#araki likes him i think because he's the only kind of guy who would arm wrestle cthulhu

[thehappinessmachine]

i think the reason why araki keeps returning to rohan kishibe time and time again is because he’s sincerely just. an incredibly fun character. he’s not some morally good guy here to save the day, he’s a magnificent bastard with an incredibly versatile power who nevertheless is also the type of nosy shit who gets himself into trouble with things beyond his comprehension. and yet...and YET he also does the Right Thing and looks out for people in his own way, and if there’s someone you want on your side who will step up to an eldritch horror and be like “you know what? you’re NOTHING compared to me” and actually somehow get out of that experience unscathed (save for his hurt pride), rohan kishibe is, surprisingly, your man

#friday and her nonsense #i just love thinking about him so much he's SO much #he's a weirdo he's an asshole he ignored the apocalypse and made all his drawing deadlines #araki likes him i think because he's the only kind of guy who would arm wrestle cthulhu #and then complain that cthulhu wasn't aesthetically pleasing enough #(rohan kishibe looking at a ufo) BAD DESIGN!!! I COULD DO BETTER BINCH

[backtobackbakubabe]

I am the Alpha Now Part 20

Bakugo x Reader

Words : 4082

Masterlist

Reader is from America and somewhat of a delinquent with an alpha quirk that allows her to turn into a wolf as well as bond with dogs. She is sent to UA to straighten out her attitude. She ends up in a power struggle with none other than our favorite hot head. Words in Italics are words said telepathically.

**********************************************************************

Your phone was blowing up. Notification after notification until finally you heard your boyfriend groan, “Check your phone already dumbass.”

You took a deep breath and cracked your eyes open. Your head was on Bakugo’s chest and you weren’t really in the mood to move. Your phone had other ideas though as it continued to buzz on the nightstand. You reluctantly pulled away from your boyfriend and rolled over to grab your phone. Bakugo was quick to throw his arm back around you and hug you from behind, peppering kisses on your shoulders.

You grabbed your phone and was alarmed to see that you had dozens of notifications amongst several apps. Your Facebook, your Twitter, your Instagram, hell even your long-forgotten Tumblr page had alerts. Nothing however compared to your overflowing text messages.

The first one you opened was from a friend back home that you hadn’t even spoken too since moving to Japan. No words, no context. Just a link to a news article. You clicked it and felt your blood turn cold. In front of you was a picture of you covered in blood, alpha teeth bared, claws out, looking absolutely feral.

Bakugo felt you tense up and put his chin on you shoulder pulling you closer to him, “What’s up? Who’s been bugging you all morning?”

You immediately hid your phone from his view. “He did it…. Dabi, he- he leaked my secrets all over the internet.” You knew there was no point in hiding it. He would be able to look it up. You were sure people were probably sending him the same links, he just values his sleep more than people and his phone was on do not disturb. You handed him your phone and got up to go to the bathroom.

At first, he grabbed your wrist, but quickly realized you needed space, so he let you go.

You stared at yourself in the mirror as your skin began to heat up. Sure, you graduated from UA but there was no way you’d be a hero now. What about Katsuki? Would you hurt his reputation by dating him? Would you ruin his plans of being the number one hero? Could you stay here? In this house full of heroes?

Your instincts were screaming for you to run. To get the hell out of here. But you couldn’t. You refused to leave your pack again, and that included Katsuki. Even if you had to go into hiding, you would never cut yourself off from him again.

You splashed some cold water in your face and counted in your head until your breathing became regular again. It had taken you all the way to thirty-five.

You walked back out into the room to find Bakugo sitting up with his head in his hands. Your phone was on the floor in front of him. You had needed your space, now you were going to give him his. He needed to be able to process this without you clinging to him.

You picked up your phone and saw that he hadn’t even made it through the whole article. He stopped when he got to a still shot from a video of you tearing a man’s arm off. You cringed and exited the article before you could see more. You didn’t need to read it, you were there, you know how it went. You were sure they spun it in some awful way to make it even worse, but at the end of the day you had done terrible things. So, they were allowed to say whatever they wanted.

You pulled open a new tab and started to look at flights back home. America was a little more lenient with vigilante behavior and while they still hold their heroes to the ridiculously high standard of not killing villains… they also tended to look the other way when it happened. It was a broken system that you had wanted nothing to do with, but now it might your only option.

You were pulled from your thoughts when you felt two arms circle your middle and pull you down until you sitting in Bakugo’s lap. “I already knew about some of this stuff… Mercy told me… but having to see it… Shit y/n…”

You were glad he couldn’t see your face because you were in absolute agony. You had disappointed him. The only person to ever give a fuck about you. And it hurt.

He could feel your anguish and pulled you tighter. “Hey, I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. Your past is your past. You can’t run from it forever. You have to face it head on and I’ll be right there to help you do it.”

Your hand found his and intertwined your fingers. “You’re not disgusted with me?”

“What? No, of course not. I’m disgusted with the people who did this to you. Who hurt you and pushed you until you had no other choice but to do what you did. I’m disgusted with your parents for not taking better care of you. I’m disgusted with the fact that the system was so broken that it took a seventeen-year-old girl putting herself in danger over and over again to fix it. I’m disgusted that there was no one there to help you.” You could feel so much stress begin to seep out of you as you slowly let yourself melt into him. “You don’t have to do it alone anymore. I know you have Mercy, but now you also have me.”

Your tender moment was interrupted by a banging on your door “Y/N ARE YOU OKAY! YOUR EMOTIONS ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE! LET ME IN!”

You untangled yourself from Bakugo and walked over to open the door. You were surprised to find that Mercy wasn’t alone. Kirishima was there too with a sad look on his face. “So uh… I’m assuming you know… I’ve been sitting out here for an hour trying to decide if I should wake you guys up.” He rubbed his neck, “I know it’s such a stupid question, but… are you okay?”

You could see the hurt in his eyes and while you didn’t want to see him sad, it was comforting to know that he still cared about you after learning about you. You reached for him and gave him a hug, “I’m obviously not okay right now, but it means the world that you care. Thank you.”

He gave you a quick squeeze. “So, should I go check on him? Or does he need a minute?”

You nodded towards Bakugo, “I think he’d appreciate the company. Let him know I’m taking Mercy for a walk, yeah?”

“You know he’s not going to like you leaving the house without him.”

You shrugged, “I’m not going far. He’ll be able to feel me through the bond if he gets nervous.”

You looked to Mercy, “Alright let’s go. I have a feeling I have a lecture coming.”

“Damn straight you do.”

The two of you left the house and walked in silence for a few minutes before Mercy stopped, “I’m very mad at you.”

You sighed. You knew this was coming. As much as you had wanted to immediately find Mercy when you came back, you were also trying to avoid this. You had failed him as an Alpha and now you had to face him. “I know. I fucked up. But I knew I had to do this alone. I had originally intended to only meet up with them. Kick some ass and come home… It obviously got a little out of control.”

He huffed in annoyance, “Obviously… But I understand why you cut off Bakugo’s bond. But why mine? If you could have just told me what you were doing, I could have helped you.”

You took a seat on a low wall and patted the top of Mercy’s head. “Because as much as I know you say you would listen to me, I know Bakugo would convince you to help him find me. He’s persuasive like that.”

Mercy growled, not liking your answer. “Okay fine… but just so you know. We know you lied. It doesn’t matter how well you think you hid it. We know. There are no lies between pack members. He’s letting you get away with it, but I’m not.”

You had a feeling he knew, but the idiot was way better at keeping secrets than you were. “Will it make you feel better if I tell you?” Mercy nodded enthusiastically. “Okay, but you can’t tell Bakugo. He’ll freak out.”

So, you told Mercy everything. Every single detail. He was fascinated at the progress you had made in the last few days. “You know Bakugo’s going to get suspicious when you can all of the sudden sustain alpha mode without shifting. Or when you can basically go feral without having to push past your limit.”

“Yeah well… we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, I think more importantly we need to worry about Dabi. He’s obviously pissed I left. Shigaraki was supposed to be coming back in the next few days. He’s gonna be pissed I left. Then both of them are probably going to try and kill me.”

“Glad to know you know me so well y/n… although I’d probably wait until after you killed shit-araki before killing you.” Mercy immediately stepped between you and Dabi and bared his teeth. “You going to call Cujo off or do you want me to cremate him in front of you.”

You could feel rage coursing through you. “You fucking ASSHOLE! I did everything you said. I didn’t tell anyone about your plans and you still fucked me over! You ruined my life! WHY?!”

You swear you say something similar to regret pass over his face before he quickly schooled his expression. “You still have a job to do. Didn’t you get my text last night?”

You narrowed your eyes, “Sorry I was too busy sleeping off the torture you put me through.” You held your phone screen up so he could see, “Also, I don’t know if you noticed but there’s currently all kinds of news circulating about me right now, so, I kinda have a lot of texts to go through.”

Dabi used his finger to scroll down to his message and clicked it. “Well read it now.”

Your eyes widened, “You don’t mean… He’s back now?”

“Not only is he back, but he’s here… at your house... waiting for you.”

In seconds you had shifted and were sprinting back towards the house. You hadn’t gone far, it would only take you a few seconds to get back in wolf form.

You had to be smart about this. You couldn’t go in full force. You had to believe that Kiri and Katsuki were still alive. They were tough. If Shigaraki was as smart as everyone says he is, he’d know to keep them alive as a bargaining chip.

You skidded to a stop outside of the house. “NO! Get out of here! We can handle it. RUN!” He had to have known that wasn’t going to happen. You knew he’d be pissed but you forced your mind into his and looked through his eyes.

Kirishima was passed out on the ground, tied up but otherwise unharmed. Shigaraki was sitting in a chair next to him with his hand wrapped around Katsuki’s wrist, all but the pinky. You focused really hard so you could hear. “Tell her to come back to the house, or you can say goodbye to your hands. I’m sure you heard what I did to Overhaul.” You felt Mercy’s presence as he made his way towards the back door, waiting for the signal. You two had played this game dozens of times. Let the villain think they had you, just for Mercy to take them out.

Katsuki spit blood on to the floor. “You could take my whole arm and it wouldn’t make me do shit.”

Shigaraki cackled, “Well if you insist.”

Your eyes glowed as you kicked the door open. “You want me? Here I am. Now let him go. NOW!”

You put as much Alpha authority in your voice to make him drop Katsuki’s hand. His eyebrows shot up before he showed you his disgusting smile. “Wow that quirk really is something.” He ran a hand through Bakugo’s hair and you could see a few hairs disintegrate under his touch. You growled and your eyes glowed even brighter. “It seems you aren’t going to come quietly…” He gestured to someone behind you. “Try and keep our friend company here, while y/n and I have a little… chat.”

“Sure thing boss.” Dabi bumped your shoulder as he passed you. Making his way over to take his place behind Bakugo.

“Y/n! Stop being so stupid. Just go. I’ll be fine. PLEASE!” You could hear the desperation in his voice even through the bond, but you couldn’t react.

“Mercy is out back. As soon as I leave with Shigaraki, meet up with him and have him fill you in on what’s going on. Don’t fight me on this, I know what ‘m doing.” Dabi smirked at you, knowing you were plotting inside the bond. “Dabi, if you so much as touch him. I will kick your ass… again… and this time I won’t stop until you’re dead.”

Shigaraki squealed in delight, “Oh I love her already. Come on let’s go somewhere a little more private for… negotiations hm?”

You silently followed him through the kitchen and into the biggest garage you had ever seen. It had obviously been modified to fit all of the guys cars as well as a bunch of hero tech and equipment. The floor looked like it had some kind of mat over half of it, that would allow the heroes to spar. Man, Endeavour thought of everything. It was thankfully empty at the moment. You were going to need all the space you could get.

“Look I’m going to get straight to the point. I’m sure there’s a top of the line security system here and I know it won’t be long before the other two hero’s along with Endeavor show up and I’m not in the mood for that headache. So, you have two options and only two minutes to make your choice.” He started to pace in front of you, “Option A. Join us and we’ll put a strict do not touch order on your precious little boyfriend. You can live your life with us knowing no villain would be stupid enough to hurt him. Option B. You decide to fight me right now and we kill everyone you have ever known. But, of course we’ll leave him for last. We’ll burn and melt him little piece by little piece right in front of you. It’ll be the slowest, most agonizing death that could truly ever exist.”

He pushed a button on his watch. “Well there are your options, your time starts now.”

You heard a loud bang in the other room. A part of you was screaming for option A. To just let them take you and protect Katsuki. Did you have enough confidence that you could win this fight. Could you risk it.

“DABI SAID TO DO IT NOW! BEFORE BACKUP GETS HERE! VILLAINS AND HEROES ARE BOTH ON THE WAY. YOU NEED TO DO IT NOW!” Mercy was talking to Dabi?

“Mercy where’s Bakugo?”

“He’s fighting with Dabi right now. I told him everything, but now he’s mad at Dabi for hurting you. He won’t calm down. I’m trying to break it up. Dabi’s trying to convince him you can do it alone. He’s trying really hard to get to you right now. I don’t know if we can hold him much longer without hurting him. Please hurry.”

Shigaraki’s watch dinged, “Ok, time’s up, what’s it going to be?”

His eyes barely had time to come up from his watch before you were tackling him in wolf form. Digging your teeth into his shoulder, claws ripping at his side.

He screamed out and placed both hands on your shoulders. You immediately smelled the melting fur and skin. You pushed through it for a few more moments before letting go and jumping back. You needed to shift back to human. You needed to heal faster.

You shifted but your eyes continued to glow. Your skin started to stitch itself back together, but you were alarmed to see it was much slower than with Dabi’s quirk.

You lunged at him with your claws out and raked them across his face. And that’s how you started what felt like the longest fight of your life. A constant dance of you lunging in and him trying to grab you. He was better at hand to hand combat then you were lead to believe.

At one point you dove to the ground to avoid him. He lurked over you and you grabbed a metal pipe and swung at him. He grabbed it easily and melted one end before yanking it from your grip. He pulled it straight in the air before bringing it down hard. You moved you head out of the way at last second and the pipe lodged itself into the soft sparing mat on the floor. You rolled out of the way and jumped back to your feet.

You were ready to lunge again when you heard the door to the garage slam open.

You turned towards the noise, “KATSUKI NO!”

That’s all it took. That small distraction left a window for Shigaraki to get his hands on you.

Bakugo sprinted towards you but stopped short when he saw was happening, “That’s right. Come any closer and she’s as good as dead.” Both his arms were wrapped around you. One hand on your shoulder the other on your hip. If he hadn’t been trying to kill you it would look like a lover’s embrace.

You took in a deep breath and pushed your quirk as hard as you could. You’re healing was desperately trying to keep up with him. But it seemed that even with all of the extra training it still wasn’t a match. If you kept up like this he would eventually win.

Bakugo reached a hand out, desperate to help. To do something.

“No Katsuki. Do nothing.” You watched as he fell to his knees helpless to your alpha commands. You know you promised you would never do that to him. But you knew the consequences of you losing this fight. You couldn’t let Shigaraki get his hands on him.

He was right in front of you, the only thing between you was the pipe that was still in the ground. The melted side looked pretty sharp. You knew what you had to do.

Shigaraki continued to try and disintegrate you while you continued to try and heal yourself. It was painful and disorienting and you could feel yourself slipping under. You had to do it now. “Don’t watch Katsuki.” Katsuki lowered his head to floor in front of you. “I love you.”

“Y/N NO!!!!! PLEASE!”

You took a step towards the pipe. Shigaraki thinking you were trying to get away pulled you closer to him. Good.

You threw yourself onto the pipe. Taking him with you.

You had thought it would hurt, but if anything… you were numb. You felt Shigaraki’s arms go limp. At least you could die knowing you took the bastard with you.

******* Bakugo’s POV******

He couldn’t move. Your command wouldn’t allow it. His eyes glued to the floor. He heard the most disgusting sound of something cutting through flesh and his heart sank. He watched as blood started to pool around the metal pipe. But he still couldn’t move. And only when he realized that it wasn’t your command holding him anymore, it was his own fear did he really understand. You were gone. Your bond was gone.

This was what Mercy meant. Before it was like a closed door when you cut him off, but now it’s just… gone. Like a vacuum, had come and sucked out part of him. “No, no, no, no, NO!” His fist pounded the ground over and over again until they were bloody. Tears were streaming down his face.

He had only had you back for a few hours. You had made plans. You were supposed to live here with him. You were going to work together. He already had a ring picked out. You were supposed to be it for him. How did he let this happen? He trained his whole life to be a hero, and he couldn’t even save you.

He could feel the utter terror coming from Mercy right before it disappeared altogether. Without you there was no bond for him and Mercy. A loud howl ripped from the other room as Mercy began to frantically paw at the closed door to the garage. He was being consumed by a cold emptiness. The blood was almost touching him now, but he remained frozen to the spot. Moving would mean he’d have to see you, and there was nothing in the world that could prepare him for that.

The world was now rid of Shigaraki, but at what cost? He knew it was incredibly selfish, but he’d take Shigaraki wreaking havoc on Japan every day for the rest of his life, if he could just be able to hold you one more time. If he could tell you he loved you one more time.

A broken sob left his lips as he realized those were your last words before you died, ‘I love you’ and he hadn’t even said it back.

His head still hung with tears dripping from his nose when a hand came out to cup his cheek.

His eyes snapped up to see it was yours. When his eyes met yours, it was like he was hit with a truck as the bond suddenly reopened. “Shit, shit, y/n. God please don’t die. Stay with me.”

You gripped his hand, “Please… help me… off this fucking pipe.”

He scrambled to stand up. Pulling Shigaraki off first who he threw like a limp doll off to the side. He then gently eased you off, wincing at the awful sounds you made while he did. Your eyes continued to glow as he eased you into his lap. He looked at the hole in your stomach and sighed in relief when he saw it was slowly shrinking.

He nudged your forehead with his nose, “Hey don’t you dare fall asleep until I see that fucking hole close up.” He rocked you back and forth just kissing your face and running his hand through your hair.

At some point Dabi came in looking busted after a few rounds with Bakugo. Without saying anything he walked over to his former boss and burnt him to ashes before doing the same thing to the pipe.

He swept up he evidence and dumped it into a trash bag. “Get her cleaned up before the idiots show up. I’ll tell the league Shigaraki never showed. You tell the heroes that you fought him off and he got away with critical injuries.” He threw the bag over his shoulder as if he was Santa Clause and not a homicidal maniac.

“I will never forgive you for this. For kidnapping her. For torturing her. For dragging her into this. And especially not for putting her business out these for everyone to know. For hurting her future.” Bakugo held you tighter as if to confirm you were still there, “I don’t care what side you’re on. The next time I see you… your dead.”

Dabi hovered by the door, “Don’t worry, I’ve already been dead a long time. I won’t bother her anymore. You don’t have to worry about me…” He took a step closer to the door but looked back one more time. “I know you don’t owe me shit… but when she wakes up… can you tell her I’m sorry.”

Before Bakugo could answer the sound of the front door sounded as it slammed open followed by the voices of Todoroki, Deku, Endeavor, and Hawks. When Bakugo looked back Dabi was gone.

Mercy lead the heroes to the garage. There Bakugo told them a modified version of the truth. The entire time Hawks’ sad knowing eyes never left your limp and bloody body.

*************************

Tags : @tspice283 , @realityisoftendisapointing , @imbi-101 , @thoughtfulpandazine2, @hotarumorikawa , @huh-iwasntpayingattention , @starfishlovingbnha , @weebnumber3622 , @mixedfeeelings , @munchmunch01 , @inumorph@xxoperatexx @runrabbitrun3 @insane-without-delirium @yolei94 @let-love-bleeds-red

#bakugo #bakugo katsuki #bakugo x reader #bakugo x y/n #mha bakugou #bhna bakugou #mha #mha x reader #mha imagines #my hero academia

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch.109-113

Hard to believe we’re at the end of this crazy ride.  

Last time, Joseph had defeated Kars, only for Stroheim to order his men to finish Kars off with UV rays.  Stroheim just wanted Kars to hurry up and die faster, and maybe he also wanted credit for the kill, but instead he played right into Kars hands.    After Joseph kicked his ass, Kars put on a Stone Mask he had stowed away somewhere, and he installed the Red Stone of Aja into the Mask.  

I should probably go over that a bit, since it hasn’t been mentioned for a while.   Kars has been perfecting the Stone Mask technology for thousands of years.   It turns humans into vampires, but for his species it unlocks even greater powers.   But Kars hit a wall in his research.   He wanted to design a mask that would make him the ultimate life form, but he lacked the means to power such a mask.   He discovered an answer in the Aja Stone, a mineral that focuses light, but he needed a bigger, more flawless sample of it, and that’s the Stone he’s using right now, the one he captured from Lisa Lisa.  

So instead of killing Kars, Stroheim accidentally made his lifelong ambition come true.   One nice touch I just noticed is that the Mask itself falls apart as soon as it’s finished its task.    I suppose, in theory, someone else could have tried it on and get the same power boost as Kars?  Would it even work on a normal human?  Well, we’ll never find out.   

There’s a couple of ways to interpret this.   One is that Kars’ “Super” Mask was highly experimental, and it must have been untested, since he’d never had Lisa’s stone until now.   So it’s possible that the thing burned itself out after a single use.   The other interpretation is that Kars designed this Mask to self-destruct after the first use, because it was never intended for anyone else but himself.    The whole point of this was to become the Ultimate Life Form, the very pinnacle of all living creatures on Earth.   I think it was implied that Wammu and Esidisi were expecting to share in this power when the time came, but why would Kars have ever allowed for this?   What’s the point of being the greatest and best in the world if you have to share that top spot with two other guys? 

Stroheim realllly wants to believe this is all a big fluke, and that he didn’t just make the bad guy stronger.   The Ripple wound on Kars’ arm is still there, so Stroheim figures he’ll die anyway.    Except Kars doesn’t seem too bothered by his injury.   And then...

Yeah, so Kars not only repairs his injured arm, he reshapes his hand into a squirrel.   Joseph speaks for us all: What the fuck?

For a hot minute, everyone thinks the squirrel he made is kind of cute, until Kars sends it to find another squirrel and kill it.  Then the Kars-squirrel tears a hole through Stroheim and carves a trench in a Nazi soldier from chest to eyeball.   Then it rejoins Kars’ wrist, and turns into a flower, and then a butterfly.   Some Part 5 and 6 pre-references for ya.  

Then the sun comes up.    Wait, the Joseph/Wammu fight happened around midnight, right?    How many hours have these folks been out here?    And it’s February, too, so this had to have been a long night.  Anyway, the sun comes up, so we’re saved, right?   Wrong.  Sunlight doesn’t hurt Kars anymore, thanks to the power he got from his special mask.   So now what are they supposed to do? 

Well, Joseph’s going to use his last resort: running away.    Also, he grabs the Aja Stone, for no apparent reason.    Kars grows a pair of wings to chase him.    He no longer cares about the Hamon users, because they’re no longer a threat to him.   But he wants to kill Joseph personally, both to celebrate his new powers and to avenge the deaths of Wammu and Kars.  

Smokey joins Joseph, which doesn’t make much sense to Joseph, but Smokey wants to tell Joseph about Lisa Lisa being his mother.   Except Joseph’s a little too distracted by the eldritch horror that’s trying to murder him. Read the room, Smokey.

Here’s a helpful diagram of Kars to explain what his deal is now.   Basically, he’s immortal and can regenerate and reshape his whole body, but he had that before, just by being a Pillar Man.   The big upgrade is that he’s no longer weak to sunlight (and by extension, the Ripple), and he can now replicate the traits of any life form on Earth.    He’s faster than cheetahs and has better hearing than bats and so on.   He can go for a full year without eating, and he no longer needs to sleep.    Sex is meaningless to him, because procreation is only important for lower life forms to maintain their species.   Kars has no need for children or bretheren.    “There is but only one summit.”  

Maybe Wammu and Esidisi had understood that truth all along, and they never seriously expected Kars to share this power with them.   They practically worshipped Kars as it was, so maybe they were only doing this for the greater glory of their leader.   

So what does Kars plan to do with all of this power he now has?   The Aja Stone was his only goal before, and that’s done.    He has no enemies to fear, and as Speedwagon observes, there’s no way left to kill him.    This page states that his only purpose now is to create a world to match his own desire, but what is that?   What’s Kars’ vision for the Earth now that he’s reached this point?   

We never really find out, and I suppose that’s why it’s convenient that he decided to start out by killing Joseph.    For all we know, he would have just chilled out and left humanity alone after that, but this way there’s still an immediate threat to deal with.  

Miraculously, Joseph manages to stay ahead of Kars long enough to find the airplane that brought Stroheim here.   You’d think Kars could have caught up to him with all these fancy new powers, but Kars was never in much of a hurry.    He took his time to search for the Aja Stone, and he made it a point to trap Jojo and Lisa rather than risk fighting them fairly.  So even now, when he has such an overwhelming advantage, he seems to be playing things the same way.   He has no weaknesses, so he may as well take his time and stalk Joseph, if only to watch him squirm.

Joseph tries using the plane’s weapons to even the odds, but Kars grows armadillo hide on his wings to protect himself, and he fires the armor at Joseph like shrapnel.   So machinery doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.   

So Joseph just flies south, using the plane’s engines to give himself a comfortable lead.   He’ll run out of fuel in a couple of hours, but Speedwagon calls him on the radio and tells him that they’ll figure out a plan.   Except that Joseph already has his own plan.  There’s a volcanic island off the coast of Italy.  I assume this is Stromboli Island, since Italy has only three active volcanoes, and Mt. Stromboli is the only one on an island.   Anyway, Joseph plans to lure Kars into the volcano, and destroy him with molten lava.    I mean, Kars is still flammable, right?

Speedwagon hates this idea, because he doesn’t see any way for Joseph to pull this off without getting killed in the process, and that sounds way too much like what happened to Joseph’s father and grandfather.  Oh, and his great-grandfather.   I didn’t notice George I up there until just now.   Speedwagon tries to tell Joseph about Lisa being his mom, but Joseph can’t hear him because of all the piranha noises in the plane.    Wait... what?

Yeah, all the feathers that Kars turned into armor and launched into the fuselage?   Well, he’s still controlling those things, and now Kars has turned them into piranhas.   Well, I guess not literal fish, since they’d never survive up here.  The point is that Kars can control every cell in his body and mimic any animal traits he wants, so if he wants to make small bitey creatures to wreck Joseph’s plane, he might as well make them look like piranhas.    ALso he makes an octopus that tears up one of the engines.  

So Joseph bails out, but he’s a sitting duck in that parachute.    Kars calls him a butterfly caught in a web, which is the second time we’ve seen that analogy in Part 2.   Araki just out here telling everyone what Jolyne would be wearing in twelve years. 

But the parachute contains a dummy.    Why did Joseph waste time drawing a face on it?   Because he knew he had to fool Kars’ razor-sharp senses, of course.    Kars probably saw the dummy, and got suspicious, but then he noticed the eyes and mouth, and though “Oh, okay, I guess that’s a real person then.”  

Anyway, this suckers Kars in so that Joseph can crash into him with his plane and they can both go into the volcano together.

But Kars thinks he can tear up the plane before it lands.   Except a robot hand grabs him from behind, and he finds Stroheim stowed away.   Wait, so Stroheim outran Joseph AND Kars and hid in this plane before Joseph took off?   

Anyway, Stroheim manages to get Joseph out of the plane to relative safety, but he crushes his whole lower body in the process.  But it seems to be worth it, because Kars landed smack-dab in the volcano!  Awesome!   Fuck you, Kars, you screwed over Lisa Lisa, and that’s what you get!   He tries to protect himself, but he can’t grow a defense against 1000 degree heat...

... is what I would say, except no, Kars totally does that.   Just when Joseph thinks Kars has succumed to the lava, Kars pops out and slices off Joseph’s left arm with his goofy blade.  

How the fuck did Kars survive?   Well, he couldn’t grow a lava-proof shell, but he could create a porous layer beneath the shell, and use the air inside to insulate the rest of his body from the heat.   That wouldn’t protect him indefinitely, but it was enough to get the drop on Joseph.  

So that’s it then, right?  Not even molten lava can kill Kars, unless you could shove him down in there and keep him still for like ten minutes, and who’s going to pull that off?    Stroheim begins to lose all hope...

Then we get a flashback to Kars’ origin.   Long, long ago, there was a race of subterranean humanoid with long lifespans and an aversion to sunlight.   Prehistoric humans thought of them as gods or demons because of their reclusiveness and power.   Also, they would eat humans and animals, so that probably made them dangerous, too.   

But I don’t think they were nearly as powerful as the Pillar Men we’ve seen in this story.   I say this because the flashback establishes that Kars was the one who discovered the latent power in their brains, and he was the one who invented the Stone Mask technology to harness that latent power.   So it stands to reason that much of what he and the others could do was the result of Stone Mask enhancements.   The problem is that those enhancements increased the amount of blood they needed to consume, and the others in the Clan feared that Kars’ experiments would destroy their whole ecosystem.   So when they tried to stop Kars, he killed them all.   The only survivors were himself, Esidisi, and two young children who grew up to become Wammu and Santana.  

So that story tells you something about what Kars might do with this newfound “ultimate” power.   He didn’t achieve this for the good of his own people, because they’re all dead now, and he wiped most of them out personally.   If he would do that to his own kind, the rest of the Earth would be expendable to him.

Back to the present, Joseph’s not giving up yet.   He tries to use the Ripple one more time, but it doesn’t work.   Worse, Kars counters with his own Ripple.    Because Kars can do that now, you see.    He’s got the powers of all life on Earth, and that includes Ripple users, I suppose.   Worse, Kars’ Hamon power is hundreds of times greater, so he ends up getting badly burned on his right knee.  

So now Joseph’s completely out of tricks, and he starts to accept the inevitable.   Kars decides that the best way to kill Joseph would be to destroy him with his own finisher, Ripple Overdrive.  So he charges up the most powerful Hamon attack he can muster, and just as he’s about to strike...

Joseph impulsively grabs the Red Stone of Aja and uses it to block, kind of like how he stymied Kars back on that cliff in Switerland.   Only this time, Kars doesn’t hold back, and the Hamon attack is amplified.    It bursts through Joseph’s right hand and into the volcano below. 

The narration says that not even Joseph really understood any of this.   He just sort of acted on instinct.   That bothered me once, but now I see that it wasn’t entirely unconscious impulse.   Back in Venice, when Lisa first told Joseph about the Aja Stone, Joseph suggested destroying it to deny Kars his prize. But Lisa said there was a legend that foretold that Kars could never be defeated without the Aja Stone.   And that would at least explain why Joseph picked the thing up back in Switzerland before he fled to Mt. Stromboli.    Maybe it was unconscious action that made him pick up the stone in this fateful moment, but I think it was a more conscious thought that made him take the stone with him in the first place.   On some level, he remembered that legend.  

Okay, so there’s a mega-ultra-Super-Saiyan-5-Ripple that just went into a live volcano.    What good does that do?   Well, it makes the volcano erupt, and it launches Joseph and Kars into the air.    So what?   Kars can fly.    Yeah, he could, but...

You know, Joseph’s lost hand really left an impression on me when I first watched the anime of Part 2, but now that I’ve read the manga, I’ve noticed tons of severed and wounded forearms all through this story, almost as if Araki had been building up to this moment.    I’d make a Part 4 joke, but nah, that’s too easy.   But it wasn’t even that long ago that Wammu lost both of his hands, and then he launched them as Joseph to distract him.    Kars lost his hand before he grew it back and turned it into a squirrel.    Hell, Stroheim launched his robot hand at Kars to distract him for the volcano crash.   And now Joseph’s hand has somehow launched itself into Kars’ throat to distract him again!

I’m assuming that Hamon energy has a lot to do with this.   You’d think Joseph’s hand wouldn’t have survived getting fired up this high, and it shouldn’t be powerful enough or alive enough to bother Kars this much, but it does.   So I’m chalking it up to all that Ripple energy.  It briefly reanimated Joseph’s hand and made it follow Kars up to this altitude, kind of like how Jonathan controlled Wang Chung’s decapitated body at the end of Part 1.

So Joseph taunts Kars about this, and implies that he planned this somehow.    And when Kars pauses to ask if he did plan this, more rocks and stuff from the volcano hit him and send him even higher up into the air.

And Joseph claims that he did plan this entire thing!  That’s bullshit, but he hopes Kars will believe it, if only to make him more frustrated.    Maybe Joseph didn’t plan all this out, but he seems to have deduced what’s happening here.  

Kars has been launched so high into the air, and at such an incredible speed, that he’s achieved escape velocity.    Does Kars even realize what that means?   I mean, he’s super-intelligent, especially now, and he’s been alive for thousands of years, but what could he really know about outer space?    Has he ever even considered it before?  It seems like all of his ambitions involve the Earth, and only the Earth, and everything living upon it.  

As for Joseph, the chunk of rock he’s on does not fly into space.   Instead, it starts to fall back down, and Joseph assumes that he’s probably not going to survive the impact.    Eight hours later, Stroheim makes it back and informs Speedwagon that Joseph must have died in the eruption.   

But Kars isn’t worried at first, because he thinks he has this whole “vacuum of space” thing figured out.  He just takes a page from Wammu’s playbook and makes air jets on his back to expel compressed gas from his body, like the maneuvering thrusts on a spacecraft.  Except that’s not nearly enough to counteract the force of the volcano that sent him up here.  

Yeah, Kars has no idea how space works.  Instinctively, he probably counted on friction to slow him down, except there is no friction in space.   He probably also expected his air jets to push him a little bit at a time, and maybe he could pull in more air as needed, except there is no more air.   Even the air from his body is denied to him, because it just dissipates into the vacuum of space.    Kars talks about the air freezing as it comes out, but I don’t think that’s right.   What’s happening to him is like when you use one of those compressed gas canisters to clean your keyboard.    Release a lot of the gas at once, and the can starts to get cold.   That’s because the liquefied gas left inside the can now has more room, and it begins to boil as it expands.    This draws in heat from the surroundings, which makes the can feel cold to the touch.    That’s what’s happening to Kars here.   All he’s doing it losing all his body heat.   Maybe some of the air really is freezing around him, but I don’t know.   It depends on whether the sunlight is hitting him, I think.

Anyway, the last thing Kars says is “I can’t go back!!!” And that’s what makes this so perfect.   In the anime, we see the Earth recede into the distance as he continues to tumble further and further away. By surviving the lava, Kars had “mastered” the Earth, but now he’s been separated from the Earth.   He’s got all this incredible power, but without the Earth, he’s got no one to use it on.

And then we come to the pièce de résistance of Battle Tendency: The epilogue page that establishes, in no uncertain terms, that Kars never returned to the Earth.   There’s no miracle escape this time, no clever trick or loophole.   He simply doesn’t have the necessary acceleration to push himself back the way he came. 

Did he die?   Nope, because he made himself immortal, remember?   Not even sunlight or starvation can destroy him now.   But now death is the only thing he craves, because he’s completely alone and has nothing to do.   I can’t imagine he’s very comfortable like this either, because it’s incredibly cold in outer space, and Kars must be able to sense that cold, even if it doesn’t actually hurt him.  

And this is such a fitting punishment for a villain like Kars.  Just as Stroheim wanted to become superior and lost his humanity in the process, Kars ruthlessly sacrificed friend and foe alike to achieve this Ultimate form, and what good does it do him?    It’s become his prison, his hell.    At long last, he’s become the supreme being, a world unto himself, but with no one around to lord it over, there’s really no point to any of it.  

I just really love this ending.   I’m not sure how else I can express it.    This is what should have happened to Akio Othori in Revolutionary Girl Utena.    But Araki was brace enough to do it to Kars.  

I suppose I could attempt some exercise in JoJo Part Comparison and connect Kars’ final fate to all the other JoJo villains.    But I dunno, this is getting pretty long in the tooth as it is.   I’ll just say that I’m suddenly reminded of Reimi’s final words to Kira in Part 4, when Kira asks where he’s being taken.   “Who knows?   But I’m sure it’s somewhere you won’t be able to rest in peace.”

So all that’s left is the matter of Joseph’s funeral-- Nah, just kidding, he’s not even dead.   What’s weird is that Smokey says he met Joseph “six months ago”, which seems a lot longer than the events of this story.    Anyway, Joseph returned to New York, only to find everyone at the cemetary.   He wonders who they’re mourning, and he’s shocked to discover it’s him.

So yeah, the rock Joseph was on acted as a “shield”, and he managed to survive the fall, and even ended up near Venice, where Suzie Q found him and tended to his injuries.  Stroheim even set him up with a robotic hand to replace the one Kars lopped off.   I guess Stroheim never sent word of any of this to the U.S., probably because of Nazi Germany gearing up for World War II.  

Anyway, Suzie took care of him for like two weeks, and they got married.   So in a way, Joseph did follow in the legacy of Jonathan.   Not in the “dying young” way, but the “Beat the bad guy and wake up in the care of a gorgeous blonde lady who eventually marries you” kind of way.   You love to see it.   But Suzie forgot to send a telegram to New York to let everyone know Joseph was okay, which is why everyone is so shocked and why Joseph is so shocked about them being shocked.

Then we get the epilogues for all the surviving characters.   I mentioned this when I liveblogged the Part 5 manga a few years ago, but the stark contrast between Battle Tendency and Vento Aureo is that Part 5 is very ambiguous about its ending.   We know who wins and who loses and who survives, but that isn’t really enough.   We don’t know what will happen to Giorno Giovanna after Part 5.   Does he live up to his lofty dream, or does he succumb to corruption like his wicked father?  I think that’s intentional, because Giorno is the “golden wind” in the story.    He’s an agent of change, but we don’t get to see the effects of his efforts, only the cause that he fights for.    But Part 2 operates in the exact opposite way.   We know exactly how and when Speedwagon dies.   I’m a little confused how Stroheim could have died at Stalingrad when Kars and a volcano couldn’t kill him, but maybe the Russians had Stand powers.    I think the only minor mystery is that we don’t know what happened to Lisa Lisa after 1948.    It’s likely that she survived into Part 3, and maybe beyond, but we never see her again.

It’s also kind of weird how upbeat this epilogue is about reporting on the deaths of so many characters.   Like, Stroheim died in one of the worst battles in human history, but he went out on his own terms, so it’s cool?  I guess?   Even the characters without deaths, like Smokey, it’s sort of implicit that he’ll die sooner or later.   But it’s a good thing because it’s final and proper.    It’s something Kars craves now, but can never experience.  A life worth living, made more precious by its limitations.  Kars tried to use cheat codes in nature, and he ended up clipping through the map and making the game unplayable.   But Smokey, he‘ll be mayor someday.

As for Joseph, we see him in an airport in 1987, bullying Japanese people because his daughter married a Japanese guy and moved there.    He’s headed to Japan right now to see her and his grandson, who probably doesn’t even recognize him, it’s been so long.   

On the other hand, he appreciates his Walkman, which is either Joseph giving the Japanese some credit, or maybe he’s just too dense to notice the irony.   

I hate that he’s listening to the Beatles, because the Beatles are overrated trash.  My favorite thing about the Part 2 anime is how they changed his music to “Bloody Stream” by Coda, which a) kicks ass and b) wasn’t a song by the shitty Beatles.  

And that’s Battle Tendency.   Kind of neat how it closes on Joseph’s flight departing to visit his daughter and grandson, in contrast to the final panel of Part 1, which showed Erina floating in a coffin alone in the ocean.   Joseph has bucked the curse and he’s graduated to Part 3, for better or worse.   

But I feel kind of weird leaving it here, because I do love the way the anime wrapped up, so I’ll close out with this:

Tsugi ni omae wa “Grazie!” to iu!

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #kars #rudol von stroheim #lisa lisa #robert e o speedwagon #smokey brown #esidisi #wammu #erina joestar #george joestar #jonathan joestar #george joestar ii #suzie q

[talktothesun]

how often do i write fics? not often at all. but here’s a cute little piece that i wrote after finishing kuroko no basuke.

---

aida riko didn’t know why she was in akita when her father asked her to meet him there. “go to a coffee shop! i’ll be done in an hour!”

now, her father was thirty minutes late, and riko was ready to leave the shop when a young girl, just about her age, tripped next to her table and dropped all her textbooks.

riko immediately went to help the girl who was on her knees.

“i’m so sorry for disturbing you!” the girl apologized as she got up from the ground and nodded.

riko shook her hands. “it’s fine! here,” she said, as she sat down at her table, “have a seat. you look like you should rest your arms. you have a lot.”

the girl smiled and took the empty seat in front of riko. she put her books on the side of the table. “thank you. i’m sado kiyomi.”

“aida riko.” riko glanced at the books and gasped. “you’re in advanced calculus? are you a second year?”

kiyomi shook her head. “i’m a first year!”

within twenty minutes, riko and kiyomi traded tricks of how to study for exams, as exams were looming on many students throughout the country. riko learned that kiyomi was in many advanced classes for her age. she apparently excelled in all her first-year classes, so they allowed her to take some second-year classes to prevent her from burning out too early.

“i was supposed to meet someone here, but i think he got sidetracked again,” kiyomi said, hiding a smile behind her coffee cup.

“a classmate?” riko asked.

kiyomi shook her head, putting her cup down. “my sweetheart! mukkun usually walks with me after my clubs, but today my meetings got cancelled. so, i wanted to wait for him to finish his obligations.”

riko clapped her hands in excitement. she didn’t know much about the girl, but she seemed so kind. riko couldn’t help but be happy that she’s happy. “how did you meet?”

kiyomi grinned widely. “i was grabbing a snack right before class, but the vending machine got stuck! i was waiting for a couple minutes, trying to press several buttons, but it wasn’t working, and i had to get to class. i was just about to give up when mukkun came up behind me and shook to machine. i never met him before, but he was kind enough to a stranger to help. but instead of one snack, two fell!” kiyomi paused her story as her smile became smaller, but fonder. “i handed him the extra snack as a thank you. after that, i started to notice him.”

the other girl squealed lightly as kiyomi laughed at her reaction. “that is so sweet! did he approach you?”

“funnily enough, i had a project to shadow a teacher for a couple weeks, and i chose our school’s pe teacher. she was so kind to me and allowed me to shadow her for my project. she coaches mukkun’s team, so i got to see him a lot more outside of school. he would walk me home after his practice and after my club meetings.”

riko sighed. “that’s so sweet. how do you find such a kind guy?”

kiyomi shrugged. “he found me.” she leaned across the table and touched riko’s hand. “i’m sure your sweetheart, junpei, will say something soon!”

the other girl groaned, thinking about the dense captain. “maybe if he looked up from the hoop, then he would notice me!”

kiyomi laughed loudly, making riko smile.

then, as if the sun had set, their table dimmed and a dark shadow loomed over them. riko looked up and gasped.

no.

of course, she should’ve known. she was in akita, in the town where yosen high school was located. yosen high school, which resided one of the generation of miracles. a miracle, who was looming over their table.

but before riko could say anything, something that she wasn’t expecting happened.

“mukkun!” kiyomi exclaimed, jumping from her seat and into the arms of the center.

murasakibara atsushi was one of the tallest people riko ever knew, standing at an impressive height of 6′10. her stats noted that he’s physically ready for a match, and her eyes looked at his body, which adorned in yosen’s tracksuit.

this was the player that intimidated all her players to the point of taking the first quarter with no points from seirin. this was the player that was deemed incapable of entering the zone, only to enter the blessed place where players could only dream.

this was also the player who bent his knees to catch the 5′2 girl in his arms, picking her up and lightly shaking her as she laughed above his shoulder with her arms around his neck. the center has a small smile on his face before he set her down and turned to riko.

their height difference was almost laughable, kiyomi didn’t even reach his shoulders, and she had to tilt her head an uncomfortable way to see his face. but riko couldn’t tell if she cared, because kiyomi sported the brightest smile in the snowy terrain.

“omi-chin, why are you talking to seirin’s coach?” murasakibara asked the girl attached to his side.

kiyomi looked at riko and back at murasakibara then back to riko. “seirin?” she glanced at riko’s bag, which held seirin’s emblem on the front and grinned. “oh, that makes sense! mukkun talked about you before and your great strategies!”

riko heard what kiyomi said, but she didn’t respond. instead, she was staring at kiyomi’s winter outfit, adorned in pants and books with a plains sweater and a long winter coat that had yosen’s emblem on the side. she facepalmed and shook her head. “i can’t believe i didn’t notice! of course you go to yosen!”

murasakibara stood quietly behind kiyomi during their interaction, but he finally sighed. “can we go now? i wanna go to the sweets shop. the old guy promised to give me a discount today.”

kiyomi nodded and grabbed her books from the side of the table. murasakibara grabbed the large stack with his one arm and held out his free hand. but before kiyomi could grab it, she went over to riko’s side and hugged the coach.

“riko-chan, please give me your number! i would love to be friends with you,” kiyomi asked as she separated from the embrace. riko could have said no, but when she looked at the girl’s eyes, she faltered.

instead of saying anything, riko simply handed her phone to the girl and kiyomi gave riko her cell phone.

“thank you, riko-chan!” kiyomi bid the coach farewell before grabbing murasakibara’s hand. “i’ll see if coach araki will allow a practice match! i wanna see tokyo, huh, mukkun?”

murasakibara only hummed in agreement but let out an “oof!” when kiyomi sliced his stomach.

“will you show me tokyo, mukkun?” kiyomi raised her eyebrow at the tall enter. when he finally nodded, kiyomi grinned at riko. “then i’ll ask coach! i’ll see you soon, riko-chan!”

at those words, murasakibara happily tugged kiyomi’s hand as they walked out the shop. their conversation lingered in the air.

“i’m sorry for leaving you on your own, omi-chin.”

“mukkun, it’s okay!” kiyomi hugged murasakibara’s arm in response, and the boy took his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders, keeping their hands interlocked. “do you know what snacks you’ll get?”

“you choose, omi-chin. but get me some for tomorrow too.”

“okay! oh, here you go! i found this in my bag and was saving it for you.”

“let’s share. oh, let’s get muro-chin some gummies. he was complaining during practice today.”

riko smiled at the retreating couple, thinking that the boy found someone who complimented him so well. she hoped she got to see kiyomi soon.

#kuroko no basuke #kuroko no basket #murasakibara x reader #knb headcanons #knb #knb murasakibara #murasakibara atsushi #this was very self indulgent #mukkun has a soft spot for his loved ones

[teddybeirin]

diavolo

How I feel about this character

Diavolo my beloved… he’s perfect. In theory, that is, but in practice I think that he was a horribly written villain who has no business existing in the first place as a character which may be a shocker coming from me but he really shouldn’t have existed the way he did in canon. His writing is filled to the brim with ableism. But he is such a king… I think that his perseverance and strong will to obtain anything he desires was so fun, especially since that kind of singlemindedness never ends well so he screwed himself and I just want to see him happy and also not written full of ableism that hurts my heart and makes me feel terrible. Also he’s pretty, he’s gorgeous, he’s the only man to ever exist, I’d want nothing more than to hold him in my arms and make sure he’s eating well and also maybe help him manage his symptoms.

I relate to him only because of how I think he is also someone who would feel terrible about his writing, I know this because I cannot say and I do not know but I know this. ;)

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Nobody, because none of those ships work. None of them. Not one singular ship works in canon, by design. But I do think he & Donatella deserved to be happy and so that counts for something right? I ship him with Donatella. And…. ME. and you and Steff!! :3c

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Doppio because nothing can ever divide you from your alters & ultimately they’d be closer than anyone else could ever be to either of them, I think that they could have had so much we could have had SO MUCH. 

ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ ︵ ┻━┻

My unpopular opinion about this character

OH….. where to START. WHERE TO START. He’s clearly not some misunderstood guy, he’s got his priorities and he didn’t care about anything outside of them but I think he’d be less horrible as a concept put out into the world if he WERE some misunderstood guy you know?? Like, if you move him to the left it stops hurting so much that Araki wrote the villain of a series full of people surviving horrible lives to be the guy who developed a dissociative disorder. You know?? Like he could have been great.

He’s the only man to ever exist, also, again, besides Doppio. <3

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

HE COULD HAVE TEAMED UP WITH THE MAIN CAST TO FIGHT A BIGGER EVIL AND ALSO NOT DIED HORRIBLY OVER AND OVER…. And he could have been a completely different portrayal of people with DID so like <3

ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ ︵ ┻━┻

My feelings….. Are all over the place! I love him genuinely truly I do but I think he needs some serious work as a character in canon.

[snakeboistan]

The Couple Games

This is going to be my first attempt at crack.

This is inspired by ‘The Great Boyfriend Debate’ by doujinzii. If you’re a Haikyuu!! fan, you should totally check it out because it is a masterpiece that should be displayed in the Louvre.

“YES!” Okajima whooped, pumping two fists in the air as the black and white ball hit the net of the goal. Karma - the student who had scored the goal in the first place - smirked, saluting and winking at the disgruntled crowd of main campus students. It was one of Kunugigaoka Junior High’s sporting events and the sport that the students were currently playing was football (soccer to anyone that’s from America). Of course, as 3-E was seen as the lowest of the low, they weren’t allowed to participate during the main events and were, yet again, pushed to the sidelines and were forced to take part in the ‘Exhibition Match’ against the school’s Football Team where they were expected to be publicly humiliated by experiencing a crushing defeat - all in the name of boosting morale. How fun. However, this year the Chairman’s plan of bringing E Class down was hampered by said class’ teacher, who had more than a few tricks up his sleeve. Days of training and training and more training had prepared the student outcasts for this game of power play and they were more than ready to show the entire school what they were made of. Currently, the boys of E Class were at a tie with the Football Club members, thanks to the goal that they were just celebrating.

“Well done, Karma,” Nagisa smiled at the redhead, who was currently sticking his tongue at the glowering Football Captain, “that was an amazing goal.”

With a grin, Karma turned to face him, “it was, wasn’t it? Why don’t you congratulate me properly?”

Nagisa’s eyes widened as his face reddened. Knowing Karma, there was only one thing that he was thinking of for his ‘congratulations’. He looked away to hide his flaming cheeks, “Karma…”

Karma took a step closer to the blunette, smirking at his embarrassed countenance, “oh come on Nagisa. I worked so hard to score a goal for our class. The least you could do as my boyfriend is to give me a little reward.”

Nagisa’s twin-tails ruffled upwards at the close proximity that the two shared, Karma’s lips were so close to his ear that a millimeter closer would have them touching the skin of its shell, “Ka-Karma. We-we’re in public.”

“Oh, please Nagi~” was purred into his ear, warm breath making the shorter boy shudder and his skin to prickle.

“OI! You two,” both of them looked towards the source of the voice to find Maehara with his arms crossed, looking at them with a mixture of exasperation and fondness as he shook his head at them with a smirk, “care to wait until the game is over before you start flirting?”

“Sorry, Maehara,” Nagisa smiled sheepishly as he pushed Karma away with an extended arm, “I hope we didn’t draw too much attention.”

Karma harrumphed before glomping Nagisa from behind, “don’t be sorry, Nagi. He’s just jealous that I happen to have the best boyfriend ever.”

“Umm, exCUSE ME!” Maehara protested loudly, amber eyes narrowed at the redhead and ignoring the looks that the three of them were getting from other students, “I’ll have you know that you are very much wrong on that, Karma. You do know that I am dating Isogai, right.”

“So what,” Karma retorted flippantly, narrowing his own eyes at the golden-haired boy, “are you saying that Nagisa is not an adorable little blueberry that deserves the world and everything in it?”

“Karma,” Nagisa whispered harshly as he could tell that their conversation was attracting more attention than he was comfortable with.

Maehara waved a hand around, “well yeah sure, Nagisa is cute and all but Isogai is an Ikeman.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean.”

“It means that he’s the better boyfriend.”

Karma scoffed, “how so?”

Maehara used his hands to gesture wildly at said Ikeman, who was watching this all go down with confusion and disbelief, “uhh, have you seen him? I mean those gorgeous eyes and antennae are positively the most captivating things in existence. Not to mention how his smile can cause world peace.”

“No one cares about your stupid hair kink, Maehara. And besides, my Nagisa’s smiles are far more endearing.”

“YOU TAKE THAT BACK!”

“NEVER!”

Isogai approached them with the face of someone who very much hates his own judgement, “guys, we’re in the middle of a-”

“Nagisa is so the better boyfriend. He’s sweet and kind and an amazing kisser.”

“HA! I’ll have you know that Isogai is a far better kisser than anyone could hope to be.”

“Oh, those are fighting words.”

“What are you suggesting? That we have a kissing contest right here, right now?”

“Of course and then you’ll see-”

“BOTH OF YOU, STOP!” Isogai yelled at them in an attempt to stop this trainwreck. Both his and Nagisa’s faces rivaled the colour of Karma’s hair as they watched their boyfriends tear into each other.

“Sorry, Isogai,” Maehara huffed, “but Karma was questioning your ability of being a good boyfriend. It’s my duty to defend you and our title as the best couple.”

“OH THAT’S JUST B*******!”

All of them turned towards the voice that shouted at them, looking on in shock as Kurahashi climbed over the stands and stomped towards them with fire burning in her eyes. She went right up to Maehara and pointed a finger at his face.

“You really think that you’re the best couple?” the orange-haired girl demanded.

“Uhh, duh.”

“Well, you’re wrong. Listen here womaniser (“former womaniser,” Maehara pointed out), Yada and I are the best couple and that’s that.”

“WHAT!” The four boys yelled, Karma and Maehara in indignation and Nagisa and Isogai in incredulity.

“You tell ‘em, babes,” Yada yelled from the side of the pitch. Kurahashi smiled and blew a kiss at her, making her squeal and catch the air in front of her.

Karma, who was still hugging Nagisa, flared up, “Excuse me, what the hell are you saying?”

Maehara glared at the girl in front of him, “Uhh, I think you need to get your facts straight.”

“Yeah, Kurahashi,” Kayano agreed loudly, drawing the attention towards her, “they’re right!”

“What the hell do you mean by that?!” Kurahashi loured at her.

Yada frowned at the resident pudding-lover, “yeah, Kayano. What the hell?”

“I think that they’re right,” Kayano crossed her arms, “you guys are not the best couple. Not when Okuda and I are here.”

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME!”

“Excuse me,” Yada said, “I’ll have you know that Kurahashi is capable of charming anyone she wants to.”

“Yeah, well, my little mad scientist can make a poison that can kill a dragon.”

“Dragons don’t even exist!”

“OH, PLEASE!”

“EVERYONE SHUT UP AND JUST ADMIT THAT MY NAGI-BABY CAN BLOW YOU ALL OUT OF THE WATER. I MEAN HAVE YOU SEEN THE WAY HIS BLOODLUST MAKES HIS EYES GLOW WITH THE DESIRE TO CAUSE HARM! HE’S DANGEROUS AND ADORABLE - THE PERFECT PACKAGE! AND NOTHING CAN COMPARE TO HIS HUGS. NOTHING!”

“SO FRICKIN WHAT?! MY ISOGAI CAN COOK ANYTHING AND HE LOOKS AMAZING IN ANYTHING HE WEARS. HE COULD WALK AROUND IN A POTATO SACK AND STILL LOOK LIKE THE COVER MODEL OF A MAGAZINE! HIS TEXTS TO ME ARE BETTER THAN ANY LOVE LETTER EVER WRITTEN AND IF YOU THINK HUGS ARE SO GREAT THEN YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HAVE THE PERFECT BOYFRIEND RUN HIS HANDS THROUGH YOUR HAIR WHEN YOU MAKE OUT!”

“BOTH OF YOU ARE WRONG! THERE’S A REASON WHY YADA IS B****-SENSEI’S TOP STUDENT. I MEAN THAT MOUTH!”

“OKUDA CAN MAKE A CHEMICAL BOMB IN FIVE SECONDS WITH HER EYES CLOSED AND TAKE OUT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU! WHICH I WILL GLADLY MAKE HER DO BECAUSE I AM SICK OF ALL OF YOU STOMPING ON THE TRUTH!”

Nagisa and Isogai could only watch in horror as their class erupted into the Pompeii of Kunugigaoka: Okajima was on the grass, wailing about how it’s so unfair that he’s single and has no one to defend him and Mimura was next to him, curled up in a fetal position and rocking himself back and forth, whispering to himself ‘it’s just a nightmare, it’s just a nightmare’; Sugino was slumped against a stand and was blushing madly; Fuwa and Rio had their phones out and were recording everything that was going on; Okano started rambling about how Kataoka’s front stroke was so graceful that it could put a dolphin to shame; Chiba and Hayami looked at each other before looking away and continued to observe the events unfolding; Yoshida was forced to restrain an angered Maehara who was about to throw himself at Karma; Terasaka and Muramatsu were just staring blankly into space, looking like they were ready to accept the Earth blowing up right now instead of in March; Hazama turned another page of the book she smuggled into the game; Hara tried to calm down the fight that was breaking out between Kayano and Yada; Okuda was still blushing from Kayano’s earlier declaration; Irina looked like her favourite show was on as she was gleefully clapping her hands and watching everything go down (to be honest, she found football dead boring and was very interested when Maehara suggested the kissing contest earlier); Karasuma’s hands seemed to be surgically attached to his face; Koro-Sensei was having the time of his life as he was hurriedly jotting down notes in three different notebooks and taking pictures with two different cameras simultaneously. Meanwhile, as all of this was happening, the Football team stood there awkwardly, having absolutely no clue what on Earth was going on. Araki, who was sitting in the announcer’s box, turned to Asano in bewilderment. The strawberry blonde was watching the bonfire that was E-Class in a mixture of confusion, distaste and fascination.

“Uhh, Asano,” Ren probed, “shouldn’t you do something?”

Asano shot a glance towards his father, noting the way the older man looked as if his feather’s had been ruffled and internally taking delight in the way he too seemed perplexed at the current state of events, “hmm, probably not. This is the most entertaining thing I’ve seen since Seo’s new haircut.”

#assassination classroom #my writing #3-e #shiota nagisa #nagisa shiota #karmagisa #maeiso #akabane karma #karma akabane #kurahashi hinano #hinano kurahashi #yada touka #touka yada #maehara hiroto #hiroto maehara #isogai yuuma #yuuma isogai #kayano kaede #kaede kayano #okuda manami #manami okuda

[hyruledrift]

The Brilliance of Giorno Giovanna

Before I go ahead and write my review of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureo written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki, I wanted to somehow put into writing why I think that it’s main protagonist, Giorno Giovanna, is truly a brilliant character. There is one more thing I’d like to prefix this character analysis with, and that is how I experienced Vento Aureo.

Vento Aureo was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from November 20, 1995 to April 5, 1999. The anime first premiered in October of 2018 and ran through July 2019. So, I devoted the past couple weeks to both WATCH and read Vento Aureo. Reading the manga, and then watching the episodes that covered the volume(s) I previously read. So I really got to soak in the entire story. I also live tweeted my entire “Readwatch” but thats besides the point. I’m a bit late to the party in terms of covering the series but this is also my first time ever doing something like this, and I thought that there’d be no better place to start rather than breaking down one of my favourite characters across all mediums of fiction, Giorno Giovanna. Needless to say, this character analysis will divulge into spoilers of Vento Aureo.

Giorno Giovanna, born Haruno Shiobana, in Vento Aureo is age 15. He is half Japanese, Half Italian. Giorno as we know is the bastard son of DIO, the Joestar lineage’s sworn enemy across time. Giorno’s stand is Gold Experience, named after the Prince album The Gold Experience. Gold Experience is a close-range Stand, with a range of 2 meters from its user. Gold Experience has many different abilities. The first one being Life Giver. Life Giver gives Gold Experience the ability to endow anything its fists touch with life, which translates into a variety of different effects. It’s second ability is Life Shot. Gold Experience's ability can also be applied to living individuals, causing their thought processes to greatly accelerate. Life Shot basically makes Giorno’s opponent experience a psychedelic trip in the middle of combat. Gold Experience also has the ability to recreate Flesh and Organs. Inspired by Baby Face's ability to transform body parts into inert cubes, Giorno discovered that he could do the reverse and create singular body parts and organs out of inorganic matter. Thus he is able to heal gruesome wounds through various means. Gold Experience also has one more ability, Life Sensor. When he [Giorno/Gold Experience] touches someone or something, he can sense other lifeforms from within, allowing him to check if someone is alive or even determine how many souls there may be inside a given vessel. (Below is a picture of Giorno and Gold Experience)

But the interesting part about Giorno is not only is he the son of DIO, its also the fact that he is also considered a Joestar as he was conceived with Jonathan Joestar’s body, with DIO controlling it (after killing Jonathan Joestar, DIO took over his body to become the ultimate life form 100 years before Stardust Crusaders took place.) 

We don’t get to see the signature Joestar Star Birthmark on Giorno often, but we do get to catch a glimpse of it in the first episode of the anime and the second chapter of the manga during his fight with Leaky Eye Luca. Which cements him as being the 5th main Joestar in Araki’s story. 

Because of his lineage, we know he’s destined to be a special character from the get-go. Inheriting traits and skills from both DIO and Jonathan. Now, I could spend all day pointing out what Giorno has done in the series that he got from DIO, and things he’s done because of the Jonathan in him. But instead of that, I’d rather point out the more notable things he’s done that he’s taken from both his fathers.

We know that DIO was rotten to the core. He had a similar upbringing to Giorno in the sense that their parents neglected him. Dario (DIO’s father) constantly abused DIO calling him both physically and mentally. Whereas, Giorno’s mother neglected him and his step father abused Giorno to no end. Both DIO and Giorno are portrayed to be very smart in their groups. Giorno somehow always knew what animal or insect he’d have to give life to depending on the situation to help him overcome the conflict he was in. For example, in the fight against Man In The Mirror, Giorno also was faced with the issue of Fugo’s stand, Purple Haze and its ability, (A virus that quickly kills you if you inhale it or if your skin comes into contact with it. It also has no cure. Purple Haze is so powerful, that Araki had to write Fugo out of the story.) So to overcome this, Giorno used Gold Experience’s ability Life Giver to give life to an inanimate object (In this case, turning a brick into a Snake - Read left to right i took panels from different pages for the sake of my point)

Also, Both DIO and Giorno are natural leaders, wherever DIO went, be it in Phantom Blood or in Stardust Crusaders, he had followers do his bidding for him. Giorno inherited DIO’s natural ability to lead as later on in Vento Aureo, we all see the team members, inspeseficallfy Guido Mista, in his internal monologue after their battle with White Album, that he sees Giorno being more of a leader than Bruno Bucciarati, the actual leader of the gang at the time. Another attribute that Giorno inherited from DIO, is the need to make his opponent feel powerless. During Giorno’s beatdowns, he is known to shout “MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA” with Muda being a direct translation from Japanese to English meaning “Useless”, something that DIO was known for, in his fight with Jotaro in Stardust Crusaders. Giorno also uses the “WRYYYYYYY” battle cry a couple times in Vento Aureo. Also, Giorno’s hair used to be black, similar to the other Joestars before him, but when Gold Experience awoken in him, it caused his hair to change to the golden yellow colour we see him as throughout the series. One more thing to point out in Giorno that is reminiscent of DIO that separates him further from the rest of the Joestar lineage, is that Giorno ignited his own change. Giorno had a dream that he wanted to see through, whereas the other Joestars reacted to things happening to ones the hold dear to them that made them want to save others. Jonathan reacted to DIO killing his father, Joseph reacted to the Pillar Men awaking, Jotaro reacted to his mother falling ill because of DIO’s awakening, Josuke reacted to Angelo killing his grandfather, so on and so forth. It was Giorno who kicked the events off of Vento Aureo by himself, persuading Bucciarati to take down the Boss of Passione (Diavolo).  

The traits and attributes that Giorno inherited from Jonathan consists of Jonathan’s heart of gold that ultimately guided Giorno down the path he took to heroism, infiltrating Passione and taking down Diavolo. Jonathan’s selflessness also passed onto Giorno. Throughout Vento Aureo, Giorno was willing to sacrifice himself/his body for the benefit of the group despite. Cutting his nose off to spite his face. A great example of this is when Giorno and the gang was on their way to Sardinia. On the flight to Sardinia, they encountered the undead stand named after the world’s biggest rapper at the time, Notorious B.I.G. Giorno deduced how B.I.G was tracking them despite being dead, and it was motion. B.I.G reacted to any and all motion around it, causing the stand to automatically hunt down, attach itself, and attempt to kill whatever surface around it that was the fastest. So, while on the airplane, Giorno selflessly lured B.I.G onto the only arm he had left (Giorno had already lost an arm to B.I.G earlier in the fight and had not used Gold Experience to make himself a new arm) 

Giorno knew it was a gamble, he had cut both arms off to save the team. Naturally, this incapacitated Giorno for the rest of the fight. But before he could cut his arm off, he turned one of his ladybug brooches into a his own hand, which carried the power of Gold Experience. Thanks to this, after the fight was over, he was able to accomplish two things. First, He helped Trish mature as B.I.G came back and Trish ultimately defeated the stand by awakening to her stand, Spice Girl. The other thing that Giorno was able to accomplish was that he was still able to heal himself and the team using the brooch that Trish worked to protect from B.I.G.

Just as Giorno had a similar upbringing to DIO, he also had parts of his childhood that Jonathan went through as well. Giorno was always the kid that got bullied by the other kids, much like Jonathan. But that all changed when he met the man he came to idolize. 

Giorno saved the life of this unknown Gangster, so in return, this Gangster protected Giorno from his abusive step-father, the kids that bullied him, and made sure that young Giorno didn’t go unfed.

Because of the unknown gangster, Giorno was inspired to protect the little guy. In a world of corrupt government and crime, Giorno had a dream of being a GANG-STAR. Instead of using power to benefit himself, he wanted to use his power both literally and figuratively to make sure that nobody would have to go through the same kind of upbringing he had to go through.

Giorno truly is all the best parts of both DIO and Jonathan rolled into one character.

In Giorno’s bio page in the second last chapter in Vento Aureo, it is said that “What Giorno desires most is hope. He has faith that he can reach any destination, as long as he has hope.” This bio page also states that the source of Giorno’s hope and justice was the unknown gangster.

You can argue that his hope was able to manifest itself and what ultimately turned Gold Experience into Gold Experience Requiem (GER) in the final confrontation with Diavolo. Giorno literally becomes unbeatable with GER. GER’s PASSIVE ABILITY is that any hostility directed toward Giorno gets nullified and all action and intent of the attack gets set back to zero, preventing any attack that is directed to him from becoming “real”. (Pictured below is Giorno and Gold Experience Requiem)

You can say that Giorno has hope and faith in himself that nobody will be able to stand in the way of his dream. So Requiem literally makes it so that nobody can harm him.

Giorno’s whole life, he had struggled with finding his own self worth and managed to find self satisfaction in saving a stranger which made him realize what he enjoyed doing in life. Helping others, putting himself in danger to make his own dream come a reality. Giorno’s admiration, spirit, pride, and willpower to fight is contagious and quickly spreads throughout the entire cast of characters in Vento Aureo.

One of the most important characters to Giorno’s development is his right hand man, Bruno Bucciarati who has done even more selfless acts than Giorno has done for the sake of others. 

From the moment they met, they both realized that each other were special people. Bruno from a young age was infatuated with assisting others, easing the burdens of others just to make them happy, much like Giorno, which is what makes their relationship so special.

During the turning point of Vento Aureo, Bucciarati died in his fight with King Crimson. Giorno was going as fast as he could to save Bucciarati from his mortal wounds but it was too late. Or so he thought. In that moment where Giorno healed Bucciarati’s body, his soul had already left his body and was on his way to the after life. However, Bucciarati knew that the job was unfinished. His determination, and sheer willpower to see Giorno’s dream come to fruition kept his body alive for the rest of the series until their fated encounter with Diavolo and King Crimson in Rome. Where Bucciarati was finally able to see that Giorno was capable to finish the job himself.

This steeled Giorno’s resolve in his fight against the brutal, merciless, and thoughtless Diavolo, who killed for his own personal gain, not caring for his victims. Diavolo’s ideals and morals are severely distorted and blatantly evil. He thought that he was the one chosen by god to carry out his will to reign over humans as their king. He believed that he was supposed to be the one to judge humans if they should live or not, killing anyone he didn’t see fit into his plan. His mafia also contributed to his heinous crimes as the main reason that Giorno and Bucciarati connected, was their hatred for the boss’ policy of who the mafia sold drugs to. Passione often sold cocaine to women and children, which led to Bucciarati’s father’s murder, and Giorno’s abuse from his father and the bullies.

The abilities that Gold Experience granted him, let him see his dream come to fruition. That mixed with the attributes that he unconsciously inherited from his two fathers, Jonathan Joestar and Dio Brando in combination with Giorno’s will and resolve that was demonstrated to be contagious throughout the events of Vento Aureo. It ultimately affected me on a personal level, which is why I wrote this analysis. I personally deeply admire Giorno and his just dream. Doing anything it takes to see his just dream come true to benefit others despite all his shortcomings in his childhood, and everyone that wronged him in his life. Giorno still believed that he could ignite the change and illuminate the path of those around him to believe his golden dream. Giving others hope, that everything will be alright in the end. 

That, is why Giorno Giovanna is brilliant. 

#Giorno Giovanna JoJo Vento Aureo Golden Wind Araki Character Analysis

[baesketballers]

Casual day with Himuro and female s/o - teaching her how to bike around the neighborhood, eating ice cream, strolling in the park, etc.

I live for this shit. (Didn’t use any female pronouns, by the way. I hope you don’t mind.)

I hope this is what you asked for! A casual day with Reader and Himuro hanging out on the beach, talking about stuff, hehe ( ◞･౪･)

“School’s out, scream and shout,” you mutter the lyrics under your breath in between licks of your quickly melting ice cream. Himuro could not even find the capacity to withhold his laugh, the melodious sound ringing throughout the mostly empty beach. You can spot a small group of people gathering about three hundred feet away, but it’s as if the two of you are alone.

“School’s out indeed,” he responds, happily eating his own coffee caramel ice cream. 

“Mmm,” you hum, and he’s not sure if it’s a reply to his words or just an unintelligible expression of how much you like the ice cream. “It means that you’ll be leaving for summer camp soon, though. You guys sure train hard.”

“Yeah,” Himuro looks off to the sea from where the two of you are sitting, legs out. “No way in hell Coach Araki is going to let us slack off—not even Murasakibara can defy her orders.” You chuckle as you bite into the ice cream cone. A comfortable silence sweeps over you and Himuro, leaving only the rhythmic sound of the waves and you chewing the crunch of the dessert in the background.

“Do you think I can tag along? I’m going to be kind of lonely,” you ask meekly, voice soft after finishing your ice cream. 

“‘Kind of’?” The tone of his voice has that teasing lilt you’re not sure you hate entirely. Still, you can’t help but bury your face in the palm of your hands when he looks at you with that smirk, afraid that he might spot the redness of your face and make fun of it—but who are you kidding? He probably knows that you’re blushing.

“Fine. ‘Really’. Really lonely, that is,” you mutter. He seems to be quite content with the answer, reaching out with a hand to pry yours away from your face. You don’t have the guts to look at him in the eye.

Himuro hums in contemplation. None of the other team members have ever brought up the issue of bringing someone along to summer camp. Coach Araki seems to be quite intimidating. Despite that, he could still try. Himuro thinks that if he convinces her your presence won’t be a distraction to him and the team, she shouldn’t be against the idea.

To have you watching him practice, relaxing with him after a day of rigorous training, and maybe bathing in the hot springs with him late at night… 

Not a bad idea. In fact, a really good idea, as you would’ve put.

“Tatsuya,” you call out, “your ice cream is melting.”

“Oh!” Himuro quickly tends to the dripping sweetness, while you watch him in earnest.

“What were you thinking of?” You ask after he handles the crisis. Himuro perks up at the question. 

“You,” he smoothly answers. The unamused expression he earns from you makes him smile wryly before elaborating. “More specifically, the thought of you coming along for summer camp. We can have so much fun.”

“Right?” You wistfully reply. “Do you think the coach would allow it, though?”

“I can talk to her. She’s a reasonable person.”

“Are you sure?”

Himuro munches on the last bits of his cone, looking at you with a glint in his eyes.

“Mmm, not anymore,” he says. Your eyes widen despite knowing that he’s only messing with you. “You have to convince me to talk to her. After all, what’s in it for me?”

“That I get to spend summer with you?” You pass him an incredulous look, but only got a ‘nope, try again’ look from him as a reply. “Tatsuyaaaaa!” He chuckles at your whining, snaking an arm around your shoulder to pull you close. You’re determined to win this silly game, but after a mere half-minute of staring into each other’s eyes, you realize you’ve lost the battle. How could someone not crumble under the softness of his gaze?

“Fine,” you sigh in defeat while Himuro beams, “what do you want?”

“A kiss, please.”

“Figures,” you roll your eyes slightly, but the smile on your face betrays the annoyance, revealing how you actually find his sappiness cute. Leaning forward, your lips meet his in a sweet kiss long enough for you to savor the ice cream aftertaste. You don’t pull away for air long enough, because he’s already onto you again, tilting his head slightly to accommodate the press of his lips against yours.

“Was that caramel?” You ask after the liplock. He smiles and nods.

“Close enough. Coffee caramel.”

“Tastes good. Makes me want to buy that flavor…” you stare off in the distance quietly, and so does he.

“Do you think they’re still open?” He didn’t think you were seriously considering a second purchase before your question.

“I don’t think so. The ice cream guy probably went home.”

“Too bad,” you say.

Again, Himuro pulls you close, pressing a kiss to your cheek before whispering in your ear.

“I still got some left in my mouth. Wanna kiss again?”

#admin #darling anon #himuro #himuro tatsuya #knb #kuroko no basket #reader insert #gender neutral #fem!reader #female!reader #male!reader #fluff #sfw #writing #imagine #scenario

[agent-yolk-writes]

What did I do this summer? An essay by (First Name) Chapter 32 Preview

You’ve been waiting, and I’ve been procrastinating. Normally I don’t do this since I want people to be fully surprised once the final product is out there, but I’m in a writer’s road block. So here’s what I have so far and hopefully I’ll figure out something that will fill the blank. I know what to do at the end, it’s the middle that is troubling.

Of course proper spelling and grammar will appear in the final product too. Enjoy~

Crimson eyes were staring at me back there. They were looking at me through the TV. The only person capable of doing that was DIO. I tried to bring the attention of the others to the screen, but by that time the screen went blank again never to be used again. I don’t know what happened to it before I blacked out

It’s difficult trying to recall what happened after Joseph shot me with Hamon. The feeling was...hard to describe. It’s like being tased, but at the same time you feel nothing. You feel this weird and unfamiliar sensation running up and down your back and quickly branches off to every single nerve in your body just before everything fades to black. I don’t think that it was supposed to work that way, so my excuse is that it’s because I’m from another plane of existence where hamon and stands don’t exist, therefore I have less resistance than any normal human from this world. I don’t know how hamon works, just go ask Araki or something.

Now that I think about it, did Dio’s eyes always had a tint of brown to them or am I still a little hazy from hamon? I’ll have to think on that more and study what little fan art I have him in my phone some other time.

Currently the gang and I are stopping at a restaurant to fuel up before we cross the desert and eventually encounter The Sun. I couldn’t find any alternate routes that’ll help us shed some time on our way to Cairo, so this battle will be like those RPG battles where you’re unable to escape no matter the level gap between the enemy and you.

The place we were eating was pretty cozy. The servers are friendly, most of the tables were occupied with the occupants making a comforting white noise, not to mention the food was better than what he had last time. Familiar 80’s music played softly above us. I couldn’t help but grumble in my thoughts that there wasn’t a music box in the room, so I couldn’t punch in seven “What’s New Pussycat?” and one “It’s Not Unusual” during our time here. Instead it’s Frankie Valli, Michael Jackson, and Madonna with a pinch of Cyndi Lauper and Bon Jovi so people wouldn’t get sick of the same tunes being played in the same order over and over again.

The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I can’t complain too much about it since who knows when the next time we’ll be able to sit down and have a proper meal. Hopefully we can do this atleast once more when we pick up Avdol (or, you know, sacrifice one of his chickens). We haven’t had a proper sit down meal with all six of us in a while. Well it’s going to be seven if we count Iggy...I pray for whoever in the Speedwagon Foundation is in charge of filling the expensive bill we’re racking up with each step.

When I looked up from picking at my food I noticed that Joseph kept glancing his eyes over to some guy from another table. “That guy…”

“Mm? Do you know him?” I asked.

The older man rubbed his chin in thought. “He looks very familiar, or at least his hat is.” The hat in question was a worn out bowler hat, slightly discolored with marks around the rim that made it look like a dog (or several) had a field day on it. When he turns his head just right, you might see reddish hair poking out of it. “It would’ve helped if Avdol was here.”

The man himself was having a one man buffet. Exotic and rich dishes that didn’t match the food listed on the actual menu decorated the table that looked like it was meant for a party of ten. It was barely noon and this guy was eating like he hadn’t properly ate anything in a fortnight. What’s a guy like him having an early Christmas feast at a family restaurant in the corner of Iran of all places?

All conversations slowly become silent as everyone else in the room looked over at the marathon eater as soon as he started to crunch up the plates of his meals. A third of his feast had disappeared without a trace to support that. I wish i could get a good photo without being too conspicuous, but the guy’s back was blocking the shot.

I leaned over to Joseph and whispered, “Have you and Avdol met him before?”

He replied, “Two years ago, I invited Avdol to New York so he can see the Fourth of July fireworks. I took him and my wife to Coney Island to see the hot dog eating contest. They had a new contestant with that same hair and hat, although that hat saw better days then. He left his opponents and the current champion way behind in his dust, but…” He cleared his throat before explaining, “The defeated champion got very upset and tried to pick a fight with him on stage. Next thing you know, his-”

The sound of wood splintering and gasps from bystanders cut off what Joseph was about to say. The source of the sound came from where the man with the hat was and...he’s literally eating the table. I shit you not, he’s finishing the second table leg when I pulled out my phone and took a picture.

Some people rushed out in horror, others were frozen to their seats at this monster breaking off bits and pieces of the top like it’s some kind of giant chocolate bar. He didn’t seem to mind the concerned glances and whispers. You would think eating wood would leave you with splinters and a bloody mouth, but this guy is going at it like a champ without a trickle of blood pooling at the corners of his mouth.

Suddenly a man marches out from the kitchen with a red face with steam blowing out of his ears. From his nice clothes and his little name tag, it looks like the manager was at his limit. I can’t blame the guy, I too would be furious if someone was munching up my table.

“I’ve had it with you!” The manager yelled. “You’re emptying out our stock and now you have the balls to destroy my property.” He extends a hand to pull at the man’s collar, tugging him up hard enough that he’s a few inches off his seat with a hand on the back of the chair for support.

“Now now” The man with the hat finally spoke. “No need for the uproar. You’re ruining the calm dining environment.”

“The only one is ruining the environment here is you!”

“I can’t help it. The way everything was presented made me wanna gobble it all up.” He shifted his head to the manager and licked his lips. “No matter what I eat, I’m always hungry.” It was only a blink but in that moment the man with the hat was dropped back down to his seat and the manager’s arm ceased to exist. Without skipping a beat, blood started spraying out of the stump and the rest of the onlookers rushed out in terror while screaming in their whatever language they know. The man seemed unfazed with the hysteria he created and casually licked off the blood that managed to splatter on his hands and arms.

Back at our table, we were stunned from the events that happened before us. To make things worse, Joseph let out a loud “Oh my god!” but it didn’t even pull a reaction out of this weirdo. He just continued licking the trail that belonged to the now unconscious manager on the floor. It’s rather crude of me to say this, but he was practically sucking up anything in his path like a vacuum. Was this the work of a stand or is he just flat out crazy?

He was consuming everything so quickly we didn’t see him coming to our table until we saw our food being dragged with the tablecloth and into unknown abyss of the man’s mouth which got most of us to stand up from our chairs in surprise.

“Hey!” Joseph yelled, slamming his hands on the table as he stood. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” To which the mysterious man looked up after he finished whatever Jotaro was having.

“Sorry sir.” He responded, a familiar southern drawl leaking through. “I just got all nervous and resort to eating everything and such to calm me nerves.” He rubbed something at the corner of one of his blue eyes and continued on with, “S’pose to be looking for someone. Lord, I knew I should’ve written it down or something.”

Something about him, and his slight change of his voice, isn’t rubbing me the right way. Whatever it is, Joseph seemed to either not get a clue or completely ignore it all together when he extended his hand to help the guy up.

Specifically his left hand.

You know, the prosthetic one?

It vanished in seconds.

Where could it be, I hear you wonder. Why don’t you asked the redhead that’s chewing on something that sounds a lot like metal.

“Mmm...I think I remember now,” Was what I might’ve heard him say through the sound of metal being chewed. “One of the people I was looking for was a man with a metal hand...just like this.” Almost right after he said that, Joseph started yelling something incomprehensible. The man then stood up as he was licking his fingers, trying to savour whatever was on there. I could see a shift in eyes that tells he’s hungry for something.

#preview fic

[sambart93]

2017.02.13 D-Stage 20th: 柔道少年・Jyuudou Shounen [Review]

I watched D-Stage 20th: Jyuudou Shounen (Judo Boys) Monday night and it was a LOT of fun with so many things going wrong throughout which added to the hilarity.

Official Website here Official Twitter here Press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

CAST

Miyazaki Shuuto Miyazaki’s Parents (played by Mitsuya - mother and Ikeoka - father) Mitsuya Mitchell Ryo Ikeoka Ryousuke Arai Atsushi Shison Jun (played by Mitsuya Ryo) Negishi Takuya (played by Arai Atsushi) Nishi Yukito (played by Ikeoka) Voices of Shiramata Atsushi and Maeyama Takahisa Sakurai Minami Kobayashi Masahiro

NON-SPOILER

This was so funny! I didn’t stop laughing! Some parts were obviously planned and were supposed to be funny but quite a few things went wrong when I went and even the actors couldn’t not laugh which added to the hilarity. It’s a simple story and the comedy is definitely the selling point here. Seeing their close interactions is great too!

Rating: 9/10 << might be in the race to be my favourite D-Stage! But I’ll have to rewatch it to decide that finally.

---

First I will talk about the story: 

Basically Miyazaki Shuuto* has always been told to aim for the Olympics but he doesn’t see the point; he’s on a losing streak, he doesn’t want to go to the Olympics, he doesn’t even think he likes it anymore. Then thanks to a trip to Tokyo with his Judo buddies, he has his first love, finds a rival and discovers what he really wanted to do and what Judo means to him.

*They’re using their own names for the characters.

Simple enough story right? Which is great because it left a LOT of room for the BIG theme of the play: the comedy. This was absolutely hilarious! A lot of it was planned comedy but unfortunately the day I went, a LOT of things went wrong or happened without the other actors knowing it was going to happen so not only were the audience laughing hard but also the actors were laughing insanely hard too that they had to stop the play a little so both actor and audience could calm down xD Which means it as a lot of great fun!

To be honest, when I first got my ticket and it was Row Z and the site said row Z is actually row 3 and a bench seat I kind of panicked because I imagined the type of benches we have to sit on in primary school in England and they are not comfortable! SO I was super worried I’d have to put up with one of those types of benches for a 2 hour plus show BUT when I got there they weren’t really benches; just normal chairs without the back and with a cushion! And my bad didn’t hurt at all! I was comfortable the entire time! Also I was super lucky that the person in front and the person next to me didn’t show up SO I was technically on my own and second row! Which made it SUPER easy for the actors to spot us; seriously the first row could TOUCH the stage without even stretching their arm out! And Mitsuya definitely spotted me and I think Ikeoka looked over a few times -- but being me I kept looking away from IkeP if he so much as seemed to see me, cos I’m a shy girl with my bias’ xD

SPOILERS

Anyway! Now to the parts of the play I wanna focus and talk about! First let’s talk about the PLANNED comedy okay?

First Mitsuya pretending to be a returnee from America and speaking half English and half Japanese, at a fast speed, was both hilarious and impressive. For the most part his English was pretty accurate but there was one that cracked me up hard and that was "it’s privacy” (instead of saying “it’s private”) which we understand in English but isn’t right xD

Then next was Mitsuya playing Shuuto’s mother and his ‘chest’ was huge! xD also after she catches her husband look at her sons dirty magazines and pins him against the wall was hilarious.

Shuuto’s a master at showing comedy through his face! When he goes to see the girl he likes’ match every time the shuttlecock (she plays baminton) went to the rival player his face would be like -____- or angry and when it went back to her, he’d be like ^_^ or =D. It occurred about 5 or 6 times and it just got funnier as he continued.

Towards the end when Shuuto realises he does want to do Judo, IkeP and Mitsuya come running in and are like ‘hey you’re next guy is called Kaji Masaki and he’s a big guy so be careful’ which is hilarious that they mentioned Kaji’s name. We cracked out every time they used a D-Boys members’ name as the rival xD there were three times:

First was Shishon Jun played by Mitsuya and Mitsuya was doing the whole pouting his lips and playing with his blonde (wig) hair.

The second one was Nishii Yukito, played by IkeP, and he was like ‘YEAH!’ in a high pitched voice and kept flicking his hair back. But this scene soon changed into an unplanned accident scene when Shuuto did the final topple, IkeP’s wig came off and IkeP was facing the audience straight on and he just looked in shock as he realised the wig had come off and then cracked a smile that he couldn’t contain. He grabbed the wig and cradled it as he walked off xD after IkeP had walked off Shuuto was left on stage by himself and he just goes 'tondemonai koto na/unbelievable stuff is happening today' and then we went back to some planned comedy where he takes his time to re-adjust his uniform and checked the ties were the right and equal length and looks so proud of himself when he’s finished xD

Another funny moment is went Mitsuya and IkeP come on stage as the Kindai Kids (play on Kinki Kids) and do a song together and their outfits are ridiculously flashy and bright, and IkeP trying to sing high notes was funny too.

Some I’m not sure if they were planned or improvised/accident comedic scenes:

When Kobayashi gets angry at Shuuto and grabs him and he pushes Shuuto back but Ikeoka is behind him and Ikeoka is stuck between the wooden pole, Shuuto and then Kobayashi still pushing on Shuuto xD

There’s a part where Ikeoka (as Shuuto’s dad) is trying to talk to his son seriously but looks down and realises his fly is open and proceeds to try and close it for the remainder of the scene (it’s got a few more minutes left) and the audience were laughing too much to pay attention to what he was saying.

And now for the, even the actors couldn’t keep it together and laughed hard scenes:

Towards the beginning of the show, the boys were running around their coach Kobayashi, and without expecting it, he grabbed IkeP and toppled him over, and IkeP got back up and just looked at him in shocked and Mitsuya and Shuuto had sopped what they were doing and just stood there wetting themselves laughing as IkeP also cracked up and joined in, as well as the audience.

Another was a karaoke scene with Shuuto and Minami. Shuuto was trying to sing badly, but it ended in his voice cracking, and he couldn't stop laughing as he continued to sing the rest of the song. 

About halfway through Mitsuya and IkeP suddenly stop the play for a few minutes and get everyone to do Mitsuya’s Exercises! So we all had to stand up and we did an arm stretch, a neck stretch and a hip roll stretch. The Mitsuya was like ‘Mtsuya Solo!’ and danced around the stage widely and IkeP just stood to the side, lent against the wall, just looking at him speechless and in amazement at the silly things he was doing. When Mitsuya finished IkeP couldn’t speak at all xD

Towards the end, to help Shuuto win the girl and tournament, Arai comes to where the tournament in and before he can start a fight, IkeP, Mitsuya and Shuuto knock Araki out, but then Kobayashi comes in but they don't have enough time to 'hide the body' so they cover him up with their bodies, BUT Arai's face went right into Mitsuya's crotch and he’s not allowed to move because he’s supposed to be unconcious, so we slowly see his face going red and his chest laughing, as Mitsuya is facing us with his head in his hands dying of embarrassment and laughing.

One final one was when Shuuto lost his balance at the left side of the stage and IkeP luckily saw it pretty soon and smoothly grabbed his arm and re-balanced him xD

Side note; can we give a special mention to IkeP and Mitsuya’s eye contact! Talk about giving each other the sex eyes all the time! xD 

During the AfterTalk

Naturally it was centered around valentine’s day and when we came in, all our leaflets had a pink heart stickie note on and they explained that it’s our chocolate and as we leave, we can put the hearts in the box of the actor we like. Then suddenly IkeP was like ‘So we’re a host club now? and then it slowly got to them calling the play ‘Boku no Jyuudou chan’ xD

They spoke about the most chocos they got as kids and Arai and Shuuto were adament they weren’t popular but none of them believed Shuuto xD IkeP spoke about getting TomoChoco and was like ‘whao! this is so nostalgic!’ and Mitsuya was like ‘that’s not my generation’ xD and they were like ‘but you’re only 19 right?’ and he’s like ‘yeah I was born in Showa but I’m a Seihei’ and he realised he’d fucked up Heisei and just died and they all got on his case about it, ‘when was Seihei?! Never herd of it! Must be an old, old era’ xD he gave up trying to correct his mistake.

Arai also mentioned how he was the one who wrote the letters/characters on the boards that are in the background.

---

Final note:

This stage was a godsend in terms of reconfirming and reaffirming my love for IkeP. He did amazing in Yuhiden and Litche Hikari Club at the end of 2015 and that’s where I fell for him so I went into 2016 super hopeful for him but he only ended up doing like ONE play and ONE dorama and that was April and September, so I was super worried for his career and worried I wouldn’t be able to see more of him BUT we’re only in February and already he’s got a dorama airing, he’s doing a stage now and he’s definitely got Dansui stage in May! So he’s already doing more this year which makes me a super happy bunny and seeing him (finally!, again!) in this on Monday really helped me remember ‘ah yes I love this idiot’ xD he really is hilarious and cute!!

---

That’s all I got to say really. I am very much looking forward to the DVD! It’s a thoroughly enjoyable play! Seriously, a lot of fun and I didn’t stop laughing for over 2 hours!

#d-boys #d2boys #d-stage #stage #review #舞台 #ikeoka ryousuke #ikeoka ryosuke #mitsuya ryo #miyazaki shuuto #arai atsushi #池岡亮介 #三津谷亮 #新井敦 #宮崎秋人

[politicalfilth-blog]

5G Technology Explained By Max Igan. The Future Is Nigh!

In this video, we give you the latest breaking news on 5g technology with Max Igan. Igan expertly breaks down what the future holds for this technology and humanity and how it will change a lot more than just your cell phone.

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Transcript

Welcome back beautiful and amazing human beings this is over to ask if we are changed over here in Acapulco Mexico and today we are joined by the one and only philosopher researcher Max Egan and where to be getting into a lot of very interesting topics in this video with regarding 5G regarding people’s emotional states and pretty much as you told me yesterday how life is just pretty much a big old emotional mirror so bit hippy bit of technological technocratic talk but I think the most important aspect that I think we could get into and you’re very eloquent when you describe this you’ve been talking about this for a number of years now you’re very kind of Clairvoyant you been right on the money so many times but the bigger issue that I want to talk to you about his of course 5 G 5 G of course is being subsidized by many governments out there it’s a new kind of faster technological advancement of Internet out there there’s 20,000 satellites going up into space to provide it but what are the convenience of course is always a double cash. Something for free for a reason it’s a really free anyway but the reason the government subsidizing missing the bigger issue is Max I think you’ve been warning about for a very long time tell us what if you need to know about 5G budgie is military grade technology that’s the Pro Bowl prices at anything that you can think of any electromagnetic weapons system any active denial system or you going to do is go and look at the dog off of website look at the on Titans on your phone all the stuff I can do this anymore than you can think of it it piggyback soft G that’s the signal that I used to do it cost to being with you know that would sure we’ll get as fast as bandwidth but I’m the lying it is the ability to put military grade technology in place and at Target anybody they want you can talk to people individually set up people fact I need to know my kids are always things like microwave cannons Liza Cannons all this old all Isaac and his butt microwave cannons the good stuff like yeah I can change your emotional state that can put voices in your head but visions. Everything I did in the first Gulf War when they put the voice of God in the minds of the araki Soulja so they gave up their arms I admitted that did this all of this is 5G capable so that’s the problem and also whether with the Internet of Things in the mess of violence in the social crediting and everything that goes with it gives you the ability to track you in real time and to penalize you in real time and too tired of you who acted in all in real-time you know he said something wrong he’s down on his social credit points or just disabled him until the police arrive to pick him up and put him in the spot prison this is what they can do with it so it’s very very dangerous I pop in the hope that specs as well I mean just the fact that it is this heavy millimeter wave radiation and say it’s a whole new ballgame than the 3rd or 4th generation of Internet do we yawn when you think of the other J behind all this 1G 2G 3G 4G this is fourth and fifth-generation but with this it isn’t an evolution of the same technology to shift over into a new. Military grade technology that just all the testing on with all these Wards for the last 10 years than our woods and as I said I didn’t order that stuff is run by some critics be like this would never happen we got a whole bunch of peacocks here to I’m going to put the camera on there but there’s going to be a whole bunch of people saying you need to understand people’s iPhones are keeping a social credit score on you rating your phone calls in your text messages in your interactions without you even knowing or having access to it look what’s happening in China right now in system that’s going throughout their entire country’s population controlling people’s ability to have high-speed internet have a job to put their kids into a good school be able to travel even based on a social credit score if there are critical of the government of course journalists already being hit with this now this is interesting point with the conversation from God that the Iraqi. Iraqi War soldiers heard can you tell us more about that as well as the documents that you talked about yesterday on our livestream that was also surrounding and discovered around 5G the voice of God is what I put in the Rocky songs you can find their own reports at this is what we did you know when you can do stuff I was test I did things in Japan a couple of years ago that I can put the Holograms in front of the shorts in Japan and it was sitting shops with a voice in your head telling you to go in and shop and the people walking past complained about it because I told this is an invasion of privacy this is why I didn’t mind string that’s what I just told you you must lay down your weapons and gone surrender to the friendly allies you know and they’re wet fart bomb so I can do this stuff but not only that when you look at what we wear electrical bangs and all this stuff affects your how hard would it be to get a title population we might be a population of dissident so perhaps in anneke’s community or whatever and just tired of them and perhaps in Juice also I’m as in that until I can. So they don’t have dementia and I don’t know what they doing what it’s like over country so this is what’s possible with all this like quitting and I can do everything you can think of what I said go look at the website and look at some of the tests are done in cultures only song to be experiencing and your electrical experiments I do what’s it all for you know and I’ve done all the tests and now they’re putting this blanket systemic roast everybody for a convenience and even people who eat organic food and stuff like this with this this radiation that is Guy Anthony is changing the cell structure of us so it’s also changing the cell structure of all the food we’re eating a base and Wildlife and insects falling off every way people noticing you noticing any bugs in your windscreen any more fights you got driving at dusk is not bumps on your windscreen you speak thousands terrible time to go driving cuz she had to clean your windscreen so much we don’t see that anymore. Just done notice and I wants this food chain breaks down and I we’re heading into really really Dangerous Waters. Will need to pay attention to it and the government doesn’t subsidize something and give you these foggy devices if they didn’t want you to have this and if they want you to have it and they are able to induce certain wives and carrier wife’s throat affect your biology affect your neurology this is very dangerous and of course this is why they’re doing it need to be aware of all these is not a matter of if but when you got historical record it’s been predominantly governments and mobs Mafia is that I’ve been ruining The Human Experience on his Planet causing a lot of suffering the kind of valve for power and with this new technological advancements they’re going to have the ability to have unlimited power and do really really crazy Sinister things then why wouldn’t a state or private corporation that profits off usually predominately your own misery won’t do that is the question is is it’s it’s foolish not to be skeptical not to look into these things and the way that this discussion is not even happening with this just being implemented especially. Does absolutely terrifying but 5G before we get into the the other topic anything specifically you think people should know or or can do even something about this larger topic other than just moved to Peru everywhere I think we will have to become aware of it but I got to stop complying with the system stop pulling away from it realizes what’s happening is a digital bear has been constructed between Austin nature bicycle E Yeah and they’re removing rx’s seen you need a mobile phone to getting to the park you know what a man like you need in my ball finder everything they are removing landlines removing newspapers magazines or information is becoming digital which means I can change it anytime I want rewrite it anytime I want and you need to be getting meeting passwords and biometric scans and things saint of buildings sorry it’s going in a really really scary direction if you put all that in place and you got this whole digital barrier between us and reality with the ability to Target and disciple anybody you want for erected to know this is a very die. Spicy and you have it based on social credit system Sunday you get home on your phone that you can and she unharmed because of what you said in the pot that died and it’s pretty scary stuff so I think we really need to look at what this is the best thing we can do is just not use it looking for the donut shop at Amazon fights gun shop it all these places out of the bank can I use cash cash is bad enough but it’s better than leaving a pipe of trial and it’s better than having this device on you the tracks you everywhere you go listens to everything you do and realize the messages back to paper cuz every cell tower you see he’s not a transmitter it’s a. Ahava stuff I have a stole your stuff from your cell phones every time you got pause every 3rd child so why would such thing in the system now or they can just pull the net out and just dragging nice people I want you know I mean we have the cell towers and they’re spread out but the 5G Towers going to be very closely located of course. Central of Adam location along major kind of light poles as well very close to each other a lot of room for concern here I’m always on a very skeptical side and people need to understand here the reality of the situation is this is encroaching all around us and it’s really our compliance our kind of laziness our foolishness that’s allowing this to happen Amazon is one of them it’s been hard for me not to use Amazon I’ll be honest because it’s so convenient one day I’ll just be here I’m forcing myself to not use them because of just a larger implications if this is a company that’s working on artificial intelligence this is a company artificial intelligence extremely terrifying when you look at the bigger applications are working on facial recognition AI systems that they give to government police departments that they gave to ice this is a total game-changer laws in France were just passed where you can’t come rub your face anymore because of the bigger Revolution that’s happening there it’s all encroaching towards less and less and less rights as people are just being in a day. With just their comfort zones just sitting down feel like it’s so convenient one click of a button I got my Chinese slave made Goods right here and I think we could get into and I think it would be very important for me and you to discuss is of course the bigger deeper psychological emotional aspects of this because as you were talking about a lot of people usually tried to fill in a lot of empty voids are usually placed into my Society on purpose through consumerism through the want of of money and end the end of the kind of greed of trying to be rich you have a totally different perspective on this which I appreciate I utilize it in my own ways but one thing you told me I want you to go from here is I try to spend money and you can’t yeah it’s a difficult thing like what how much anything you know what I have to pay to be a lot but. Is something I really want to go if I had a lot of money that I don’t know what I’d spend it on you know I saw I tend to give a little why you know I got to help people have a water to house of people and stuff like this as much as I try to spend it just it just seems to come back to me all the time it’s a freaking thing a couple of years ago I left the strategy with $5,000 in my pocket and I use credit cards and I went away for about three months ended up being a wife for 19 months went around the world 2 and 1/2 * and I end up in Virginia and I had $230 left in my pocket so I go around the world with 219 months two and a half times on $5,000 and then right when I decided what I’ve only got $130 in my pocket it’s time for me to book a ticket I’m as soon as I book The Ticket I want to come out to me and said you changed my life you saved my life last year my husband died and you always in a really really dark place and you you saved my life and she handed me an envelope with $5,000 in it to go home with exactly the same. Are you sure this is a hell of a die nice and she was like I don’t know please please take it and I, I didn’t spend it I just said let it sit in an envelope and I like I just didn’t spend it all you just throw this is too much of a guy nice and it’s a my guide me and I sent her an e-mail months later to say like how I is it all good amount of stupid this money here and she was like no other place have it you know but that’s the thing and are you lose attachment to a Papal who who always worried about having my money will find that never got any money people who are worried about their health all the time with one of their wives having health problems you know if you have no stake in the outcome you lose attachment to it is an emotional mirror Nessa how it works and the laws of dama dama you do the right thing and the right way at the right time for the right reason and what is right well if you find the one Lord corporation which is unconditional love and service to Creation which doesn’t mean you serve yourself at the expense of others are you don’t serve others at the expense of yourself you put yourself on a TV. Kill Squad finish every writer show in lak’ech I’m another yourself you know and I just gave all that I can everything websites for free all my films of my fat free the book all right I gave away free and since I started giving everything for free and anytime I’ve got anything spare I give it to someone for free who needs it I just leave in the side of where everything I need is always there for me it just works and I have a lot of money at all but but what if I needed it just comes the way that beautiful woman come and just gave me everything that I just spent on the last 19 month so it’s been going around the world trying to wake the world up and I just got that straight back to me now you can go home resting place.

You got that that you got the funding to go and do it again next time you want.

NSL works and it’s an emotional mirror some people need to lose stake in the outcome you know if you or the the the rules of dama and the end that are in a side of unconditional love with you throw yourself to the way you can write it and I’m living proof that it works and the more you resisted the more difficult to get that I can tell you in my own personal life every time I try to control a specific aspect or start worrying and stressing out like a crap I’m broke I have no money or crap I’m having this problem this medical issue if it only gets worse from here and I had so many times in my life where I’m just at work out I’ll be fine and just the same thing at alternative media especially early on I didn’t have much money random person came to me right as I had zero and I was like you know it will be fine I’ll be okay first comes up to me as like here’s you know a hundred bucks allows me to eat for the next day which was incredible God had so many moments like that not only what money but like random places like being at the G20 not having a place to stay and then being like know it’s going to be okay it’s going to be fine and literally a hotel manager coming. Give me in the hotel that I’m just having a drinking because I don’t know what else to do tell him hey you want anything you need anyting yours a hotel magic kind of synchronicity and magic magic live to get so much easier once you release a you just like let-go and your line. Find a workout has less stress you put on yourself that use your it is if you want to say it didn’t cut me off anytime because I can talk about this for a while and are now you could throw yourself that when you can draw that you really can you know and people you have if you are having a hard time I can save you stressing out about some universities going to go really have a little bit more I have a little bit more you getting it yet you know so you got to lose attachment to all that United States a beautiful world full of beautiful people and everybody really wants to help each other you know that I really do and if you don’t have a stake in the outcome if you can give to people unconditionally on your phone the universe gives back to you when we gave him we we expect something in return it doesn’t work gif. Give something to you I’m not giving you a debt you never asked for I’m actually giving you a gift there’s nothing attached to that you’re not and people need to be able to do that every was a time is not money you know if we can just open up your heart to yourself and see the beauty and trueness of yourself than you want to give to others it’s a beautiful thing and I and that’s how I live my life that’s why I give everything there’s nothing to go on my website it’s all free I give it all away and the University of scars made out of work should my if we we could adopt that attitude all I believe we could change the world so I quickly we really could you know but the fact we go to Pi to be Lord is always that stress dripping in the back of everyone’s mind so matter how much I try to let go and tell him all this and I just so you know I was never part of that I walked away from the system in in early and school and become a musician so I’ve never been part of it so I know why it’s easy for me and I can see that but I can still say that other people can do this. I’ve met all the people that have done unto mean you’re doing what I mean is it works fine she really was let me know it’s perfect we all have our negative negative sides and we all have our negative traits that we have to fight through and it’s not an easy fight what are the things you said to me that really spoke to me is like when you’re giving a gift you’re not giving someone debt that they never wanted cuz that’s what you people do I give you this now you better do this and this and this and I used to conduct my relationships like this before time to actually do some introspection to meditation have some third-party professional work work with me and be like hey.

Wow I wasn’t sometimes especially earlier on in my life especially my teenage years in my early twenties I wasn’t the kind of detrimental behaviors and we’re all making mistakes but it’s about recognizing them admitting them to to him and not making sure you never do them again because the way in the philosophies that you speak about her very very important a lot of people are adverse to a lot of this a lot of people are adverse to this because they don’t hear it in the mainstream media they don’t hear it in the schools they don’t hear it in society in this is an important message that needs to be spread around because a lot of people are so uncomfortable would even just having free time to think as individuals themselves that they have to drown this out with TVs being on in their rooms all the time that’s a drowned this out with radios being on the on the side with constant constant noise that the jaundice out with constantly being on their phone and never having a free moment to even freely think because of all the horrible thoughts because of the fear they have in themselves to even critically analyze the truth of this. Which are difficult to swallow and that’s why the the 5G industry is becoming as prevalent as they are because people are like well I get faster internet I could Pastor distract myself from life and the realities of life and the harder truth of this life and and the heart or emotions that I have a process and I could just get out of those but just more bull crap and you’re not a part of that system you’re not part of that Paradigm and I always appreciate you Max I always appreciate the time we spent I appreciate everything you say just wanted to say thank you and deep down appreciate you and your energy and and just the person you are cuz this is a message that people need to hear and I had my own Falls I was one of those people people need to understand I was literally so traumatized before I had a hard time not having the TV on constantly because when I was left in my thoughts I said think about traumas or the bigger darker horrible aspects of this world that I didn’t want to process and I just kept medicating myself with the subconscious propaganda as being thrown. Let me buy them that makes me be like oh but I get it in the day shift to Mio but it’s going to be so quick to download on my movies and everything else in a matter of seconds now it is 5G is going to be so great that kind of ideology is perpetrated by the larger ecosystem by this larger problem so I’m going on around nose supposed to be in to be on you but I feel so emotionally attached to this because I was at fault and your words are kind of medicine medical therapeutic nature so appreciate you leave you with the last words because appreciated this video share with your friends and family members but last words Max again preciate you very much and you do it because you want five is from that person you haven’t given him a gift you’ve given him a debt I never asked. I give this poison now you’ve given Sunday to yourself if you can give unconditionally no stake in the outcome and sometimes I didn’t even pay for the the person shopping next to me just because. I look like I need some money so I’ll just run this stuff through the chick at and walk away if I can before they even see me do it you know and that’s so the stuff it it it just attracts good when you did go to the track school so I do good price and believe in yourself because we can all get through this yet his home this whole thing is just an idea that somebody had and it’s time for new idea I think it’s about to be born.

The post 5G Technology Explained By Max Igan. The Future Is Nigh! appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/5g-technology-explained-by-max-igan-the-future-is-nigh/

#We are Change #We Are Change

[sorayahigashikata]

Chapter 30: "That's so sad. Alexa, play Jurassic Park."

#Paula reads SBR #Chapter 30 #HOORAY VIOLENCE #STILL GOT THE DINOSAURS #catch me not crying #and not watching Johnny get eaten either grrr #I just realized something #Sonic 06 has something in common with Part 6 #THEY DIDN'T HAPPEN #KONO DIO DA #Steel Ball Run spoilers #Part 7 spoilers

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 105-108

“Master Kars has taken a fighting stance!   I... I wasn’t expecting tongue...”

Hey, remember Wammu?   Well, he’s dead now, so the only Pillar Man left to worry about is the leader, Kars.  His army of vampire slaves don’t like this, so they try to bumrush our heroes, but Lisa kills a few of them, then threatens to destroy the Red Stone of Aja unless Kars honors their agreement. 

And Kars is cool with that.   He only took off his headdress and exposed his antennae to prepare for the next one-on-one fight.   He then kills his unruly henchmen to prove that they don’t speak for him.  Moreover, Kars is now willing to fight Lisa Lisa.   Earlier, he said that he didn’t like fighting women, but now that he’s seen her in action, he’s on board with the idea.

But he doesn’t want to fight in Skeleton Heel Stone, where Joseph and Wammu squared off.   Instead, he chooses the Piza Berlina Temple, right next door to the S.H.S.  Apparently, after a hard day of chariot racing, the winners used to come here to worship their gods and drink the blood of the losers. 

It’s weird to me that Kars and Wammu should be so familiar with this place, and carry such an abiding respect for it.   I mean, they’ve viewed ordinary 20th Century humans with utter contempt, dismissing them as backwards primitives.   Santana disassembled a German rifle like it was easy, and he’s supposed to be the big dummy in the Pillar Men.   That’s how little they think of 1938 technology and civilization.   The Hamon users in this story only get a bit of respect because they‘ve become worthy adversaries. 

And yet, the Pillar Men seem to be a lot more respectful towards ancient humanity.   Esidisi knew the writings of Sun Tzu, if not the man himself.   You’d think he’d just ignore or devour Sun Tzu sooner than look at him.   And you’d think Wammu would have wanted to fight in the traditions of his own culture, but instead he’s all into this ancient human racetrack.    It can’t be because it’s old.   Compared to Wammu, it’s positively brand new.  

On the other hand, these guys are the last of their kind, as we’ll learn in a few chapters.   Human culture is the only kind the Pillar Men have gotten to see, and it’s been that way for about a hundred centuries now.   If Esidisi wants to read a book, he’s pretty much going to have to tolerate human authors, because that’s all that’s left.   And if Wammu wants to admire a sporting arena, he’s stuck with places like these, built by those pesky “primitives”.  

Joseph asks Lisa to let him fight Kars instead, since he’s still worried about her being a woman.   Also, he believes Kars is weaker than Wammu, so he should be able to defeat him.   But Lisa insists on handling this, and she strips down to this circus outfit.    That sounds like I’m making fun of it, but I’m not.   It looks pretty badass, but also period-appropriate. 

The fight is very short.  Kars pulls some sort of disappearing act, then emerges from one of the stone surfaces of the temple, trying to slash at Lisa from behind with his blades.    But Lisa has it scouted, and she wraps her silk scarf around Kars’ arm, charges it with Hamon, and kills him, wham, bam, thank you ma’am.  

And then the real Kars emerges from the same stone, and stabs Lisa in the back.   Somehow, Kars disguised one of his vampire minions to look just like him, right down to the blades in his arms, and sent that flunky out as a distraction.    It’s a cheap trick, and a complete 180 from the honor displayed by Wammu in the previous fight.  Kars doesn’t care.   He doesn’t care about dishonoring Wammu’s memory, nor does he care about breaking his word.   The only thing Kars cares about is getting the Red Stone of Aja, and now he has it. 

Unfortunately, this takes Lisa Lisa out of action for the rest of the story.  Kars hasn’t killed her, but she’s too badly hurt to do anything from here.   That kind of sucks, because Lisa’s such a cool character.   A friend of mine once complained that Lisa got a raw deal in Part 2, and we should have gotten to see her get a big fight, on par with Joseph vs. Esidisi, or Caesar vs. Wammu.   I can’t really disagree with the sentiment. 

However, I have a hard time figuring out how such a fight could have been worked into the story.   She couldn’t beat Kars, for Pete’s sake.   He’s the final boss of Part 2, so it sort of falls to Joseph to do the honors.  And she couldn’t beat Wammu or Esidisi, because Joseph was the one who needed the antidote to their poison rings.  Lisa could have lost to either of them--the way Caesar lost to Wammu-- except she’d have to die, which would spoil the big reveal of her origin story.

So maybe there needed to be an extra Pillar Man in the cast?   Not Santana, because he’s too weak, but maybe Kars’ group has a fourth guy named Talqingedz or whatever.  So Lisa Lisa could mop the floor with that dude... and then what?    Would it really carry any dramatic weight for her to defeat a guy like that?  A Pillar Man so ancillary to the story that the plot would flow just as well without him?    When you get down to it, Lisa Lisa’s dream opponent for Part 2 just ends up looking like Wired Beck, a random jobber presented solely to establish her credibility as a fighter.   And we already got Lisa vs. Wired Beck, and clearly that wasn’t satisfying enough.   So Lisa Lisa vs. a Pillar Man probably wouldn’t have been much of an improvement.  

Nonetheless, I think it’s a valid criticism of Battle Tendency.  You come out of this story wishing we could have seen more of Lisa Lisa in action, and we just aren’t going to get it.   But the root of the problem isn’t that she didn’t get to fight more, it’s that she was presented as a fighter when that really wasn’t her role in the story.   She’s a teacher, training Joseph and Caesar in the ways of the Ripple, but more importantly, she’s an enigma.  Who is she?   What’s her connection to the Joestars?  To Straizo?   To Caesar?   Where did she get the Red Stone of Aja?   And so on.  

Her Ripple mastery makes her one of the strongest fighters on the board, but that’s just another piece of the puzzle.   I think there was a profile of Lisa Lisa in the manga that said her Ripple was three times stronger than Joseph’s.   But we never get to see it demonstrated, because that’s not the point.  We’re just supposed to wonder who this lady is and how she got so powerful, and where has she been this whole time.    I think this is also why everyone keeps writing her off as a woman.   It’s not just chauvanism, it’s intended to keep the reader off-balance.  One minute Joseph and the Pillar Men are respecting her power, and the next minute they’re dismissing her.    It keeps you guessing. 

I suspect this is one reason why Araki dealt Lisa Lisa such an inglorious defeat here.   Could Lisa have defeated Kars in a fair fight?   Yeah, I think she could.   But if she cleaned his clock, it would defeat the mystique of the character.   The same is true if Lisa lost to Kars in a fair fight.  We’d say “Oh, okay, she wasn’t quite as strong as Joseph, so that’s that.” 

Now, the other major reason for Kars to defeat Lisa Lisa like this is to demonstrate Kars’ main character trait.   He only cares about achieving his objective.   Wammu had his warrior code, and Esidisi had his devotion to his comrades, but Kars has only himself and his goals.   He had Lisa and Joseph cornered in the abandoned hotel, but they didn’t have the Aja Stone on them.   Lisa made that bluff about a bomb, and then proposed this contest to settle things.   Kars agreed, but not because he had any intention of honoring the agreement.  He just let things play out because he knew Joseph would bring the Stone to the battlefield, and even if Wammu lost, he would still have all of these vampires to back him up.  

That’s how Kars was able to defeat Lisa.   He used Wammu’s own honor to lull Lisa into a false sense of security.   After seeing how noble Wammu was in defeat, and how gracious Kars was in disciplining his vampires, she began to believe that Kars would fight her fairly.     That was Kars’ plan all along.   Once he had her isolated on the temple, with the Red Stone of Aja on her person, he made his play.    It’s dirty pool, but it worked, and that’s all Kars cares about. 

This makes Joseph super-duper pissed, but what’s he gonna do about it?   He’s way down there on the ground, surrounded by vampires, and his Ripple is weak from the fight with Wammu.    So now Kars can just watch from a safe vantage while his henchmen tie up the last loose end.  

But then, the Nazis show up, led by Stroheim, complete with a repaired cyborg body.  And Speedwagon and Smokey are here too, along with a fighting contingent of the Speedwagon Foundation.   And they came prepared too!  Everybody’s armed with UV emitters.   To be sure, ultraviolet lamps haven’t worked so well against the Pillar Men, but against ordinary vampires, they seem to do the job quite nicely.   

So while they clean house, Joseph climbs up to where Kars and Lisa are, and he’s ready to throw down.   Joseph has plenty of harsh words for Kars’ dirty tactics, but Kars doesn’t care.   This has all been a chess game to him.   The Ripple Clan, the vampires, even Wammu and Esidisi, they were all just pieces on a board, maneuvered and arranged until he could secure a path to victory with minimal risk.  

See, that’s the other thing about Lisa Lisa.   It’s very subtly expressed here, but Kars was clearly very worried about her.   He knew Joseph was a threat because he killed Esidisi, but he knew he could use Wammu to wear Joseph down.   But Lisa Lisa is even more powerful and experienced than Joseph, and she’s shrewd enough to destroy the Stone if cornered.    He knew he couldn’t beat her at her own game, so he let her think she was playing her own game in order to set her up for that sneak attack.   If Kars hadn’t done that, he’d be dead by now, or the Stone would be lost or destroyed.  

Likewise, I’m not sure Kars is confident about a fair fight with Joseph, even though he’s tired from fighting Wammu.  I mean, you’d think he’d just charge Joseph and cut his head off if he could, but instead he lures him into another trap.    Before Joseph got up here, Kars tied Lisa’s feet to a rope.    He made sure not to kill her, but only so he could use her as a hostage.   Kars tosses Lisa down, and Joseph has to grab the rope to keep her from falling to her death.

And the whole point of that was to keep Joseph standing still.   He can’t let go of the rope, so he’s in no position to defend himself.   Now Kars can just walk right up to him and kill him at his leisure.   As far as Kars is concerned, this is what fighting is all about.   Not a test of strength and skill like Wammu’s ideal, but the achievement of victory at minimal risk.  

And this is where we see Joseph exceed Lisa Lisa.  They both got suckered into Kars’ traps, but Lisa doesn’t have Joseph’s penchant for trickery and quick thinking.    She’s got more Ripple power, sure, but that doesn’t matter against a guy like Kars.   I’m starting to get the impression that Kars is a lot weaker than Wammu, since he fights so conservatively in this story.   He may not be able to afford to fight Joseph in any other way.   

So how in the hell can Joseph get out of this one?   Well, first he tries to kick Kars to keep him away.   Kars just cuts his leg, along with a section of rope that was in the way.   Joseph’s Ripple is so weak that the kick did nothing. 

Then Joseph sets his own scarf on fire and talks about how he has a plan, and it’s so awesome that he can make this work before the flames reach his body.    Kars thinks this is just desperate posturing, and all Joseph seems to do is swing away.    Kars thinks he’s trying to get some distance so he can recover his Hamon energy.

Then Kars cuts the rope, since Joseph won’t stand still and get murdered.   

And it backfires, because Joseph did more tricky rope tricks!   Hermit Purple, bitch!

Basically, that very first bit, where Joseph tried to kick him, even then, Joseph had a plan.    He got Kars to cut a section of rope, which he then used to tie his own leg to the rope holding Lisa Lisa.   Then he goaded Kars into cutting the rope so Lisa would fall, not realizing that Joseph had her secured with his other rope.   Also, that other rope got caught on Kars’ own foot.   It’s complicated. 

Oh, wait, I forgot to talk about chess.   Okay, so earlier, Kars was gloating about using Lisa as a pawn to achieve checkmate.   It’s a good analogy, but I’m pretty sure chess was invented within the last 2000 years.   In other words, Kars literally slept through the entire history of the game.   So for him to be talking about it now, I have to assume he learned about chess during that month while Joseph was training.   That kind of sucks.   Esidisi and Wammu were running around trying to find the Red Stone of Aja, and Kars was probably chilling out in Switzerland playing chess and drinking hot cocoa all night.   Wotta heel.

Then Joseph pulls himself back up with his scarf and uses Overdrive against Kars’ blade.  Joseph’s Ripple is so strong that he just powers right through, destroying the blade on Kars’ arm like it’s no big deal.  That’s interesting, because when Joseph first saw Kars’ blades, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to block them, and now it’s Kars who wasn’t strong enough to block. 

Maybe “Light Mode” was more of an illusion than a genuine power?  I mean, the blades are super-sharp, but I never understood what difference it made for them to be all sparkly, unless it’s a psychological trick to demoralize the enemy.   It definitely worked on Stroheim, and it worked on Joseph for a while, but I don’t think Joseph’s gotten that much stronger since their last encounter.   

Anyway, the Ripple worked, and Kars’ entire arm explodes.   Yeah!  Then he falls off the temple, and Joseph loosens the rope to help him on his way down.    Cool!  Then Kars lands on a bunch of spiky rocks, the same gruesome fate he intended for Lisa Lisa.   Yeah, how’s that taste, Kars?   You loincloth-wearin’ piece of crap?  

So... yeah, we won!  Great job everyone!  Except for the Nazis, they can all go fuck off and die in a fire.   Smokey’s feeling a lot better about everything, so he asks Speedwagon about Lisa Lisa.   See, earlier, Lisa revealed to Joseph that she was the baby that Erina rescued at the end of Phantom Blood.   But Erina told Smokey about the same baby back in New York, and Smokey knows that Lisa Lisa is Joseph’s mother.  

Except, Erina told Joseph that his mother died of a disease when he was a baby, so how can Lisa be alive and a Ripple Master?   Speedwagon agrees to explain, since Smokey took care of Erina while he was away, but he insists that Smokey not reveal any of this to Joseph, because it’s Joestar family business.  

I hadn’t really considered it until now, but this is the first time we’ve seen Smokey and Speedwagon interact so far.   They’ve gotten to know each other off-panel, and they seem to have a bond over their shared respect for the Joestars, so it lulled me into thinking they’ve appeared together before this.    Anyway...

The origin of Lisa Lisa isn’t all that complicated, actually.   She was raised by Straizo and became a Ripple warrior, while Jonathan and Erina’s son, George Joestar II, joined the British Air Force in World War I.   George and Lisa fell in love, married, and had a baby, Joseph.  

The catch is that there was one last zombie from Phantom Blood.   Speedwagon and Straizo thought they got all of Dio’s zombies, but one of them was very clever and managed to stay hidden.    He just made sure to eat his victims’ entire body, so as not to leave any physical evidence.   Also, he faked a disability to excuse himself from any daylight activities.    By the 1910′s, he had successfully infiltrated the RAF as a Major.  

So George learned of this, because he knew all the Phantom Blood lore from his wife and mother.    But George never had any Ripple abilities himself.   He may have had the potential for it, but he was never trained, and I guess he didn’t develop it naturally, the way Joseph did.  

So he tried to gather evidence to expose the zombie Major, but his plan backfired and the zombie killed him instead, then covered up George’s death by reporting it as a plane crash.    Speedwagon and Straizo investigated this, but before they could act...

Lisa got wind of it and took matters into her own hands.  She killed the zombie major, but she did it in front of another officer.   The authorities knew nothing of zombies or Stone Masks, so they just thought she murdered an RAF officer in cold blood.    So she had to leave Britian as a fugitive, and she’s been living in exile in Italy ever since.    The Speedwagon Foundation has been trying to clear her name, but I doubt there’s whole lot they could do about a case like this.

And there you have it.   Erina was so heartbroken over the death of her son and the exile of her daughter-in-law that she asked Speedwagon to never tell Joseph what really happened to his parents, and to keep the Ripple a secret from him.   Of course, none of that really worked, because Joseph developed the Ripple on his own, and Straizo and Stroheim forced Joseph to develop those abilities even further, leading him directly to his long lost mother.   Erina wanted to protect Joseph, but she couldn’t save him from his own fate.    Smokey starts crying, and I’m like “same tbh.”  

This ties back to a point I made early on.   When I watched the anime, it seemed kind of random to introduce Smokey, then drop him for most of the story, then bring him back at the end.   But now, it makes a lot more sense.   He was a viewpoint character, but only so far as the stuff about the Joestar Family.   All the fighting and Ripple stuff could be done without Smokey, since Joseph could function as his own viewpoint character for that part.   And while it’s kind of weird for Smokey to be absent for so long, it helps that he seemed to feel the same way.    He clearly went out of his way to join Speedwagon on this mission to Switzerland.  He simply cares about the Joestar Family that much.    He couldn’t sit in New York and wait for an update.

Anyway, Lisa’s going to be okay, and the vampires are all dead, and Kars is slowly dying from the Ripple wound Joseph gave him, so it looks like we’re all finished here.   Stroheim decides to put Kars out of his misery by shooting him with high-intensity UV rays.   Maybe that’s overkill at this point, but we might as well let Stroheim have his fun.

Oh SHI--

So yeah, Kars had the Red Stone of Aja this whole time, but he only just now decided to use it.   That’s because the Stone will only amplify the power of his special Stone Mask if there’s a powerful light source.    This whole fight has been happening at night, so Kars had to wait until morning to try this little stunt.  But Stroheim has helpfully supplied a bunch of UV lamps, and those work just peachy, thanks.   Fuck Stroheim forever.

And just like Dio and Straizo before, the Stone Mask digs bony protrusions into Kars’ brain, but this time the mask has the Super Aja powering it, so Kars stands to gain even more power, turning him into... what exactly?  

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #kars #lisa lisa #robert e o speedwagon #smokey brown #rudol von stroheim #george joestar ii

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 83-87

Last time, the Red Stone of Aja got mailed out to the bad guys, so Joseph and Caesar have gone to shake down the Venice Post Office.   Notably, Joseph wears a hat and coat similar to the one he’s rocking in Part 3.

Turns out, the package is already on its way to St. Moritz, Switzerland.   Messina knows this because... okay, try to follow this.   So Esidisi hijacked Suzie Q’s body to mail the Stone.   So she probably wasn’t even aware of what she was being forced to do, but Lisa Lisa used Ripple Hypnosis on her to retrieve the address.   You’d think she would have told the boys about this ability before they ran over to the post office, but maybe they left before she could say anything.

Meanwhile, this dog’s about to get run over, but this is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, so what else is new.   Araki’s hatred for comic book dogs is the stuff of legend.

OR IS IT?   Yeah, take a good long look, because this is the only time Araki saves a dog in JJBA.    Apparently, Kars is a sucker for innocent plants and animals, go figure.  

I don’t know what else to tell you, except Battle Tendency = Best JoJo Part.  

As for Joseph, he and the others go to Switzerland, only to get held up by Nazis at the border.  Turns out, their mysterious commander knows all about the Red Stone of Aja, the Pillar Men, and Joseph and Caesar’s Ripple training.   That guy who tried to rob Lisa Lisa a while back?  He was a Nazi spy the whole time.   So now they have the Stone, and they want to cooperate with Joseph’s group.   Lisa goes along with it, because it’s better than letting Kars find the stone.

For some reason, Araki pauses to discuss Nazi Germany a bit, except he has all these historical events from March and September of 1939.   I’m not entirely clear on the chronology of Part 2, except that the final battle with Kars takes place in February of 1939, so none of these things have happened yet.  

But the point still stands.    Hitler wants Nazi Germany to rise above mankind, just as Kars seeks his own kind of supremacy.   And like Kars, the Nazis are interested in the Red Stone of Aja as a possible path to greater power.  

Everybody spends the night at some Swiss inn, until Kars shows up and uses his hyper-senses to detect how many men are in their room.   Then he slashes through the wall with that blade he sprouts out of his forearm, killing them all with one attack.   

Except for their commander, who has the Stone.   Kars is confused, because he sensed the number and location of everyone in the room, but somehow he missed this last guy, because he’s got no body heat.  

And Joseph barges in just in time to find out that this dude is Stroheim, the Nazi officer who blew himself up to stop Santana.  Somehow he’s alive, and also a cyborg, which is why Kars couldn’t detect him.  

Kars only wants two things: To capture the Aja Stone, and to kill Joseph Joestar.    He says that he can’t afford to spare a Ripple User powerful enough to slay Esidisi, but Joseph wonders if Kars is motivated by a desire to avenge his comrade, rather than any sort of cold tactics.    Wammu had called dibs on fighting Jojo, but he’s in Greece at the moment, and Kars is in no mood to wait.   

But Stroheim insists on tackling Kars himself, as his cyborg body was specifically designed using the information gleaned from studying Santana.   He’s strong enough to rip out pieces of Kars’ flesh, and he’s armed with a big-ass machine gun.  He tells Joseph not to pity him, because he’s proud to become this living tribute to German technology.  

What I want to know is: How did Stroheim survive Mexico without Joseph knowing about it?  He was there when that grenade went off, after all.   Maybe Stroheim landed some distance away, where Joseph wouldn’t have thought to look for him.    But how did Stroheim’s men find him?  

Anyway, Kars is not impressed, and he cuts Stroheim in half with his “light mode”, which is just the blades in his arms.   They seem to glow, but it’s actually just reflected light from the complex patterns in the blades.   From the sidelines, Joseph is unnerved by Kars’ ability, because he doubts that he could block or avoid those blades, even with the full power of his Hamon energy.   

As for Stroheim, he had no idea that Kars could do anything like this.   I don’t know, are arm-blades really that big a deal?   Wammu’s powers seem a lot cooler, and Esidisi’s “flame mode” looks pretty scary, even if it only melts stuff.   Still, it’s enough to beat Stroheim.    Kars mocks him for thinking that he and Santana were on the same level.   Kars considered Santanta a “novice”, like a “weak puppy.”   That’s an interesting choice of words, since we just saw Kars save the life of a weak puppy earilier.   Maybe that same pity was the only reason Kars kept Santana around in the first place.      As dangerous as Santana was, Kars considers him utterly useless.   

He even refers to Santana as “it.”  Maybe that’s just a mistake in this scanlation, but I dunno.   He’d probably use “it” to refer to that puppy he saved too.   And maybe this contempt explains why Kars refers to him as “Santana”, the name Stroheim gave the guy.   I always wondered why Kars didn’t use Santana’s real name, but maybe Santana never had one.  

But Stroheim’s not done just yet.   He has a UV beam built into his eyepiece, which stuns Kars long enough to make him drop the stone, and then it slides over a cliff.

Joseph and Kars race after it, but Kars is faster, because he doesn’t have to worry about slowing down before he goes over the edge.    He can survive the fall, while Joseph can’t.   So Kars figures that Joseph will try to kick him, and Joseph does throw a kick... at the snow, to distract Kars long enough for Joseph to get the Stone back.

But Kars has  blades in his legs too, and he uses one to snag Joseph and pull him over the edge of the cliff.   Joseph manages to use Hamon to grab hold of some icicles to stop his fall, but he still has to deal with Kars’ unstoppable blades, and his relentlessness.   Joseph’s whole deal is that he outsmarts his opponents by exploiting their inattentiveness.   But Kars is laser focused on getting the Aja Stone, so it’s almost impossible to catch him off-guard.

So Joseph uses that tenacity against him by holding up the Stone in the path of Kars’ attacks.   Kars wants to kill Joseph, but he doesn’t dare use his blades near the Stone.  Remember, Kars’ plan requires that specific Aja Stone because it’s the only one big enough and flawless enough to power his “Ultimate Life Form” mask.   If he damages the Stone, it won’t be suitable for his needs.   Knowing this, Joseph kicks him down the rest of the way, while he heads back up a “rope” made of Ripple-connected icicles.

Said icicles were provided by Caesar, who expected Joseph to try something like this, because he’s already learned that Joseph thinks in terms of ropes and strings.   Stroheim is astonished by their flawless teamwork.  

Below, Kars goes out of his way to adjust his fall so as not to crush a flower.   He laughs at this latest setback, because he’s just that impressed with Joseph’s resourcefulness.   Then he withdraws to try again another day.  

This whole arc surprised me when I watched the anime, because it seemed like Kars would be the final boss of Battle Tendency, but here he was fighting Joseph early.   And it wasn’t exactly an all-out fight.    They had a little footrace and Joseph used the Aja Stone to keep Kars at bay, but not much more than that.   Considering all the crazy stuff we saw from Esidisi, you’d think Kars would be much more dangerous. 

But that’s just it.    Esidisi was extremely formidable, and Joseph destroyed him with his Hamon training.    Kars lost 33% of his team in a single stroke.    All he has left is Wammu, who’s in Greece at the moment.  He simply can’t afford to take on Joseph in this situation, so he doesn’t try anything too crazy.   Both of them know his blades are powerful enough to get the job done, so he used them, but when they stopped being effective, he ran out of cards to play, so he left.    It’s not that Kars is weak, it’s just that Joseph’s gotten so much stronger.    So this fight feels like a much milder affair than the battles with the other Pillar Men so far, even though Kars is supposed to be the best one.  

And this is something else I really love about Part 2.    There’s only five villains to deal with: Straizo, Santana, Eisidisi, Wammu, and Kars.   That’s it, so it makes things pretty easy to keep up with, and it leaves room for Wammu and Kars to fight multiple times.  

Compare this with Part 3, where the Stardust Crusaders have to fight through a gauntlet of evil Stand Users as they make their way to Egypt.    I think I counted 26 bad guys in Part 3?   Somewhere in that neighborhood.    And I love Part 3, don’t get me wrong, but if Dio only had ten henchmen instead of two dozen, would it really hurt the story?  

This was something that really bugged me about Parts 4 and 5.   Would La Squadra Esecuzioni’s role in Vento Aureo be any different if they only had five guys instead of seven?    And what was the deal with that dude who lived in the transmission tower?    Most of the “villains” in Part 4 were just randos who just fought with the good guys for no particular reason. 

With Part 2, you don’t have any of that.   Five villains, and three of them only get to fight once.   That means every fight has to count, and every fight has to move the story along.  Kars isn’t going to just show up to be sociable.  He saw an opening to achieve his goal, and he went for it, only to discover his enemies were better prepared than he expected.   Now, he’ll have to wait for Wammu... 

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #caesar zeppeli #kars #rudol von stroheim #lisa lisa #messina #suzie q

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 94-98

This is the first part of the “Joseph vs. Wammu” arc. 

Is it “Whammu” or “Wammu”?    I just looked it up and you drop the “h” I guess.

Here’s some background on the mansion Kars has been using as a base.    I get the impression that it’s a real building in St. Moritz, Switzerland, which leads me to imagine Hirohiko Araki visiting Switzerland in the 80′s and being inspired by the sights.    Then again, I’m not even sure this is a real building.

Messina’s injured and Caesar’s dead, so it’s down to just Joseph and Lisa.  They want to track down Wammu before he heals up from the Caesar fight, but instead they run into some new asshole named “Wired Beck.”   I always assumed he was named after the Beck who did the song “Loser” in the 90′s, but no, it was Jeff Beck, who made the album “Wired”.   This led me to wonder what the other Beck’s first name is, and it turns out that is his first name.  His full name is “Beck David Hansen”. 

It’s been like... 28 days?  Since The Pillar Men spared Joseph in Rome, and while he and Caesar were training, the Pillar Men have also been busy creating vampires with the Stone Mask.  Wired Beck was a fugitive murderer before they got ahold of him. 

Joseph is all set to fight the guy, but Lisa steps in and kills him instead, doing one of those awesome “I killed you so fast that you don’t even know what hit you” attacks.   Joseph is amazed and somewhat surprised by her fighting skills, which I don’t understand because he’s been training under her for three weeks.   Like, Beck didn’t take Lisa seriously either, but he just met the lady, so I get that.  

And when they finally find Wammu, he praises Lisa Lisa for noticing that there’s a lot of other people in the room with them.   But he still adds “-for a woman!” to his assessment.   You’d think a 12,000 year old Pillar Man, who thinks his kind is superior to humans, would rise above this sort of sexism.   Or maybe I’ve got it backwards, and it’s exactly because he’s a 12,000 year old supremacist that Wammu’s attitude is so backward.

Anyway, Kars is here too, and so are like a hundred vampires.   Like Wired Beck, they’re all loyal minions of Kars and Wammu, just hanging off the ceiling and waiting for orders.   Joseph and Lisa could kill a few vampires without any trouble, as we’ve just seen, but this is just too many.   They’re trapped and they know it.   

To Joseph’s credit, he tries to set up a string to trap all of them at once, but there’s too many eyes watching.   Wammu asks Kars to let him fight Joseph one-on-one, but Kars is done with that shit.  He just wants the Red Stone of Aja, and he sees no reason to wait around.   But then Lisa tells him that she has the Stone in a secret location, and if she or Joseph don’t check in with it by a prearranged time, a bomb will go off to destroy it.  It’s a bluff, and Kars knows it’s a bluff, but he’s too obsessed with the Stone to take the risk.  

There’s a lot of shots of Lisa Lisa acting cool in this part of the story, probably because we’re running out of other characters.    I preferred the anime Lisa Lisa to the manga design, because I liked how she looks like the cover art to Duran Duran’s Rio “album”.   Compared to that, the manga Lisa looks a bit... understated.   But I’ve come to appreciate that understated look.   Joseph uses his boisterous personality to help draw attention away from his tricks.    But while he’s making a scene, Lisa Lisa just adopts this stone cold poker face and dares anyone to call her bet.  She knows how badly Kars wants the stone, and she knows that Kars understands how badly she wants to keep it from him.  Why should she be bluffing about this?   Leaving the stone in such a situation sounds like a smart play.   Kars thinks she’s just being desperate, except she doesn’t look desperate, does she?

Lisa proposes a wager to break the standoff: She and Joseph will fight Kars and Wammu for control of the Red Stone of Aja.  Nice and simple.   Kars accepts, not so much because he accepts her bomb story, but because it gives them a chance to avenge Esidisi.    He asks Wammu to chose a battleground, then sends Joseph to fetch the Stone while they keep Lisa as a hostage.

Wammu’s choice is a place called “Skeleton Heel Stone”.   If I understand him correctly, it was something like a Swiss answer to Stonehenge, but later on it became a gladiatorial arena.

Joseph heads back to St. Moritz to get the stone, and carries Messina back with him.  Okay, so about Messina.   Wammu lopped off his arm outside the mansion, but when Caesar entered the mansion to chase after Wammu, he found Messina lying inside, like someone had carried him in.  So how did that happen?  I can only guess Messina brought himself indoors, but that doesn’t sound like something he would do, since he knew the mansion was enemy ground.

Back at the hotel, Joseph finds the Red Stone of Aja in Lisa’s luggage, but he also discovers an old photo from 1889.   There’s Speedwagon, his grandmother Erina Joestar, and... Straizo?   Holding a baby?!    Of course, anyone who knows Phantom Blood knows that this photo represents the all the survivors from the Part 1 cast.   The baby is the same one Erina rescued before Jonathan sank the ship to stop Dio.   But Joseph has no idea about any of that.   He had heard of Straizo before their fight in New York, but he didn’t know much.

Here’s a nice shot of Skeleton Heel Stone.    It’s supposed to be near the foot of Piz Bernina, along the Italian/Swiss border.  

Joseph arrives with the Stone, and holds up a match to it to demonstrate it’s amplification powers.   Satisfied that it’s the genuine article, Kars agrees to proceed with their contest.

In the meantime, Lisa deduces that Joseph saw the photo in her suitcase, and explains that she was the baby in the photo.  Erina saved her from the sinking ship, but since she was pregnant with Joseph’s father, she entrusted Lisa’s care to Straizo.  That’s how she learned the Ripple and came into possession of the Red Stone of Aja.  Joseph is more confused that Lisa looks as young as she does when she must be fifty years old.

And once again, Joseph finds himself empathizing with others.   He had always seen Lisa Lisa as a cold, hardnosed instructor, but now he’s imagining how difficult Straizo’s betrayal must have been for her.  

Never mind that shit!  Here come vampire horses!   Joseph asks the same thing we’re all wondering: What the Fuck?   It’s actually quite simple, really.  To prepare for this event, the Pillar Men used the Stone Masks on some horses.   The vampire goons can barely control them.

What I want to know is where Kars found all these silly Roman soldier uniforms for all of these guys.   Like I said before, it’s been about a month since they woke up in Rome, but I get the feeling that all Kars did was find a new home and dress up his new vampire henchmen in silly clothes.   

The idea is that Wammu will be fighting Joseph in an old-fashioned chariot race, but Joseph thinks the use of vampire horses is an unfair advantage for Wammu.   But they explain that the reins will conduct Hamon, so Joseph should be able to control them with a light Ripple.   O... kay?  Lisa Lisa verifies this, but it still seems kind of goofy.  

Kars orders the battle to begin with the moon appears out of the clouds, but Joseph seems more interested in clearing his chariot wheels.   That makes Lisa nervous, until...

... the race begins and Wammu’s chariot gets stuck.    While everyone else was watching the moon, Joseph was tossing crap in front of Wammu’s chariot to slow him down.   

Look at this big tricky himbo, he’s great.

So the way this works is that there’s a pillar on the racetrack, and there’ll be a weapon hanging from it for the riders to take.   Joseph wants to get a head start so he can have his choice of weapon.    This is because one of them is a big old warhammer, and he’s worried about what Wammu could do with such a thing if he got his hands on it.    However, if Joseph could cover it in oil, he could charge it with Hamon and really give Wammu a hard time.  

And Joseph pulls it off!   He nearly loses his grip on the thing, but it catches on the ring on his finger.   Incidentally, this is the antidote ring that Caesar secured for him earlier.   Joseph has decided that he won’t drink the antidote until he’s beaten Wammu, so he’s wearing it on his pinky instead.   So Joseph seems really confident that all he needs is the warhammer to win this thing.    So why is this (Pillar) man smiling?

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #wammu #lisa lisa #kars #robert e o speedwagon #erina joestar #straizo #wired beck

[duhragonball]

JoJolion Chapter 95

And here we are at the most recent chapter, published in March of 2020.  I don’t know if there’s going to be an April edition of Ultra Jump, what with the coronavirus and all, and even if there were, I don’t know if JoJolion was going to be featured in that issue.    So for now, I’m caught up on JoJo, and this seems like a good place to be caught up to.  

Let me try to get all of this straight, so when future-me tries to sort all this out, he can read this post and have a refresher.  

Tsurugi is (apparently) dying, having succumbed to the curse that has plagued his family for generations.   

Norisuke (his grandfather) wanted to perform the same equivalent exchange sacrifice that his own mother had done to save him as a boy. 

Jobin (Tsurugi’s father) has other ideas, and has secured a branch from one of the Rokakaka plants.    This is often called the “New Rokakaka”.   I think that’s because:

Pre-JoJolion, Josefumi Kujo and Yoshikage Kira stole this branch and hid it in the Higashikata estate.   The idea being that they could graft it onto one of the trees on that orchard, and maybe that would give it some extra mojo to make the fruit capable of saving Kira’s mother.   I think that’s how it went down, but maybe I’m wrong.   Anyway, the Earthquake happened, the boys got fused together into Josuke, who had no memory of their earlier plan, so it took until like Chapter 70 for anyone to even find the branch and know what it was.   Josuke and Rai thought the Rock Humans captured it during the Poor Tom fight, but actually Jobin and Tsurugi got it, and Jobin’s been keeping it in the room where he houses his rhinoceros beetles.  

Only Yasuho suspected the truth, that the Rock Humans didn’t capture the branch, so she went to the Higashikata home to try to find it, while Josuke tried to pursue the final Rock Human, Afeku Satoru, Head Doctor of the TGU Hospital.    (I assume Dr. Satoru is a Rock Human, since all of his dead partners were Rock Humans, and they don’t trust outsiders). 

Funnily enough, while Josuke’s been struggling to pursue Satoru, Satoru has been pursuing the branch.   Somehow, he seems to be able to bi-locate, appearing at the Higashikata estate while he does his business at TGUH.   This is probably an effect of his Bullshit Stand, which automatically attacks people who try to approach him or see his face.  

The last we saw of Josuke, Holly healed his wounds with Rokakaka juice and gave him some pointers on dealing with the Head Doctor’s Stand.   Then she passed out.    Josuke then hired a bike courier to deliver a package for him.   I kind of hope is was a letter to the Head Doctor that says “I’m gonna kick your ass, Sincerely, JoJo Fourballz.”

Meanwhile, Yasuho’s been getting her ass kicked.   She sent her Stand, Paisley Park inside the Higashikata house to search for the Branch, but Jobin caught her and trapped PP in the toilet.   At the same time, Dr. Satoru’s Stand was attacking Yasuho herself, and her arm got lopped off.  

Fortunately, all of this came to a head in this chapter, when Norisuke finally finds out about Jobin having the branch and pulls Paisley Park out of the toilet, allowing her to return to Yasuho.   

Briefly, Norisuke is willing to consider Jobin’s plan to save Tsurugi with the Branch’s fruit, but he uses his Stand (King Nothing) to investigate a little, and discovers that the Branch was handled by Ojiro Sasame, the same guy who was reported dead in the newspaper earlier.  So now the whole family knows that Jobin killed people to make his plan work.   

And so Jobin then attacked his father with his Stand (Speed King).    It’s strongly implied that this killed Norisuke, but he used a similar attack on Yasuho about fifty chapters back, and it just knocked her out, so maybe Norisuke is still alive, but it doesn’t look like it.   

As things currently stand, Jobin looks to be taking over the family.   His wife seems to be on his side, though mostly out of shock and fear.    His brother and sisters don’t know what to do, so they’re just sort of standing around like they have been for most of Part 8.  

So I’m guessing things are heading to a climactic showdown here.   Pretty sure Josuke is on his way to the Higashikata home, because he’s decided that the branch must be there after all.     Dr. Satoru is already there, although only Yasuho and Mitsuba seem to understand what that means.    I think Jobin is hoping he can get the fruit to ripen before the Head Doctor can do anything, or maybe he doesn’t recognize him as a threat.   

Other possible players:

Kyo Nijumura: She may even be on the grounds, since she’s been posing as the family’s maid the whole time.    She’s actually Holly’s daughter, working undercover to dig up information on the Higashikata family, but I don’t think we’ve seen her much since that secret was revealed.   Did she quit the job?   What has she been doing ever since? 

Rai Mamezuku: The Plant Appraiser.   He only got involved because Josuke needed someone to help find the branch and take care of it until it fruited, and that seems to be a formality at this point.  

Kaato Higashikata: Norisuke’s estranged wife, recently released from prison after the murder conviction that followed her saving Jobin from the curse.   Hard to believe she’d just sit this thing out.  We don’t even know what her Stand is called, so it’s hard to believe Araki introduced this lady just to leave it there.   

Karera Sakunami: Kind of the counterexample to Kaato.   Karera knows a lot less about what’s going on, and she seemed to have a closure on her role in the story, so I’d be surprised to see her show up again.    But she’s out there, and loyal to Josuke, to some extent.

Tooru: This guy’s barely done anything except hint that he got to third base with Yasuho while they were in high school.   But he seems to have some sort of ties with Dr. Satoru, so maybe he’s important.   Personally, I think he’s just there to add flavor to the Josuke/Yasuho romance.    Karera served a similar role earlier on, showing up as an old flame (?) of Josuke’s, and now we have Tooru playing the same role for Yasuho.   Anyway, fuck this guy.    I hate him.  

Dio Brando: What’s nuts about Part 8 is that it has absolutely nothing to do with Dio.    At all.  Part 2 at least mentioned him a lot, and Part 5 starred his son, but in Part 8 they ran out of Dio in 1890, so no one even knows to bring him up.   I don’t buy it, personally.   He’ll show up in Chapter 100 and reveal that he was the secret mastermind of this whole thing.   Then he’ll turn everyone into vampire dinosaurs.   

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojolion #spoilers #jobin higashikata #norisuke higashikata #joshuu higashikata #daiya higashikata #hato higashikata