Okay but I really like the idea of Sophie, Michael and Howell being roommates in 1980's college just for fun and giggles.
Michael, being a typical young student, survives on instant noodles and oatmeal he keeps in his nightstand instead of the table, stacking books on a blanket and trying to get along with Howell in five square meters. Overall he just a sweet boy who tries his best to study while Howell plays music from a tape recorder on the max volume at 1AM.
Howell Jenkins collects dust, random tests and papers, magazines, posters, a couple of dozen deflated rugby balls and old cassettes under his bed. A small family of spiders lives peacefully above his bed, who look like they've been here for 10 years already. He also locks himself in the bathroom for at least two hours every evening and every morning, and Michael fights for HIS LIFE to find a moment when the shower is free.
Sophie Hatter, on the other hand just...lives with them. Seriously, one day she barges into their room completely unannounced and starts cleaning Howl's part of the room, telling them that "she lives there now." She was not worried about the lack of extra space, nor other small points related to the fact that she simply invaded their private property. None of them kicked her out anyway, allowing her to terrorize their ten square meters. And, partly, not without scandal, spiders and Howl's fashionable clothes.
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asking and receiving (bonus below readmore)
[ID: A black and white, digital Trigun comic of Vash and Wolfwood. In the first panel is a close up of Wolfwood's mouth as he says, "Vash". Accompanying it is a close up shot of Vash's eye, widen and cheeks flushed. Wolfwood presses a knee against the open space between Vash's legs and says, "Tell me everything you want from me." Wolfwood's face is equally as flushed. He continues to say, "I'll give it to you. Everything." As he talks, a wide shot shows the both of them in white space. Vash is sitting, leaning a little back with both hands pressed against the surface he's sitting on. Wolfwood is in his white dress shirt, stripped of the blazer. He's still leaning in with one knee in between Vash's spread legs, his right hand touching Vash's lips and his left hand behind his back.
The shot closes in on Vash's mouth and Wolfwood's hand against it, pressing down on the lower lip as he says, "You have to ask though. Go on." His hand moves down to Vash's chin, gently holding it. With a shy and uncertain expression, Vash hesitantly asks, "Um... K... Kiss... Please?" Wolfwood, without wasting a second, leans in and kisses him and indulges by pressing deeper, eliciting a small noise of surprise from Vash.
Wolfwood moves away from Vash first and with a smile, asks, "What else?" Vash tugs on Wolfwood's left sleeve, wordlessly budging Wolfwood to give him his hand that was still behind his back. In the next panel, Vash utters, "Hold me..?" He's holding Wolfwood's left hand with his own while his right hand is reaching for his waist. Wolfwood complies, moving his left hand to Vash's shoulder and his right hand continues to touch Vash's cheek. Wolfwood asks again, "What else?"
More comfortable now, Vash leans in to kiss Wolfwood. Wolfwood catches him immediately, pressing his thumb against Vash's lips to stop him before demanding, "Hey. Ask." Vash looks back in surprise and Wolfwood meets his eye with a quiet, insistent look. They're quiet for a moment before Vash leans in again and curtly requests, "Kiss. Me." Wolfwood says "Good", smiling as he lifts his hand away, and meets Vash's lips. In the next shot, Wolfwood had adjusted his position, sitting on Vash's thigh. The hand that was once on Vash's cheek has moved its way to Vash's nape, pushing away the collar of his jacket with his pinky. His other hand continues to grip on Vash's shoulder. Still kissing, Wolfwood asks again, "What else?"
In the next shot, Vash is starting to turn, moving Wolfwood with him. Vash asks, "Let me on top of you?" Wolfwood says, "Mhm" before asking again, "What else?" The next panel shows a close look of Vash's face. He's looking down, flushed and shy just as he had been at the beginning, but now, more decisive. Vash asks, "Wolfwood... Let me have you..?" A panel of Wolfwood taking Vash's hand into his, pulling it towards his chest. The next panel shows Wolfwood lying down where Vash had laid him. Vash's hand is on Wolfwood's chest, covering the cross of his rosary while Wolfwood's hand lingers against his, loosely pressing Vash's hand in place. He looks up at Vash with a shy smile of his own, flushed cheeks. He says, "All yours."
A panel shows a close up of Vash's tender gaze before he leans down to be closer to Wolfwood. The final shot is a front view of their positions, Vash's face turned away from the viewer; Vash is leaning over Wolfwood who's lying down with his right leg draped over Vash's legs. Wolfwood's left hand holds onto Vash's left arm. With finality, Vash says, "...Mine." End ID]
[ID: A follow up bonus comic in a looser, sketchier style. They're laying comfortably in bed when Vash asks, "What was that earlier?" referecing to the start of the previous comic. Wolfwood glances away and says, "To get you used to it. Asking. And getting what you ask for. Since you're alwasy hesitant about it." Vash's eyes widen, tight lipped. Wolfwood continues, "Knowing you, it'll be a tough habit to break..." When he says this, Vash can't help but laugh, unable to deny it. Wolfwood slowly brings a hand to Vash's cheek and continues to say, "So I'll keep trying -- whatever ways I can... to get it through your thick skull." Vash takes Wolfwood's hand with his, kissing the the palm gently. Wolfwood's eyes soften and holding onto Vash's cheek, he leans in to try for a kiss. Vash says, "Hey..." before stopping Wolfwood's lips with the back of his hand, a smug look on his face, "Ask." Wolfwood's embarrassed and with little irritation, asks, "Really?" Vash smiles, saying, "You're in need of practice too." They pause for a moment, Wolfwood looking contemplatively, before he's leaning in again, asking, "May I please kiss you?" Vash looks him in the eyes and says, "Yes." The comic ends with a "chu", indicating an off-panel kiss. End ID]
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Clark is aware that spying on others is more Batman's thing.
However... it's his little niece and nephew, okay? Just because they live in Illinois now (and aren't his blood relatives) doesn't mean anything. The Walker family's always been close with the Kents, even if only Grandma Walker still even lives in Smallville. So, just like he always keeps an ear out for Ma and Pa, he keeps an ear out for Alicia, Maddie, her husband Jack, and his cute niece and nephew's heartbeats.
It's easy enough and a pretty good indicator of their well-being, even beyond the obvious.
Clark really can't be held accountable for the chair that punched through the wall of the Watchtower's meeting room when he shot up out of it. He figures that he's being quite restrained, actually, since his nephew's heart literally just stopped beating.
In the time that it takes to pacify the rest of the assembled League members, though, Danny's heart starts beating again.
But it's different. Slower. Dangerously so.
He needs to get to Amity Park right now.
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Let's talk about Jump GIGA
Jump GIGA covers, 2016-2024. Volumes are published (left to right per row) as Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn releases, with 2018 and 2019 briefly breaking the pattern by having three Winter and three Summer volumes each. 2023 has an Early Spring volume in addition to the standard four.
So, people have pointed out that the 2024 Spring cover is, uh, not like other covers.
But I've only seen comparisons to other MHA GIGA covers and MHA Weekly Shonen Jump covers. Out of curiosity for what GIGA's typical marketing aesthetics might be, I put together a comparison between all of Jump GIGA's covers to date.
And, um. Some things stand out, to say the least.
First, let me clarify what Jump GIGA even is: it is a seasonal magazine from Shonen Jump, published separate from Weekly Shonen Jump. SJ is an absolutely massive brand and they have a number of magazines serialized outside of the most well-known weekly magazine.
The content of Jump GIGA is primarily made up of one-shots and spin-offs. From the beginning, a lot of the appeal has been the cool cover illustrations which showcase special merchandise that comes with the purchase of GIGA. Usually the cover also promotes big things going on related to the WSJ series, like movie events, new games, or special figurines for sale.
The marketing aesthetic has been clear from the start: the cover consists of one core illustration and a number of ads surrounding it. Most often you get a cover illustration of a protagonist, and then ads and merch for other series, e.g. Food Wars protagonist cover with One Piece film promotion and Haikyuu!! merch.
The purpose of this marketing direction is pretty obvious. Spin-offs and one-shots are not likely to generate a ton of interest consistently, so they lure people in with the cool covers and tempting limited edition merchandise of the series they already know and love. In this way, highlighting one series with the cover and different series with the merch makes sense, because maybe somebody doesn't care about Food Wars, but they definitely want those Haikyuu!! stickers, stuff like that.
Starting from 2020's Autumn volume, you can see a shift. For the first time, basically all of the merchandise is for the cover series. The Demon Slayer manga had already ended five months earlier in May, but a two-chapter spin-off was scheduled for release in WSJ during October. This GIGA was released exactly one day before the second chapter was published and it capitalizes on the hype.
After this point, only MHA and Jujutsu Kaisen dominate the cover and the merch in quite this way, with Black Clover getting attention last volume as a way to highlight the fact that it actually switched syndication from WSJ to GIGA.
Anyway, most commonly the cover illustration is a solo shot of a core cast member (usually but not always the protagonist), and if it's not a solo, it's a big cast illustration.
Only a few covers focus on two characters, and usually it's a crossover as opposed to characters from same series sharing the limelight.
Here we've got Food Wars' protagonist with the main characters from Dr. Stone and Act-Age.
The two covers most similar to the Izuku & Kacchan cover are 2022 Winter and 2023 Autumn.
Winter depicts the main trio of Blue Box in a seasonally-appropriate aesthetic. Not gonna lie, this one kinda makes me laugh--Blue Box is a romance and sports manga, and even though Christmas has a romantic air to it in Japan, instead of depicting any sort of like, hesitant but hopeful romantic energy between the heterosexual couple that actually get together later in the series, they focus primarily on the two girls being cute with the guy is a wee footnote? I mean, all right.
Meanwhile, Autumn depicts one of the protagonists with the series antagonist with a typical cool action style. I'm not very familiar with JJK, but I hear these two have got Some Drama going on, so, there's that.
The merch itself has also evolved over the years. Stickers and posters were present early on, but they have since expanded to decorative folders and now acrylic stands and coasters. 2021 Summer sees the first time the cover illustration is marketed as merch, with the Jujutsu Kaisen cover included as a decorative folder.
Right after that, the Kacchan cover of 2021 Autumn is included as a poster alongside earlier covers featuring Todoroki and Izuku.
2023 Summer's cover is a huge, wrap-around MHA cast illustration and it was published three days after chapter 396 came out, strategically timed to highlight the big shift in the final battle as Ochako vs Toga ends and All Might vs. AFO begins. Merch includes a decorative folder of the wrap-around cover and character motif stickers.
And then we get this!?
A duo cover illustration where the cover art itself has been merchandised to hell and back!?!?
Acrylic stand and pin set!?
Double-sided coaster showing bkdk greatest hits!? With volume 29's river scene cover!?
There's also a double-sided poster featuring the Spring cover with the ninth popularity poll art and a decorative bag with the anniversary art. The cover art itself is plastered all over the volume, front, back, and spine, apparently a total of 19 times.
I honestly don't know what to say about this. It feels wild that this is actually what the cover is. Obviously it is a huge marketing push in anticipation of season 7, and Izuku and Katsuki are the most popular characters, but. it just feels... unique.
In the course of Jump GIGA's publication, this direction is kind of unprecedented. Genuinely no one could have expected this. This seems to be the first time there's been this much merch for a cover. And it was a solid fucking move, marketing-wise--it's sold out basically everywhere, everyone is talking about it. And even people who don't follow the series or ship these two can't help but comment on how strikingly romantic it looks!?
I don't know how much say Horikoshi had in what the cover was, but damn it sure feels like he drew this with immense affection. I kind of wonder if he personally pushed for it to be these two, rather than the typical solo shot, cast shot, or even a protagonist vs. antagonist shot.
I'm KO'd, man. idek if this post is useful to anybody I'm just on my hands and knees here.
Everybody knows what we're all here for, and it's these cute boys finally getting their happy ending.
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Fun little silly thought I had about the Lair Games and specifically Leo deliberately losing is all the reasons he could have for doing so.
My favorite headcanon for his main motivation is that Splinter wasn’t proud of him anymore.
I imagine that, in the beginning, winning the Lair Games was Leo’s opportunity to shine. He wasn’t artistic or the baby of the family like Mikey, wasn’t a tech genius who created amazing inventions like Donnie, wasn’t the eldest who was insanely strong and dependable like Raph. So he had to shine somewhere else- anywhere else- and what better way to get attention than to be a winner? A champion?
And then he won too much. And it wasn’t special anymore. He got too big headed, too cocky, he knew this was his element and he ran with it.
Splinter’s words of congratulations slowly petered out. Suddenly, there was no real reason to win.
Winning feels empty when the only one cheering you on is yourself.
So- Leo schemed. And he’s a great schemer, fooling his whole family (and Donnie did deserve a win- people were way happier when he won.)
He even gave up his prized possession! His room!
Though he knows his brothers probably think it’s a bad prize. A terrible one, even.
Leo doesn’t sleep much as is, though. So Dad’s snores were more comforting than anything. It was reassuring to hear him so clearly alive and close by.
Even if the distance between them was larger than Leo’d like.
He’d just have to find something else, something more to show his dad that Leo was someone to trust, to be proud of, to love.
He gets his chance soon after, when he needs to pull off a plan against Big Mama at his dad’s side. Leo can only hope this victory is one that has a lasting effect when his father looks at him with pride once more.
Victory, for Leo, is a pretty loaded term.
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