly differently.

But, for the sake of argument, when thinking about stories that are more in line with canon... I think there's a comfort to it. We live in a universe full of so much randomness and chance- tiny differences in one day can make the difference between meeting someone special or getting hit by a bus. Sometimes, it can feel daunting to look back at your life and think about how one thing or another might have led your life in a different direction. I think there is a comfort to be found in the fantastical idea that there are can be core parts of a life experience that are immutable. Even if you took a different class or skipped your morning coffee or overslept one day, you'd still find your way to the people, places, and events you were always meant to. Or that even after you find those people, even if you had an argument, or made a decision took you both to a different place, that the relationship you have is strong enough to weather those small differences. It's not really about fate or destiny, it's about the strength of a bond and its ability to persevere even if the conditions aren't exactly "right".

34. Do you write to improve? Or is that not a concern for you?

I wouldn't say that it's not a concern- I mean, I would be pretty disheartened to think I'm getting worse at something I spend so much time on. But it isn't at the forefront of my thoughts the way it is say with art. In the past I would make myself take on challenges (my ask blog, drawing events) specifically with the purpose to developing a skill or learning how to use a program or simply learning to be less precious with the process. I don't think I ever really did that with writing, though. I know there are writing month events- but if I try to force myself to participate I just hit a mental block.

I think it's also easier for me to see improvement in my art at a glance. I can go back and look at a history of drawings and immediately say "oh I got better at drawing folds in clothing"- but comparing my old and new writing samples is a bit trickier. I don't often go back and reread my old work- and if I'm honest, sometimes I think some of my older pieces are better than some of my newer ones, oops.

I will say that while I don't think I make a conscious effort to write to improve my writing- I do consider writing a means to improve at other things. I think writing has made me better at processing my own emotions and empathizing with others. I think it's helped me to develop a vocabulary to help explain my thoughts and processes when I'm speaking with others. I've been told that I "speak like a writer" in the past, and I think that's just because when you spend enough time writing, you have to spend time finding words for things, and there's a rhythm to that that easily finds its way into your day to day.

#thanks for the ask!

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selfproclaimedunicorn · 6 months

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MORE QUESTIONS

what other fandoms do you enjoy outside of ASOIAF?

Lmao, the big list of Things Misa Enjoys

I very much enjoy anime & manga. I got infected with those brain worms back in high school, & they simply will not leave. Particularly into Sailor Moon, which I haven't stopped thinking about since 1999, (I have OCs for that & a fic I'm gonna one day sit down & plot out beyond This Is The Vibe. I have a few things floating around in my brain, but I just haven't made the time to do anything with it. Maybe since I'm at reception for 6 hours I'll do that 🤷🏻‍♀️) & JoJo's (I also have OCs for this one, but no fic. I do have a homebrewed ttrpg system to run a JoJo's campaign with, though. But I need to finish statting enemy Stand Users & some character design. Also it's not a priority because I have an asoiaf campaign trilogy to finish running). I don't read or watch anything with the quickness, so I haven't watched a ton of newer anime or made that much of a dent in my reading of Berserk, but I do enjoy both newer stuff and Berserk. I even have a couple figures from Demon Slayer, which is probably my favorite newer series? It feels very nostalgic to the series I grew up watching.

I was into the Netflix Witcher series, but I haven't been able to bring myself to finish season 3. No amount of Joey Batey tits or confirmed pansexual Jaskier can really build my hype back up when I've heard the last bit of s3 sucked & I know I probably won't watch season 4. I have collected all but the last book of short stories though, so once I've worked through more of my books I need to give a fair shake before donating I plan to start those & get into The Witcher proper.

The Elder Scrolls is very good & fun, & I know the plots of all the mainline games even though I've only ever actually played Skyrim to completion. I have...I have so many OCs for that. And a fic I'm slowly working on that tells the story of the Dawnguard DLC by way of Lapsed Viglant Of Stendarr & Werewolf Vampire Hunter Are Forcibly Adopted As Serana's New Parents (and also I am confirming Serana as, like, eternally 19 because she feels very teenagery/early 20s-y to me). Fun fact: two of my current very close friends (my Platonic Wife included) were made by way of TES (and then another friend was introduced to me by a TES friend). So, thanks for your service, Todd Howard. Y'know, I guess.

It feels very "What are your hobbies? / Magnets." to say, but, like, dolls in general. I've collected porcelain dolls since I was little (but that collection got pared down massively when I moved from Texas), & I'm currently working through a clean/restore/dress/display of my old Bratz dolls. I've also dropped real adult money on dolls to (out of box, bc it sparks joy) display in my apartment. Specifically the Sasha (my best girl) Rock Angelz repro I waited almost a full year to see drop, Heather Greyson from Shadow High, & The Pride Bratz (I had a giftcard). I need to finish cleaning my old Bratz before I drop money on more though. So I know my shelving situation, lmao.

I am not not into Dragon Age, but I also complain about it all the time. I refuse to engage with it in a multimedia way. What I cannot learn by playing the games/have told to me in those games is simply not for me to know. Just...the way the franchise is handled & how it feels very obvious that Bioware wants to tell an incredibly specific story (while still allowing for character creation?), all the lore decisions they're making that feel like retcons/throw away everything I got invested in early (hello the dwarves & the dalish & Alistair's everything), & the increasing non-optional nature of the comics & books...it brings my blood to boil. The games are fun though! I have fun playing the games! And my personal Warden/Hawke/Inquisitor trios can be pried from my cold, dead hands!

I'm gonna be real, I know much more about Th Old World Of Darkness than Vampie v5, but I am into Vampire The Masquerade. This is, again, a "I have learned everything in bursts of hyperfixation that last a varying length of time," but I would very much like to take one of my two special vampire boys out for a spin one day. Because they're there! They exist & they are appropriately melodramatic, & I love them. Evil, fucked up, Hecata thug & flouncy, Catholic For The Aesthetic Toreador music producer my beloveds 💕

#ask #im also casually into batman & the flash #and star trek #but not enough to really make NOTE y'know

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reddymikkelsen88 · 27 days

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Football - The San Diego Chargers

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lycheermne · 5 months

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Day 16: HERE WE GO AGAIN

I got into Mamma Mia! And more specifically, I got one of the leads named Rosie! I was so anxious all throughout today because I really wanted the role, I remember even starting to learn Kitagana and manifesting getting the role as I impatiently waited for the list to be out at 4. I remembered that I can not get my hopes too high since I thought I did so well in my auditions that my mind was mostly filled with mentally preparing myself to be rejected which I did not mind.

Rosie Character Analysis

I feel like Rosie to me kind of resonance to me and is someone that I want to be in terms of her surface level personality. I love how she is just so independent and confident in herself that she is not afraid to express her lovely ways even through societal norms that people may have of her. She seems to have a sense of self, providing that support for Donna and is more of the life of the party for Tanya to sort of play around with her. I feel like Rosie is really a self-made character, a character where she did not have much help when growing old which gained her a lot of independence to try newer things in life such as experimenting love at a predominantly older age than usual. I love that as an author of something, she must be clever and quick witted at a lot of things as her book is a bestseller. She is a pillar for Donna throughout the show but also providing some comic-relief for the audience to enjoy. I feel like I want the audience to see two sides of Rosie that is still her without separating two identities: Her ability to be funny and her ability to be vulnerable. Need to know when it is her time to shine and know when it is time for others to not. And as the actor of Rosie, I have to portray it well.

I am a bit nervous because I really want to portray Rosie well and make her character justice, I want the audience to see "Rosie" come out and show that with delicate care of her, the life of the party is important to me. She is going to be an important character that I will find interesting, but I think this will mean a lot to me.

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tailsrevane · 2 years

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[comic & movie review] the death & return of superman

“your rampage ends here, doomsday! even if it kills me.”

it was basically impossible to be a kid who liked superheroes in the 90s and not know about at least two storylines: bane breaking batman’s back, and doomsday killing superman. i was a much bigger batman fan, so i read basically all of knightfall and knightsend, and bits and pieces of knightquest. the death and return of superman, though, i only really read the issue where superman actually dies and a few issues of reign of the supermen. i also had a like… junior novelization of the whole arc? it glossed over a lot and streamlined the whole thing, but i got a general idea of the story as a whole from it.

so i finally read it, and… yeah, wow, it was rough at times. the actual fight between supes and doomsday is the only really good thing about the death of superman, and it was pretty good. funeral for a friend was just… kind of genuinely awful? like, i frequently found myself bored and tempted to just skim through the issues just to get through them faster. things got way better with reign of the supermen and the return of superman. those were genuinely compelling, though i still found the lex/supergirl stuff extremely missable. i loved superboy and steel, though. i kind of want to go out of my way to read more stories about them in the future.

i still hadn’t read the comics when i sat down to watch the two newer adaptations for the first time, but i definitely enjoyed them. they were a much more faithful adaptation of this arc than superman: doomsday, though they still had their departures. i especially didn’t really like that they changed the fight between superman and doomsday to start in metropolis rather than being an epic battle across america with superman getting increasingly desperate to stop him the closer they got to his city.

still, it was nice to see superboy, steel, eradicator, and cyborg, and a lot of other elements that were entirely absent in superman: doomsday. and i think they did a really good job of adapting the broad strokes of the story into a movie. i even like some of the changes they made, like replacing that weird lex clone or whatever the heck was going on there with just the normal lex, and kind of mushing supergirl and superboy’s stories into one story minus the sexual overtones.

i was a bit caught off guard by how bad the comics were considering how consistently great knightfall and knightsend were, but they had their moments. and i really did like the movies quite a bit. even though i did miss some of the details from the comics that were left out, i’d go so far as to say the movies are probably the best way to experience this story.

death of superman (comic): c-rank funeral for a friend (comic): d-rank reign of the supermen (comic): b-rank return of superman (comic): b-rank the death of superman (movie): b-rank reign of the supermen (movie): b-rank

#superman #death of superman #funeral for a friend #reign of the supermen #return of superman #dc universe original movies #dc comics #comic review #comics #movie review #movies #reviews

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theloniousbach · 2 years

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CECILE McLORIN SALVANT/SULLIVAN FORTNER, JAZZ ST LOUIS, 17 (stream)-18 NOVEMBER 2022

My second jazz singer in a row! No need for concern, I feel fine. But it is out of character for me even as I join the bulk of the human race. Veronica Swift two weeks ago was also evocative in selling songs and reinventing them, including mash ups across genres. CECILE McLORIN SALVANT was a bit more jazzy, if only because she had the irrepressible SULLIVAN FORTNER, not so much accompanying as offering a sympathetic parallel melody. But, even more than Swift, she sold her songs.

Last night, in person, they were in serious cabaret revue territory with seven tunes on marriage. That the first one was Never Will I Marry tells me the arc. It included Bessie Smith’s Sam Jones Blues wherein our hero returns after a year to find that his wife has moved on. Dividing Day from Light in the Piazza was devestatingly bleak and the following Guess Who I Saw Today was slightly less so. If Mama Was Married was comic, but her own Obligation built on a friend’s line that expectations are premeditated resentments.

They brought out Jazz St Louis’ President/CEO Victor Goines for the last two tunes, including Billy Strayhorn’s brilliant but poignant Lush Life.

I paint too dark a picture. This was delivered with good humor by both McLorin Salvant and Fortner (as I’ve seen from my streams over the last few years, he is extremely clever and enjoys discovering fresh things in the tunes each time he plays them). She has remarkable range and control which she uses to great dramatic effect. She can go from little girl seeming to growl within a measure. She dances around melody and rhythm as jazz singers do, but without some of the affectations.

They opened with Some People from Gypsy after which she reported that they had nominated Jennifer Lewis (a Webster University alumna who was on campus very recently) as Mama Rose for a future production.

And they have a deep book, witness no repeats from the previous night’s set, and remarkable telepathy. Fortner launched into No One Knows Better Than I Myself and it took half a chorus before McLorin Salvant gleefully recognized it and summoned up the lyrics. On Thursday night, they nailed Getting To Know You having never played it together. He also proposed the If Mama Was Married and then mouthed the words for her.

We were sitting in the balcony looking at him and therefore got to see some of those interactions. I couldn’t see his hands for most of the set when he played grand piano. But he played Fender Rhodes for a tune each night and I was stunned when he played both. That put him playing treble and melody with his left hand while chording/arpeggiating accompaniment with his right hand. That complete reversal is rather like Elizabeth Cotton or Albert King playing left handed on a guitar strung the usual/right handed way. But piano isn’t a handed instrument. Usually.

The streamed set was a wonderful preview with an equally eclectic set, including a few more of her tunes, some more established show tunes but also newer ones that McLorin Salvant the singer would be on the look out for. I had heard an instrumental of Bacharach/David’s catchy melody Wives and Lovers which was familiar. Looking it up it showed up a list as one of the most sexist songs—and it is. But they did it in part she was asked why she didn’t sing feminist songs. That’s not the reason, but she/they are charming contrarians (at least that’s how I’ll reconcile myself with the marriage suite).

Above all, she’s flat out charming with stories of her French existentialist/Socratic music teacher who gave her Bessie Smith records and asked her what she wanted to learn, how much she treasures Victor Goines, and the sources of the tunes.

Cecile McLorin Salvant is the third member of Artemis we’re seeing this season to go with Anat Cohen and Allison Miller in a season with women artists prominent in the mix.

My ears get bigger all the time.

#concert review #jazz #jazz st louis #2022

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toshio · 2 years

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been rewatching “Durarara!!” lately, and it’s one of my favorite animes (biased from nostalgia but whatever). the show is a bit complicated to explain, but to sum it up:

it follows the story of a “headless horseman” or “Dullahan” (irish mythological creature) which is basically a “headless rider” who carries their head while riding on a black horse [said to be the embodiment of a Celtic god or something like that]. anyway, it sounds crazy, but bear with me for a bit. the anime makes its own rules of course, so the headless horseman is a badass chick named Celty Sturluson (she wears a cute yellow kitty helmet) and she’s easily the most lovable character in the series who could do no harm. the premise of the story is that she’s an immortal entity that traveled from Ireland to Japan (Ikebukuro) who came searching for her missing head that she lost centuries ago. will she find it? watch Durarara!! and find out (no but she’s got super OP powers like being able to create weapons like scythes and knives out of thin air with her mysterious powers).

the entire show takes place in the restless city of Ikebukuro, Japan and there exists an online + anonymous gang called “Dollars” and you really feel immersed into the setting, because they somehow are able to make you feel involved in their online chat rooms as they gossip about city drama. i’m always a huge fan of anime shows that take place in big cities because i’m naturally a city person, so i find it very chaotic, yet rhythmic and soothing compared to those quiet, boring suburban neighborhoods.

aside from Celty, the entire cast is pretty diverse, the opening theme tells you all of the main/minor characters names and you learn more about each character’s life every few episodes which build character development - tying the overall plot of the story together while giving enough context. there’s 2 openings and 2 ending songs (25 episodes total) and the first ending song was my absolute FAVORITE because it shows all of the characters holding each other in one really long image, it’s super wholesome and awesome because of how symbolic it is (it even became an internet meme template that people still love today).

i could honestly go on about this anime for hours, but two of the most fan-favorite characters at the time were Shizuo (blonde) and Izaya (smug twink with fur hood jacket) who absolutely despise each other (more context will be given after you watch just a few episodes). if Shizuo sees Izaya on the streets, he starts going FERAL and chases after his little skinny ass. their relationship in itself is comic relief genius, and 100% my type of humor. i love these two. any OG anime fans will remember this - they were a cultural reset for the yaoi fangirls in 2010, their ship name is “Shizaya”. good times.

in conclusion, this anime just...hits home for me. it’s nostalgic, it had a way different/unique animation style for 2010 at the time. i’m a hipster weeb nowadays who mostly rewatches old stuff. i seldom indulge myself into newer mainstream animes due to personal reasons. however, i highly recommend Durarara!! if you haven’t seen it. it’s a /must watch/ if you enjoy cityscapes, fictional gang violence, supernatural elements, and the like.

#sean's anime recs #does anyone remember this showww?!? i loved this shit #leave a like if you remember watching this show a decade ago!

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nellie-elizabeth · 2 years

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fic authors self rec! when you get this, reply with your favourite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. let’s spread the self-love 🤍✨

Thank you @portraitofemmy and also @spiders-hth-is-an-outlier!!

Okay, I'm going to pick one non-Magicians fic for the list but the other four are all gonna be Magicians... what can I say, I think I've grown hugely as a writer since 2019 when I started writing for Queliot! Everything before that doesn't hold up particularly well, in my opinion. I'm also going to try really hard not to go too hard on the recency bias thing. I tend to think I'm getting better as a writer, which means I think my newer stuff is, by and large, stronger than what came before it... but let's go! In no particular order...

A Comet Pulled From Orbit (The Magicians)

This is a novel-length AU of The Magicians which combines the magic and characters from that universe with the immortality and some of the basic plot from The Old Guard comics/film. I worked harder on this fic than I ever have any other piece of writing in my life... I had tons of backstory detail for each of the characters, I plotted it out meticulously, read every word aloud to myself to smooth out the prose along the way. I think it's my most polished work, my most book-like book, and I have enormous fondness for it. It's Alice POV, but Queliot is still the romantic pairing that gets the most... screen-time, as it were. Alice and Eliot are the main characters, but it's also got Kalice, Margo/Julia, and general ensemble feels galore.

Regrets, or the Absence Thereof (The Magicians)

My favorite smut that I've written - this is a depiction of the famous Marqueliot threesome, but it's through the lens of Eliot revisiting the memory in his Happy Place, set in 4x05. So you've got Eliot watching a past version of himself, along with Margo and Quentin. It plays with Eliot's memory and sense of self, what he knew then vs. what he knows now, his mosaic memories creeping in as he watches he and Quentin have sex for the first time.

When Quentin Met Eliot (The Magicians)

It's When Harry Met Sally only with Queliot! Quentin Coldwater as Harry Burns, Eliot Waugh as Sally Albright. I've been told by people that this may be the best thing I've written, and I do feel very proud of it. Bonus points that it comes with such gorgeous art from @aniallating!

is it too late (or could this love protect me) (The Magicians)

Messy, sprawling, Quentin POV in a no-magic AU where Eliot and Quentin were friends in undergrad who have been slowly drifting apart for the past several years. Now, Quentin is engaged to Alice Quinn, when a revelation about Eliot's feelings rocks his world. I'm super fond of how this one came out, it was written really quickly and in a total writing frenzy the likes of which I have not been able to replicate often. It plays around with flashbacks and flashforwards and has a lot of my favorite lines I've ever written in it!

textual communication (Roswell, New Mexico)

And... just so not everything on the list is Queliot, this is a fic I wrote for Malex. I did a whole series where I wrote one short fic per episode of the show, 39 in total. This one is for episode 3x01 and it's a series of texts and emails between the two characters, written during a year in which they were apart. I don't even know precisely why I like this so much, it's very different from most of what I've written but I just had so fun trying the epistolary style, so to speak. I found something of the characters that I was looking for in writing it.

~~~

I tag anyone who wants to play, this was fun!!

#my posts #queliot #malex #the magicians #roswell new mexico #my fic

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witchy-jadda · 3 years

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rott spoilers ahead

so i’ve given myself some time to think about everything and try to process it all and here are some of my thoughts on trollhunters: rise of the titans...

- straight off the bat, i loved the intro. opening with blinky telling the story of what happened up until this point was incredible. i would have loved if they had circled back to this though (i saw someone else say it should have been him telling the story to jim and claire’s kids and i loved that idea!)

- i also liked that they didn’t waste time at the start, instead they just jumped right into the action which was fun.

- honestly, i thought jim’s plotline throughout the movie where he basically thought he was useless without the amulet was just really not fun to watch. i understand why it was there and it played into the climax but i really did not find it one bit necessary seeing as i felt that we have grown beyond that. i felt it was overused. we’ve been there before and jim is aware that he’s the trollhunter, amulet or not.

- douxie being so soft with nari was genuinely one of the most heartwarming parts of the movie. i feel that we were really robbed of so much potential with douxie in this movie though. we didn’t see nearly enough of him. it seemed that the writers were picking and choosing when to remember how powerful he is. switching with nari and connecting to her are two examples of when they actually used his power, but aside from that they just disregarded it a lot.

- and speaking of forgetting how powerful people are... i’m genuinely so hurt and let down over what they did to claire. do they not realise how powerful she is? did they just forget about her character arc? it sure felt like it. she got to use her powers a few times (connecting to nari, portalling the titan, etc) but mostly it felt like she was saying she was spent and therefore unable to do anything. she is so strong and so powerful, and that’s just so empowering - especially for young girls. and then it kinda felt to me that rott was reducing her to basically nothing more than jim’s love interest.

- okay another quick note, it kinda felt to me that krel’s potential was also pretty wasted? he barely did anything and i just think he deserved more too.

- ew okay i don’t even want to think about it but i know i can’t discuss rott without talking about the mpreg thing. seriously, what the fuck was that? at first, i thought it was going to be a joke. i thought aja and krel were gonna wind steve up and see how far they could go with making him think he was pregnant just for a little bit of comic relief. but then he was actually pregnant. and so i laughed, because even though it was dumb it was kind of funny. weird and unexpected, but kind of funny. but by the time the movie was over it just didn’t sit right with me. looking past the fact that it was just more of them making steve’s character into a joke, i couldn’t see the logic in giving so much time to that subplot when other characters (claire, douxie) and other relationships (claire and douxie’s friendship) were sidelined. maybe if he had gotten a whole season the mpreg thing could have been included as comic relief or whatever, but with such limited time i really don’t see the point of wasting so much time on something so pointless.

- speaking of steve, i need to talk about creepslayerz... they really deserved more :( like i get that eli literally helped steve through child birth and then named one after him which was lowkey adorable but i loved their friendship so much and i was really hoping to see more of them. i was kind of hoping they’d get to do more as well. look i gave up on hopes of a romance long ago (even though i still really wished it would happen) but i hoped that at least we’d see some more of their friendship.

* by this point my brain has decided to forget absolutely every point i wanted to make... cue the brain fog (we don’t like her) and allow me to take a moment to read back and try to find my point again *

- i don’t think i can stress enough how much i loved the visuals in this movie. holy fucking shit it was just phenomenal. like wow. the art was absolutely fantastic and i’m really hoping for another the art of... book because i love the art of trollhunters and i feel that they could do with updating it to include the newer stuff. but yep, the animation quality was incredible and i don’t have a bad thing to say about it because just wow.

- speaking of art... a moment of appreciation for character designs. just wow wow wow. we love to see such intricately designed villains. we love to see growth in our other much loved characters. and the locations too? fantastic. beautiful. amazing. loved it.

- another moment of appreciation for jim. the hair. the scars. the injuries. the winter jacket. the fact that he looked a little older.... loved it. loved it, loved it, loved it. i cannot wait to spend hours pouring over reference pictures to draw them all.

- and claire... her armor being weathered and worn. her eyes!! her hair looked great as always. i just love her...

- nari nari nari... my goodness, her magic is so beautiful. i wish we got to see more.

- also, the jlaire moments were very cute. their kisses? so soft. they literally love each other so much. i adore them.

- what happened to the babies from the darklands btw? is not enrique just chilling in the lake’s house with a ton of babies?

- barbara deserved better. i would have liked to see her and strickler happy.

- on that note, why the actual fuck did they think a few explosives would win against magic?? literal ancient magic and these dumbasses were like huh i guess we should blow it up. i’m sorry, what?? y’all are stupid.

* currently trying to think of every possible point that isn’t to do with the ending because i really don’t want to think about that yet *

- the whole thing with archie and charlemagne felt super unnecessary. like usually characters sacrifice themselves and it’s like sad and you can see the reasoning and stuff. but they literally could have gotten out. i really did not vibe with that. it felt like they just did that to leave douxie with no one.

- that trollmarket was beautiful though.

- speaking of trollmarket... they really restored the heartstone just like that? are you joking? i was not impressed at all. the heartstone was dead and gone, could not be destroyed. did they just forget that? half the shit in wizards wouldn’t have happened if the heartstone could have been restored. very pissed off by that. it was dead, that was it.

- okay back to jim... love that he pulled the sword from the stone. it was cute that it was a group effort, kinda would have preferred if it was just him but that’s just a me thing. and maybe me and my daylight tattoo are biased here, but excalibur is not half as pretty as daylight.

- not gonna lie, jim yelling come on trollhunters! kinda got me. i was very emotional watching this.

- i think the most in character jim moment of the whole movie was when he dropped excalibur, he didn’t have his armor, he was all alone and he decided to make a fist and fight the wizard/god with literally no weapon or means of defence. i don’t think y’all understand how much i love this dumb self sacrificing selfless boy. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, he is literally one of my most favourite characters of all time. i love him with all my heart.

- the armor!! wow wow wow. that was a fucking cool scene. beautiful.

- jim getting stabbed or whatever with that fucking spear thing nearly killed me.

- okay here goes... toby. my sweet toby. jim and toby’s friendship is one of my absolute favourites ever. my goodness. and toby getting in the van and going to save jim was incredible and such a toby thing to do. of course he would think of doing that.

- but like seriously... claire and douxie are so fucking powerful and they were both just like lol i guess we can’t do anything to help jim? i’m sorry what?? don’t tell me that claire wouldn’t go full on black and purple eyes and get herself up their to him. i just... i’m so bothered by the fact that they were sidelined y’all :|

- also, do not seriously try to tell me that aaarrrgghh!!! would let toby go on his own. he would have went with him. he would have followed him.

- literally as jim was falling the first thing that went through my mind was oh aaarrrgghh!!! is gonna run up and catch him.

- and while we’re on the topic of aaarrrgghh!!! why tf did they have such a build up that something was going to happen to either him or blinky for literally no reason? wtf

- aaarrrgghh!!! would not have let toby go alone!!! if he had been there, he would have protected toby, he would have saved him and none of that mess of an ending would have happened.

* ugh here’s the bit i was dreading... the ending *

- first off, i am choosing to ignore it.

- time stone? really? we’re... we’re gonna do this? literally one of the most original things i have ever watched is now - at the literal last possible minute - rip off another movie?? really?? whyyyy???

- i literally cannot express how much i hated it. it was so fucking unnecessary.

- he didn’t need to go back that far!!!

- i’m actually trying to block this out but i suppose i have to at least touch on it. jim would never ever put that burden on to toby. he just wouldn’t. before even looking at all of the other issues with toby getting the amulet, i need to say that. it just wouldn’t happen. he struggled so much with being the trollhunter, he wouldn’t put that on toby.

- also toby literally never wanted to be the trollhunter?? he never wanted the amulet? he wanted to be a duke and have his war hammer and go on adventures with his best friend and his wingman and eat mexican food.

- okay so um i guess they all just forgot about unbecoming? cool cool cool.

- seriously though, was it not established many times that jim literally had to be trollhunter? and if he wasn’t it would be draal and everything would go to shit? did they just forget about that??

- having jim just decide to give toby the amulet literally takes away from the entire meaning behind jim getting the amulet and becoming the trollhunter. the amulet chose jim. merlin chose him. out of all of the creatures in the world, it had to be jim. he can’t just give that to toby!!

- and as much as i love toby, he would not last a day as trollhunter.

- and that’s not even beginning to mention all that jim erased by not becoming trollhunter. no father son relationship between him and blinky. they didn’t stop steve from picking on eli so no steve redemption and no creepslayerz. is he just going to allow enrique to be taken? toby will not have the same incentive to go into the darklands to save him if that’s the case. strickler will not show any sort of sentiment towards toby either. and then the big one...

- IS THAT FUCKER REALLY GOING TO ALLOW CLAIRE TO NOT GET HER POWERS??? WHAT???

- if jim isn’t trollhunter and the whole thing with enrique doesn’t happen then claire will never get her shadowstaff. let’s be real, strickler probably wouldn’t even need angor rot with toby as trollhunter. somehow i can’t see him making it that far...

- if claire doesn’t have her shadow staff then the whole thing with morgana won’t happen. she won’t destroy the shadow staff and then she will never develop her powers. would jim really rob her of that?

- okay i can’t do anymore, it’s too much for me now...

- i touched on this already in a separate post but i gotta say it again... i did not enjoy the destiny is a gift bit at the end. first of all, jim having toby find the amulet literally takes the meaning of that speech and his destiny away instanty. and second, i just could not stand hearing emile hirsch say the words that belonged to anton yelchin. it was just uncomfortable.

aaand i think i’m done. maybe i’ll have more later but i have a headache now from all of this.

#rott #trollhunters #tales of arcadia #rott spoilers #jim lake jr #claire nuñez #toby domzalski #blinky #aaarrrgh #wizards #toa #douxie #rise of the titans #trollhunters spoilers #trollhunters rise of the titans

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amazing-spiderling · 2 years

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Mattfoggy for the ship ask game ♡

Oh I definitely ship it 1. What made you ship it?

Believe it or not I watched the whole the Daredevil series as it came out and was like "WOW! GREAT TV!" and went about my business??? I was like "yeah that Matt Murdock is a good egg" but had no interest in doing like fandom stuff, but I was elbow deep in Spider-Man fandom at the time. In fact I was so deep in spiders that I was doing a Spider-Man podcast with a buddy, and we happened to do an episode about Spider-Man and his adventures with Daredevil, which got me reading several team up comics, including "The Death of Jean deWolf" and it blew my face off. At that moment in time I was feeling kind of underwhelmed with the Spider-Man/Deadpool series because it kept hinting at these deeper emotional themes and then chickening out, but the Jean deWolf story just *went* for it. We didn't just get a dark and hurting Spidey, we got a Matt Murdock questioning whether he was too unaffected by the course of events and the two characters realizing they had something to learn from one another and it just HIT.

After that, I decided to check out some of the Daredevil comic proper and ended up snagging a few random comics (Man Without Fear, whatever was out of the Zdarsky run and the Waid run) and the Waid run just scooped up my heart like a little football and ran for the end zone. HERE was a relationship between Matt and Foggy that had what I was looking for. Not just squishy feelings, but anger, confusion, true protectiveness and support and sacrifice and disappointment and love love love.

After reading the 2011 and 2014 run I went back and revisited the show, this time with my shipping goggles firmly in place and it was a wonderful experience. Not long after I found some people online to share fandom and ship love with and made myself quite comfortable, so I imagine I'll be here for a while. <3

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

I mean, I'm a sucker for a friends to lovers situation, and my last two major OTPs also involved characters who were working together in one form or another to further an idealistic goal. I think what I love most of all about these two is their capability for quiet intimacy. When someone uses the phrase "old married couple" I think our minds automatically turn to petty bickering, and while there is certainly plenty of that between these two, I think the notion applies to them in a softer way. A "knows your order at the restaurants we go to" and "picks up your preferred brand of shampoo because they noticed you were running low" kind of familiarity. Relationships of course, have their big moments, their swell of the orchestra, confession in the rain, scaling a mountain to save your soul glimpses into the depth of each other's emotions- but such things burn bright and burn out without the quiet soft moments to sustain them. I think it's this capability that helps to strengthen the bond between these two (in whatever capacity a reader wants to enjoy their relationship, honestly), but it allows for them to have a meaningful impact on each other in a slow, long lasting way. It isn't so much about the two of them meeting and one saving the other or sweeping them off their feet (okay, maybe there's a little bit of that) so much as it is about two people growing together over time, and both becoming stronger, becoming *better* for it. What could be a greater sign of love?

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I think I've said this before, but I think it's the only unpopular opinion I have... I don't want MattFoggy to become canon in main continuity.

That has absolutely nothing to do with them as characters and everything to do with comic book meta. I mean, there *are* stable couples in comic books, but I think a lot of them are introduced where that was always how they were conceptualized (and in the case of queer couples, they can often involve newer or less well known characters). But when it comes to main characters? Comic book title holders? Their romantic relationships are constantly in flux. Think of Peter and Mary Jane, who have been together for literal decades off and on, and MJ is rarely if ever given space to exist as anything other than Peter's girlfriend-sometimes-wife-just-another-thing-he-has-to-worry-about-balancing. Even with married couples like Reed and Sue, they are put though some frankly toxic situations just to make their relationship interesting on the page.

And while we might argue that hey, Peter and MJ are destined to be, they find each other in almost every universe, I can't imagine they would do that for Matt and Foggy. It's just... not a path to happiness in comic books, because comic books last for ages and ages and the status quo is always changing, and a quick way to do that is to break characters up and make them miserable. (I mean, Matt and Foggy break up as friends all the time, but if they did it as a romantic couple I just don't think Marvel would put them back together again. It would just go down as a failed experiment.)

Now, if someone wanted to write a limited or side series (like Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows) or hell, even make them a canon couple in one of the other established universes (cough Earth-65) that would be great. Since those universes/storylines aren't constantly being dragged into the spotlight (and in the case of Spider-Gwen, Matt and Foggy are not the main characters) there is less of need to constantly change things for the sake of changing things. If Gwen tried to thwart what she clearly thought was some kind of secret plot by Murderdock and DA Nelson only to find out they were having a small but tasteful wedding ceremony? Fantastic. And there would be literally no reason for Marvel to ever change that down the line. Why bother? They're not on the page enough for it to need to change, and we the fans can have as much fun as we want with it. Likewise a RYV style side series would just accept the pairing as fact and then build a story around that established parameter. The whole point would be that this one facet of the relationship is different, and it is permanent, so what else can the writing team drum up to create drama.

I don't imagine any of that is going to happen any time soon, of course. Marvel probably doesn't have the guts to do it, and whatever, that's fine. I just don't want to give naysayers the ability to rain on my parade by saying, "they got together and it was a trainwreck" after the fact.

#mattfoggy #thank you for the ask #sorry this got long #i just have a lot of feelings #*she doesn't even go here*

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lesbianakaashi · 3 years

Text

The Forgotten Shounen: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

This is not a “Why you should watch/read khr” or anything like that. This is just me going into the deep dive and throwing my findings at you. I’m making this because khr used to be my favourite series when I was 15 (I had plushees, posters, tradingcards, the art book etc) and now as an adult I constantly find myself baffled at how unknow it seems to be.

1. Okay first what is khr?

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! or just Reborn! is a series by Akira Amano which was published in Weekly Shounen Jump from 2004 to 2012 (with 42 volumes) and got an anime adaption which run from 2006 to 2010 on Tv Tokyo (with 202 episodes and one OVA).

2. What’s it about?

Khr is a parody of the italian mafia and plays in a world where the mafia is heavily influencial. The protagonist is the japanese middle schooler Sawada Tsunayoshi who is known as “No good Tsuna” because of his failing grades, general weak and cowardly personality and weak physics.

He becomes aware of the mafia world when a 2 year old baby called Reborn arrives at his house claiming to be the greatest hitman and declaring himself his home tutor. Reborn was send by the 9th head of the Vongola famiglia who is ready to retire and looking for a new heir. Which of course, is supposed to be Tsuna and now it's Reborns job to shape him into a worthy sucessor.

Tsuna rejects the violence of the mafia world and refuses the position as the 10th. Thanks to Reborn and his general craziness Tsuna meets different people and starts to make real friendships. Reborn wants 6 of those friends to be Tsuna's future guardians, basically a group of people which will be closest to him in the vongola famiglia. Tsuna might have no interest in those positions but the friendships he builds with them become really precious to him.

Reborns arrivial also brings in the enemies of the Vongola family which leads to Tsuna being forced to engage in battles. Generally Tsuna openly avoids fights and prefers to run away but will put himself in danger for his friends' sake or because of something Reborn did.

Through out the series Tsuna matures and gains strenght but he never becomes a power fantasy. He's just a guy with many flaws who grows through the human connections he makes.

Personally I think the relationship between Reborn and Tsuna is one of the best student teacher reltaionships in all of manga only topped by Mob and Reigen from Mob Psycho 100. Especially the last arc really underlines their unique relationship to me.

Furthermore, khr offers a new and unique battle system: The flames. I'm not gonna go into to too much detail but the general idea is that one fights with their dying will flame which basically turns off your the savety switch so you can fight with everything you have. The flames are seperated into different categories such as: sky, storm, mist, rain, sun, lightning and cloud and have different attributes asigned to each one. Tsuna's use of the sky flame and his transformation when using it is still one of my favourite shounen transformations to this day.

3. What happened?

The series did really well and then not so well over the course of its serialisation. After the manga got an anime adaption it increased in populairty and video games, light novels, and other products such as CDs were created based on the series. Reborn is one of the best selling series of Weekly Shōnen Jump and has sold around 30 Million volumes overall. It was and still is very popular in Japan but rather unknown in the west.

According to the article "The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump: A Look at the Circulation of Weekly Jump" khr was the 10th bestselling series in Weekly Shōnen Jump, with a total of 7 million copies sold in 2007.

This number increasing to 15 milion in 2008. Which placed khr into the 4th best selling series of 2008 in Japan.

Between 2008 and 2010 those sales declined but still kept strong with khr as the 6th top selling manga in 2009, 8th best selling in 2010 and then 24th best selling in 2012.

In November 2014, readers of the Da Vinci magazine voted khr number 17 on a list of Weekly Shōnen Jump's greatest manga series of all time.

After the anime came to an apprupt stop in 2010 for unknown reasons the manga sells took a visible hit. (Apparently the studio wanted to put the anime on halt because they were busy with other projects and give Akira Amano time to develop her story but I couldn't find any source for this claim) Furthermore, the rushed last chapters of the manga in 2012 declined the popularity of the series even more. There's no offical statement as to why the manga was ended in such a way but it's reasonable to assume that Jump either cut it considering the decreasing sales or Akira Amano choose to end it for personal reasons.

Nontheless, Tsuna not being included in Jump Force (a fighting game where you can play as different characters from Jump) in 2019 even tho he made it in earlier Jump Stars games also underlines the decreased interest in the series.

Rumors on a reboot or anime adaption of the last two arcs surface from time to time but are genereally unlikely. Artland the studio which made khr has gone bankrupt around 2015-2016. It might be taken on by another studio but rather uncommen especially with such an old series.

4. Art style

The khr anime ended over 10 years ago and the old art style might not be appealing to newer audiences.

Especailly because the anime adaption follows Akira Amanos old art style which heavily developed within the years. Here a picture comparing characters in the new art style:

A modern anime adaption in the new art style would be aesthetically pleasing. It would probably look similiar to Psycho Pass since Akira Amano did the concept art for this series.

(My personal art student hot take is that both art styles are unique and fun. Up to this day Akira Amano still has my favourite art style and even if the amount folds in the characters clothing is a little extreme I love it dearly.)

5. Criticism

The show is not without flaws and even if I greatly enjoy it it wouldn't be right not to adress them.

Daily Life Arc:

A lot of people view the first 20 to 25 episodes as fillers and quickly lose intererst in the series. This is due to the fact that Akira Amano inteded the series to be a gag manga and focuses the first chapters on world building, character introduction and comical narratives. It's rumored that the decision to develop the story into a battle shounen was made because the sales weren't doing well enough at first. So the first chapters/episodes may seem titidious but are necessary for the story and the development of the characters. The tonal shift from a more gintama like gag manga to a darker battle focused story can also be offputting to some viewers.

Either way a lot of people blame this arc when discussing why khr never got an english dub or didn't end up on Toonami. I've also read that the manga never finished serializing in the north america. However, it finished in other western languages like german and spanish.

Censoring:

The anime censors A LOT. From Gokudera's smoking habit, Yamamoto's whole character arc which deals with heavy themes such as depression and suicidal thoughts. The general bloodiness of the manga was censored and sometimes whole chapters and characters were left out even if those were important to the devolopment of others.

Filler episodes:

Out of the 202 episodes the anime has around 29 filler episodes which makes roughly 14 %.

Sexism:

Even if Reborn was written by a woman most female characters are rather flat and their storylines often tied to a male character in one way or another.

Genereal things:

Khr, like many other long running series, is sometimes criticised for a lack of world building or unpopular narrative choices.

6. Hope?

Khr isn't exactly dead. As stated before the series is still very popular in Japan and still gets new merch pretty regulary. There are also petitions floating around for a reboot or a new anime season but those never get a lot of traction. Furthermore #Reborn2期アニメ化 (#Reborn2ndAnimation) used to get some traction on twitter not too long ago. Last year the Anime News Network did a poll on which anime the readers would like to see a rebooot of and khr placed second.

Either way here's a collection of recent khr things I could find.

- In 2018 a new bluray set was released in north america

- The khr stage play reached yet another new season

- A mobile game was released last year

- Currently ongoing anime cafe event called "Concerto di Vongola"

- Last month there was an event with the former VAs and stage play actors where they discussed their favourite khr episodes.

- There has been an increase in blind reacts to the openings on youtube which might bring in a new fan base. The biggest one I could find had around 90k views and was made in 2019. On this note check out the soundtrack. The first openeing Drawing Days by SPLAY still makes me go insane (but I'm biased of course)

There also renewed hope for a new season/reboot because Shaman King, Inuyasha and Bleach got anounced for new seasons after a long hiatus. It's important to keep in mind that the circumstances for those series are differnt tho. For example bleachs new anime is often tied to the immense success of the gatcha game.

7. Conclusion

Khr is a series which used to be a flagship for Weekly Shounen Jump and is deeply beloved by it's fans, especially in Japan. It influenced other shounen series like bnha. It would be nice to see it gaining a bigger fanbase in the west :)

#khr #khr meta #anime analysis #shounen jump #katekyo hitman reborn #mirytalks #long post #manga

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